The House of Words (no. 29), Dave Bonta and the internet, 9

Banner, Via Negativa

MY: So now we have billions of web pages ... It's easy for readers to feel lost; it's easy for writers starting out to feel swamped or invisible. How do you think a writer who wants to make his or her way in an e-world can find a place? How does such a person find the readers who will feel kindred or be interested?
DB: Well, for people who are withdrawn or misanthropic, I don't know what to suggest. But if you're an interesting writer and you're at least a little outgoing, it doesn't take too long to find a community of bloggers to link to and comment on. I fear a lot of people start blogs these days on the advice of editors or agents who neglect to tell them that the most important trait of a good blogger is generosity. If you want people to read you, you have to read them. You need to link to other bloggers and other websites, whether in your posts or in your sidebar (ideally both) — that's how the web grows. I actually border on being too withdrawn to be an effective blogger; I often link to a blog post I like in lieu of leaving a comment. But the thing about comments is, other people besides the blogger see them too, and if your comment is interesting, will click through to check out your own site. I've seen bloggers build up huge readerships due to an ability to leave witty comments on high-traffic blogs.

Banner, Morning Porch
Image from Clive Hicks Jenkins.

Every writer should have some kind of website — they're crazy not to. Whether it should be a blog, and if so, what kind of blog, depends on the writer. There's nothing wrong with maintaining an essentially static site with just occasional updates about readings or new publications. But finding and staying connected to readers and kindred spirits online involves a pretty big commitment in time and energy, which can severely cut into one's writing time. If you're all about the Romantic ideal of the lone writer building an edifice of unique, inspired work, you're best advised to avoid all contact with blogs and blogging to avoid contagion.

Blogs, Social Media, Hot Water, & Getting Fired, part 2

12 Suggestions for thought, continued

7. DISCUSSING PROBLEMS. Teachers and professors: when discussing the people in your life who give you trouble (particularly students and colleagues), be measured and thoughtful and always remember the principal or the dread Dean of Students, floating over your head in a little black dirigible. If you would like a skimpily-paid vacation from the U. S. government known as welfare, disregard this advice. Same goes for other workers. Yes, there is a little judgmental cloud floating over your noggin. Really. They haven’t found you yet? They will. Wasn’t “The Tard Blog” writer always doomed to firing? This morning teacher Natalie Munroe is in the news, suspended from work because of her blog. She seems to have leveled a lot of fair criticisms. But as she admits, some posts were written “out of frustration.” She was an English teacher; perhaps she could have used her writing skills to appear a little more judicious and less rash. Rash can be funny, and funny—if not well-considered—can get you fired. Every chortling thought does not deserve print.

8. COMMENTS AND TIME SPENT. This is about that little matter of time and not wasting it. If you want a lot of comments, you will have to work at it. My observation is that just as many or more people come to your blog when you cease working at it as before—they just don’t leave so many comments. I love getting comments and replying to them, but I no longer have the time to work at acquiring them. I hardly have any time to visit other blogs, for example. But it doesn’t make any difference to your stats.

9. LANGUAGE. A lot of profanity is used as humor, and I like humor. But there is a trade-off. I might’ve used profanity as a teen blogger, had there been such a thing, way back when. But it’s another element that alienates and strikes out at a portion of your readers, the ones who just don’t like it and think there’s too much trash-talk in the world. Some people speak one way on Facebook, another way while blogging: clearly, they’ve thought about the difference between social circle and public forum. Good idea. Do that too!

10. SOURCES OF HUMOR. Related issue: there’s a strand of thought that thinks toying with ideas of sexism and racism is funny or especially effective and barbed. Back to Rosen’s tweets again! (Lately I have been distressed to find that it appears that the more liberal a writer is, the more likely he is to attack a woman or a person of color who does not agree with his point of view: that is, the more likely he is to attack a conservative woman or a conservative black. This does nothing good for the liberal cause and is quite successful at alienating people. Rosen did not like Logan’s stance on the war in Iraq, so he felt free to mock a 20-30 minute assault on her. Or see, for example, the recent “black garbage pail kids” and “minstrelsy” and “monkey in the window” comments about Herman Cain.) Funny? It’s not.

11. LOVELESSNESS. My most general advice is always to write from a stance of love and to enjoy other people, no matter what their politics or religion or lack thereof. I see a lot of people writing from a stance of lovelessness, a point of view where they can only like people like themselves. Why bother to write and reach out, then?

12. WISDOM AND LOVE. In his famous Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin included among his goals, “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.” Many people have taken this straight; others have thought that little item tongue-in-cheek for its impossibility. Disregarding the fact that both Jesus and Socrates experienced a rather unpleasant death, we might say that it’s not a bad idea to exert wisdom. Nor is it a bad idea to consort with many, even "tax collectors and prostitutes," and yet hew close to your own beliefs and speak out of love for the world, bad as it may be. One by one, if we do so, we might just see the resurrection of civility on the web.


Photograph courtesy of Mustafa Kilic of Istanbul and sxc.hu.

Blogs, Social Media, Hot Water, & Getting Fired, part 1 of 2

This little post was inspired by several friends who have come to me in some degree of unrest caused by what they had posted on a blog. It covers a number of issues that have occurred to me over a few years of blogging. Part 2 will appear tomorrow.

12 Suggestions for thought

1. CHILDREN. Your blog is a sort of adjunct chamber to your house where people who do not know can visit. In the riot of your imagination, just ponder who might possibly stumble into your door: mad clowns, local predators, carnivorous aliens from another star system, and other potential undesirables. No matter how interesting they may be, they’re not people you want ogling your children. I never posted pictures of my three young children; when my first two children graduated from high school, I did post a picture of my son and of my daughter with friends on my blog. For me, when considering under-18 children, initials are good enough on a public blog.

2. FRANKNESS. In addition, don’t get too naked, metaphorically speaking, in that room. Reticence is a lost virtue, but you can bring it back and yet still reveal much that is interesting.

3. POLITICS. Unless your purpose is to write a political blog, what reason do I have to want to know your political stance? I tend to like people, and I’m interested in people—a writer ought to care about people—but I notice that many people blog as if wholly unaware that other people do not believe as they do. That mode leads people like Nir Rosen to think that they can make abusive, sexist, unclean tweets about an American woman’s rape and beating in a public square with complete impunity. Wrong. (In the interests of full disclosure, I confess that I am a registered Democrat who is not particularly happy with either party or with the way of the world as presently constituted. Hey, it’s a fallen world. But at the moment it strikes me as still falling.)

4. PURPOSE. And what is your purpose, anyway—do you have any coherent idea? Figure it out and stick to your goals.

5. INTEREST. We all have different interests. I’m going to talk about my upcoming books. But I probably have plenty of people who only choose to read the Midget Palace post or the I Interview my Visitors series. Don’t try to reach everybody in every post. A blog is a whole with many parts. That said, don’t examine navel lint than can only be of concern to you and your significant other—well, I think even navel-lint-level topics can be funny or curious, but one has to exert a little artifice. Do that. Don’t be lazy, don’t be boring.

6. MODESTY. You know, even Michelangelo and the Tang emperors and Shakespeare had to die. No matter what we believe, we can agree that our very birth is a miracle against long odds (so many sperm headed for our special egg, so many ancestors who might have died too soon); likewise, we all have a variety of gifts that we did absolutely nothing to earn, that were freely given to us at birth. The only thing we can take credit for is whether we use those gifts or not. And even then, we’re just lucky if we weren’t born to be featured on “The Tard Blog” or to be a slave in the cocoa fields or to find some other role that feels like doom. So how about a little humility?

To be continued...

Photograph courtesy of Michael Faes of Switzerland and sxc.hu.