Lessons of a Changing Blog
On Monday I talked about off-topic blog posts and how they can be a good thing for readership. That got me to thinking about this blog and where it’s wandered to over the years, and looking back over the archives really did highlight some salient facts for me:
- I’ve gotten much, much better at formatting for the internet, particularly at adding white space and images to make things more readable. Interpreting Rejection, or, About the Form Letter was the first sort of longer, list-formatted post I did, and if you click through you’ll see that it’s basically a big block of text. Nowadays I’m far more likely to use bullet points, font/highlighting changes, and images to break lists up. I’ve actually gone back and improved some of the most popular off-topic posts so that things like The Hunks of the Western Literary Canon are more presentable.
- Speaking of off-topic posts, I’ve clearly increased their share of screen time over the year-and-some that this blog’s been around. This is especially true in longer posts: anything over 500 words or so is far more likely to be something like Badass Superheroes and Their Shameful Origins than the monolithic writing-tip posts I used to produce like the “Devil’s Details” post on Pacing.
- I’ve gotten much better at internal linking. Could you tell?
Most of these are just the natural evolution of an internet writer: content gets shallower and shinier, simultaneously. Chalk it up as part of the transition from “aspiring novelist” to “pampered fashion writer.”
Supermodels were also part of the transition, so it's safe to say I'm never looking back.
The plus side of this is that it’s overall a more engaging, entertaining, and easy-to-read blog than it was a year or so ago. On the other hand, it’s probably not as valuable a resource to other writers, particularly if they’re just scrolling through the last half-dozen posts or so. That’s likely to turn up a few short thoughts on writing, some pop-culture references, and maybe a picture-story about highly inappropriate advertisements for divorce lawyers.
But hopefully posts like this can at least be useful to other bloggers and internet writers, who can at least take away the lesson that naked supermodel bums never hurt anyone’s site traffic. What do you think? Is there any substance left below the style of MA101? Did I tempt you into clicking through to a delightful new surprise hidden in the archives of the blog? Drop a comment and let me know!
Internet Writing: Never Read the Comments
Do you write for an online audience? Congratulations! Now don’t read the comments.
I think this is a simple enough thesis that I don’t have to expand on it much. Something with a small, friendly audience (like a blog, say) — fine. The people commenting are probably mostly going to be saying decent, relevant things. But as soon as you start talking about, say, a thousand page views, you’re talking about comments calling you a “mexican jew lizard.”
The subject of your writing does not matter. God help you if you’re writing about any sort of politics, including local ones — if you cover a school board meeting that voted to add apples instead of tinned pears to the lunch offerings, expect to see something in the comments asking why libtard fags like you voted for a “moslem nig-bitch.”
But other topics are not safe. In the interests of good reporting a took a deep breath and plunged into the Comments section of articles I’ve written on things like classical music and movie history. Some winners include:
Once again, these are not particularly controversial articles. They are humor pieces about entertainment. Comments from actual news stories are by and large not reprintable.
Don’t read the comments. I’ll leave you with that thought and with Mr. Period’s sage advice, courtesy of Penny Arcade:
Writing Life