Advice for the new blogger

The other day on Mastodon someone posted a simple request: They were thinking about starting a blog (!) and wondered how people decided what to write about (!!).

Well.

First of all, it’s the perennial/daily question for those of us who blog, right? What am I going to write about today? Or tomorrow? It goes without saying that if you don’t already have a lot to say, then blogging is not for you.

This is not a comment on the original mastodon post; it’s a recent blog post at dalelyles.com

Here is my advice for anyone wondering whether or not to start a blog: Who’s your AUDIENCE? As our very own Georg Christoph Lichtenberg says, “It is almost impossible to write anything good without imagining someone, or a certain group of people, whom one is addressing. In 999 cases out of a thousand it at any rate greatly facilitates the execution.” (L.76)

Even if that AUDIENCE is just yourself (more about that in a moment), who are you writing for? Writing is a conversation that you are having with your reader, and if there’s no one there, how do you know how to say what you want to say?

But be bold: Assume that you have an AUDIENCE of readers who want to hear what you have to say. Who are they? Why have they come to your blog?

For example, here on Lichtenbergianism.com, I presume my AUDIENCE wants to read about the creative process, MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT. I presume they want to know more about Lichtenbergianism and our practice of TASK AVOIDANCE, or how to make RITUAL work for them, or why the KING OF HEARTS FALLACY is a creativity-killing mistake.

At my personal blog, I presume my AUDIENCE wants to know about my fun life: the labyrinth, our travels, the cocktails, and of course my Liberal Rants.

At this point in my life, I have an established voice that is going to sound largely the same at either blog, but I’m still writing for different readers and will adjust the level of snark (to give an example) depending on who I think will be reading the piece. (Go check out the Liberal Rants or the travel posts over at dalelyles.com for some first rate snark.)

This whole AUDIENCE thing is why I sneer at the emails I get from random internet folk asking if I’m open to “partnering” with them to provide articles for my blog — and the articles they want to provide are about network protocols, or real estate investments, or the exciting world of crypto. I mean, did they not even visit the blog?? It does not inspire confidence in their business model.

Can you write a blog if you think of yourself as the main (or only) AUDIENCE? Of course you can. We call that a diary. (That was snark, but it is true: there’s nothing wrong with starting a blog that is actually a diary, although my personal advice is to use some journaling software on your computer (here and here) so it’s safe from prying eyes and you can say whatever the hell you want without having to explain what you meant to an AUDIENCE you never intended to see it.)

Any more questions about starting your very own blog?