23 May 2007

Blogging Thoughtfully

Wall Street Journal columnist JeremyWagstaff offers "five conclusions I’ve reached about how to Blog Thoughtfully". All are worthwhile to keep in mind, but the first is especially relevant:
It’s no longer about feeding the beast. I’ve tried to post once a day, but I think the abundance of blogs nowadays makes a nonsense of that. People nowadays have so much to read they don’t want space filled up for the sake of it. (That’s what a newspaper is for.) Don’t be afraid to not post. No one unsubscribes from a feed because it’s silent for a few days; they unsubscribe because it’s too noisy.

I think that most of us who blog for any length of time start to notice ourselves passing through periods of blogging malaise when the urge to post is lacking and we're left with a vague sense of obligation to post. Those feelings generally pass after a time and the old spirit returns, but why is it that we feel that we should be posting even when we have nothing we want to say?

Taking Wagstaff's guidance to heart then, I'm not going to post today.

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