COMPOSING A BLOG POST

     A few weeks ago a blogger commented on "composing" a post. The composing caught my attention and I have been thinking about it ever since. What has to be done to put a blog post together?

    First , I have to think that I have something to say. My Mom's advice was to say thank you and then sit down. Some people may disagree with me but that's allowed. Now I don't post on a regular basis. I don't have the time or ideas to post everyday.

     In my case, I may have a few topics in my head. I have to list them or I'll quickly forget them. When I decide on what topic I want to write on, I roll it around in my head. I think about information that I have or need. I think about the order that I want to say things . I wonder if I have any photos.

     I have all of these things in my head and then I sit down and write. I usually go over things two or three times. Sometimes I add things. Other times I change the order and sometimes things are better left unsaid. 

    Sometimes it's very hard to come up with a topic. There's just nothing I want to say. So sometimes I'm absent for a while. One has to have a little fire in the belly to keep on posting.

    Then , I pick my font, print size and run spell check. Oh yes, throw in a few labels. And let my friends on Face book know I've posted . Then I also ping it. I don't know if pinging does any good but it was recommended in Blogging for Dummies.

      I like to keep my audience in mind and try to attract other readers. That's part of writing. Sometimes I write for myself and other times I think of readers. Most of the time it's probably half and half.

     Now I notice many different writing styles out there. They're interesting or I wouldn't follow them. It's part of what makes blogging interesting.

    So how do you put things together? Well, okay, if you don't want to give your secrets away that's okay.

Bloggers Block

    I am suffering from blogger's block. In fact, I've been suffering blogger's block off and on for some time now. I may have suffered from blogger's block since I first stated blogging.

    We've all heard of writer's block. We've probably all suffered from that too. As I was thinking of this post I thought I should do some research and look up writer's block. Sure enough . There were many sites on writer's block and most of them had ten easy ways to overcome writer's block. Then I thought , maybe I should look up blogger's block. Sure enough ...dozens of site on blogger's block. Most of them were carbon copies of writer's block. Darn! I thought I'd invented a new term. Now I'll have to research and see how many years behind I am.

    Back to blogger's block. I sometimes have two or three topics for a post in my head. For some reason I may not be able to write the posts because I am waiting for something. I may need some pictures. A series of posts I never made was my trip to Chicago and my daughter's wedding. It was a fantastic trip and I had many pictures. What I needed first was one picture from one of my friends. I asked him two or three times and never got  the right pictures. After  while the fire was gone from my belly and I didn't make the posts. If I'm waiting  for some reason I can't seem to come up with new topics. I seem to be stuck until I unload the two or three topics in my head.

   So here I am with blogger's block so I'm writing about it until I get the next series of photos I need.

    Funny thing is that I don't seem to see any of you with blogger's block!

Bumbling Blogger? That's Me!

    When I started blogging I thought I had something important to say. I also thought that anything I put out on the Internet would be automatically seen and read by millions. Well, I was much more than naive. After a few months I discovered that few or none were reading my blog. What should I do?


     So I got the "Blogging for Dummies book."  That would do the trick. First , I got the impression that  I had to be on search engine lists, I tried to put my blog on search engines and couldn't tell whether I got my blog on search engines or not. Anyway there wasn't any noticeable increase in hits.


    So what's next? I discovered that I had to follow some blogs. How do you do that? After awhile I got the hang of it and was following half a dozen blogs. I also found out that I had to have followers so I told my friends and got a half dozen followers. However , my friends didn't have blogs so that wasn't going to go very far. Still no more traffic. Finally, an honest to goodness blogger showed up to follow me and even left comments. Until  that time I didn't have any comments. Of course, I hadn't left any comments. So Red, get busy and make comments on other blog posts. 


     So the "Blogging for Dummies " book was consulted many times. I then knew that I had to follow more blogs and make more comments before I would be noticed. Slowly this process has been succeeding.


     Now the seed for this post started in another place. In writing courses you are told to consider your audience. In other words who are you writing to. Obviously the audience thing didn't sink in. I did not have it in my head who my audience would be.


    It would go like this. I might want to write about music so my audience would be musicians  and  music listeners. I might expand this to the arts in general and I could include acting, dancing, writing and visual arts. I had no idea who I would write to.


     Gradually I gained some readers and followers. These people don't really know what to expect on my blog. I bounce around on a wide variety of topics. Lately, since I have regular followers , I'm influenced by  readers. Comments give me ideas for posts. Other bloggers give me good ideas for posts from what they write. I write mostly about experiences I have had. 


      So after three and a half years of bumbling around there are some things that are making sense and bringing about more blogging success. When I look back some of these things should have made sense a long time ago. A focus of my writing may have made it easier for readers to follow me. I'm sure people drop by my blog and wonder ,  "What's this guy all about?"


     So I am extremely happy with the people who have chosen to visit me on a regular basis and that you can put up with someone who bumbles from topic to topic.

March 4th: National Grammar Day

     Now I'm sure that every one of you is just thrilled to know that Mar. 4 is National Grammar Day. I had never heard of it until yesterday. National Grammar Day was established in 2008 so it only took me four years to find out about it.


     Many bloggers from time to time make comments about their writing ability and specifically with relation to grammar. People know that there  is a grammar which is made up of rules for correct writing. People will say a remember taking grammar in school but I can't remember any of it. I remember taking a grammar quiz in teachers' college and it showed I didn't know the difference between a noun and a verb. I got sentenced to remedial grammar and couldn't get out until I passed the test. 


     Sadly, I think there are potentially many excellent bloggers out there who do not blog because they are concerned about the grammar thing.


     I applaud all bloggers I follow for their willingness to write! That is the key goal ...to write. Some bloggers write as they talk and their posts have an interesting flavor. For these blogs if they changed their style I probably wouldn't follow them. Other bloggers are more aware of some rules but also like to use an informal style which will be more appealing to the reader. A few blogs are written quite accurately when it comes to grammar.


      I have two grammar police on my blog. It's been a long time since they've done anything with my writing. It was always surprising how much editing they did. So I thank Jock Mckenzie for supplying me with help. Jock has written a novel Dealing with Dymans. MK is my daughter and she's a real stickler. I can learn a lot form her. She is also an excellent writer. My third adviser is Brian T. Kline and he is an excellent writer. He has very tightly controlled and logical writing. One of his jobs was to turn engineering language to regular language so sales people could describe their products. But with all this help I still like to write in an informal style. 


   Basic grammar is very simple. It's right or wrong stuff. For people to get grammar it has to be applied. You have to apply grammar to your own writing as you write or look at it after you've written. Grammar is easy to teach but it's difficult to teach well. Sadly today grammar is rarely taught. I still wish I had a basic grammar text in the house. Wait a minute , couldn't I find all the grammar explained on the net? 


    So to all my followers "Happy Grammar Day" or whatever appropriate thing you're supposed to say. 

Types of Blog Writing

        Since I've been shopping around blogs this last while, I have noticed that there are many types of blog writers. Since I'm looking for blogs to follow I have been looking with a somewhat critical eye. I'm looking for something to follow which is interesting and related to areas that interest me.

        Many bloggers blog about their daily lives. I'm amazed at how many of these writers are able to make their daily activities very interesting. Some just have interesting lives so that makes it easy. One blogger I follow hikes at least once a week and sky dives from time to time. Others have the knack for telling an interesting story. They provide detail and description. They are able to build up their story to some kind of climax.

       Other bloggers have an area of expertise which they tell about. Cooking, gardening and bird watching seem to be popular. I've also seen some pretty neat art blogs. A personal friend and former teacher blogs about teaching strategies. He's really good at it and new teachers could really benefit from his blog. (It's too late for me! I retired fourteen years ago but I still read his blog.)

      Many bloggers develop a special column which appears in their blog on weekly basis. One blogger only posts a picture on Sundays. I always look forward to this photo. Another blogger has a special Wednesday feature which I look forward to. Other bloggers set up contests.

     Some bloggers have a personal writing style that makes their blog posts interesting. One blogger who expressed concern about her writing ability and wished she had learned more in her English class brings authenticity to her blog by her use of country language. It works well. She has many followers and she can skip the grammar. Another blogger who constantly worried about his posts was a natural at telling a good story. His stories built up to a climax. You were drawn in to read his posts.

     Photographers have great fun taking pictures and posting them to tell a story or to show off places, flowers or birds. Many artists use a blog to display their art or to produce art. I asked an artist friend of mine what I could do to improve my blog and his instant answer was , "More pictures!" He thinks visually so he helped me develop another aspect of my blogging. I really had to work hard at this one. I finally had to take a picture and then build a post around the picture.

    So in shopping around for blogs to follow I have pleasantly learned more about blogging.

A Great Topic Machine

       The other day I noticed a comment on my niece's face book page that really got my curiosity going. She said right off the wall, " It appears that there will always be a lot of things in life that I'll never understand." I made the comment back, "Am I missing something here? I'm curious." My niece really surprised me with a list of things that genuinely puzzled her. These ranged the whole gamut from scientific to philosophical.

      Her list included things such as why do people wear jeans to a symphony concert?, how sound is recorded, life changes such as tadpole to fog and caterpillar to butterfly, why people suffer from others bad choices, plants surviving arctic conditions, man made highs and lows in the economy  and brutal things people do. This is a list that really makes one sit up and think. Each idea can lead off in hundreds of directions.

     I'm sure that for some of these questions Jocelyn will sooner or later find answers. Others will have to be open ended answers. What intrigued me was that she was thinking these thoughts and was smart enough to wonder out loud about them and then write them down. 

    So here I thought is a real topic generating machine. What great luck!

    I'm sure that many bloggers find it difficult to come up with topics for their blog. I found it easy in Dec. when I did a Christmas theme. I'm going to sit down and see if I can come up with other themes. Sometimes topics come easily. I usually like to find a topic and roll it around in my head for a few days. When I start writing most of it comes very easy. I do the usual deleting a sentence here and there and adding other things. Sometimes things have to be moved. I learned this year that at certain times I should make something into two posts instead of one.

     What really makes it easy is to have a bank of topics. So to start out 2011 I will have some topics to work with.