That tweet you blasted out with a massively embarrassing typo in it? Or the email newsletter that went out with a gaffe of epidemic proportions? Too bad. It’s like that late night fling you can’t take back and your wife leaves you.

You’re utterly unforgiven.

But that blog post? You can correct it anytime. Your constant refinements can mushroom it into a finely tuned piece of literature. You can even rewind time to edit out the aforementioned fling.

You are forever forgiven.

Long time blogger artist Austin Kleon writes on blogging as a forgiving medium compared to others:

The ability to “move it around for a long time” is what I’m looking for in a writing medium — I want words and images to be movable, I want to switch them out, copy and cut and paste them, let them mutate.

But most importantly, I want to be able to be wrong. I want to change my mind! I want to evolve.

. . .blogging feels to me like a world of endless drafting, endless revisioning.

It’s a beautiful thing to be able to re-create over and over again.

(Now if yer twisting the truth after-the-fact for nefarious purposes, that’s a whole different matter that will bite you in the arse.)

He also makes a excellent point when he says readers need to be forgiving towards bloggers too. After all they’re expending their blood, sweat, and tears without asking for much of anything in return.

To do the exploration that growth and change requires, one needs a forgiving medium… but what one really needs forgiving readers.

Read the rest over at Austin’s alluring blog — it’s a very forgiving read: Blogging as a forgiving medium.

While you’re over there, bookmark him and sign up for his newsletter. It’s good sheet.

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