On Blogging

This is an essay I wrote in my personal blog on LiveJournal a couple years ago. It seemed relevant to this endeavor on Blogger, so I thought I'd re-post it here.

By my estimation, this coming week will mark my second anniversary as a "blogger." By happy coincidence, I came across an excellent article in The Economist yesterday that deals with the blogging phenomenon and what it might mean for society.

Although I have a lot of thoughts on the article, I don't really want to elaborate on them here. I will say that it's interesting to think that simply writing essays about domestic life, pet peeves, and the odd opinion on current events somehow makes me and many of the people reading this foot soldiers in the new media revolution. What I would like to do with this post is to lay out a list of things that the past two years of keeping an online journal have taught me about writing. (That's not to say I will always apply the lessons. But when you see me violate one of them, you can rest assured that I know better.) So without further adieu, here is my personal manifesto on blogging:

1. When I started doing this, I laid down a rule for myself that I would only write about topics that interested me, and I would never force myself to write about something just because it was the hot topic du jour. If I'm not interested in something, I can't write about it in an interesting way.
2. There are no boring topics, only boring writers. I sincerely believe that any subject matter can be brought to life by someone who approaches it with enthusiasm, originality and some sense of writing craft. Note that I'm not saying that I am capable of taking on any topic. There are some things I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, simply because I'm not a good enough writer to pull them off.
3. Related to point #2, a good thing to remember is that the less inherent drama or comedy a situation has, the harder you'll have to work to make a decent post out of it. Someone writing about how they were trapped in a burning building, were being chased by the police for a crime they didn't commit, or got locked out of their house while dressed only in their underwear doesn't have to put many flourishes or stylistic tricks into the essay to make it work. Writing about what one had for dinner, or the small details on ones daily routine requires a bit more heavy lifting. In grad school, I took a class on copywriting that was taught by a wonderfully vulgar and blunt instructor. When one of us wrote an ad that had a lackluster concept behind it, he would often say, "You could use that approach, but the end result had better be one (bleeping) charming piece of writing!" I hear that guy's voice ringing in my head every time I'm tempted to write a laundry list of my daily activities a la, "I woke up today, took a shower, got ready for work, etc., etc."
4. Sports radio host Jim Rome likes to tell his callers, "Have a take and don't suck." That is a great piece of advice for people trying to communicate in any medium. The "don't suck" part goes without saying and was more or less the point of #3 above. The "have a take" part is equally important. I try not to write about something unless I have an opinion or an attitude about it. The degree to which a certain post succeeds or fails is largely a function of how well that opinion comes across by the end of the essay. That's not to say that I can or even want to change the reader's mind about anything. My goal is simply to explain what I feel and why at any given point in time.
5. I'm not interested in stock observations, canned arguments, toeing an absolutely consistent ideological line or taking a run at easy targets. There is way too much writing along those lines out there, and some of it is produced by very intelligent people who are capable of much more. I don't enjoy reading the products of intellectual laziness and I certainly don't want to produce any for others to read. A general rule of thumb is that if I find myself writing something that sounds like it came off a bumper sticker, that means I need to dig a little deeper and put some more thought into it. Real people living in the real world have complex and ambivalent reactions, hold inconsistent attitudes, divided loyalties and are constantly confronted with cognitive dissonance. I don't think acknowledging those things while making a point is a sign of weakness.
6. I am sometimes accused of writing War and Peace length posts. My only reaction in the face of that criticism is to shrug and say, "I yam what I yam." I rarely come away from a piece of writing feeling like I wrote more or less than I wanted to. I write as long as I think there's still a point to be developed. Once I don't feel like there's anything left to say, I stop. Of course the reader is the ultimate arbiter of "too long" or "too short." If you notice the word count one way or the other, then the writer has failed on some level. If that's the case here, you get what you pay for.
7. The very act of keeping an online journal is supremely presumptuous and narcissistic. It is based on the assumption that anyone in the entire world with Internet access might be interested in your life and thoughts. That's a mighty big assumption. I try not to compound the inherent hubris of this medium by taking myself too seriously. I think it's important to post something every so often that assures readers that I know I am full of shit.
8. There's no substitute for honesty. I always strive to tell the truth as I see it, while at the same time understanding that neither I nor anyone else has a monopoly on THE TRUTH. Hemingway once said, "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." I can't improve on that sentiment, other than perhaps to refrain from blowing my head off with a shotgun after invoking it.

And that's pretty much all I know about writing a blog.