Blaugust #9: Writing Posts the West Karana Way.

Sorry that I’ve been missing so many days of blogging. I really wanted to do a post every day, but last Tuesday, Tropical Storm Isaias rolled through and cut power to almost a million Connecticut residents, me included. We just got power back yesterday afternoon.

Being without power in this 21st century world is weird. I would be reading books by the light of my phone flashlight, washing dishes by hand, bringing all my chargers and portable stuff to work to charge. A work I hadn’t seen since March 13th, the unlucky day we all had to abandon the office because of the pandemic.

Anyway, today’s writing prompt comes from Paeroka of Nerdy Bookahs, who asks:

What’s your process when creating a blog post?

Back in my previous blog, which I cannot link because it is now a spam site, I’d fret over this question so much. I knew the posts that “worked” from the traffic plugins. I knew that when I did web comics about my EverQuest adventures, I’d get a lot of engagement. If I found what everyone else was playing and wrote about that, I could get some engagement because plugging into the zeitgeist is always a good idea. I’d spend days working on some posts.

A decade or so back, I worked for a few months for Massively.com (now called Massively OP), and found I was doing things all wrong. Features could take as long as you wanted to lovingly craft, but the nuts and bolts of a working, professional blog was content, as much as you could make, delivered on a regular schedule.

I found I couldn’t do all three of: work at my programming job, write for Massively, and actually play any game, and I was getting anxiety attacks from the pace, so I focused on my programming job and went back to actually playing games instead of just writing about them.

But, I took some lessons from that, and it transformed my approach to writing:

Find a really nice picture to kick off the post

People are visual creatures, and in general, most people will not see more of your post than the picture and the headline. If they like both, they may read your content. If your post has no picture, then the engagement will diminish.

I used a panel from Schlock Mercenary for this post, because it was dynamic and colorful and had the first rule of highly effective mercenaries in it: “Pillage before burning”.

Write an effective headline

Remember, the words in your headline are probably all the words your audience will actually read, so the headline needs to do all the work of the post. Ars Technica occasionally posts articles about their method of working, and you may think I’m being flip about all this, but no, these are actual things. You may also think I’m being really obtuse about the subject of this promptapalooza, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Effective headlines should either:

• Ask a question
• Start with the words “How to”
• Be provocative
• Be wrong

Aside from “How To” posts, headlines should spark some reaction from the reader. A headline like almost any of the headlines from my first few years of blogging (sample: This thing I found was funny) will not bring the clicks.

Write the first thing that comes into your head, even if it isn’t on topic.

Blog posts aren’t always essays. If you asked a random person on the street, “wanna read an essay?”, I doubt many would take you up on it. If they are reading your post, there will be some portion of their minds that will be taking in the evidence. “Hey, this looks like an opening statement… and look, this next paragraph is expanding on the statement… and here it looks like the author is quoting from sources… OH MY GOD, IS THIS AN ESSAY?”

Kurt Vonnegut Jr has said he wrote all his books for an audience of one: his sister. He knew he couldn’t make everyone like his writing, but if he could get her to like it, then that was enough.

I used to write for the people in my EverQuest guild; I knew they’d read what I’d written because, a lot of times, they were the topics. These days, since I’ve just begun blogging again, I’m just writing for myself. I find that the posts of my own that most interest me are the ones I just wrote for the fun of writing them.

Presidential debates are fun to watch. If you can look past the candidates themselves, and listen to what they’re saying, it’s a lot like a blog post, especially one with prompts, like this one.

The moderator asks a question, and the candidate restates the question, and then goes on to say whatever they wanted to say, no matter whether or not it is related to the question, because they want to control and focus their message, and do not need the moderator to do that for them.

This is a lesson I’ve taken to heart. The topic of this post was “What’s your process when creating a blog post?”, and I started off with two paragraphs about a power outage, because it was on my mind. If I re-read this post in five years, I’ll be able to perfectly place it in time and memory.

Other things on my mind: The ending of the web comic Schlock Mercenary, the upcoming presidential debates, and the simple but effective writing style of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

So, in closing, here’s my process when writing blog posts: Choose a picture, write a headline, type a lot of words, and then press “Publish…”. I’m not a writer, I’m not getting paid for this, but when I press that blue button, I can smile and say to myself, “I just published another blog post!”.