Liza Rose

Sunday 25 May 2014

How to organise a blog?

Following the high of yesterdays creative moment, I find I am in a quandary already. Should I continue to focus on a key subject or should I let my creativity flow and post random snippets of brain fluff. The authorities on blogging appear to agree. Jane Friedmans Blogging 101 suggests there is much advantage to having a single topic blog - better organisation, more focus, greater depth, a chance at viral growth. The public will want your brain fluff about as much as they want your pocket fluff!

On the other hand, when the main purpose of blogging is to improve your writing skills then diversity of styles and topics may be more favorable. Until the skills are honed and the subject is refined, then the general wisdom is write about "what you know"; However, what if "what you know" is a little bit about a lot of things, but not a lot about a specific thing? I have always held that I am a specialist in generalism which is an advantage in my particular line of work, but not of particular use when attempting to write a detailed novel! 

That said, some degree of organisation is required. I have followed blogs where the limits of cyber-space restrict the organic growth of a generalised structure (yes it does have some limits if you prefer them, rather than free fall into the unknown chasm that can be the world wide web). One lady had problems when her blogging limits forced her to split the blog into two - a French language version and an English language version. Another limit of cyber-space is translation - there are just some things that dont translate well! 

So decision made.
Option 1: Specialist
Option 2: Generalist
I have never been one to conform and so I went with Option 3 - I will start off as a generalist and morph either by design or by accident into a specialist as and when the time is "write"!

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