If you look through my archives, you will note that I add a blog entry approximately once a month. That’s right. In a medium that meaures things in hours, I’ve been working in months. It’s not that I don’t have more to write or even that I particularly care who is reading, if anyone. If anything, I’ve got too much to say. (ask my poor wife) I also have the same amount of readers no matter what I do, so I can assume I there’s some kind of audience for whatever it is you call what I’m doing.
I was unsure of why this was until recently, when one Rick Albano (a professional blogotype of the higest order) hit it right on the head. He pointed out that many would-be frequent bloggers aren’t because they treat each post as “too precious”. Blog posts are a somewhat unique form of writing. What I’ve been trying to write (with varying degrees of sucess) are essays. Blog posts are not essays. They’re almost anti-essays. I think the best term I’ve ever heard used for blog posts was by one James Lileks, who calls them “dashed-off tripe”.The point is not to polish the crap out of them, the point is to get them written and posted.
This isn’t to say that blog post writing should trade quality for update frequency. (Though there are many blogs that use this method.) For me, it means trading update length and depth for update frequency. The way to become a better blogger, in my mind, is to blog more. It needs to cease being something special and become something that’s just a function of daily life, like drinking coffee or putting out the garbage. (In my case it’s very similar to putting out the garbage.) It cannot be a function of how busy I am. No one is going to miss me for the thirty minutes or less it takes me to write something.
So there you have it. Gauntlet thrown. I’m going to shoot for a updating at least once a day. In reality, it will probably be more like three times a week. Either way, I’m done writing essays. It’s a motherf@#king blog.
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