Rachel Johnson on Blogging

Via The Englishman; this comment from Rachel Johnson in the Times:

I don’t get blogging. It’s not only that I’m reluctant to write for nothing.

Mm. I write occasionally for money – for a bike magazine. Then, I expect a decent rate for my words. I write here for nothing because I like writing and it gives me the impetus to hone my skills. If you enjoy writing, the being paid is largely by the by – writing doesn’t make us rich; or at least that is the case for most of us. We do it because we enjoy it, just as others enjoy watching sport, flying kites and building model railways. It’s a hobby. We don’t need a deep reason for doing it, we just do. No one expects you to understand or “get it”.

There are all those people who ask, “Do you blog?” at parties (our own sad neutered version of the “Do you swing?” question), and who warble about “wikis” and “web presence”.

Rachel must move in strange circles. No one has asked me if I blog, let alone swing. Perhaps I don’t go the the right parties. Any chance of an invite next time?

Still, a few weeks ago I started to write one. It’s very easy – even a middle-aged woman can do it. I wrote about what I was making for supper that night. And food shopping in the Portobello market. Then I checked to see the global response to my debut. Nothing. On my next five posts? Zero comments.

She really doesn’t get it, does she? I was rattling away at the keyboard for months before my first comment and even now, several posts can pass without any interaction from others. It doesn’t undermine the activity though. Ultimately, I am writing for me, because I want to, because, hopefully, my craft will improve. Comments are nice – unless they are trolls – but not essential.

Then I really pulled out the stops. I wrote about how my husband shouted, “Free Konnie Huq!”, and I gave an eyewitness account of how a former Blue Peter presenter, that is, a celebrity, was actually touched by a civilian. And after all that unpaid work, was the web on fire? Once again – nul comments.

Perhaps no one is interested? Frankly, the Olympics and everything to do with them are a dull, tedious and mind-numbingly banal waste of time. Perhaps I am not alone in that assessment. I don’t even know who Konnie Huq is (let alone care) – well, I didn’t. I do now (know, not care – I still don’t give a toss). I’m not sure that I feel enlightened by the knowledge, though. Why, therefore, should I be bothered if Konnie Huq is touched by a grubby little prole? You people are so far up your own arses you could lick your tonsils.

I don’t get it. There are the blogs that work – such as Judith O’Reilly’s brilliant blog turned book Wife in the North, or the riveting Petite Anglaise, or our own Alpha Mummy (on Times Online; a treat) – where you sense that the authors are releasing themselves with feeling into the ether. This is because blogging is about regularity, I presume. You have to post every day. You have to be totally committed.

Er, regularity helps – people will be looking for fresh material – but, and if Rachel doesn’t get this point, she is in the wrong job; you have to write something that is fresh and interesting. And, importantly, you have to build a body of work so that the search engines start to pick it up and so that people drop by and start linking. Then, when you’ve been at it a few months, people will look upon you as someone they want to visit on a regular basis and engage in conversation. A bit like real life, I suppose. It doesn’t just happen, you have to put in a bit of effort.

In California people have started to blog themselves to death and The New York Times is reporting stress, sleep disturbance and exhaustion among the “blogging community”.

More fool them.

Well, there is no danger of me having a coronary at my laptop triggered by exhaustion and anxiety about page hit rates. It’s quick and easy to start a blog, as I’ve discovered. It’s even quicker and easier to stop.

That, m’dear, is because you never really started, did you? Once more we have a professional journo making asinine comments on a subject on which they are staggeringly ignorant. No change there, then.