OK, so, the first step to writing a blog post is by starting with your own personal version of “Ok, so…” That’s my personal starter. When I have nothing to say, and am not sure how I’m going to say it, I start with “Ok, so…” and for some reason, it gets my fingers a-typin’.
I’ve been writing all my life, to myself, to others, in prose, poetry, and song. Oh, and lest I forget all the thousands of emails I’ve written. What is the purpose of a blog, if an objective one can be determined at all? Sure, there is the diary approach, “I woke up, drank my coffee, read the newspaper, walked my daughter and took my dog to school” but who really cares about that. I mean, do YOU even care about re-living the headlines of your own generic day-in-a-life?
Far on another end of this multifaceted spectrum, is the ever-growing “i’m a blogger but really a journalist” personality. These growing numbers of folks are collectively the river gradually but persistently wearing down the stone (aka traditional news media).
In a similar area, are folks who blog on one, or a narrow set of topics, looking to promote some kind of service or product or expertise related to that topic.
Although these two types of bloggers are similar in that they both focus on a narrow set of topics, they differ in their “why”. One wants to motivate your actions in a certain direction; the other wants to motivate your sense of appreciation. (Oh, and, need I clarify that last observation to be extremely broadly stroked? Well, broad indeed. Not looking to solve the world’s problems, just leading up to my own personal point.)
What those two types of bloggers have in common is that they’re both focused on a narrow set of topics. In fact, most successful blogs are focused on a narrowly-sliced theme. You have an interest in topic x, look to the foremost bloxpert for the most up-to-date thoughts on that topic.
In my particular case, I’ve had this blog for a few years, and have posted to it only intermittently. I’ve been stepping it recently, but I still consider myself a blogger in training. One thing I’ve been weighing is the question of “to focus or not to focus”. Whenever I consider one particular theme for my posts, it just feels too restrictive, and my next post seems to be about something completely unrelated.
But. On that question “unrelatedness” I have a new, more recent interpretation: Even if I intentionally tried to write about a different topic every post, meaning, if I refused to even broach the same topic twice, there would emerge, anyway, a common thread through all my posts. The reason being that it is still ME writing these posts, my own personality, my own take on each topic. I am the common theme on this blog. I’m exploring myself in this particular (and possibly extremely odd) venue of “is it private? is it public? if it’s public who’s even reading? what’s the relationship between someone reading my blog posts and me? is it even a relationship?”
So that’s my take (as of today) on how to write blog posts. I write on whatever I’m thinking about, whatever I’m reacting to, with an attempt to not posture as if I’m some important person whose thoughts matter more than others, but as a simple, lone individual, who would rather be part of this experience than not be part of it, who would rather put these thoughts out into the metaverse, rather than keep them in a private journal at the bottom of one of my drawers, who would rather have even one other person find these thoughts interesting and possibly beneficial, than only be happy with thousands upon thousands of daily readers.
And I write in the hopes and expectations that a common theme emerges
