Write fast edit never?

The beauty of blogging was the idea that you can dash off a thought and publish as-is. Editing, cleaning things up, making it perfect – none of that was important for blogs. Sure, you fixed your typos if you remembered, but you could also add a post with "more coming". And sometimes never finish it.

The problem came as people started to take it more seriously. People blogged about their professional life, their research, their business. For many, it became the sort of thing you might be judged about. Gone was the "web log" nature, and in its place, a far more professionalised form of writing came into being. In some ways blogs merged with other forms of corporate communication. Others grew into newsletters and independent media publications. And the middle? The urge to share links was subsumed into Facebook and microblogs.

The medium I'm using now, Ghost, has an interesting history. According to its Wikipedia article, Ghost began as

WordPress, born to build blogs, had become too much. Ghost was created as a simpler way to do things. But I think the rise and fall of Substack is what really made more people notice Ghost.

Substack's main appeal (other than being free to use) was its built-in mailing list infrastructure. Substack was born to write newsletters. At some point (my knowledge of Ghost's history is pretty non-existent outside its Wikipedia article) Ghost added the ability to handle mailing lists and subscriptions. So once Substack's nazi problem came to the fore, Ghost was there as a viable alternative.

But you should really edit newsletters. Me? I just want to write, publish quickly, and edit probably never. I just want to blog.