There are three kinds of people who read this blog; those who can count and those who can’t.
Also (in the world of blogging) there are bloggers and there are readers of blogs. Okay, and bloggers who are also readers of other blogs. Okay, and also readers who blog. I’ll stop there because you should get the picture by now.
The point is that there are other bloggers out there. Lots. And among all of those people, there must be a fairly high percentage who experience what no other generation before has experienced. Blogger’s Block. This is something like Writer’s Block, only potentially pandemic because, with the advent of blogging, far more people must have taken up the pen (or keyboard, in this case) than ever before.
A writer was once seen as the only category of person who would dare venture into the wilds of publishing and such, and was therefore an intellectual and not to be messed with at informal social gatherings. Others, we shall call them columnists, have chosen the route of high exposure in newspapers and other periodicals over the heady world of book shops. Both of these sub-species, however, see literary enterprise as a vocation and could casually cast the comment at a cocktail party, “What do I do? (condescending chuckle) Well, I guess you could say I’m ... a writer,” and subtly avoid mentioning that they hadn’t eaten in three days but that would be remedied by the kilogram and a half of cocktail sausages they had just concealed about their person on their last trip past the hors d oeuvres table.
But all this has changed. No longer does the professional scribe hold the intellectual high-ground. Oh no, my friend. Blogging has brought an end to all that. Now, every moron with a modem and too much time on his hands (Thinks: am I giving too much away? Oh well...) can claim a place in the sun. Whether anyone is actually reading their offerings or not is another matter, of course. I heard once that, according to probability theory, if one thousand monkeys were each given a typewriter and punched at letters randomly, given enough time they would eventually end up with a sequence of letters identical to the complete works of William Shakespeare. The observation continued that, with the arrival of the internet, this theory has been disproved.
Well, maybe. But back to Blogger’s Block. To every person who has sat in the ethereal glow of a computer monitor and discovered, despite all your best intentions and despite all the right feelings, that you’ve got ... nothing, just ... nothing, well I salute you! You gave it a go. You started your engine and reversed out of your driveway. Okay, so you sat there in the metaphorical road for five minutes gripping the steering wheel in a blank stare and then drove back inside the garage but, hey, no-one can say you didn’t try. This blog is dedicated to you.
So, I’d like to lay down a few tips and (hopefully) helpful comments to get you back on the road if you’ve found that the thought of getting in front of your blog page again is just more than you can handle.
A good blog is one, I guess, that complete strangers as well as a few friends and family could enjoy equally. That is, the broader the appeal, the better. I am of course excluding those ‘specialist’ blogs, such as those dedicated to politician-bashing or ‘Updates from the Mothership’, or blogs in which over-achieving (and under-tanned) academics notify the world of the impact of the latest seismic activity in Guam on silkworm birth rates, or other blogs in which over-tanned (and under-achieving) varsity students tally their beer can tonnages for the week.
Grammar, too, is important. Punctuation exists. Use it. (!!!??!!!!) Just don’t overdo it. (!!!??!!!!)
Flow and cohesion are important factors to keep the reader with you. Take the reader from the start, past a few vistas if you like, to a point that is obvious but not too predictable. By the end of the blog, your reader must be able to re-trace his steps and see how he got to where you took him. To take such a radical tangent halfway through your blog that your reader feels like it’s in a parallel universe far, far away may mean that you go there without him (or her).
Humour is important but not essential. Think of humour as passing a stool. Trying too hard is just painful.
Avoid getting too philosophical, especially if it’s borrowed philosophy. This applies to everything from Karl Marx to Helen Steiner Rice. Someone else’s musing and life-enhancing self-help gems, unless already a part of your own mental circuitry, can sound hollow and smack of wanting to be heard rather than having anything to say. Somehow, even via modems, ISP’s and blog sites, what gets put out into cyberspace still smells like either the real McCoy or a dead fish. Keep it real. And remember; I’m watching you.
But basically it boils down to this one thing: you must have something to say. Eloquence and pointlessness are not good bedfellows. Humour and pointlessness have an only slightly longer shelf-life. A platform from which to address the world demands that that address adds value, moves humankind forward. From those to whom much is given, much is demanded. A blog is an opportunity to change the world, and all from the comfort of your own home!
Of course, this is the crux of the matter. What to say! External inspiration can work well, if employed only from time to time to grease the grey matter and get things moving. So, as a public service to all the world, here follows some possible topics to help those experiencing ‘The Block’ to get back in the saddle again.
- Camel Racing: The Secrets of Success
- How to get the most out of Lithuania
- Adventures baking with caustic soda
- Mexican Diva’s of the 70’s
- The South African Revenue Service: The Third Force
- DIY Mutation for the Weekend Genetic Engineer
- The Idiots Guide to Toilet Paper
All important stuff, you’ll agree. So much for external inspiration. But, really, the internal ‘voice’ is what you want to tap into. Not internal ‘voices’(plural); there’s treatment for that. No, I’m referring to that personal central focus. Now don’t go Zen on me – hear me out. I’m talking about a personal internal well, the spring of your life, the soil from which the roots of your daily living are drawing. Most of the time we’re not really aware of it, but it is connected to our unconscious mission or identity or purpose. (Or something. Heck, this is deep.)
I’m no psychologist so don’t hold me to this but there seems to be a ‘voice’ inside each of us which, when we listen to it, tells us whether we’re in a positive place or a negative place. When the voice is negative, we run away from it and drown it out with busyness and recreation, but when it’s positive it has the potential to carry us through almost any circumstances. The problem is that most people find that voice to be negative. Introspection, when used as an attempt to get to hear that inner voice, generally produces depression. I’ve never hear of anyone who went introspective and came out saying, ”Wow! I’m so much better than I thought. I think I’ll do that again!” No, generally those who delve into the depths of introspection for too long stop reflecting light. (And then they become writers.)
Your inner spring will issue whatever it’s catchment collects. Someone once said, “From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Wise words, indeed. (No, it wasn't Yoda.) Whatever comes out of us is only what collects within us. We must have something desirable, something nourishing to drawn on, not simply for the sake of good blogging but for living in general.
Can you hear your inner voice? Is it important to you to know what it is saying? We can start to hear it when we ask questions like:
- What gets me up every morning?
- What makes me the happiest, the most satisfied?
- What gives me purpose?
- When I die, what will have counted the most in my life, and is that worthy of my life?
- If my life achieved just one thing, what would I want that to be?
Getting the picture? Big questions, I know, but do you really want to go through the rest of your life and not have answers to these?
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