Blogging: Musing for your amusement

For just a little bit, I'm going to muse about a topic other than gaming. Never fear, I'm not going to drone on about basket weaving or needlepoint. I just wanted to give some attention to the medium that allows me to ramble on about my own passions. I promise, this won't happen that often besides I just posted a review of Flatout 3. Think of this as the date stamp on your milk container. After all, you'd probably rather read the date than guess with your nose...

With apologies for the cliché', there are millions of voices on the Internet and sometimes it's hard to separate the content from the chaff.  Everyone has an opinion and they will express it given a medium.  It seems the prevailing medium of choice is the blog.  

Companies have even embraced the practice as another avenue of promotion giving a degree of editorial freedom to the employee authors.

 I've found some truly compelling reading between the tribulations of a beleaguered pizza delivery driver and the Smith family's holiday happenings.  If it wasn't for blogging and Google search I'd never have known about any of it; for better or worse. 

As I understand it, blogging began more or less as a public diary.  While watching an old episode of Call for Help from 2004 I remember seeing  a very young Amber MacArthur( currently on TWIT.tv:The Social Hour) explaining the use of blogs as a convenient way to keep up with friends and family.  Up until that point I thought that a weblog (blog) was a system file on an Internet web server somewhere. 

In my defense I'm an IT guy so I tend to jump to different conclusions than most people.

Twitter and Facebook have largely assumed the role of updating your daily goings on these days with all due respect to my pizza driver's blog of course.   Instead of fading away like the dial up modem  Blogs have morphed into free form pseudo news outlets. 

Subject only to the editor of public opinion, budding authors and seasoned journalists alike have taken to the medium.  There's a sense of freedom to make your work available to the world sans editorial intervention.

Of course the world teaches us that nothing is truly free and like everything else there's a cost to blogging.  Depending on where you publish your work you may have to pay for web hosting or tolerate the display of banner ads whose content you have no authority over. 

Let's not forget the effort involved.  Publishing just a few updates a week can consume hours of your time if you're at all concerned about the content of your blogs.  If you allow comments there's time involved in moderating them. 

Speaking of comments, you quickly learn to grow a thick skin when you put your work out in the world for all to see.  The fact is that not everybody is going to agree with you and contrary feedback can be cruel.  I learned a long time ago to never publish anything I didn't believe in or couldn't defend.  If I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it given the right evidence. 

It's hard to be heard in a crowd.  As I said at the beginning of this, there are millions of voices on the Internet.  You may be the next Hemingway but without promotion only your immediate family will ever know it.  Getting eyes on your blogs takes some effort.  Search engine optimization (SEO) and writing articles for sites like Technorati can help raise awareness but success is not instantaneous or guaranteed. 

It's far easier to be compelling in your writing if your subject covers topics you know and/or care about. That may seem obvious but I've wasted many hours trying to flesh out a post that I wasn't invested in. If it feels like a chore instead of a conversation with a friend it's probably best to shelve it for awhile.

Sometimes, stepping away can help bring a troublesome topic into better focus later on. I don't believe that good writing can be forced. Writing is an art form expressed with words. Art is never a mechanical process rather it's an experience shared between creator and audience.

If you care at all about what you write (and you should for every one's sake) then it's worth the effort to promote it.  If you participate in social networking make sure your circles are aware of your blogs and articles.  Word of mouth has more power on the Internet than it does in most other mediums.

There's debate over whether bloggers can be considered journalists.  Since many professional journalists and authors maintain their own blogs the line has been blurred.  In most cases, writing skill aside, the only difference between a blog and a published news article is the presence of an editorial gatekeeper. 

The basic tenets of non-fiction writing apply to either channel.  Keep your reader in mind as your write, maintain a clear division between the factual and your own editorializing and don't stray too far off topic.   Nothing's more irritating to a reader than finding an opinion expressed as fact. 

That doesn't mean you can't have an opinion by the way.  Just make sure your reader's know that's what it is.  The value of an opinion grows exponentially with the care taken to provide accurate factual information. 

By the way, since most of this article is based on personal observations and viewpoints it's considered opinion.

Personally, I enjoy writing.  I don't make a living at it but someday I'd like to.  Even if I don't reach that goal I'll still post to my blogs and submit new articles. My hope is to provide content worthy of being cited just as I cite other works for my current articles. Time will tell...