Blog News Watch

I haven’t posted much lately. I’ve just moved house, and was pretty sure that I’d be able to post as soon as I moved in.

The phone company promised the line would be on Friday, the 14th of December - the day we moved in. Even if I had no internet for a week, I could at least find some antiquated modem cord and even more antiquated dial-up account and posted.

But it’s been more than two weeks now, and the phone line is still not installed, and the internet can’t even be ordered until the phone line is on. Recommendation to Australians: steer clear of AAPT if you need the phone on fast.

That’s when I realized that blogging sucks. Truly, like everything else in life, it has its downsides.

1. You rely on others to access your audience

Those day-job oddballs drive a car to work. Well, most of them, and let’s just ignore the smart people who use public transportation for a moment.

When you can drive yourself to work, with a car you own, your access to your job or to the people you work with is in your control. You own the car. You can make it work or stop working. You can also get it fixed when it has problems.

Not bloggers! Our method of access, the Internet, is in the hands of companies who don’t really care who you are as long as you’re paying them. You can lose your access - and your livelihood - in the blink of an eye.

Without the access, you’ll be stuck writing headlines because you can’t research the posts or post breaking news.

2. You lose touch with faces

The people on the Internet that you communicate with day-to-day when you’re a blogger can be great, fun people, but it’s easy to forget that they are people. For all you know, they could be some kind of bot that passed the Turing test.

Human contact is important to your sanity, and even when you live with your family that contact starts to disappear. While family is great for keeping you that little bit sane, a more varied and wider amount of contact is best.

3. The confinement is insanely infuriating!

If you are a full-time blogger who works from home, the confinement can get pretty bad. No, not the confinement from other people - we already talked about that - but the confinement in space. Whether you’re in a home office or at your dining room table, the confines of the room/house/tent will start to get to you after a few hours/days/weeks in the same place.

Especially if your wife does all the shopping. Then you’ll never see sunlight again.

Blogged with Flock

Boing Boing is a great blog. If you don’t read it, you should.

It’s one of those role model blogs, a success story, that everybody looks up to and admires.

Truth is, it’s also one of those success stories that seems overnight, but wasn’t quite - they’ve been at it for many more years than blogs have been around, beginning life as a paper zine. Remember paper?

Michael Martine has just written a fantastic post called What You Can Learn about Blogging from Boing Boing that covers some of the lessons you can glean from this most mighty of blogs. It brought a smile to my face to learn that Michael’s article was inspired by one of mine.

Cory Doctorow once said you should pretend you’re a news wire writer when you write your headlines; simple and to-the-point. The key to remember is that if you’re writing a blog that isn’t quite as newsy as Boing Boing is to use that principle… but only for the headline.

It differs for blogs that write anything other than news. Here’s how:

During your post, stick to some of those newswriting conventions - short paragraphs (1 sentence per paragraph for news but 2-3 will do for blogs), aggressive removal of tautologies and redundant words - and even paragraphs if you’re that kind of writer - and remaining on topic at all times.

That said, create a voice for yourself and use it. Show your personality when you write. Don’t make it self-obsessed, and watch out for the overuse of the word “I” - the key is to develop a personality, not talk about yours.

One trap that many writers following this advice fall into is adding in useless “I think” or “I reckon” or - you get the point. You’re writing the piece. It’s obvious that it’s about what you think, and you don’t have to point it out. If you do, it just makes you look uncertain.

So visit Michael’s blog and learn the lessons of blogging that Boing Boing offers.

But remember, if you don’t write a Boing Boing style blog, don’t try to write as if it is one.