Erasing.org

I'm starting out with a review of erasing because I know it very well, and think that it is a good starting off point. I have been reading it since, oh, probably the second or third week of its existence, and I am what can be called a devoted reader. It's part of my daily life.

The writer/designer, Scott, also has a site called Dreamline, which is actually how I found him. Dreamline is devoted to the artwork of Dave McKean, and I am a big fan of his. Anyway, from there I followed Scott (then calling himself "Scotch") to Vivisect, a loosely knit group of designers, of which he is no longer a member. When he left, it didn't take long for me to track him down at erasing.

I've always been a big fan of Scott's design work, and this gave me a chance to appreciate him as a writer. The site is a journal, which he updates daily (or almost daily).

His writing is generally very clear, and has an objective self-awareness that few other non-professional writers seem to possess. He seems to try very hard to be honest about himself, and for that he gets my respect. There are so many journal sites out there devoted to people who think the world has done them a great disservice by making them middle-class and bored. Scott has his moments of complaint, but they are tempered by a fairly thorough grasp of his true situation and a quiet introspection that makes his prose flow easily.

I can offer only two negative comments about erasing, but they are minor ones, and I can't really fault him too much for them. The first is that he has a tendency to erase entries that he doesn't like. While that may make it a little difficult for a new reader to catch up, you can't argue with his reasoning behind it: it's his life, and he doesn't have to display any more than he wants to. The second is a feature of his writing. If Scott has a lot to say on a topic, he says it, which is good. The more he warms to that topic, however, the more prone he is to write run-on sentences. LONG ones. That doesn't mean that they are hard to read, it just makes it awkward at times. The good thing is, that's not the norm.

The last thing I want to say, is that I recommend erasing very highly. At the moment, it is my favourite site on the web.