Hi! This posting goes one step further. It will tell you how to properly write a blog about how to properly write a blog about how to properly write a blog. About a quarter of the blogs tell you how to properly write a blog about how to properly write a blog, and the other half tells you how to properly write a blog.
1. Dictate the style. Do you think style pops up out of the ether? That it happens all by itself? Of course it doesn’t. Style, let’s call it “fashion” for that’s what it is, is created by creative people. They don’t merely KNOW what people like; they create what people like. This year you will like this; next year you will like that. Every publisher goes along with that, otherwise they wouldn’t sell a thing. Shopping lists and stuff like that seem to be IN.
2. Dictate the subject matter. Be decisive. Grey was very much last year’s colour; or was that the year before? These days it’s not black and white; it’s black OR white. I’m not going to tell you what’s IN and what’s not. YOU determine that. YOU make the rules.
3. Don’t ever, EVER, use an adverb, not even inadvertently. Adverbs are out. They are quite unnecessary, and publishers hate them, and they will toss your work aside as quickly as they can scribble a rejection slip. Come to think of it, try to avoid the use of nouns. A noun is too definite. Who gave you the right to decide what other people think? If you must use a noun try to be as vaguely ambiguous as possible.
4. Don’t use the passive voice. Yes, I know Shakespeare had used it, but you want to write something that will last and can be understood. Who these days understands a word Shakespeare was saying? And the passive voice probably accounts for huge hunks of it. Anyway, the passive voice has been banished.
For more handy hints, one free editing of a small sample of your work, and a weekly course, you can join my writing circle for a mere $40 a week and learn how to properly write a blog about how to properly write a blog about how to properly write a blog properly.
That’s no good to me! I need a lot more certainty. If I pay an extra 25%, can I learn about fonts, colours, templates and all the other things that
get in the way ofopen up my creativity. And what about POV? It’s all too hard. I need to know what to think. HELP!Keith, neither love nor money…
Agreed – too many blogs out there tell you how to blog.
Thanks Jan – and all self-appointed I believe!
Oh, now I see how to do it!
But!!!!!!!!! YOU HAVEN’T PAID!!!!!!!!!
Well, what you really need to do is take a couple of weeks to write a 20,000 word guide and sell a billion copies on Amazon (I’ll buy one, provided I can get it for 99 cents) and then retire to your yacht with all of your new found financial freedom. I’m selling a course for a mere $750 that will tell you how to do just that. But act fast. The price won’t stay this low for long. 😉
I look forward to sailing into the sunset with such genial company!
I hope you are going to create a new weekly category about how to properly
I will answer that once the money starts coming in!
Could you please give us your bank account details, including any passwords and secret questions (and answers) so we can send you the money, so we can learn stuff?
No sweat. The FBI probably have all that info. Just ask them!
Oki-doki! Ring-ring. Hello Feebee? You know that Bruce guy we were talking about the other day? Could you just pass along his bank details? Tx.
You will find, Yvonne, that there’s approximately $2.98 in my account. Because I was illegally in Canada for a couple of months, the Canadian Government are now trying – in league with the New Zealand Government – to cancel my NZ pension. Oh well… you can have the $2.98… All pretty depressing really.
Hooley-dooley! I’ll get my friend Phoebe, at the Feebee, on your case. Boy, the governments really go after the big boys, don’t they?
LOL!!!! I pay more taxes than Air New Zealand and I am/was on the pension!
Dear Author,
I am thrilled that you brought these things to our attention. I especially like the caution against nouns. Have you noticed how the wonderful, enriching activity of reading a book has been cheapened lately by turning it into a noun? “That was a very good read,” blog reviewers are all saying these days. Very distressing! I read books, myself; I don’t read reads. Can you imagine Emily Dickinson’s poem saying “There is no frigate like a read?’ Frigate, indeed.
Anyway, I wish you well with this entire venture as a blog-writing coach. I hope you find enough
suckersseekers to make it profitable to all.Sincere,
A Devoted Reader
Thanks for the read. I shall continue to blow my own pipe – oh! frigate! – a pipe is a reed not a read. And a very good reed it is too!
Dear Mr Goodman, It has been made fairly clear to myself as a blogging wanneabe that I am possibly publishing posts written in quite the incorrect manner and that there is vast room for improvement in the way in which I approach my various subject matters. You sound like just the person to solve all my most inadequate issues and steer me infallibly in the direction of correct blogging techniques. I had no idea that was what was amiss with my posts so I for one am most grateful for this intercedence from your most generous self. The cheque is in the mail and I look forward to more instructions and guidance in due course.
I do hope the cheque doesn’t bounce. If it does, I am more than happy to negotiate a few free lessons in painting, knitting, and crotchetry in exchange.
Dear Bruce
I will pay by American Express and if you don’t accept it ( like most retailers here in Sydney) then I am happy to teach you how to write a blog in Marathi.
Maharashtra doesn’t request too many Chemical Safety procedures to be translated – but just send cash!!
Indian Rupees then
I wrote a novel without using a single adverb, article, adjective or noun, it was written entirely in jargon.
Sounds like my sort of novel! Where can’t I buy it?
You can’t really buy it but you can submit a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) for it. Our agency pumped them out by the truckload.
I’d like to, but I think I’m being followed…
Such wisdom, such clarity…oh you must feel like throwing pearls before the swines! I do hope many people will sign up and improve this blogosphere! Cheers, Johanna ( good thing I myself do already everything by the book)
Thanks, Johanna. You color our world!!
That’s it! too dang many rules. I quit. I’d rather do it my way, thank you.
Wait. No. Forget. Everyone wants my money–soon I’ll be in the poor house. I thought blogging was supposed to be f.u.n. 😦
The more people pay the more fun it could get! Did I mention I allow for automatic bank transfers?!
Goodness, Bruce, this is one of the best rants I’ve ever read, getting more and more unreasonable and crazy as you gathered steam with each passing paragraph. I bet you could write speeches for certain people running for the U.S. presidency, sucking people in with your reasonable intro and moving into the real crazy as the candidate wound up. it could solve your financial problems, too. Of course, they’re such geniuses, they’d never consider it…
A speech writer – Ah yes! I have a dream!
🙂 🙂 If you can’t use a noun, what about a pronoun?
Gosh Noelle! How very yesterday!!
Ha ha ha!! A scathingly ironic post written by you!!! But hey, that is what writing has fallen to!
(Forgive the exclamations, the adverb and the passive voice.(
😀 😀 I forgive the exclamations, the adverb and the passive voice, but NOUNS! NOUNS! NOUNS! Some people never learn. 😦 🙂 😦 🙂 😉 😦 😀
Yes, SIR, YES!!!
Excellent. By the way I am the trendiest new Publisher using the latest technology. Please send me 3 samples of your best work and $200 and I will give you my expert opinion on how to become a world famous writer.
It’s in the mail!
So splitting infinitives is OK then?
To really split is rarely wrong – these days!
🙂
Adverbs are out, avoid the use of nouns… so only verb 😕 So much to learn…
!!
Oookay!