When Harriet met Guriel

Jason Guriel -- set to join the Signal family this Spring with his second collection of poems, Pure Product -- is Harriet's newest blogger. Check out his inaugural post, where as usual, he says some smart things:

Perhaps the best strategy for writers in the age of the Internet – especially for writers like me, who are prone to blunders and benefit from rigorous editorial intervention – is to navigate the Web, and especially blogs, with a kind of self-imposed, print-era prudence. This may entail drafting blog posts longhand, typing them up only when they’re just right, and then withholding them until every one of their words has been weighed. Although the reduced presence of editors in the DIY-world of the Web is surely good for some version of democracy, it isn’t necessarily going to be good for the quality of that democracy’s cultural products. More and more, as the 21st-century rolls out, writers – blurring with (and into) bloggers – will to need to be their own most ruthless editors.

Read the rest here.