I've been reading a blog today... which is somewhat unusual in and of itself... and...

The advice is to start one and, as far as I can make out, the advice has been... um... enthusiastically acted upon by any number of wannabes like (though with the notable exception of) myself.

The thing is...

BLOGGING FOR BLOGGING'S SAKE IS DULL! Both to read and, I imagine, to write. Today's example (from a worryingly popular source that should know better) was utterly, utterly twee and ... not to put too fine a point on it... desperate.

At the risk of being shot down in flames, most writers I've met (and I am including myself here) are much better at living in their imagined worlds than in the real one.

In other words:

Writing a good story does not mean you are interesting, it means your story is interesting.

So, with the exception of those very few opinionated opinion formers whose opinions are worthy of note, I come back to the title of this thread:

What is the point of writing something not very interesting that consumes a lot of energy to put dull and predictable rubbish onto a page for nobody to read when you could be writing the next novel?

Not very interesting of Dublin

Ha ha I have to say I agree with this totally.

I've read a couple of blogs that have been about nothing in particular, just what the person did that day and I've thought - who gives a ****

Someone suggested I do a blog - but to be honest I don't know what the heck I'd say and it'd only be uniteresting twaddle that nobody would read anyway.

As you say, I'd rather spend the time writing proper stories or editing my novel!

Kat

I prefer blogs that are full of advice or specialist information, eg, editorialanonymous, bookends, The Intern, and most blogs set up by WWers.
Or they're funny/original - which is not easy to do consistantly week in, week out.


The sort of blog I wouldn't recommend setting up, but which are far from rare, are the ones used soley to post chapters of the WIP. It doesn't help the writer's case if the agent stumbles across them, or are pointed in that direction in a submission, and find themselves looking at an uncorrected early draft. If the writer is serious about wanting feedback they should join a writers community.


- NaomiM

Over at Strictly we blog about writing for precisely that reason. Who wants to hear what we do all day? Also there are a few of us, so we don't have to post every day.

Recently I was asked to write a diary of my week for a parenting mag - you know the thing - a week-in-the-life-of-Helen Black and it was excrutiatingly dull.
HB x

yeah, I completely agree with that. At my blog on www.thewritingden.webs.com I try and use that to promote me as a writing tutor, so I try to make sure every post could be useful for an aspiring children's writer. And there a bits of self-puffery, like if I have a book launch I'll say so - it's part of proving that I can do what I say I can.

I agree, I think it's only worth blogging if you've got something you really want to say, because if you haven't, sure as hell no one's going to want to read it.

The two kinds of blog which work, it seems to me, are

a) the good, varied, appealingly written and kept-fresh blog about something the blogger is interested in, whether it's reviews of YA chicklit, or restoring WW2 fighter plane engines. Anyone who's interested in those things will find it eventually, and keep coming back.

b) the blog which talks (well, variedly, and kept-freshly) about whatever's come into the blogger's head today. With these, the blogger's voice (see HB's thread in Private Members) is all: their take on the world and their way of expressing it, is what draws people in.

But it's a big commitment to keep posting, and posting freshly. And so a blog that the blogger's heart really isn't in, isn't going to work long-term, it seems to me, whether they're a wannabe-published or they're very published.

There are far more things you could do, before and after that longed-for contract,

The book trade loves bloggers because they already have an audience for the book. But that assumes that the blog's any good. A dusty-looking blog with the occasional post and mutterings about what the cat had for breakfast isn't going to do that.

But Gaius, I think you're possibly underestimating most people's appetite for trivia. I absolutely agree with you - I want to feel I'm really getting something worth reading from a blog - just as I do from a social occasion, or a friend, or a book, or a newspaper or a radio programme: something which makes me think, which adds to what I thought or new before.But some people are happy with the blog equivalent of the trivia/factoid/gossip column in a newspaper...

Emma

<Added>

"There are far more things you could do, before and after that longed-for contract..."

than you can actually do. So I think the trick is to find which things you actually enjoy doing, and which suit you and your writing life, and ignore the other.

Guess why I don't have a blog? I made an active decision not to include such a feature on my website.

I agree with you, Gaius. While there are some people who can say something useful, entertaining or profound in a blog, there are an awful lot of blogs out there that are little more than attempts by uninteresting people to get their 15 minutes of fame. There are even one or two journalists whose time would be better spent writing their next article.

Alex

But Gaius, I think you're possibly underestimating most people's appetite for trivia

Well... I've seen some of the magazines people read voluntarily, in their own time, having spent their own money and without a gun to their head. Like the scary, scary stuff published in Hello, Heat, OK, Now, Chat... "Jordan continues to say stupid things about an otherwise *&%$ed up life. SHOCKER!" etc.

More seriously, I've seen the way things like Facebook works and how much interest a status update about a cat eating toe-nails can generate...

But that's with friends, people who know you, people who have some reason to see behind the facile statement of the bland to something more substantial.

What you are talking about is people who don't know you, have never met you, probably won't meet you, being encouraged to develop an emotional attachment to the smallest details of your life... Coming back each day to worship in a shrine dedicated to one potentially not very interesting individual for no adequately explained reason.

Hmm... Did anybody say stalker?

G

Coming back each day to worship in a shrine dedicated to one potentially not very interesting individual for no adequately explained reason.

I think one thing is that, with feeds, it needn't be worship, it need only be a passing interest, but one which the technology makes it easy to indulge. And such is the human drive to connect, you don't have to do that for long before you feel you know them, even though of course you don't.

But most people, most of the time, want bland. When I wander down into the kitchen and say 'Hi, how's it going? - cold, isn't it' to my children, I don't seriously expect (or want - given that I was up till 1 last night marking OU scripts) a deep disquisition on the the present state of the world, or them. I just want to make some human contact with them. That's what God made the weather for, isn't it? To give us something through which to make contact. The dull blog is the virtual equivalent of that. If it happens to contain cats, or children who strop, or cars which need their engines re-bored, and that resonates with you, it's like having the same conversation over the fence with your neighbour.

Emma

If I read too much of this thread, I'll be in danger of developing a desire to create the blandest blog I can imagine, just to see how many people read it.

Before blogs existed, some people used to (and maybe still do) create their own webpage on which they could inform the world what they did on holiday, or what their kids did last weekend. And before that, people used to show one another videos of their kids visiting zoos and similarly boring things. And before that there were cine films. And before that, family photo albums. And before that...

Self-indulgence is not a new phenomenon. Some people just have an unjustified sense of the degree to which others want to know what they are doing. Personally, I would feel uneasy about telling the world too much about what I'm doing. I don't want to live in a goldfish bowl.

Alex

I don't seriously expect (or want - given that I was up till 1 last night marking OU scripts) a deep disquisition on the the present state of the world

When I moved to Ireland, it took me an embarrassingly long time to work out that the obligatory greeting of "Howya?" (How are you?) not only did not need a detailed reply, but could safely be ignored without offence.

Point taken, foie gras is delicious once in a while, but spuds are preferable on a daily basis.

Incidentally, leading back into an apparently unrelated thread, I wonder if this has anything to do with different attitudes to re-reading? I like to be surprised by what I read, something that I can't imagine happening on the second, third or fourth read of any story...

G

Self-indulgence is not a new phenomenon

No, but the institutional requirement for self-indulgence as a professional, career-building task is.

Self-indulgence is not a new phenomenon. Some people just have an unjustified sense of the degree to which others want to know what they are doing.

Nor is self-expression a new phenomenon. The thing about blogging is that it costs nothing to do: you spend ten minutes on blogger, twenty minutes writing something, and then you see what happens; people either find you or they don't. And the way to build up your blog stats is actually exactly the same way as it is to build up your network of friends in real life: get out there, be interested in others, accept their offer of a share in their life, and offer a bit of your own - your blog - in return. That's how communities get built. Assuming that it's not by a sleb, nor offering free gold watches or killer tips to get published, a successful (in terms of hits) blog is as much a mark of the blogger's willingness to go out and connect, as it is of the value of the content.

The stats, if you like, are your justification, if you need one, for what you call self-indulgence, Alex, but I'd call self-expression. You could argue that it's writers like us who are far, far more deeply self-deluded, being so self-indulgent as to think that a commercial company will think that it can sell thousands of copies of our made-up stories to people who've never heard of us...

I like to be surprised by what I read, something that I can't imagine happening on the second, third or fourth read of any story.

The experience of any piece of fiction is always a mixture of the pleasures of the new and the pleasures of the familiar: hence people's taste for particular kinds of book, and the mega-selling of writers who can find a new thing to do within that particular kind of book, whether it's Joanna Trollope finding a new intelligence for commercial women's fiction, or Roger Morris finding a new literary way of writing crime... What's happening when you re-read is that the balance alters. Eventually, if you're a serial re-reader, some books become the equivalent of saying 'Hi' to the children in the kitchen of a morning. But you're still connecting with that language and those people.

Emma

I wasn't intending to suggest that all bloggers are self-indulgent, Emma; only the ones whose blogs (or web pages, videos, etc.) are exclusively about themselves.

Re. the point about re-reading a book: this is something I do very often, many times in some cases. It's surprising what you do notice in a re-read that you didn't spot the first time through. Of course, the ending is not a surprise the second time through, but some of the plot twists can be. And re-reading as a writer, you begin to see how the story was put together to achieve the effect that it had.

Alex

only the ones whose blogs (or web pages, videos, etc.) are exclusively about themselves.

It's quite a subtle thing, isn't it: on one hand, a website in particular, is supposed to be about you (assuming you're not running it for an organisation or whatever). And yet, I agree, there's about you, and there's utterly self-centred. One reason I didn't start a blog for ages after I started thinking I should, was because I didn't know what I'd blog about - as with most writers, my own life is really very dull, and although I do have opinions about lots of things in life, they're rarely coherent enough to put out there as is, and I'm allergic to knee-jerk, renta-quote, sound-bite opinions of any sort (though of course I'm crosser with them when I don't agree with them either). The only thing I both have opinions about, and have the drive to sort out and make coherent and (I hope) make worth reading, is writing. So that's what I blog about. My stats would probably look much healthier (though they're not bad, considering I rarely have time to do anything to build them up these days) if I were lighter and chattier and more frequent, but then that's me...

Emma