Where's the Party?

The writing blogosphere has been in a bit of an upheaval lately. First, Bookseller Chick lost her job. Then Nadia Cornier retired her blog, followed by Miss Snark and now Squawk Radio.

Yesterday I went to Romancing the Blog and randomly clicked some of the side links. In fifteen minutes I found four blogs that hadn't been updated in over a month. One of them still floated a post a year old. (Those guys really should check those things.) RTB has added so many links in the year I've been reading them that the page is now freakishly long. But an actual perusal of some of these links shows the two real truths of blogging, the ones that no one really wants to talk about:

1. Blogging is a timesuck.

2. There's only so much to say.

It sounds like such a great idea to the unititiated - it's free marketing, after all. Get your name out there! Gain momentum in your career! But most writer blogs end up as either blatant promo (a post every few months when a book comes out) or aspiring writers logging on every six weeks to complain about how they can't finish anything. And eventually, most people just give up.

Writing a blog, it turns out, is like publishing a magazine. By yourself. In which you come up with all the articles, do all the research, find all the visuals, and create all the content. Every day. It's a lot of work, especially for the people who are good at it. The Squawk Radio writers could easily - easily - put out an actual magazine and sell lots of copies. That's how good they are at blogging. But magazines aren't their business; writing is their business. So see point 1 above.

Everyone wants to know how to make a successful blog. But that's the wrong question entirely. Here's the real question: What is a successful blog?

Is it frequency of content? Quality of content? Marketable names in the title? Or is it just numbers? 'Cos numbers only matter if you're trying to sell something to your readers. And as soon as you try to sell something to your readers, they know it. The Phony Radar is never broken. Readers always know when there's nothing in it for them.

After doing this for a year and a half, I have only come across two rules on how to keep blogging:

1. Like it.

2. Forget numbers.

I actually don't know how many readers I have, and I don't really care. I log into my stats about once every four or five months. All I know is that Megan sends me lots of readers (thanks Megan), and the posts with "sex" in the title got lots of people looking for porn, and the one I did about internet flame wars got the most hits of any post I've ever done. I blog because I like it. That's why I don't quit.

Two more tips on blogging:

1. See my sidebar for a few who do it really well.

2. Pictures help.








Enjoy,
Abby