Over the last year and a half, my blogging dilemmas have been many. I have, I’m afraid, been able to reduce these dilemmas into neat little binaries quite without satisfactory answers.
Long or short? A few quality posts or many chatty posts? Should you write about everything? Is developing a brand necessary? Is less more or is less just less in the blogosphere?
The question is, should I gear the blog towards any one side of these pairs of concerns? Or should I not pick and keep speaking in many tones deep and shallow, sombre and chatty, touch-and-go and scholarly, short and long?
The posts on writing, especially the short ones, attract the largest number of hits. The longer, in-depth ones about blogging or writing still attract a greater number of readers than creative posts.
The reflective, memoir-like posts, such as the one here, are the ones that take a greater effort to write and are more personal to me. These inevitably attract fewer hits but more loyal followers who come back even after long intervals.
Of course, I can keep writing what I want for myself. Then I won’t have to worry about revealing too much about my personal life or grammar or format .
But that will mean an audience of only one. Only me. I am the most boring person I know. Completely predictable. So I won’t be much help as audience.
At the heart of my question though, whether to focus on any one core interest, creative memoir or writing, is another question which is of interest to everyone.
Must a blog follow a magazine model if it isn’t just personal but covers a variety of topics? In the publishing world as it exists now, you’ll find women’s magazines, technology magazines, fashion magazines, scholarly journals, science magazines, popular science magazines. . . Rarely will editors and publishers mix one kind of presentation with the other.
If a blog is a personal one, should it just concern itself with one group of topics speaking in a style and tone that remains constant?
I am increasingly inclined to think that people may not have to make a choice anymore. Reading habits online aren’t going to replicate the way people used to read magazines or journals or personal stories offline. In fact, stagnation might become a real possibility if one is not willing to be flexible online both as readers and writers.
“An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional” said F. Scott Fitzgerald.
I think a blogger has to embrace multiplicity even more than an artist.
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I was told yesterday that this post will be Freshly Pressed. Thank you WordPress. If you’re interested, check out my other posts that were Freshly Pressed: My Blog Audience, Sounds of the Blogosphere and Characters from the Inside of your Head.
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