Sunday, May 17, 2009

On blogs

Edit, edit, edit. No amount of editing is too much--4 or 5 people may read the blog.

Make it funny. You don't want people to get bored and not make it to the end of the post. The last line or paragraph should send them away chuckling to themselves, like good Broadway sends you away whistling.

Moderate embellishment is acceptable if it makes the humor more robust.

Don't get discouraged if nobody writes comments--everyone writes blogs that bomb from time to time. Just keep at it. It is a skill, and like any skill, requires practice, focus and hard work to improve. You can do it. Keep writing. Keep editing.

Use the "Link:" box to refer to refer to funny websites. This enhances the reader's experience by providing additional content in an interactive way.

Avoid reading too many Mommy blogs--they're not the highest quality writing and may make you lazy about your own. Look for more crafted writing, like overheardindc2.blogspot.com, to guide you.

As you mature as a blogger, you will find the joy of spending way too much time writing and editing entries that may attract not more than one hand's worth of readers. As Despair, Inc, has said about blogging, "Never before have so many people, with so little to say, said so much to so few." But with time and effort you may get a blog-following of your immediate family and a friend or two. Keep it up--blog, blog, blog.