Picked up on Twitter and so true:
I must delete some of my rss feeds, so I just now decided, any blog that apologizes for not posting, they're out. One gone already!
Don't apologize for not posting. If you must, sneak back in and back-date some posts so it looks like you've been paying attention to your blog all along. Or commit to daily posts for a month so that your blog looks fresh. Then collapse your archives so previous months' don't tattletale about former bad habits.
There are ways and there are ways.
6 comments:
Oooh, good point! I promise never to apologize for not posting again!
>>>sneak back in and back-date some posts
So you are basically advocating fraud?
I won't be taking any of your future or past advice at face value.
Yeah, fraud. Sort of like the fraud involved in revising and editing your first book draft. Major fraud.... omigawd, you can't slam out a great book first time! Does that make you a fraud as a writer? Well, to some I guess it would.
One wonders why people have such curious ideas about blogs and editing them. Watch for a future post about correcting typos and grammatical errors in your previous blog posts.
< Sort of like the fraud involved in revising and editing your first book draft.>
I tend to agree...that's sort of the point of blogs, imo...to create a work in progress, showing "your work" of revision and change. Blogging is more process-oriented, and process often demands going back to things. When I used to manage a monthly magazine, there were many times that I wanted to go back in and tweak, refine, expand and update with current information but couldn't.
Furthermore, we bloggers tend to think that readers are hanging on (and remembering) every word we say. That's not true. And readerships fluctuate and change, too. If it's a great post, someone who wasn't around might find it fresh and engaging.
All that said, if I were to recycle something, I'd add an intro note and say so up front...perhaps with any rethinking I've done or fresh links, even to a news story or other blogger's more recent post...
It'd sure make for an easy update.
As for the apologizing, if you aren't posting...it's kinda obvious. No need to make excuses...sometimes we just step away from stuff.
Except everything changes, and now blogs are morphing into interactive websites, easily changed, but with a different focus and job than when they originated. More and more people are foregoing a website, and just using a blog as their major site for business. So parts will remain static, other pages will be regularly tweaked, some pages more interactive. You can see this adaptation at Wordpress and other blogging platforms.
I think for a writer whose product is the written word, the capability to impress is important. So being able to edit and revise a blog is a very powerful tool.
That tool becomes yours if you can detach from the concept of what a blog "should be" and allow for it to morph into something more useful. Some people are better at that than others. :)
I know for certain that one of the ten commandments isn't "Thou Shallt Not Change Thy Blog". It even sounds ridiculous in that context.
You inhabit a different blogoverse than the techies. They don't do such things.
And it's really a stretch, comparing revising/editing an *unpublished* work with one *published.*
Despite my crankiness, I did link here. I think you have your finger on the future. Good luck.
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