Harris' Views

First off I'd like to say that for a book that is talking about writing and improving it, it isn't that bad a read. Now on to the real stuff. Harris has a view of reading and writing that poses them as very intertwined with each other. He liked to use the word rewriting instead of just writing. He did this because he sees writing as a response to some text that you have read or are reading and that you are responding, commenting, etc. on the text that you read when you write. He says, "imagine yourself as rewriting-- as drawing from, commenting on, adding to-- the work of others." His view of reading is that you have to understand what the author is saying in your own words. Then when you write you have to use that to build some sort of argument or thesis of your own if you are using that piece. Pretty much his whole purpose of reading is to use it later in some form of writing.

The main difference between Sullivan's approach to blogging and Harris' view of writing is the freedom aspect of blogging. Harris looks at revising more and looking a lot at your text before you publish it. This is kind of the opposite of the high feeling you get from the freedom of blogging. However, they have the similarity in that they both think blogging/writing are forms of commenting, adding to, and drawing from other people's works. Blogging is just a little less formal than the process that Harris described in his first two chapters. Pretty much we can start to establish that blogging is definitely a form of writing.