Archives for October 2014

A bad case of stupid seems to be going around.

Some people blame it on Mercury being in retrograde, but not me. I just call it people being people.

Does that make me less compassionate or more realistic? I don’t know but I do know that telling people to only write when they have something to say is a great way to kill productivity.

The intention is good and the idea is solid but good intentions don’t always lead to good results. Neville Chamberlain had good intentions when he rolled over for Hitler but students of history know that instead of saving lives it led to more bloodshed.

Writing Is A Habit/Skill

Writing is a skill and like any other it can be improved through exercise. It is also a habit and like any other habit it is impacted by how you approach it.

I don’t have hard numbers to share but my best guess is if you let yourself develop a habit of only blogging when you have something to say you might not blog with the sort of frequency that allows you to build a readership and improve your skills.

That is because many if not most of us are fighting our internal editor, the one that says our words aren’t as eloquent as others and our ideas aren’t as interesting.

One of the best and most important things you can do to improve as a writer is to write daily. One of the best and most important things you can do as a blogger is to think about topics to write about each day.

The idea here is to train yourself to write when you don’t feel like writing and to learn how to develop ideas for posts even when you don’t feel like doing so.

If you take these ideas to heart and work upon them you will start to see progress and improvement in both areas. The writing will become easier and so will coming up with ideas for blog posts.

There are those people who disagree and will tell you my suggestions is off base because it might impact the quality of your content and that lesser quality content will have a negative effect upon finding readers.

They are missing the boat.

Quality content is always important but the person who doesn’t perform regular maintenance on their home risks more. The degradation and deterioration of skills doesn’t happen in one fell swoop but over time.

Think of it as being similar to regular check ups at the dentist/doctor.

You don’t have to floss or brush your teeth but if you don’t there is no doubt that sooner or later your teeth and gums will show issues that you could have avoided.

Are You Giving Out Bad Blogging Advice?

Are you giving out bad blogging advice is the subject line of an email I received not long ago but it is not what made me decide to write this today.

Blog posts about blogging are the low hanging fruit of the blogosphere. There are 1,982,382 of them and thousands more that are created by the minute but they also happen to be among the most highly trafficked.

So when I took a look at my stats the other day I noticed there had been a small drop off and wondered what the cause was. It is normal to see some play in the readers because their time is limited and unless you consistently provide them with content that is entertaining/educational some will drop off.

Sometimes it is because they are bored or feel like they have learned all they can. Sometimes it is because they just don’t have time to read any more and they go elsewhere.

While it is nice to know the reasons why they leave you can’t or won’t always know.

Anyway I didn’t take a survey or try to figure out what caused the drop this time. I just accepted that it happened and decided to see if writing a post about blogging would pull some new readers in.

If things go as I hope some of them will read these words and like what they see. They’ll wonder who writes about a bad case of stupid and do they have a closet filled with gold nuggets they wish to share.

The answer is I write about bad cases of stupid going around and I do have gold nuggets in the closet but you’ll have to keep reading to decide if it is 14K or some synthetic variation.

If you ask me I’ll promise to share the diamonds too but sometimes you’ll find the cubic zirconium but only because I am the guy who writes daily and sometimes you strikeout while swinging for the fences.

Join The Journey

But if you are interested in joining me and the others in the journey we’d sure love to have you. The follow me buttons are all over the place and if you leave comments I promise to answer them.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Someone asked me how I got into blogging and if I could teach them how to build a blog. The answers to those questions aren’t really a part of this post.

That is because I only have ten minutes before I have to coach soccer practice and I prefer to have time to write about those things. Instead I’ll share a thought that came during the conversation.

Do You Remember Where You Came From?

They didn’t ask me to answer that particular question. It popped into my head…unbidden.

It had more to do with my thinking about the old posts that used to show up more frequently things like Jack’s Experience In the Ladies Room or One Slightly Used Pump For Sale  and Grandma.

Of course when you cover as broad an array of topics as I do it is not unusual to see a variety nor is it unusual to see a blog and blogger evolve.

I like to think that reading through the years here you’ll find evidence of evolution and growth. I like to think that I’ll see plenty of improvement in my writing.

It is part of why my writing has changed or so I think. I am more focused now on the technical and art aspects of writing than I used to be.

Not to mention that as things have changed I have adapted or at least tried to adapt to those changes.

That covers thinking about SEO, paying more attention to headlines and thinking about social media platforms.

But it is also tied into not doing some of the things that used to work.

The Media’s Influence

The timer says I have two minutes left so we’ll cover the media’s influence by saying there was  time when I would clip sections from posts on Yahoo or CNN and include a link to them.

I did it because people responded to the political and or commentary upon current events and because sites like Yahoo and CNN used to link to my stuff.

Hasn’t happened in a while but back in the day quite a bit of traffic came via those avenues.

Might be possible to do something like that again. Might be a way to leverage the size and strength of those platforms but it wouldn’t give me as much pleasure as just writing and focusing on storytelling does.

Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, but it is not my focus.

Still it doesn’t hurt to remember where you came from.

Sometimes the way to start a story is by taking a moment to look at what came before.

“If you buy into the mythology promulgated by the people who know about blogging you must do it their way because they have tens of thousands of subscribers, they make tons of moolah and some people call them A-listers.

Man, that would be grand, to be called an A-lister and to know that the 287 people who aren’t related to me and don’t follow me online actually know my name. Come to think of it, I have more Facebook friends than that so maybe I should aim higher.

Don’t worry friends, this is not a passive-aggressive attempt to slam anyone. As I have said before when I choose to go after someone I do it in a way that makes it clear– in other words I use their name or at least their website.

But that is not what this is about.” Blogging Doesn’t Have To Have A Point

Somewhere a group of those who taught me how to write are standing around holding their heads trying to figure out why there is a disturbance in the force.

But not all of them are wincing in pain because there are the few that understood I recognized that every story had a beginning, a middle and an end and that I could I write that way.

They also understood sometimes I had to go about things a different way and that if they let me I would take the long way home but I would always find my way back.

Back then I didn’t have a real good handle on why I chose to do things differently, I just knew that when I did I was happier. Now a thousand years later I still go about this writing process in my own way but if you ask me to explain how, what, why and when I can give you a certified academic answer.

Or I can give the short remark and say the more intuitive and progressive will appreciate it: I blog in this manner because it brings me joy and if you don’t have fun you don’t last as a blogger.

Can You Entertain And Or Educate The Reader?

Sometimes people tell me they still don’t understand my method and ask me for an explanation. I tell them if you are going to write you need to find joy in the journey and if you want people to read you need to entertain and or educate the reader.

It is part of the reason why I have multiple blogs. I need a place to write traditional stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end. I need a place to use as a sort of mind dump where I empty out my thoughts and I need a place that covers some of everything.

The challenge is that when you expand to cover multiple topics it is harder to build a readership. That readership can be a nice thing. It feels good to get feedback and if you want to monetize the blog that readership is a big part of it.

Sometimes I think about focusing on stories about my kids. I can tell you about how when my daughter recited an address instead of saying Unit number XXX she said Hashtag XXX.

Why?

Because she doesn’t look at # and call it pound or number, it is a hashtag to her. There are other stories like that in here. Flip through the pages and you’ll find plenty of them.

There are more that could be written about and shared but now that my kids are older I have to be more cognizant of the boundaries of blogging. Not every story is mine to share any more and I need to be cautious about whether telling one will generate flack at school for them.

I don’t want that. They deserve to walk their own road without having it marked up by dad.

Blogging Doesn’t Need To Have A Point

Great writing is subjective and so is entertaining/educational.

Experience has taught me that sometimes people just enjoy reading whatever you put on paper and that even though you may not think it is very good they get something from it.

Maybe it is like music and they hear the beat you hear in your head while you are typing, I don’t know. I just know that sometimes you can just write for the joy of writing and people will read your words.

They’ll read them and find something in the 27th word or 187th sentence that catches their eye or ear and that will be the thing that keeps them going.

And sometimes that might be the thing that keeps you going, the knowledge the sometimes you don’t have to have a point. You just have to pour some of yourself into a post and people will read.

P.S. The posts below will play a role in some future writing. I am kind of excited about it.

1. How Did You Become Who You Are?
2. The Search For The Write Words
3. Life Is Meant To Be Traveled Along The Field Of Dreams

Hope to see you in the comments.