Blogging & Writing Archives - To Give a Defense

Rebranding, reinvention, & ten years of blogging. With some initial words about Benedict XVI.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 1, 2023 • Blogging & Writing

It has been ten years since I published my first blog article, and it is no longer the same blog, I am no longer the same blogger, nor the same person, I was ten years ago. As though I could have been. There exist a glut of “ten things I learned in ten years of blogging” posts, and I’m skeptical of such things, but what the hell, I’m going to write one too—because I can. (And I also say a few words about Benedict XVI and my changed byline.)

Saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Hays.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • June 9, 2020 • Blogging & Writing; On Other Blogs

No, Virginia, blogs are not the magisterium. 7QT XXI, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • November 27, 2015 • Blogging & Writing; Seven Quick Takes

This is really a post about the New Evangelization and how blogs fit in (and how they do not), but I must go through some set-up first. I had already chosen the new title for this blog, secured the new URL, and was fast at work making it pretty, when lo! over on Facebook someone — let us call him A. — shared a presumptuous post to my timeline. The post in question was a podcast promoting some obscure Marian apparition, rejected by the local bishop. I won’t give it further attention by naming it here; it is that bad.

How I write. 7QT XX, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • March 20, 2015 • Blogging & Writing; Seven Quick Takes

When I was in graduate school (this was in the 1990s), I wrote everything longhand, keyed my rough drafts into an Apple IIGS using Appleworks Word Processing (I know; I’m 45), and revised, by hand, on the hard copy. Then I would repeat over a series of maybe 8 – 10 more drafts. Then, along about 2001, with the sudden ability to do a great amount of research directly from the Internet, I began to write entirely on the computer, in Microsoft Word. That was not a good idea: Inevitably, my computer crashed. And so I returned to longhand.

Seven quick takes in defense of longhand: 7QT X, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • January 18, 2014 • Blogging & Writing; Seven Quick Takes

Computer crashes helped me to regain my normal and native sanity about how to write. A time there was, and ever a good time, when I wrote everything by hand and raged, raged against the dying of the light. I wrote every term paper in graduate school by hand, and by hand revised. It felt natural thus; and I retained a record of all my corrections.(Which I would promptly show to my students as an example of what revision is.) The visual does matter; and the startling impact of it is lost when comparing an early, clean draft with a later, clean draft.

The best writing advice I ever got & other quick takes: 7QT III, seriatim.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • October 26, 2013 • Blogging & Writing; Literature; Seven Quick Takes

The only thing I know about writing is this: that you have to work hard at writing the kind of stuff you want to write. It does no good, if you want to write 700 page novels, to listen to others tell you that people only read short stories anymore. Don’t listen to them; if you’re not coming up with short stories, you’re not a short story writer, and the quickest way to stop writing is to spend years trying to learn how to write something you don’t have it in you to write in the first place. Write the 700 page novel. Learn how to do that. Read 700-page novels and learn how they work.