Keeping the Customer Satisfied

To mangle a sentiment from a great American: "You can please some of the people all of the time; and you can please all of the people some of the time; but you can't please all of the people all of the time." This has become very apparent to me over the last few days. My thoughts have been consumed with The Writers Blog Alliance and this has led me on to write several posts about writing and blogging, yet I have been aware that my established readership are used to more wide-ranging subjects from me. How to keep everyone happy? It's a hard life, being a blogger.

In the end, I have to write what I'm thinking about; everything in this blog is produced on the day I post it, even the fiction. There are times when I wish that I had access to work I produced long ago but what remains of it is on a hard drive back in England. So I have no option but to blog what my brain happens to be fooling with on any particular day.

For two weeks my mind has dealt with nothing but writing and blogging. I have tried very hard to think of other things, perhaps a story or a memory, but nothing comes. It's all about blogging and writing.

And perhaps that is how it should be. The Writers Blog Alliance is a huge and exciting endeavor that has the potential to make the blogosphere a more useful tool for the writer; of course I'm going to put all of my energies into ensuring its success, especially in these early days. It's my baby (oh, good grief, I think I'm writing a mommy blog). In time it will be able to toddle about the place and do more for itself but, right now, it needs me to be thinking about it. So that's what I must do (sorry, Keef!).

ProBlogger doesn't help, of course. Lately I've been reading it a lot and, since it's essentially about blogging, I get fired up again. For instance, today Darren posted an article entitled ProBlogger Disclaimer, which, as pointed out by Steve Pavlina, turns out to be more of an "exclaimer" than a disclaimer. It prompted this comment from me:

"The internet is the last place in the world where there is such a thing as a free lunch. To blog is to be prepared to be copied, ripped off, flamed, ignored, and idolized. The blogger does it anyway, giving his/her time away in huge chunks to a world that often doesn’t appreciate, understand or care. Some, a very few, are developing ways to earn a living by blogging; the vast majority blog because they love it and want to do it, without thought of monetary return. And good content is given away every day.

"It makes no sense at all but still we do it. It’s called blogging; love it or leave it."

That was written in a moment of passion resulting from Darren's thoughts on the pros and cons of blogging. But I'm sure you'll understand how the discovery of ProBlogger has been another factor in turning me away for a brief period from the primary intent of this blog (I will return, honest, Keef).

I have to face the fact that blogging itself has become a matter of interest to me, however. For many, the solution to my problem would be to start another blog that deals with that subject alone, leaving Gone Away to pursue its rather different intent. I do not want to take that route, mainly because I doubt that I would be able to supply a blog about blogging with regular posts over a long time period. Instead, I look forward to the categorization that Mad is working on; once that is introduced, I can write whatever I happen to be thinking about and consign it to the relevant category.

It has struck me that I could, as an interim measure, take a leaf out of John Evans' blog, Syntagma, and tack new thoughts on to the bottom of the latest post - not an update, as Syntagma does it, but a whole new article. This would give me the capacity to post twice in a day without burying the first post beneath the later one.

Who knows? I might even add something on after posting this...

--ooOoo--

More About Blogging!

Quills Abroad has posted an excellent article on the roots of blogging.