WordPress keeps asking me if I want to blog more often. No, WordPress, I do not, and furthermore I think it’s a terrible idea to blog every day. Writing every day, I get, but that doesn’t mean you should publish every day. When does the editing come in, I ask you?
No, it doesn’t have to be perfect — Penelope Trunk, Arianna Huffington, and Ann Daly agree that blogs are no place for perfectionism. But even given that ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’, you still aim for the good and not the ‘written in five minutes and it shows’. (And, if you click through to the Daily Show interview, you’ll see Jon Stewart give the Hufflepuff a little guff about this issue. Oh, Jon, you’re so dreamy!)
Sometimes I think there's no point to blogging, because Jon Stewart always anticipates my questions and concerns...
Despite having become a more enthusiastic blogger than I ever would have guessed, I still wince at the immense amount of crap that’s ‘published’ on the net. (Has anyone noticed how the quality of OMG! has plummeted since they started their ‘contributor network’?) The last thing we need is more quantity, with no regard for quality.
(I should note I’m sympathetic to the idea that blogs can be the equivalent of an open sketchbook or journal, but I think that should be designated somewhere. And please don’t call it an ‘article’.)
Maybe I’m a hypocrite, though, because I’m already blogging more than I think I should. I find three times a week incredibly time consuming, and I still don’t have time to edit as much as I’d like. So why do I do it? Because that’s the standard advice for growing your audience, and I’m trying to grow my audience. (Fame! You’ll remember my name!)
I’ll pause for a moment to let the peanut gallery protest about ‘prostituting your art’.
Done?
Yes, I think American Idol promotes mediocrity too. I don’t believe in art by democracy, and I don’t believe quantity of hits has any correlation to quality. This is why I insist on saying what I want. (This also is why I positively suck at selling out, by the way.)
But before you get all high and mighty on the idea of self-promotion, you should know that the great epic poet Homer was also down with getting your name out there. It’s called kleos (‘Fame!’) and all Homeric heroes want a piece of it. That’s why they kill as many enemy warriors as possible — I wonder if purists would accept that as a substitute for modern networking??
I don’t defend the classical canon just ’cause it’s there, either. Homer is good stuff: damned fine similes, impressive character development and the rest. Except those parts where he’s just listing stuff so the bard can show off his memory. That’s kind of tedious — but hey, that’s how it works. No one bats a hundred, and the thing about constant production is that it doesn’t allow you to pick and choose.
A bust of Homer. It's weird to see him as writerly given that he was composing orally...but that's okay, it's coming back around. (Licensed by Wikimedia Commons.)
Historians study networking among the long dead and call it ‘cultural capital’ to make it sound like something better than fame-whoring, but it’s really not. Now that I’m meeting some entrepreneurs and they’re telling me about the difficulties of raising financial capital, I think it’s no different than raising cultural capital: it’s a tedious, time-consuming grind where you actively seek out more connections than you had before and ‘leverage’ them into something else. Not fun, exactly, but necessary.
Cultural or financial, living or dead, it’s all the same. (Fame!) We all want people to know our name — or, in my case, pseudononymous blogging tag.
Current schedule works for me. Writing every day seems like an awful lot if you’re not inspired to do so.
What I want to know, though, is what happened to your Plan B: become a web/software/database developer of some sort. This was the audacious plan that truly made you my hero. SOOO few humanities academics even have the ambition to break out of freelance writing/editing…. you were going to be my great hope for self-transformation as an expression of pure will.
Worry not, Caitlin, my situation is such that freelance writing/editing isn’t really an option if I want to pay the bills. But I did just get into to town. And there is much networking going on, and still some learning on the technical side. But I’ll keep you posted, surely!
And really I think my purest expression of self-will would involve the adulation of crowds with money…so yeah, it’s all relative.
I agree that people shouldn’t blog everyday. Sometimes you DO have to put up some random tat, just because YOU like it and are expressing your like. But everyday is a bit much. Specifically, I know my blog is mostly personal things–things I like, things I make or enjoy, etc, with the ccasional rant about something that’s pissing me off. I only do it to try and get me to do more creative or thinky-winky things. I think alot of people don’t realise that others actually can find and read their blog. Its a drawback of the internet. Some people think that what they write, all the things they opinion, aren’t really out there in the ether and totally trackable.
Yeah, that’s my objection to the idea that you should just ‘get it out there.’ I think the Draft function is great for jotting stuff down, but like I said, there a lot to be said doing that, then editing the next day. Which is what I usually try to do!
I can’t advise you on what you should do, but my own rule of thumb is that I blog only (or almost only) when I feel I have something compelling to say. I’ve had months where I logged 20 posts, and months where I got 3. Then again, I’m not trying to build an audience (though I do enjoy their company), so if you are, then a month with only three posts would probably be a bad idea for you.
Still: forced writing is often bad writing, and you want your audience to come back because the shit is good, not just because it’s there. My favorite example of the intermittent blog is “I Blame the Patriarchy” — the author may post every day or every other day, then may go for weeks or months without posting anything. But what she does post is almost always well worth reading.
Interesting parallel to me, since you bring up Homer, is that he’s kind of like a pseudonymous blogger — people know and love his work, but they have no idea who the guy is.
‘Forced writing is often bad writing.’ True, but one of my great obsessions in life is the fact that to be a successful creative person (writer, artist, whatever), you absolutely can’t wait for inspiration to strike every time. It’s the ass-in-chair thing, you have to work on whatever project whether you feel like it or not. And then there’s being creative on commission, which especially isn’t about inspiration.
And yes, it would be nice if the world waited for compelling content…but as Caitlin points out below, the Academy is great practice for a world that demands forced brilliance. Who knows, though, this may change (in writing, at least) with the advent of things like Google reader, which allows the reader to choose how often to ‘update’, regardless of the author!
And Homer as a blogger…Hmm, I think you’ve just given me the inspiration for a seriously demented post…
I don’t know. I try for twice a week, given all of the other commitments I have. Now that the kids are all in preschool, maybe I’ll aim for more often.
And I like the “bad” stuff as much as I like the great stuff. Your “reduced brilliance” is more worthy, entertaining, and thought-provoking that 99% of the other stuff that’s out there. I’m still getting used to blogging; I spend a lot of time thinking about my blog posts, then I write them. So I always have a whole bunch waiting in the wings being mulled over and reflected on, although not necessarily edited.
I find, shudder, that Twitter is a great place to start the writing process, and then it comes together as a post a little later after tweeting it out.
Now that I’ve said that, I’m off to post on wether pop culture is a legitimate area of inquiry and analysis in a Freshman Writing class…
Yes, I think twice a week is the most reasonable blogging schedule — and of course that means TTh…oh, wait…Thanks, though. I think I have no problem saying thought-provoking stuff, but I’m concerned with getting it into a well-written form.
I agree, Twitter has been surprisingly useful as a way to find inspiration, and has given me ideas that…and I vote yay, pop culture is totally legitimate. I mean, I wanted my students to analyze Homer, but in the end, they just wanted me to lecture entertainingly and hand them the themes. Painful, but if I could use that lesson to get them to be better media consumers in the real world, then fine, at least I’d done something.
Oh WoPro how we track each other. I am also at 3 posts a week because you need that number for proper audience growth, but I don’t have time either. Still, we must jam that underworked trifecta into the internet mail slot with consistency. I’ve had a sudden flourish of creativity lately and am sitting on quite a few posts, but no telling if I will stay ahead or not. Useful thoughts indeed.
Yes, there’s the rub: whether we like it or not, regular posting is necessary for keeping the traffic up…but great that you have some ideas in the pipe. I have quite a few drafts jotted down (see above) but when there’s so much stuff going on I still find it difficult to get them into any sort of shape! Argh!
Going home on the train today I suddenly realized that your question essentially replicated the “publish or perish” quandary. How many limp and muddled books have been written because their authors needed tenure? Don’t let that happen to the blog!
Yup, I was going to point that out too. But while I think that there are MANY reasons to object to the publish and perish (no time to do it anyway, writing guaranteed to suck, and you’re not really doing it because you want to in any sense, by the end) I don’t have much patience for diva-esque ideals about waiting for the Muse. The greatest artists throughout history have had to produce, plain and simple…I don’t think anyone is excepted from that. The question is just how to find a balance that works.
I have to say that I’m often relieved when my favorite bloggers start posting less frequently — then I don’t feel guilty when I’m days (weeks) behind in my reading. One good/great/fabulous post a week would be enough for me. Yours are always high quality, BTW.
P.S. I think it’s hilarious that you wrote about the Hufflepuff on the same day I linked to that, er, “article.”
That article wasn’t too bad…I object to the HuffPo on many fronts, but the writing is at least kind of okay. I’m serious, though, as embarrassing as it is to admit I read OMG, I’ve been truly horrified by the level of suckage that’s happening in the last few weeks.
I agree wholehheartedly, it’s quite a relief when good blogs don’t publish too much, because yes, reading is just as much a part of the community as writing…which is why the whole thing is so time-consuming!!
I’m clearly not one to talk, as I go through bursts of posting every day vs full weeks of nearly nothing. I do, however, think that you should pace yourself in such a way that you are a) comfortable with the load and b) satisfied with the quality. We don’t need you driving yourself crazy/crazier than you already are.
True enough, though I think I’m too far gone to become what anyone would call ‘sane’!
Do whatever works for you. If you drop down to less than 3 times a week I’ll probably check less often, but who knows… you’re on our blogroll so you might get hit anyway.
We do post everyday. And sometimes I’m surprised by how what I think is a junk post will turn out to be incredibly popular (especially the mini-rants). And what CPP thinks is a terrible post, other members of our audience find important and useful and link to… what CPP thinks is a great post other members may find uninteresting self-absorbed twaddle. There’s no predicting taste.
For us it’s a hobby, so if we run out of content or whatever, we’ll just let our online community languish in our absence.
I think that it’s at terribly idea to blog everyday since I think that much of the stuff publisheded on a blog on a daily basis is incoherent ramblings where people are concerned to ‘up their ranks’ in a specific search engine rather than the value of the content of a posting. I like text to be edited since badly written text implies to me that the writer hasn’t bothered editing it so they really don’t care about their reader. I actually write every day but I also need time to edit it. I really enjoy the editing process and I considering it akin to sculpting..much in the creative sense of making a pot. One good article once a week is good enough for me and I’d rather read it rather than some nothingish text that’s published on a daily basis.
Yes, I have written about that before — SEO is indeed the devil, and the web doesn’t tend to reward good writing. But, as I was discussing above, there’s a certain degree to which the market does determine creative output…but so it has been for a very, very long time!
I definitely vote for quality over quantity–that’s what makes your blog so enjoyable!
Thanks! But again, I’m a big fan of a pragmatic balance…ideally, we could all aim for that, but I think here’s another case where regular output of ‘B’ material is preferable to waiting for an A every time!
I think you create just the right amount of content. Here’s my take on the quantity-quality debate in blogging…
I think that the ‘quantity’ people aim for search-engine results and for more attention from first-time readers. When most of us read a blog for the first time, we tend to go, “Ooh, it’s updated every day, that’s special.” I do, anyway, and I can tell that many blogs are written for people who think that way.
But once I actually like a blog, the chances of me reading it EVERY day are slim. In fact, I get overwhelmed if it’s updated every day. Every other day, or even 3 times a week is frequent enough for me… and for a lot of people, I think.
I agree, readers are just as overwhelmed as writers — this is the downside of this age of freely created content. But alas, to get those new readers, you need to encourage the “oooh, it’s special’ feeling at least enough to get them hooked. In theory, anyway…in practice, there’s a little old lady in my brain who’s irked at this newfangled need to pander to shortened attention spans.