300
December 21, 2010 Leave a comment
This is our 300th post; it’s taken a little under a year for us to make it from 200, just about as long as it took for our second century, but a good bit faster than our first ton. I’ve been responsible for the vast majority of these posts; at about 250 words a go that’s the equivalent of a fair-sized novel.
Has it all been worthwhile? I’d struggle to say that the world would be a poorer place without the benefit of my bon mots, but I fancy that there may have been an occasional felicitous phrase that brought a smile to the face of one reader or another.
I have no doubt though that the principal beneficiary of all this literary endeavour has been me. There was an interesting article in the Guardian this week, which examined the therapeutic potential of blogging, for those who have experienced life-threatening illness or other trauma. I have never had to face such a trial, thankfully, but I do find that the discipline of composing a regular column is a powerful antidote to the anomie of day-to-day life.
Anyway, I reckon that persevering for this long qualifies me as some sort of blogging guru, so I feel that I should be sharing the benefits of my wisdom with my less-experienced fellows.
What have I learned about the art of blogging? Precious little if I’m honest, but here are a few pointers:
- Avoid being too restrictive about your subject matter; you may think you have a lot to say about something, but you are likely to find inspiration running dry sooner than you think.
- Conversely, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself; if you come back to a thought often enough you may eventually express it more or less the way you want.
- Don’t look at the statistics page too often; no matter how low your expectations your traffic figures are likely to be discouraging.
- Do read lots of other blogs, and leave lots of comments; if you’re stuck for a topic to write about then rip off someone else’s idea (but do link back to them).
- Don’t stop; once you let it drift for a while it’s hard to get started again.
- Finally, and most importantly, don’t ever think about all the useful things you could be doing if you weren’t wasting your time with your stupid blog.
Second Life Shrink 