On Blogging > part one: finding your voice

It's interesting reading other people's blogs. Being a blogger myself for nearly seven years, I know that it's often very difficult to figure out what to write about, or how to write it. That challenge is common to all publications and art forms, and it's often called 'finding your voice'. It involves picking your topic(s) to write about, figuring out who you're writing for, and then writing it in a way that makes other people want to read it.

I. picking your topic(s)

Picking a topic or topics to write about is probably the hardest part of starting a blog. In fact, it's something I've been struggling with since I started blogging. You have to imbue part of your self into your blog, in order to make it stand out against the millions already out there, but if you get too personal you run the risk of turning your blog into a LiveJournal-esque e-diary (the 'e' stands for 'emo'). And in case you haven't heard, no one cares if Becky wore the same dress as you to home room today, or that your mom yelled at you to do the dishes and it made you sad. There's a fine line that you have to walk between personal and generic, and there's no class or book that can teach you how to walk it, or even where it's located.

If you're skilled in some craft, science, or technology, or if you're an expert in your field, or a celebrity among your peers, you have something of an edge over everyone else. There's a very good chance that you can write about your special subject and have something truly unique and compelling to say in the process. The rest of us mundanes have to tough it out with trial and error.

II. who you're writing for

After you've picked your topic, you've got to present it, but before you can do that, you have to figure out who you're presenting it to. For instance, if you're writing about technology, you also have to know if you're writing for fellow technophiles or if you're writing for neophytes and outsiders. That's an important distinction.

Writing for the former allows you to skip the introductions and get right into the nitty-gritty details, but you alienate and confuse a less knowledgeable audience because your stuff will sound like meaningless jargon. And it's harder to find things to write about, because you have to be on top of your subject in order to keep from boring your readers with information they already know.

If you write for the latter, however, things switch around: you have to approach your subject from the perspective of a beginner, which means there has to be a lot of hand-holding, which will alienate your more advanced readers. The trade-off, however, is that you have a whole wealth of information that you can cover related to your topic, starting at the basics and working your way up.

My point is that in picking one potential audience, you almost always have to alienate another. There IS a compromise option, that allows you to cater to all of your audiences, but it's very difficult and it rarely pays off: the kinds of blogs that cater to everyone are generally the kinds of blogs that no one wants to read. Figuring out who you want reading your blog is an important part of finding your voice and making your blog interesting.

III. writing with style

Magician and radio personality Penn Jillette claims that a teacher once told him, "no one wants to read what you write, so make it easy for them." Supposedly, that little tidbit of advice stuck with him and made him the entertainer he is today.

It's true, though. I mean, who are you, really? Me, I'm just a young guy from New Jersey. I haven't invented time travel or discovered the missing link, I'm not in any movies or TV shows, and I haven't written a book (yet). If I want you - or anyone else - to read what I write and stick around for more, I have to make it easy for you to do so. I have to make my website accessible, I have to make it easy to navigate, and I have to make my writing as coherent and compelling as possible.

That's no easy task for me, nor should it be for you. We're not master writers; if we were, we'd be publishing our thoughts on paper for money, instead of online for free. Still, even if your writing is dreadful, you're blogging for someone else to read, so you've got to work on it, and hard. Spelling and grammar errors make reading dreadful. Tehy say popele can udnersantd waht you wirte as lnog as the frist and lsat leterts of the wrods are in the corecrt palce, but that doesn't mean we like having to do it. And if you make it hard for people, they're not going to come back.

Do you have to take creative writing classes or buy a book on writing style? It wouldn't hurt, certainly, but that's not necessary. For the most part, if you keep your writing as free of errors as you can, and at least try to make it interesting to read, that should be good enough.

That's it! That's how you start a decent blog. If you're feeling cheated after reading all of that, I'm not apologizing. I never promised to have all the answers, and I know I'm not a very good blogger myself. Hopefully what I've said so far has its own merit, and even if not, I'm not done yet.

Tomorrow I'll talk a bit about the history of this blog, hopefully giving you a little insight into what makes a blogger tick in the process. See you then!