| I always tend to think that in the blogging world there are those that are journalists and those that are diary writers. The diary writers only ever succeed if they're writing about things you'd read in Penthouse Forum circa 1978. Try not to involve yourself or your feelings too much. Offer less opinion and more substance and things based on the concrete. Use the words "I" and "You" less and consider it more of a group activity -- even though people may have not shown up yet. Instead of lines like "Do not allow anyone to read your code out of context.", you need to put the parts together and make the reader actually understand how you got to the thought process without being demanding. Instead consider something like "From practical experience I find that often, reading code out of context can obscure the meaning, context, blah." Zed is the only person who is allowed to be this opinionated, and only because he is charming at the same time. If you want people to read, they have to feel engaged and part of the conversation. This is key. Find your 10 favorite blogs, or ones of people you closely identify yourself as being close to professionally speaking, and do your best to gauge the voice of the ones that are extremely readable. Find your likes and dislikes, about a particular blogger or series of posts and gauge other media sources by the same methods. I find my best writing comes after a lot of reading, pause to think, a mental break then coming back to the subject. Give it a try. |