How To Write In Your Blog
We will discuss the technical aspects of logging in, formatting and posting to your blog entries on another page. We will also, for the appropriate classes, discuss the way to install and maintain a web site/blog.
However, the most important aspect of your blog will be - the content and style of your writing - also referred to as developing your writing voice.
Developing Your Voice
Neville Hobson's blog led me to an article on Corante by writer Stowe Boyd. Corante's "True Voice team" is developing a "20 Questions" list regarding developing a voice for your blog writing.
Best advice you'll find anywhere? Read first! Read twice as much as you write. That theme will be repeated throughout the suggestions you will find here. Just read Neville's post.
By: Stowe Boyd, Greg Narain and Suw Charman (Excerpt)
As a building block of Corante's True Voice seminars, we have developed a list of 20 core questions around the business of blogging. We have an initial 20 Questions, which will be the next 20 blog entries here. The other True Voice team members -- Suw Charman and Greg Narain -- and I have drafted what we think are a good start, and we are open to rephrasing or reworking the language of the 20 Questions. And we are eager to get a broad spectrum of answers from a network of bloggers we know and admire -- both Corante contributors and others.
1. What's a blog (or, what's blogging), and why should I care?
2. Who is writing blogs, who is reading them, and why?
3. How is blogging distinct from journalism, and how will it change traditional journalistic media?
4. Blogging has been characterized as a 'social medium': what makes blogging social?
5. Blogs are being adopted by social activists, in political and policy domains: will the rise of social media lead to a fundamental change in society, and if so, what sort of changes will they be?
6. Is it possible to make real money from blog-based advertising, and if so, what form will blog advertising take, since there seems to be such ambivalence and controversy in the blogosphere about advertising?
7. Are there common characteristics of successful bloggers that can be adopted by others, and if so, what are they?
8. What will successful social media companies look like, and in what ways will they be different from traditional media companies?
9. How can businesses and employees who blog unofficially learn to peacefully co-exist?
10. How do you get employees and managers to engage with and derive value from blogging projects?
11. How do we successfully prevent public-facing blogs from being neutered or turned into a broadcast by the marketeers and lawyers?
12. In what ways do we need to support staff bloggers in order to ensure that they can blog effectively?
13. How can we use blogs and blog technologies to create a net freeing of time, instead of them turning into time-sinks?
14. How do we communicate new, blog-related concepts and technologies in a way which is both comprehensible and comfortable for non-technical users without using new (and therefore potentially opaque) terminology?
15. What are the most useful and beneficial applications for blogs in business?
16. What are the basic technical concepts necessary to understand about how blogs work?
17. How do you decide what's worth writing about, how you should write it, and when you should write it?
18. What if you're not the world's best writer but you still want to blog: what are your options?
19. Once your blog is up and running, how do you measure progress: like how many people are reading it?
20. How can you find good blogs and how then to get them to link to your blog?
Please go read the article and the list of questions along with the comments. It is the combination of the two that is generating a very valuable resource.
Neville Hobson: About True Voice and the 20 Questions
By: Neville Hobson (Excerpt)
Neville responds to the Corante article with added suggestions. Read his post and the comments by others.
"What if you're not the world's best writer but you still want to blog: what are your options?" I think that's a very good question, which I've given a comment on.
TechnoFile: Writing Well on the Web, From: Inc.com, February 2004, By: Anne Stuart
"Hardly anybody really likes reading online. No surprise there, since so many websites are so poorly written. Here are easy ways to make your Web words more reader-friendly.
If there's one thing everybody knows about the Web by now, it's that people read differently online than they do on paper.
Why, then, do so many business websites (perhaps even yours) still read like books, brochures, or reports -- and often badly written ones at that?"
D.G. Jerz
A great site. Writing Electronic Text: Tips and Guidelines for Writers
" Plenty of other web pages offer advice on coding, design, and stylesheet tricks. This collection, emphasizing content, rather than coding, offers links to advice on writing electronic documents (mostly web pages, but also e-mail and interactive fiction). It is part of a larger collection of handouts on writing." -- Dennis G. Jerz
By: Anne Wayman (Excerpt)
1. Write honestly, from the heart.
When you write from your feelings, your voice will be automatic. Of course, you’ll have to rewrite and edit, but allow your honest feelings to surface and show.
2. Write as if you were writing or talking to a friend.
When you’re writing or talking with a friend, the honesty and passion show up. So does the clarity. Clarity, even simplicity, expressed through you will make your writing sing - in your voice.
3. Picture your reader.
Every time you write, you’re writing for a particular audience. Think how you would address one reader in that group as if they were a friend. Write for that person.
4. Read widely
Read all sorts of things. Get out of your field and read something you’re not inclined to read. Notice the voice. Can you see yourself writing that way? If not, why not? The answers don’t matter; the key here is just to become aware of voice.
5. Experiment
Break out of your comfort zone. If you always write articles, try a short story, or part of one. If you write mostly for high-end travel magazines, try something for children. The goal here isn’t to break into a new market, although that may happen, it’s to play and experiment and stretch your boundaries. You can even do this with a sentence or two as an exercise.
BBC Mini-Course
The Craft - Main Page
The BBC "commissioned articles from top writers on the basics of getting started. We publish a new article every two or three weeks."
The Craft - Develop Your Voice, by Stella Duffy
Need some help deciding how to tell your story? Stella Duffy, author of Eating Cake and Immaculate Conceit, provides a whistle-stop guide to the process of finding your own personal writing style. In this session you'll cover...
University Sites
Northwestern, Medill School of Journalism
Alternative Writers Seek Their Voice, by Ben Yagoda, English professor at the University of Delaware
Harvard
Twenty Tips for Senior Thesis Writers, by Sheila M. Reindl
A bit too formal for a blog, but very good information for developing your thesis and clarifying your arguments.
UCLA
What to Avoid
"Here is a short list of writing problems to avoid..."
Other Sites
iVillage (US)
iVillage.co.uk
Remarks to Young Writers