There is something intimidating about blank space. I think that’s why the existing templates for blogs don’t provide distinct visual separation between entries. It’s usually a subtle thing, a line, blank space, but nothing like the abrupt space of a canvas.

I think that the implied cohesiveness of words, generated into a space that is not a blank, helps most beginning writers feel more comfortable adding words to their blog space. The first stroke is always the hardest. It’s as if you’ve violated the blankness, and you feel the pressure to make what you put there worthwhile. But with the support of a few lines written before, the pressure is mitigated. Once you start adding words to the screen, it’s easier to continue.

Because blogs are always works in progress, the writer feels more at ease. A blog is never really finished. Like a painting, blogging only pauses in interesting places.

The particles of a blog are not seamless. Each entry is a line in a poem, read in reverse, and situated by relation to the disappearing text that scrolls off underneath. Having written in the space before, adding to it becomes easier. Each new entry becomes a mutation, upsetting the stasis of the ethos conveyed before. A violation of stasis, but seldom of emptiness.