In terms of the blogging experience, I cannot say that I've learned much about the act itself. Being someone that has, in addition to this shared blog, another four that I keep up means that I've done a lot of it over the last few years.
What has come down is confirmation of certain suspicions that I've held for quite some time now, and I think that many of you will nod your head in agreement as I state them below.
Blogging is Performance.
Lo those many years ago, when I suffered through high school and worries that my life would be over by 21 if things did not line up perfectly after graduation and nothing would be worth living if I couldn't be with that raven-haired beauty what thought herself an ugly duckling, I sat through composition and literature classes that required students to keep a journal.
I sucked at it. Now that I have blogging to contrast with it, I know why I continue to suck at keeping the damned things. I have no audience to perform for, so I cannot muster the enthusiasm to keep it up regularly. I still managed to get it done, but I hated doing it and it didn't help that the teachers were nosy busy-bodies that tried to correct me in their written feedback. (This is what we call "Not Helping".)
Blogging, on the other hand, has an audience. Other people can, do, and will continue to read what you post online so long as it persists. That's why even dead blogs keep up readership, so long as the writer--showing a flare for the dramatic--captivates readers and has them scrolling down and hitting the "next" button or link. Crap writers, dull writers and novice writers are disadvantaged in this medium until they can fix their flaws and not only find their voice, but lose their fear of letting it sing loud and proud.
This is why the successful blogs have some form of theatrical quality to them; their writers know that this is like writing copy for some actor or presenter to read, so they make the words interesting in their own right somehow. Attitude, snark, sarcasm and other slants that otherwise would be unprofessional become commonplace for this reason- it keeps readers reading in the same way that attitude in live performance keeps viewers watching.
Next...
It's Harder To Comment Well Than To Blog Well
One of the most persistent warnings is "Don't read the comments!" In addition to the sheer quantity and variety of stupid that one often encounters when reading blogs (or YouTube comments, etc.) there are uncountable scores of crap comments that suck due to being unreadable. Spelling so bad that God couldn't comprehend the poster, grammar errors that destroy the intended meaning, walls of text--no paragraphs--that make the eyes bleed and destroy a reader's attention span, overuse of jargon when it's not called for, and other things that have me reaching for the bottle too often.
Good comments make blogs better for everyone, and I am guilty of failing this one as much as anyone else because writing a good comment takes effort akin to writing good blog posts themselves. It's not a matter of length, or sophistication, but rather an ear for rhythm and an eye for relevance. Keeping one's comment focused upon a post's topic is a sound foundation, as it a habit for directness and brevity, which is where the ability to link proves very useful; if your comment needs to be lengthy, it's far better to write that as a post of your own and link back to it when you write that comment. (This is, in part, what "Touchback" or "Linkback" tracking is for.)
And...
The Skills That Make You a Successful Author Make You a Successful Blogger
One of my friends is Scott Lynch. He is now a professional fantasy author, but he began as a blogger back when Livejournal was a thing and it was through blogging that he attracted the attention of the man who is now his editor and agent. (It is also how me met his current girlfriend, a peer, by the name of Elizabeth Bear.) Another writer I know, Patrick Rothfuss, is also quite the blogger and through his blogging (in part) he developed both the skills and the contacts that he needed to get his traditional publishing contract and publish his first two novels.
This pattern repeats itself in folks who are now writing non-fiction, of one sort or another, be it a gossip column (Perez Hilton) or something far more substantive (Leo Laporte's This Week In Tech). Deliberately blurring that line is Stephen Pressfield, a fiction and non-fiction author who turned to blogging when The War of Art hit huge and he decided to start blogging about those practical problems that creatives deal with daily in order to do something other than write about Afghanistan all the time. (Go on, see for yourself.)
I cannot avoid concluding, therefore, that improving my writing craft will improve my blogging. That's not all...
The Successful Blogger is an Old-School Triple Threat
By that, I mean "Writer", "Businessman" and "Showman". You need to appreciate that to become a well-read blogger you need to promote yourself without shame or hesitation, that you can't get away with being a shit writer, and that you can't get away with letting shit comments go on your posts. Think of yourself, when running a blog, as a host and readers as guests; your job as a good host is to keep the party running and ensure that guests enjoy themselves, and the readers need to be mindful of each other and respectful of the host's efforts and property. Falling down on either end can crash a blog right quick, so you need to swap hats on the fly to deal with difficulties that crop up.
Not that far from running a service-oriented business like a restaurant or a club, really.
So, I've got some thinking to do about my blogs. Change of hosts, change of layout, change of focus, all of that stuff. All I can say for certain is that they will never be journals.
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