so you wanna be a blogger

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so you wanna be a blogger MOTIVATION So you've decided that you want to write in blog form. Good for you. I grew up in a household that encouraged literacy, so writing has been an outlet for me as long as I can remember. I highly encourage people to try it out, even those who have never written anything aside from term papers. Writing can be highly cathartic. In many ways, it's like an antacid for your emotional turmoil. Blogging is a way to get your writing out in the open. While it's been pointed out that there are bloggers who don't know how to write, I think that there are more writers who don't know how to blog. Believe it or not, it IS a skill. Just because you can write does not mean that blogging will come easily to you. The main thing that you need to figure out is what your motivation is. Motivation is your guiding force. After reading hundreds of blog entries here on Myspazz, I've discovered that there seem to be three main sources of motivation. The first type of motivation is personal. People are sitting down and writing out their personal thoughts about things that are going on in their lives. They include personal references, the names of people who are involved in situations and their innermost feelings on those occurrences. If you are writing to get things off of your chest and relieve some emotional pressure, blogging for mass consumption might not be for you. When I say "mass consumption," I am referring to opening up your posts for any stranger to be able to read. What many people don't understand when they do this is that people are going to respond. People might not always respond in a manner that the writer wants to hear, especially on extremely personal and sensitive material. In these cases, no matter what you say about wanting feedback, you might just want to write it off (no pun intended) as being a form of expression. Set your posts to private or preferred. Select only the people that you want reading these posts by getting the e-mail addresses of those on your friend list that you want to read these items. Then ask these people to subscribe to your blog or e-mail them personally when you've posted something new. I high suggest against posting a bulletin regarding these posts. The second type of motivation is inclusive of friends. People who write about personal experiences that happened between friends. These are not always the best written pieces and tend to have so many in-jokes that random passers-by will not understand. These entries are also not geared towards reading for mass consumption. Sure, there might be people who would love to read them in the peeping tom kind of way, but in the long run they are geared more toward those people who might actually give a damn. Namely, your friends and family. If this is your motivation, I would set your blogs to "friends only." This allows only those who are on your friend list to read your posts. You can post bulletins when you post one of these pieces because chances are, those involved in what you are referring to in your writing are on your list. It also keeps out random as*hol*s who might just have something f**k*d up to say about a picture you've posted of one of your not-so-attractive friends. You love your friends, you really don't want just anyone walking in and talking s**t about them, right? Plus, you want to keep out those people who you might not want to know about your drunken escapades. Namely, your employer or any of your co-workers who might start s**t for you. The last type of motivation is a little more sweeping. When I first started posting stuff in my blog section, it was written much the way that it is now, but with a few more personal references. I didn't mind if random people stumbled into my pieces and was flattered when someone told me that they found a story funny. Nothing I wrote about was anything that I would have wanted to hide. There in lies most of the issue with blogging for mass consumption. You have to be willing to be completely open. If you want to have a large reader list, it makes it impossible to be able to set certain pieces to "friends only." I have written about highly personal topics in the past, but always with a sense of trepidation. I had to repeatedly ask myself if I was OK with strangers reading things that were personal to me. If I have determined something to be too personal, I will not post it here on Myspazz AT ALL. I don't post something with a private or restricted setting. Doing so turns off readers. They want to feel included in your life. So what is it that you want to do with your blogging? Do you want to get your writing read? Do you want to share your experiences with other people? Or do you just want to get things off your chest? This is something that you need to figure out before deciding to go after an audience. If you can't bear to listen to some f**kwit chime in on a personal matter in your life, I would HIGHLY suggest not coming to me and asking me to promote your blog. I am not going to put my stamp of approval behind someone being delivered a dose of pain. Because, let me tell you, the first few times that someone comes to you with an opinion that you think is mean or unfair, you WILL lose your cool. Then it's all on your shoulders. You can't get mad at someone about having something negative to say when you asked for people to turn their attention towards you. You will have to figure out how to deal with it without going completely apes**t. If you are writing for mass consumption, you also have to be willing to not have your profile set to comment approval. If your motivation is to gain an audience, they are going to want to feel like they can tell you anything. Even bulls**t. Even non-constructive comments made only because they were in a bad mood and wanted to take it out on you. Or because they didn't like your face. Or because they wanted to capitalize on your popularity. Granted, you can always go through and delete these comments. It will always be YOUR blog and you can choose to do with it whatever you want. But closing off the option of free commenting to the other readers who AREN'T going to talk s**t will just deter them from commenting at all. How do I manage to get hundreds of comments? I leave my posts open so that people can discuss things amongst themselves, even if I'm not around. How often do I need to delete stupid s**t? Rarely, unless I'm in the Top Ten Ranked. Then you get all kinds of stupid s**t. How do you get into the Top Ten? That's for another post. I hope this was helpful to you. In the long run, please don't ever stop writing. There will always be critics (myself included). The thing that is first and foremost important is that you write FOR YOURSELF. Everything and everyone else should be purely coincidental. See you next week