You Hate Me. You Really Really Hate Me
Every once in a while, I get a genuine “hate-o-gram” in my email. Somebody, out in the great cosmos of the web, actually sits down, takes the time, constructs a carefully worded letter, telling me “what a bad writer I am,” how boring my weblog is, or how I should just “write normally.” I, usually, read these letters, and mark them for deletion about as quickly as I mark the “enlarge your penis in ten minutes” emails that come my way. It just doesn’t make for interesting reading, there’s nothing I can do about my writing style, and this is “normal” for me. I’ve tried explaining to folks in the past that, “this is just how I write” and it customarily falls upon deaf ears.
Since I’m not really a writer, I can’t possibly be considered a “good” writer, can I? Since I update the content on this site only because I want to improve my writing skills, sort of “flex the muscles” if you will, you can’t really expect me to come out with some mind-blowing hysterically funny posting every ten minutes, can you? I mean, if I could do that, I wouldn’t be writing a web-log, I’d be off in the sunset writing best selling novels, Hollywood screenplays, or some other “valid” work. That’s just how the web, specifically the land of the blog, works. It’s cheap, easy, and free but you get what you pay for.
I happened across a website today that talked about the elements that makeup a “good” blog. Now, these elements, while all subjective, don’t belong to me. They were passed off by a “design expert” who, presumably, knows what he’s talking about.
He says the five things that makeup a “good blog” are: candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, and controversy. (I don’t think I really even know what some of these things actually mean. I mean, how can you write with “candor” and what exactly is “pithiness?”)
Even if I did the candor, urgent, timely, pithy, controversial blog of the century, I’m convinced that there’d be somebody out there who would take the time to actually sit down and write me an email, “Dude, you sooo need to write like all normal and stuff.”
And I would pay about as much honor and attention to an email that starts off “Dude” as I would to one that starts off “Enlarge your penis” but, hey, that’s just me. What do I know? It’s not like I’m a “design expert” or anything.
Until next time…
