Blogging

 

As an aspiring novelist I've read a lot of books regarding novel-writing and memoirs on the craft of writing. It struck me the other day that bloggers could learn a lot from novelists despite being greatly different types of writing (in general). I've composed a list of five questions that a blogger should ask his or her self prior to publishing a blog entry. These points are all based on the advice many successful writers have recommended to me as a novel writer (through thier books).

1. Have you chosen the right title? There are no laws in place to stop two novelists giving their novel the same title - it's a bad idea to do so though. If I named my novel Crime and Punishment, for example, I could never hope it would be known as the Crime and Punishment as it would be competing with Dostoyevsky's masterpiece. Similarly, although two bloggers can have posts with identical titles it is not a good idea.

2. Would I have written this blog even if I knew no one else would read it? Any good writer will tell you they write not for the money or the admiration (in fact many good writers get neither) but they write because they have a desire to do so, a thirst that cannot be quenched. As a blogger, do you blog because you want to make a six-figure annual sum through Google AdSense? Or do you blog simply because you have to? Ironically, it's the bloggers who never intended to make the money who earn a good living from it.

3. Can the blog entry be summed up in a single sentence? In his book Writing a Novel and getting Published by Nigel Watts, Nigel says that the thesis (or main theme) of a novel should be "what the author is saying about the thread summed up in a single sentence". In other words, if you can't describe a work of writing in one sentence the message you are putting across may be too garbled or perplexing to the reader. If a novel can be summed up in once sentence then is it not reasonable to expect you can do the same for your blogs?

4. Can I make the blog any simpler / shorter? A painful part of writing is when the novelist's agent asks them to cut large chunks out of their novel (it's not uncommon for a writer to remove a third of his / her book at their agent's request). The agent (usually) knows best, however, because if a piece of writing can be expressed in less words it can have more of an impact. Can you make your blog entry any shorter without altering the message?

5. Have I written sufficent drafts of my blog entry? A novelist will usually write a minimum of two to three drafts before passing it onto their agent. In the first draft the writer will write loosly and without creative limits; the second draft will rework the first draft into a more level and consistant piece of work; the third draft will polish it so it is suitable to pass on to the agent. Try this approach on your blogs for a more professional finish.

It occured to me recently that I'd developed an application addiction. Throughout the day I was checking emails, RSS feeds, Google AdSense, Google Analytics . . . the list goes on. There must be lots of users out there with a similar addiction; I figured the best way to stop the cravings is to switch these applications off during the working day.

It worked!

If you pin point what's contributing to your time wasting you can get more done in a day. I've documented my findings in a new aricle.

Read the article Programs to Switch Off While Working here.

To blog or to article write? That is the question.

My site contains a blog and an articles section. What's the difference? Should you write blogs or articles? Are they the same thing?

To a certain extent it's a matter of opinion and there is certainly some crossover between the term blog and the term article. Both generic terms themselves, blogs can be articles and articles can be blogs.

In my opinion, for the ethos of my website and for the scope of this blog entry I class blogs as personal and opinionated whereas articles are closer towards neutral and are very much formally written. Put simply, I try to get my viewpoints made clear in blogs and the facts made clear in articles. Even this doesn't serve as a hard-and-fast rule - I often spend time wondering whether a blog should be written as an article and vice versa.

Here are four questions I ask myself before deciding whether or not I'm writing a blog or an article:

What's the longevity? How well does the entry age? A lot of us blog about the ever-changing world of technology. Let’s face it – some things start going out of date the moment we publish them. Since blog entries have a date and time attached to them such transient subject matter lends itself to blogging more so than articles.

First person or third person? My days at university told me that first person (I said this, I said that) is not appropriate for credible articles. Rather, the third person (It is this, it is that) should be used. I always write blogs in the first person viewpoint and articles in the third.

Personal or professional? What kind of image do I want to project? I find a blog is more about me and my personal experiences; an article is much more neutral and unbiased. If you want sympathy and feeling from the reader you’re far more likely to achieve that with a blog than an article. Conversely, if you’re going for academic credibility a researcher will never cite a blog entry whereas they may do a well-written article.

How much of it is your viewpoint? If there’s anything more than a slight tinge of my personal opinion then I make it a blog rather than an article. Any points made in a blog should be on your own outlook – an article should be based on cited facts.

You may think, so what? As long as I write something on the subject it doesn’t really matter. In some cases that may be so but is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Can you use blogging and article writing to your benefit?

Yes, you can. Read on.

Generally, I favour the use of "Blarticles" - this is a word (that I made up for this blog entry and) I use for writing an article and then blogging about it on its release. When I say Blarticles, I mean a blog AND an article, not a blog and an article mixed together.

My approach to Blarticles is this: research and write quality articles in the third person view point; base it on factual information and cite facts. Then, blog about it. Blog about your own article! You write a blog about your neutral, unbiased article and give your own opinion on it. There are several benefits:

The ability to perform resurrections. Sometimes your blogs may be dismissed by readers who stumble across them at a later date as being too old. That’s a problem with blogs – they’re time-centric – they appear to date even though the ideas in them may be as fresh as the day they were written. Articles aren’t like this. You can use your blog to resurrect articles; let’s say you write a timeless article one month and blog about it. A week, a month, a year or ten years later (as often as you see fit) you can blog about it again from a fresh angle. You can re-drive people to your content in a way that is harder to do through standard blogging.

Good for search engines. If you choose your keywords carefully writing a Blarticle means twice as much content for the search engines to index. For each new idea you have a blog entry and an article for the search engines to pick up on. It doesn’t matter that they’re on the same subject. Remember, one is factual and the other is opinionated so as far as the search engines are concerned it’s twice as much new content.

Make the right impression to the right people. Academics can read your article and bloggers and friends can read your blog. It’s so simple - you can be a friend and a professional at the same time.

Of course, some bloggers may not have much of a choice. Whatever they write will look like a blog entry due to the nature of their website (i.e. it uses commercial blogging software on a site that is primarily or exclusively blogging). I'm lucky, this blog is just a facet of my own hand-coded site so I can integrate non-blog elements as little or as much as I like.

If you can start "Blarticling" then to blog or to article write will never be the question!