Over the past few weeks I\u2019ve been trying to write posts and tweets. I hate it, but don\u2019t see any way around it if you would like at least a few readers. The writing itself is OK — I like short things anyway. But when the snippet floats by in a stream of everything, unfiltered, in a soup of phrases and sentences, the spaces between it and the next thing stuffed with hashtags, it seems like something has shattered forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want a name for it, at least — the tweets, posts, comments, responses — quick, short and self-contained, usually assertive, and probably \u201cours\u201d, that is, characteristic of us now as no\u00a0earlier kind of writing could be. Like any writing, it\u2019s difficult to do well, which may be why it degenerates so often into expletives, insults or endless, empty niceties.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, I like the phrase \u201csite-writing\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0An enterprising person named Jane Rendell is claiming that phrase for a kind of architectural criticism that interests her, that reports the effects of specific space, or more specifically the relationship between a built space and its surroundings — and us, of course.\u00a0\u00a0At first, I thought my thoughts about the phrase were absolutely at odds with hers; but maybe not.\u00a0\u00a0A website is — or should be — specific, I think.\u00a0\u00a0It should mark out an area, set priorities and limits — ideally have a bit of visual identity as well.\u00a0\u00a0Writing for such a site will necessarily consist of bytes and bits, and beyond that, will succeed or fail depending on how it supports, confronts, contributes to what\u2019s around it, that is, the\u00a0site<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n p.s. (are there post-scripts in site-writing?) \u201cPost-writing\u201d would be a contender, too, but I suspect I like the sound, the rhythm of \u201csite-writing\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past few weeks I\u2019ve been trying to write posts and tweets. I hate it, but don\u2019t see any way around it if you would like at least a few readers. The writing itself...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"On the Definition of Site Writing ","bgseo_description":"I wan to claim the phrase site writing to mean the kind of compressed, assertive, succinct messages most of us need to write now. ","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}