Looking back over the scant entries in my journal towards the end of 2007, I wonder whether I have set myself too difficult a task.

Originally I saw blogging as an opportunity for me to write the sort of mini-essays I did for my sf fanzine Groggy in the seventies and eighties. Typing up ditto masters on a manual typewriter and printing them with a hand cranked spirit duplicator was a chore and I couldn't afford to mail out more than six sheets an issue anyway. I tried to say as much as possible in as few words as I could get away with.

I found a lot of virtue in this necessity. Writing is better when authors have enough sense to shut up before they run out of things to say rather than after. (Besides which, I am sure those readers straining their eyes to read the faint purple prose on the sixty-fifth sheet to go through the rollers, thanked me for my brevity.)

However, Groggy came out six times a year, at best. A blog can consume a year's worth of my old fanzine pieces in a couple weeks. I'm not sure my brain can generate ideas fast enough.

So during the coming year I intend to excuse myself from making every entry a mini-essay as I've tended to do. Yes, that's right. I am resolving to do worse. To write more sloppily. With less planning. I will see if I can't allow myself to jot down a stray thought, or reference a trivial website I came across, or mention our cat in passing, more often.

I hope I will still have plenty of essays but without so many lacunae. Lacunae. I like that word. I wish I had more opportunity to use it.