What exactly IS a blog and where does it go once it escapes your imagination and dances off your keyboard? It’s one thing to imagine it, another to sit down and write it, and yet another step to actually make the effort to post it. But it doesn’t stop there. Hopefully someone reads it, maybe a lot of people read it, maybe it causes comment, maybe it changes how someone thinks, maybe it changes someone’s life, maybe a lot of lives. Maybe it gets you laid. Maybe it makes you rich and famous.
Maybe not.
But for as expansive as that first paragraph becomes, it suddenly jerks to a stop and immediately contracts like a black hole, back to a single question:
So what?
Each blogger comes to this format with a different set of needs and expectations. Some want to change people’s opinions while others just want to vent. Some bloggers are seeking support, some want to make new friends and others want to relieve personal pain or boredom. Some are looking for an outlet for the stories they have to tell while others just want to tell us their life’s story.
A few weeks ago, a new blogger started her career on OS by stating something to the effect that she was attracted to OS because the movie critic Roger Ebert often quotes bloggers that he reads here. The implication was (I assume) that being a blogger on OS is just one small step away from a regular gig on Nightline, Hardball, or The Huffington Post.
I started “blogging” with this same “talking head” mentality… that, and the naive notion that there were powerful literary giants out there just waiting to discover the next Hemingway or London on the Internet. I assumed that all bloggers were somehow credentialed in advance and that this site provided a hideously simple way to sneak into this exclusive club. But realistically, very few bloggers here or anywhere have the kind of legitimate access to primary news sources of information to be truly newsbreaking. Most are only trying to be the first to rehash “breaking news” coming across the CNN ticker. I don’t feel qualified to add anything to the discussion on health care reform or Obama’s citizenship and don’t care to live-blog the Miss Teen USA Talent Contest.
What does that leave?
At first, I decided that my thing, my niche, would be as the acerbic, disaffected angry old man, and I started off complaining about cell phones, flat-billed baseball caps and the lack of air in popular music. But I very quickly found that no one really cares what angry old men think (plus I’m not THAT old and only had a limited number of cranky opinions.) So I switched to what I do best: quirky, off-center essays on the little observations and ironies of life. There doesn’t turn out to be a huge market for that either, but at least I enjoy exploring the topics (mechanical pencils, shitting babies, Spam, nudie ponds, hitting a tennis ball, hitchhiking, motorcycle trips, witnessing a murder, the Amish, harmonica players, bonsai, speed skating, picking grapes, global warming, Buddy Guy, hippies, pie-wielding Polacks, SOBs, the invention of sex...)
But again, it all eventually comes back to “so what?”. It comes back to “who cares?”. It comes back to “where does this all go” when it leaves my computer? With the exception of the generous people who rated and/or commented internally on the post, what was gained from spending the time and energy to write these things? I didn’t make a dime off of any of it. I didn’t get laid. No publisher or editor or agent ever called to beg me to let them use my stuff.
I’m looking for other people’s experiences and opinions. Are you happy with your blogging career? How do you make this work for you? I really want to take this to the next level, but I’m not convinced that there is a next level on the web alone. Where do you go with your observations besides obscure literary magazines and seldom-read blog sites? How can you use a blog to attract attention to your work? How can you generate income from a blog? How can you move beyond the supportive but relatively insular community that is OS?
This is an open call for ideas and information. I’m interested in learning how we can use this platform to further our own needs and not just the needs of the editors and their sponsors.
What do you think a blog should be? Where can it go? How can we USE it?
Roger Ebert… are you really out there?
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
jmac1949
Lisa Scroggins
jlsathre
toritto
Deborah Young
I am Stretch
Salon.com
Comments
Your question fascinates me. I should have waited until my brain had booted up to respond, so I may have to come back.
You ask good questions, Jeff, but my response is simply that a blog should be whatever the owner wants it to be, as long as it complies with the terms of service of the site. Salon is simply giving you a publishing platform, and, to a certain extent, a built-in audience; do with it what you will.
Personally, I like having Jeff Howe here, and would like a lot more stories like the Mountain Cabin with a Tin Roof.
First off: Hey Lancaster! I’m dispatching from the hinterlands of bucolic Cumberland County, so we’re practically neighbors. Hi neighbor!
Anyway, to answer your question—yes, I’m absolutely pleased with my goofy little blog. For me, this is a fun hobby.
Now, I’ve been blogging here for over a year, and I think (for most people) the key is to first amuse oneself. Popularity is a phantom thing. Success is relative. I’ve had a couple of popular posts that I don’t think are as good as ones that only like 3 people read. I have my own barometer of what constitutes a “successful” post. It’s probably a mistake for folks to look for fame and fortune in the blogging world. (Personally I’m looking for fame and fortune in my home and maybe in my 5th period American lit class! Ha! Like I said, I have a different barometer for success!)
I write a lot about music—sometimes I write humorously about music, and sometimes I write fairly straight reviews. I guess this is my niche, but I also write about other interests (Once I wrote a post about the 18th century novelist Charles Brockdon Brown—not, uh, one of my most popular posts, but a successful one on another level I think).
For all my posts, my main criteria is always to amuse myself and (attempt to) write coherently. Ultimately, for me, this has been a fun and fulfilling hobby.
Not sure I answered your question Jeff. I guess what I’m saying is if you are enjoying what you write, you’ve already taken your blog where it needs to go...
MJ
Meanwhile, enjoy it for what it is, whatever it is. For me this is the most rewarding, safest place to put my life on record. No matter if I don't publish a memoir -- I now have a body of work going on two years that probably otherwise wouldn't have been written were it not for the blogosphere. And hopefully that will continue. It is what it is, and to me blogging is an unexpected gift.
Where to go from here? I've used my experience in another, bigger test: I've started writing a book. I'll have to wait and see how that turns out. It was a reasonable next step, one that several other OSers and many bloggers elsewhere have taken. In this sense, blogging can be seen as a training ground for other sorts of activities.
In the end, I suspect that what a blog does is "sell" the person who's writing it. Not getting-money-for-goods selling, but creating a reputation for yourself. You've done a good job with this, I think, as have many other OSers; you're all known for writing a particular kind of post, giving value of a particular kind for reading. I think it's this reputation that might be the best focus for parlaying a blog into something bigger, whatever that something is.
I know that I need to adjust my thinking in order for me to take the experience of writing to another level. On the one hand, I know that I'll never be published or even noticed by the "in crowd" but, on the other, I am compelled to write.
You ask, "How can you move beyond the supportive but relatively insular community that is OS?" For people like me, this is it and I just need to learn to accept the experience for what it is. If my tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to listen, does it make a sound? I have a feeling that when I can answer this question with a resounding "YES' then I will have grown as a writer and as a human being.
Thank you, Jeff. You just made me think through an issue which has been plaguing me.
i am able to tell the author, liked that pic! eww TMI, or whatever.
as far as the writing, blogging part (as opposed to the reading, commenting part), i am just learning to write, to hear my own voice and see it in print (of sorts) and get feedback that may help me to improve my communication skills.
Making money has never been part of my motivation. And, now that I think about it, that could very well be a major part of its appeal.
Lezlie
Much like Ken Burns who sought the words of diarests of the 1860s like Mary Chestnutt and George Templeton Strong, this woman (O. P. N. Salon) will look to read into the hearts minds and souls of men and women who lived at the turn of the 21st century.
Much of what was written (none of it by me) then will be used to document the time.
My works will cast aside as the work of some poor unfortunately soul who accidentally wandered into a place where he didn't belong. Seeing my works as a collection of "shaggy dog " stories, I will ignominiously cast aside.
All that said, I come here to write what I'm not allowed to write at work, and sometimes people read what I write. And that is a good thing.
Hence my eternally sarcastic reply to how to get an EP: Kill your mother.
Since then I have done a journey of grief interrupted by spasms of posts about stupid things or poems or answers to Open Calls. My blog remains absolutely diverse in that I don't stick to a subject, genre, style or even a purpose. But writing through my grief gave me something I never imagined. A support system. I don't care if anyone thinks this place is a false construct of community - for me, it happened to be a place where my thoughts about my grief, my emotions, including anger, were not only shared but acknowledged and applauded.
I have close personal friends who have never responded to the news of my Mother's death. I get it - it's a scary subject, and maybe they don't think they know what to say to me.
From OS I have received cards, PM's, phone calls - all people checking in to make sure I am ok. I have been overwhelmed by the kindness and support I have received.
I know this doesn't address your topics, but my story is one that needs to be heard. I would never have been able to get through this with the ability to grieve so openly without this incredible community.