Blogging. Flogging. What’s the Diff?

Last updated on: June 2, 2009 at 7:15 am by John Shore

Blogging. Flogging. What’s the Diff? 2009-06-02T07:15:35-08:00 John Shore

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This morning a reader, “urbanruralwitness,” left the saddest comment on my post My Cup Runneth Over.

“At least more than 1 person looks at your blog,” he or she wrote. “Unlike me. Let me ask: Was it tough to start this blog? How did other people notice you? My blog is now a bud. A dead rotting bud.

“A dead rotting bud!”! Poetic! And, like so much great poetry, it makes you want to kill yourself.

My response to urbanrural was:

“Yes, sometimes up to THREE people a day read my blog.

“Blogging is the most brutal thing since … flogging. My Actual Honest Opinion is that if you’re blogging in the hopes of attracting a readership beyond your family and friends (and even then), forget it. There are 120 million blogs out there. How in the world is any one blogger—who isn’t a corporate blog, who isn’t already famous, who isn’t a freak expert in some tiny little informational niche—supposed to rise above that solid wall of noise?”

I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately, because I’ve been e-chatting with the president of the San Diego Christian Writer’s Guild about maybe teaching a class at this year’s SDWG conference (which I attended last year and wrote about in Humbled by Beginning Writers, doncha know) on the how’s and why’s of blogging.

The “How” part I can do: Wake up. Caffeinate. Write blog post. Hit “Publish” button. Try not to obsess over your viewer stats. Fail at that. Don’t know what I’d talk about for the rest of the forty-five minutes, but that would do the job.

It’s the “Why” part of blogging where I get a little lost.

Because you love to write? Meaning you appreciate and even relish the craft of writing? Then why start a blog, where you have to produce so much writing you can’t possibly properly attend to each piece?

Because you want to be famous? Please. Talk about your one needle in 120 million haystacks.

Because … you love to type?

If you keep a blog, tell us why. Love writing? Hope to become famous—or to at least gather some folk around your soapbox? What gets you writing and publishing the content on your blog? What inspires you to blog? Do tell! At the very least it’ll help me with that class. Thanks!

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