Helmut Answers A Couple of Qs

Phronesisaical, or the "Phron," is one of the first blogs I ever read-- and after more than two years in the "blogopshere," I'm still checking in on an almost daily basis. Founding blogger "Helmut," (not his real name) is a DC friend, a professor of philosophy and an expert (he's edited an anthology for Johns Hopkins University Press and testified before Congress) on the philosophy of torture. Apropos of the workshop I gave last Saturday on writers's blogs for the Maryland Writers Association, I asked "Helmut" for his thoughts on blogging.

Madam Mayo: Do you read any writers's blogs?

Helmut: If fiction, I don't really read many unless I e-stumble upon them. I find McSweeney's, for example, really annoying in its overly self-conscious and preening cleverness. So, I assiduously avoid the site. My dislike there has more to do with the writing itself than with the fact that it's blog-based. It may be that writers' blogs and their drawbacks/assets have as much to do with the medium of blogs rather than writing itself. Part of this has to do with market. For example, I like James Wolcott as a writer and urbane wit, but I tend to check his blog more often than he posts. In some cases with other writers, this would doom them to blog oblivion (under the blogoid assumption that you continually have to post new content)-- that is, supply not keeping up with demand. In the case of Wolcott, however, he has the institutional heft of Vanity Fair behind him, but also individually has a large-ish market of readers. They'll come back, like me, to check for new posts.

Madam Mayo: What do you think attracts readers to a writer's blog?

Helmut: Given the vastness today of the blog world, readers tend to congregate around those blogs that either established themselves early on or have had the good luck to have some basic quality or particular product discovered by some other well-established blog. But to keep the readers, the blogger has to post fairly often. That need to post (if one wants readers and to retain those readers) is going to be in basic tension with the quality of the writing at some point, I would think. If one doesn't care about the readers, I have no explanation for why they're blogging in the first place... Frankly, I have no idea about these things regarding my own blog; otherwise, I wouldn't have given it the ugly name it has and wouldn't have committed myself-- on a whim-- to posting fruit photos.

Madam Mayo says: check out the latest fruit photo on the Phron here.

Guest-blogger Leslie Pietrzyk, "Work in Progress" Blogger, on Writers's Blogs: 3 Best + 3 Worst Practices

More on writers's blogs! As many of you know, I'm gearing up for a workshop on this very subject for the May 3rd Maryland Writers Association Conference, apropos of which, last Friday, San Francisco-based "Right-reading" blogger Tom Christensen offered his do's and don'ts--- if you missed that excellent post, be sure to check it out. Today, my amiga, novelist, short story writer, workshop leader and all around outstanding blogger, Leslie "Work in Progress" Pietrzyk offers her 3 dos and 3 don'ts. Over to you, Leslie.

Best

1. Keeping the site updated on a regular basis. Why should I return if there’s nothing new?

2. Providing information that is interesting, useful, or really funny. I like getting a sense of the blogger’s personality and life, but I also want to be gaining useful information about the blog’s topic. Yes, there are some blogs that I read just because the writing is hilarious: The Fat Cyclist is about biking, and I don’t even own a bike or want to. But please keep the rambling about your trip to the grocery store to yourself (unless you’re funny!).

3. Indulging in a few off-topic obsessions. This may seem to contradict #2, but I enjoy feeling that there’s a person—complete with quirky taste—behind the magic curtain. So whether it’s the Tour de France (The Elegant Variation), your crazy upbringing in Florida (Maud Newton), or pugs (you know who!), please don’t be afraid to give us a glimpse of who you are. It’s just a blog; have fun!


Worst

1. Being too, too cozy with a select circle of friends (often other bloggers) so that the average reader feels as though she’s accidentally stumbled into the “cool kids” bathroom in high school.

2. Abusing my trust. If you write that you love a book, please do so because you love the book, not because you got a free copy from a publicist. Or, at least admit that you’re shilling.

3. Absolute self-absorption. I’m happy you have a book out; I really am. But if that’s all there is to your blog—YOUR book, YOUR readings, YOUR conferences, YOUR mother loving the book—I am going to move on. Please learn to promote yourself shamelessly in a discreet way.

--- Leslie Pietrzyk

---> For more of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here

--->For more Madamn Mayo posts on lit-blogging, click here

This Blog is Not a Log or a Diary of My Life; Neither is it Forum or a Community Bulletin Board

It is a filter. You want to know what blogs to read? Come see what I recommend here and here and here. Want to find out about some extraordinary books? Try this 1,000-year-old apparently true adventure that almost defies belief and Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and all 10 of these. And how about this mind-blowing (literally) video, this Icelandic movie and this sleep-inducing CD and the magic Baby Muse... I blog about my books, events and workshops (yeah, I'm flogging) but also, generally, my interests, my tastes, what I want to share (e.g., "All Hail E.T., Minister of Information!") and celebrate (e.g., Mexico's beloved English eccentric's masterwork, "Las Pozas"). If you don't like it, fine, there is an ocean of blogs out there, wade in. Why not start your own?

Excerpted from "On the Occasion of Madam Mayo's 2nd Anniversary: 5 Lessons Learned (So Far) About Blogging"

--->Click here to return to Madam Mayo's home page.

Guest-Blogger Tom Christensen, "Right-reading" Blogger, on Writers's Blogs: 3 Dos + 3 Don'ts--- or, the Basics of Karma

Re: my upcoming panel on "Writers's Blogs: Best (& Worst) Practices" for the Maryland Writers Association Conference on May 3rd, I'll be blogging about writers's blogs for the next week, and inviting other writers to offer their tips. Tom Christensen's eclectic and charming, always suprising, and beautifully written blog, Right-reading, is so outstanding that I recently included on my list of top 10 writers's blogs. A delight and honor it is to host this post! Over to you, Tom.

Just as there is no one way to write a novel, so there is no one way to write a blog. I imagine Joyce's blog would look a lot different from Proust's, or from Kafka's, or from Celine's, and so on. But I would subscribe to all those feeds.
That said, there are a few things that I think can limit or expand a blog's interest, effectiveness, and reach. Following are three dos and three don'ts to consider in developing a writer's blog.

1. Don't be too self-referential
The approach that is usually the least appealing and most limiting is the navel-gazing diary--- what I had for dinner, what I'm listening to on the radio, which friend I am annoyed at, me, me, me. I suppose this could work if you are a really celebrated and fascinating person, but for most people, unless you are simply writing for friends and family, being too self-referential is a common, and deadly, mistake.

2. Do have a consistent focus
So if you're not going to just write about yourself, what will you write about? The best blogs have a defined focus. Regularly addressing one area of interest will help attract readers, since they will know what to expect, and by returning they confirm an interest in the topic. (Some bloggers apply the 80/20 rule: if 80 percent of posts are on topic, 20 percent can be on other things.)

How tight does the focus have to be? I think my blog.rightreading.com suffers a little from having a focus that is not especially rigorous. I address all aspects of print and electronic publishing, particularly editorial and design, which are seldom fully integrated. As a generalist, I find it difficult to get much more narrow than that. Still, I did spin off several other blogs-— on Asian art (7junipers.com), on Mesoamerica (buriedmirror.com), on northern California (friscovista.com). These are all things I am interested in that I thought would be better off having their own domains rather than mucking up the content at rightreading.

Am I talking too much about myself?

3. Do create useful and original content
Whatever the topic, you have to have something original to offer. Some bloggers do succeed as aggregators of content produced by others, but I think it is more difficult to get by with that approach than it used to be. Sure, many posts can consist of passing along items spotted elsewhere, but unless you create some original content with a unique point of view, it will be difficult for the blog to grow.

Some web marketers like to talk about "link bait." While the term sounds a bit cynical, it encapsulates an important truth. If you have at least one excellent piece of content that will draw readers to your site, that can help to unmoor the blog and carry it into deeper waters. Rightreading gets more visitors than my other blogs in part because they are drawn to popular pages on how to get a book published, Taoism and the arts of China, my book publishing glossary, my rendering of the Yi jing, and more.

(I will not abuse my host's hospitality by inserting links to those pages; anyone who is interested can find them by typing the search term into the Google search box followed by site:www.rightreading.com; that is, for example, by typing book publishing glossary site:www.rightreading.com.)

It's good to distinguish between print content and web content. Broadly, print is about sustained concentration; the web is about instant gratification. While some bloggers-— Conrad Roth (http://vunex.blogspot.com/) and Gawain (http://heaventree.blogspot.com/), for example-- manage to sustain excellent blogs built on the model of the literary essay, these writers are battling the basic nature of the medium. It is better, I think, to keep things short and sweet, for example by breaking up print paragraphs into two or three web paragraphs.


4. Don't confuse press releases and publicity materials with blog posts
Corporate bloggers often fall into this trap, and most publishing companies are among the worst offenders. When blog posts are always pushing a product, they push readers away. Consider Veer, a good example of a smart corporate blog (http://blog.veer.com/)-— it rarely promotes its own products. It is entertaining and informative, so it attracts readers.

Mention your own articles and books, but be judicious-— limit those mentions and keep them pertinent. Try to look at the blog as the product, not as a vehicle for promoting the product: that is how your readers will look at it. If your blog becomes a destination you will earn links and rise up in the SERPs (search engine result pages).


5. Don't blog in a vacuum
Have you heard the new blogger's anthem (http://www.catbirdseat.org/catbirdseat/aug06/blog.mp3)? Especially with a new blog, you have to be patient. Search engine specialists argue about the nature of a possible Google "sandbox"-— a holding area to which new websites may be assigned for months before they are allowed into the top-ranking SERPS. What is clear is that you need to establish trustworthiness (to build up your "trust rank" in web lingo) before you can consistently rank well for most search terms. That means acquiring links from established authority sites in a natural pattern (certainly not by buying irrelevant links en masse, a technique that might have worked in 2002).

One of the best way to acquire links is to participate on other blogs and forums. By that I don't mean making a quick self-promoting comment on somebody's blog (which is likely tagged "nofollow" in any case), and then never returning, but instead actively participating in web communities. When the conversation comes around to topics on which you have made good posts, you will get links.

6. Do be generous
Old-media types look aghast at bloggers providing links that lead readers away from their websites and off to other areas. And some SEO (search engine optimization) specialists are leery of squandering page rank by leaking away link juice. These approaches will not work. You must credit your sources and link to excellence whenever you can. Most people will notice when you link to them, and they may reward you with a link back.

Your "link neighborhood," the constellation of sites you link to and that link to you, says a lot—- both to your readers and to the search engines-— about the nature of your blog. It's karmic-— if you are generous with credit, praise, and links, I promise you will be repaid.

---Tom Christensen

---> For more of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.

---> For Madam Mayo's archive posts on lit-blogging, click here.

Writers's Blogs: Best (and Worst) Practices

On May 3rd I'll be giving a workshop on best (and worst) practices for writers's blogs at the Maryland Writers Association annual conference in Linthicum, Maryland. So, I'll be blogging about that in the next couple of weeks. On this subject, here are a couple of golden oldies (well, oldies by the standards of the blogosphere...)
--->Madam Mayo's Top 10 Writers Blogs
--->Tip o' the Turban to a Few More Writers's Blogs
--->Writers's Blogs: Madam Mayo's Top 6 Peeves
More peeves anon.

Perra Brava

Blog alert: Tepoztlan-based writer Rena Lindstrom just started a blog, "Perra Brava."

On Blogging and Writers's Blogs: Yummy Links

Blogging:
---> From Wired magazine, "The Lifecycle of a Blog Post" This is a treasure--- bloggers, and anyone interested in blogging, be sure to have a look at this.
---> From Copyblogger, "Why Brains Crave Beneficial Copy"

More on Writers Blogs:
--->Apropos of last Saturday's WIW Writers Conference panel on writers's blogs, I asked writer Andrea Cumbo which litblogs she recommends. She said she loves Book Ninja and fruitful by Gayle Brandeis.
--->WIW member and science fiction writer Nancy Jane Moore is a member of the blogging team at Ambling Along the Aqueduct, sponsored by Aqueduct Press, which publishes feminist science fiction, and wanders into interesting territory from time to time. Nancy Jane Moore also blogs on self defense at Taking Care of Ourselves.
--->WIW member Austin Camacho writes, "Of course, I could mention my blog, which I share with my wife: Another Writer's Life (and a writer's spouse). But my favorites are A Writer's Life - Murderati -The Outfit - Acme Authors Link."
---> For the archive of posts on "Gone to the Litblogs," click here.

Post-AWP Note-oid or, Paper Source: Antidote for Blog Fever

The past couple of weeks I've been thinking about blogging, talking about blogging, and blogging about blogging. Explanation: I've got a writers conference coming up this Saturday at (Washington Independent Writers All-Day Fiction Seminar at American University) for which I'll be chairing the panel on writers's blogs. And, I was just in New York at the AWP mega-powwow, aka bookfair, nonstop yadda yadda yadda, with Sergio Tronocoso, Francisco Aragon, Dawn Marano, Mark Statman, Leslie Pietrzyk, Richard Peabody, Christine Boyka Kluge, John Oliver Simon, to mention only a few, and plenty of the yaddaing about, yep, writers's blogs. Some blog, some don't, some care, some couldn't. Blogging is just a fad--- or it's the biggest thing that's happened to the literary scene since the 15th century. Or---? Well, happily for me, I'm walking distance to Georgetown's Paper Source, which has the most beautiful letterpress business cards, as well as endless racks of silky-looking papers and ribbons and, on the third floor, an Ali Baba's cave worth of doo-dads. Why not make an accordian book? With a cover of sparkly lipstick-red paper! "Do something creative every day" is their trademarked motto. Such wonders we have, yes, even amongst the Starbucks' and the Kinkos'. Yes, even as the book appears to be going, if not the way of the dodo, then, for the most part, into the digital soup. Plop.

More anon.

Writers's Blogs: Madam Mayo's Top 6 Peeves

This Saturday I'll be chairing the panel (with Wendi "The Happy Booker" Kaufman, Leslie "Work-in-Progress" Pietrzyk, Deborah "32 Poems" Ager, and Shawn Westfall, on writers blogs for the Washington Independent Writers All-Day Fiction Seminar at Washington DC's American University. So, I'm thinking a lot about writers's blogs... (here, by the way, is a list of 10 excellent examples of the genre). So, as a reader of writers's blogs, herewith my top 6 peeves--- the things that make me surf on (and rarely, if ever, return):

#1. Black backgrounds.
So sleek, yet such a strain to read. Forget the fancy stuff, make it easy on the eyes for your readers.

#2. "Me, me, me, and mine, blah blah and when I was contemplating the lint in my navel, blah-be-de-blah"
I'm looking for quality content, and that includes good links. Interestingly, a number of well-known literary writers have blogs that are very poor examples of the genre.

#3. Ginormous jpegs which take--- so I am guessing but I'm not going to wait to find out--- anymore than I would watch paint dry--- eleven cen-tu-rie-sssss to dooooooooow-n-n-n-n-load
Many readers have a dial-up connection, sometimes or all the time. But even still, they can surf away, click.

#4. Long strings of even more ginormous jpegs.
Please God, why?

#5. Inconsistent / infrequent posting.
It's a canard that to attract readers, a blog needs to be updated daily. Some excellent and very popular writers's blogs, such as James Howard Kunstler's, are updated once a week; others, such as Jeff Gomez's Print is Dead, frequently, but not necessarily daily. But a writers's blog that appears to have been abandoned, weeks or even months ago, with no explanation... well, it's about as appealing as a grocery cart parked on a front lawn.

#6. Opening a blog post with an apology
"Sorry not to have been posting as I should"--- oh, yecch. (Re: peeve #2). Just blog.

Less peevishly... more anon.

---> Read Madam Mayo's previous "Gone to the Litblogs" posts here.