Let's Talk About Blogging

One of the blogs I follow on a regular basis is ‘Trooper York’. Yesterday he did an All Custer Day, with some pretty good posts. Here is the first one:
http://trooperyork.blogspot.com/2009/06/he-died-with-his-boots-on.html

Troop seemed a little despondent that there were so few comments on the wealth of Custer material, but ya know, Custer hasn’t really been controversial in well over 130 years.

Not that it is pure controversy that drives comments, but having something to argue about sure does.

Good writing is not a comment driver either, again with Trooper York as our example, as he does several satirical series that are incredibly well written and LOL funny, but rarely draw comments.

Another supremely well written blog I follow, is Sippican Cottage: http://sippicancottage.blogspot.com/ Again, most of his posts draw very few comments. How can you make some toss-off remark after one of his pieces?

I don’t usually do my best writing in comments because of time constraints. After all, great things aren’t written, their re-written. Or in my case, re-re-re-re-re-written. I envy people who can toss off a 5 or 6 paragraph essay on something in a couple of minutes and have it look and sound professional.

Me? It takes me 20 minutes to type that much, and then I go back over every word, making sure the meaning is exactly what I want, that the tone of the whole sentence is what I want it to be, that the paragraph says what I want it to say.

But that’s why I blog. The only way to get better at anything is practice. Skill and experience aren’t granted because you want them; they are gained by hard work.

In this case I have the easy job.

The hard job is done by the folks who have to read this drivel.