Friday, January 02, 2009

what is this blogging the kids are doing today

I'm starting off the new year, professional-wise, by ignoring my many deadlines in the next two weeks and trying to figure out this whole "blogging" thing. This seems ridiculous, as I have been blogging nonstop since June 2005, when I first claimed not to be interested in blogging. (Actually, July is even funnier - read from the bottom, as I transition from explaining why I'm not blogging to writing obsessively.)

But now I'm considering actual professional blogging. A blog about my book topic, for one; a blog about science and being a science writer, maybe; a blog about knitting...probably not. These blogs would be under my real name (I know! shocking!). I'm thinking WordPress, because people seem to be happy with that. And I hope that it would find readers.

Very few people have actual pre-built interest in my book topic, but as soon as I tell them about it, they're like, whooaa, cool! So the hope is that my blog would attract people with the "whooaa, cool!" response and get them to keep reading and eventually, oh, buy copies of the book for themselves and everyone they know. I guess I know more or less where I'm headed with that blog. I'm just waiting to hear from, um, the guy whose family it is about to see where he stands on this whole "book" issue.

So, what about this science/science writing blog I might want to start? I actually don't read any science blogs, mainly because I don't like any of them enough to go back regularly. Do you read any? Which should I read? I'm going to start surveying them and seeing which ones I should read, who I could learn from, just how mean and awful the commenters are, and why I dislike so many of the blogs. (I suspect a lot of my problem is that I have a really short attention span when I'm reading on the computer, which means a post as long as this one is pretty much not going to work for me.)

I suppose it could all be the same blog, with BookTopic posts tagged as such and other posts tagged as something else.

Help? Anyone? Insight?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you're there for the comments then it's more bartending than journalism, and you may have to be sort of prepared to let it go where it wants to. I don't know.

And someday you'll have to figure out how to handle the occasional crazy drunk. I think I'm coming around to the opinion that it's a matter of saying "I'm going to throw out the occasional crazy drunk" rather than trying to lay down a lot of general rules (which the trolls can nitpick to death). But I could be wrong.

kumquat said...

I've got it: How about a practice blog about the upcoming trip? Then you are prepping for blogging the actual trip and trying out what it feels like to blog science separately from everything else...

Jason Brozek said...

I like reading (and writing, now) more focused, single-issue blogs. I found it hard to sustain interest in *my own* here's-what-I'm-doing-with-myself-today blog.