Okay, so this blog has been devoid of real content for a solid month now. Part of this has been due to writerly funk, part is due to a dearth of ideas, and part is due to the following:
Recently, I had the slightly-creepy realization my blog has similarities to those evangelical Christian newspapers you can pick up for free. If you've ever rustled one of those open by mistake, you know the articles start out sounding concrete and relevant to the modern world and then wriggle themselves into a sermon. That's not necessarily a bad thing, provided you're feeling open to some spiritual inspiration that day, and are sympathetic to the Christian worldview. The problem is, I'm pretty humanist and geekish, and I get suckered in specifically because the headline implied the article was going to be a lot more worldly than it is. Thus, I tend to feel let down as soon as I realize the article is essentially an opinion piece about religion.
And therein lies the reason I started feeling disturbed by my own blog. A bunch of my posts are essentially opinion pieces about publishing and writing, and I do have a tendency to start out talking about one subject and then twist it around until I'm talking about writing. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a form of bait-and-switch, and I wonder if my audience (o hai, u guiz) occasionally feels annoyed by it.
The reason I do all this is because I'd like my blog to be genuinely helpful and informative to other writers, but oops, I don't necessarily understand that much. Frankly, I'm grubbing for topics here. And what I do understand is specific to me; the more I learn about writing, the more I realize there're a thousand ways to do it well, and everyone has to figure out their own personal method. Employing other people's techniques is, at best, a character-building exercise to help you achieve your own unique style a little faster. Thus, my views are--by definition--of limited utility to others because they're mine.
I don't know how to sort this out. I could relax my criteria for what I blog about to include personal stuff, whimsy, and unfinished thoughts. However, then I worry about what Kate In The Closet said in her very useful series of posts regarding creating an author website. She said: "[T]he purpose of your site is to get your user to perform a specific action".
What's my intended action for you? To have you keep coming back. Yes, I'm out to ensnare your minds, my sweet unsuspecting pretties. And I want to do it with quality content.
However, personal stuff, whimsy and unfinished thoughts aren't necessarily quality content. They're better than no content, and not-blogging is the thing I'm struggling with lately. Nevertheless, I worry that blogging about stuff that isn't specific and thought-provoking could be more harmful than helpful to my aims.
I probably shouldn't overthink this. It's just a blog, right? The bar isn't that high.
So I'll wave the standard white flag and just ask: What sort of things would you guys be interested in talking about? What topics do you think it would be cool to read about? What kinds of fluff would you enjoy?
9 comments:
I think the thing is to decide what sort of blog you want to create, and then get readers who want to read that kind of blog!
I'm enjoying coming along for the ride, so whatever you fancy musing on will probably interest me.
I personally enjoy your insite into geeky things and writing.
I would like to see a series of posts starting with a little short (4-5 paragraphs) story's and then a breakdown and contrast why this style or writing is good in some cases. Take different ways to write and explain why some are good here but not there.
That's my idea.
Whatever you want to muse about is good for me. :) I am just along to "hear" where your mind goes as we don't seem to be very good about phone calls & flights to see one another.
We're sort of going through the same issues at the Literary Lab site. We want to keep readers coming back; we want to provide useful posts; we can't always think of anything useful to say; we post anyway. Me, I have decided to write about either what I'm reading or what I'm writing, or both at the same time. I have no idea if anyone cares; it's what I've got to offer. There is only so much you can say about "show don't tell" or whatever anyway.
Oh, man. I thought this post was going to be about evangelical Christian newspapers, but it totally wasn't!
I think fairy said it best. Find what you love, what's unique about you, then hunt down the readers who get that.
That said, I like writing advice (examples are best). Drawings. Anything geeky. Wait, that's what I put on my blog... Hm. I guess that makes sense.
I'm here because of the fluff you've been writing so far, so maybe my opinion will be worth nothing.
I suspect your dilemma will rectify itself soon enough — you begin with dearth and funk, and these simply can't persist for much longer.
As for the Christian messages, I really did think you were posting some photos of your navel, which makes me wonder where the epicentre for the hoodwinking meme truly resides.
FairyHedgehog: Aw, thank you! One thing I'm very glad of is that I haven't seemed to lose any readers for having been a lazy sod the past month. Phew!
Sarf: Hey! That's a really good idea, and I'll have to look into it. Things that do work are always hard to analyse, so that might be a valuable thing to explore here.
Heather: :) True, dat. I'm really glad you and Sarf both blog, because I figure I'll hear about the big things in your lives faster that way.
Scott G. F. Bailey:
There is only so much you can say about "show don't tell" or whatever anyway.
Exactly! And after you've said it, it just kinda goes away into the background, and you can't really say it again, even if you get new readers.
Adam Heine: Hee! I could do drawings too, but I'm trying (and failing, but in a fun way) to keep this as a writing blog. Sarf's suggestion sounds like a good one regarding writing advice.
Whirlochre: But...that is my navel.
I'm very glad to have tempted you here with my fluff, regardless. No one shakes up the party better than you. :)
Hi JJ,
I think that for many writers (like me!) blogging is essentially time spent not writing that should be spent writing.
I have a certain number of bookmarked blogs that I allow myself to visit and yours is one of them...but I don't visit here as frequently as some of the others because of the "usefulness" factor.
It's a guilt thing. I can justify time spent reading blogs if I can tell myself that the time is not really being wasted, it's honing my writing skills or adding to my knowledge of the publishing industry.
I notice a lot of people will post YouTube links or vids about something they think is really cute (ie, "check out these cute penguins" or something) and I never click or watch those. I do like blogs with blog aggregators on the sidebar which is like a shortcut to see if there's anything worthwhile going on elsewhere.
I think contests and critique sessions are immensely useful. Posts about writers' personal angst, not so much.
It's all about time!
Miss Sharp: You make some very fine comments! Since blog-surfing is wasted time, I'd do better to stick to useful posts. Gotcha. :)
And you're in luck; I have contest planned for this week!
Post a Comment