If I Blog Again

…please stop me.

Joe Felso is actually my third incarnation as a blogger. The first time I wrote a haiku a day and an essay a month, book reviews every once in a while, and, if I couldn’t think on anything else, pasted in poems I’d written long before. That blog wasn’t successful in any sense. I posted so infrequently, the only audience that could enjoy following that blog would also enjoy an afternoon watching flowers turn to the sun. I didn’t write enough to make it worthwhile even for me.

The second blog was a scary birth, so flawed in conception and design that it lasted only long enough to gasp its last breath.

This time I’ve tried much harder. For months I posted everyday, and then cut back to three or four times a week, which is still a lot. Though no one would mistake me for a self-promotion machine, I sought readers and tried to join a blogging community. I did have visitors this time.

But now this blog is ending just as the others have. So I’m thinking about what I did wrong or what I’d do differently next time…if there is one…someday. What advice would this spent blogger offer a new one?

1. Pace Yourself. Even a true believer in the power of consistent and dedicated practice will reach a point when pleasure drains from the process and the highest aesthetic standard becomes completion. WordPress tells bloggers that consistent posting will cultivate an audience, and, as I learned with my first blog, that’s certainly so. However, it won’t do you much good to post frequent crap. Every writer strikes a compromise between quality and productivity, and it helps to know your limits and post only as often as you can post well. Or forgive yourself if you can’t post well and try again tomorrow—consistency is a mighty big picture.

2. Specialize. Several blogs representing your different spheres of creativity may be better than one blog full of everything. Joe Felso purports to be Joe Average, representative. But the circles of my Venn diagrams describe eccentric intersections. I wonder if readers prefer knowing what they will encounter on a site, whether—as impressive as it might seem to offer more, more, more—a niche is more appealing than a pile. It’s one thing to create a consistent and reliable voice and another to sound the same no matter what your subject.

3. Use your name. Contrary to what you may expect, another name might not vanquish your fear of honesty, make you bold, or protect you. The greatest courage is being yourself. It’s tough to express conviction behind a mask, and the time may come when you will hunger to be yourself, honestly and openly. You owe some protection to the people around you—keep them hidden—but be yourself.

4. Know why you’re blogging. It’s easy to get caught up in the statistics and find yourself either twisting to appeal to readers or judging your work by how many visitors arrive. It takes a strong person to watch the blogstat line and not be moved by it in some way. A stronger person could ignore the stats and focus on his or her own motives.

Perhaps after a few months or years of unfettered free time, I may blog again. But this experience still needs to come into focus. If I blog again, I want to get it right.