Just. Shut. Up. (Part I)

Let’s face it. You take one look at the title above, and you figure the Catholic Writer Chick is probably hacked off about…something. Well, yes and no. :-)

Fact is, something did fry my bacon this week, but that issue will be dealt with in another post. This, however, is simply a quick and dirty complaint. Or maybe…shall we say…a suggestion? 

Please… PleasepleasePLEASE… If you are putting together a blog, website, or other online station where I’m likely to land and stay awhile to read, please resist the urge to use the “playlist” feature to piggyback music onto the reading experience. 

PLEASE. 

 I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon here. Heck, I’m a musician. You’d think I’d love to sample the music that other bloggers enjoy, and listen while I read...right? 

Well, actually, not so much. Here’s why. 

The first, and most obvious, reason is that my tastes in music and yours are probably not the same. In some cases, I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to the music I find on blogs. So the blog itself—the writing—is often compelling, witty, entertaining, or otherwise extremely enjoyable…but I can’t enjoy it because in my face is some rattly noise that sets my teeth on edge. This does not encourage me to stay and page through your blog; it encourages me to get away, and fast. To be blunt, creating a setting that makes people want to escape…is rather counterproductive to the idea of blogging in the first place. 

The second reason—one more specific to me—is that unlike many writer/readers, apparently, I am not wired to be able to write or read with music playing in the background, especially very active music. Even music I enjoy—actually, even more so, with music I enjoy—I simply cannot do those two things at once. I can edit with music in the background, as long as it’s fairly quiet and fairly subtle: think classical here, or the most subdued Celtic folk. But trying to create something? Or trying to read things I’ve never read before? Let’s put it this way. My hearing is extremely sensitive, to the point where if there’s music playing around me, no matter how quietly, my brain gravitates to it like a cat to canned tuna. I have bought not one, but two, “white noise” machines in the past several years, just for the purpose of blocking out external sounds while I’m trying to concentrate. They work, I relax, and the brain stays clear. 

But I can’t plug in my white noise machine when I’m surfing the Net…especially not when your music completely takes me by surprise. 

No doubt some of you are muttering, “Well, you dolt, just mute the stuff.” Easier said than done; in every blogging/playlist platform, the ways to do this can vary slightly. So making your readers hunt for which link is the “magic key” is, to say the least, inconveniencing them. Some of you add insult to injury in this matter as well: one particular blogger (who shall remain nameless) didn’t help matters by tossing off a remark about “those of you who are too stupid to figure out how to turn off the sound.” 

 Lemme get this straight, then; not only am I subjected to your taste in music just by clicking on your link—but should I find it tricky to escape having this stuff shoved at me, then I’m stupid, too? Yeah, that makes me want to come back! 

The late, great Uncle Bobby at WGN Radio used to say, “It’s easier to stay out than to get out.” He was referring to trouble, of course—in all its varied forms. But in this case, that “proverb” seems to apply equally well. Want to avoid irritating your readers, inconveniencing them, or giving them an excuse not to read your blog? Simple. Keep it simple, keep it straightforward…and keep it quiet. Many, many, many of us will thank you for it.

Thoughts? 

Janny

Beware the Tyranny of the "Shoulds"!

Q. When does a blog cease to be "just" a blog? A. When it becomes a tool you’re using for some other purpose.

Q. Well, that's a great idea, right?

A. Not necessarily.

I found myself in bit of "blog" and "should" overwhelm this week. I was reading a blog from one of my compadres in which it was asserted, quite strongly, that author blogs should be aimed at marketing themselves, and nothing that doesn’t have to do with promotion and professional image/branding should be there. I.E., if your written body of work has to do with, say, nineteenth-century music, amateur sleuthing and metallurgy, nothing else should be on your blog but aforementioned music, sleuthing and -lurgy. That means should you have the urge to talk about your children, your pets, your religion, your football team, or your latest recipe for spinach dip…those things need to be on another blog (if they need to be anywhere at all). The rationale is that you want readers who come to your blog to learn about you as an author, not necessarily as a person. Therefore, if they come to your blog expecting to read about what you already write about and, instead, come upon a blog entry about your cats, they’re going to be upset at you for wasting their time, your blog will be a marketing failure, and they’ll go elsewhere, convinced you’re a hopeless amateur. Do we all really believe this? And if so, why? I don’t mean to poke holes in any particular point of view here. As far as marketing, branding, etc., go, the advice is probably good. It may even be the Gospel According to the Latest Marketing Gurus, and/or people who have sold a heck of a lot more books than I have. But I think it’s a serious mistake to look at this advice, swallow it hook, line, and sinker, and take it as the only way to go, with any other way marking you as unprofessional. The comments about this post were telling. Some agreed it was a great idea. But I also remember one particularly adept author saying something along the lines of, “I’m just starting to figure out how to have one blog working, and now you’re saying I need to have two? Forget it!” To which I said, “Amen, sister.” The internet has brought us an unprecedented opportunity to get information in what can be a very solitary and isolated occupation. This is a good thing. It’s wonderful that we can, with one click, avoid re-inventing the wheel in so many ways. Thanks to instantaneous communication, we can avoid a lot of mistakes and get some very useful instruction, sometimes instruction that we would have had to pay big bucks for in the “olden days” of only being able to get this stuff from a classroom. We can also, however, go into overwhelm very quickly if we try to take all the information available as the only way we “should” be running our writing careers. Because there’s no such thing as a single way a career “should” go, in any enterprise—and especially in a creative one. So consider today’s entry a voice for caution. For reading all the information out there, and still trusting your gut as to what’s going to work for you. And above all, for avoiding the notion that anything “should” be the way to go for you, the only way to go, so help you God. I for one couldn’t disagree more with the frantic branding and marketing blogs that I see from authors. Not that marketing isn’t important; of course it is. Not that setting up a good website isn’t a good idea; of course it is. And if you truly want to have one “marketing” blog and one “personal” blog, and you honestly have the time and inclination to keep up with both of them…more power to you. But for this blog reader? I go to agents’ blogs to hear about agenting, and I go to editors’ blogs to hear about editing, true. But I also enjoy hearing about them as people. And when it comes to fellow authors, this goes double. Yeah, sometimes we can go overboard—or have a series of blog entries that makes people wonder what we’re really about. I don’t enjoy author websites that have inferior writing samples posted…but superior quality photographs of their horses. (Someone might be in the wrong line of work!) If all your blog talks about is your kids’ achievements, or your farm in Connecticut, I may or may not visit it very often. If you’re purporting to be a writer, at least some of your blog probably needs to be about writing! :-) But overall? A blog with a personal touch means I’m more likely to stick around. Yes, information about book signings is pertinent…but so is your perception of the industry from a purely personal POV. Yes, information about your upcoming releases is valuable…but not if that’s all I read, and it sounds like a press release. I'd much rather see a whole person in your blog. Tell me some of your opinions. Be multi-dimensional. That, to me, is what blogging is for. The rest of it we can use news sites, publisher sites, our writing groups, and our publicists (especially the unpaid ones, otherwise known as family and friends!) for. In your blog, I want to get a glimpse of who you are. I can’t get that if you transform your blog from a glimpse into your thought processes, work style, and life to something that’s clearly structured to be a marketing machine. Those things turn me off, each and every time. This is only one author’s opinion, as a reader and as a writer. But I think it’s sad that in this brave new world of information we’re all experiencing, we’re in some senses being put into the same restrictive boxes we would have been without it. We can even more easily get awash in “shoulds,” get convinced we’re missing the boat, and get down about failing (yet again) to recognize the “secret handshake” that’s “going to make all the difference.” Let’s not go there, because in reality, there’s really no such thing as “the way your blog should be.” Your blog “should” be what you want to make of it. That’s only fair for creative people on a creative, worldwide bulletin board. Here’s to blogging for the sheer joy of it— Janny

Hot diggity! Someone's reading this!

Don't laugh. :-) My son made the comment about the commercial where two guys are talking about blogs and the one guy says, "your blog readers...meaning your mother?" And this was after I'd read and commented on his blog! Didn't even think of it. But I was seriously considering taking this blog down entirely. CWC has been sitting up here for awhile without a great deal of attention being paid to it...until recently. Recently, the site visits have crept up, the comments are starting to show up here and there, and in short, there's actual communication going on. And that's the idea of a blog in the first place! Of course, I did read yesterday about commercial bloggers who are making advertising money in the tens of thousands of dollars per year by posting about various business "inside information" and selling advertising from the people and businesses who post...but quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to work that hard in that direction. Not that I'd mind making money off a blog! (Yes, and how soon do I want to leave the day gig?) But I think I can find better ways to make money off the internet than selling advertising for a writing blog. Maybe this will become the Next Hot Thing on the block, and people will want to line up to be seen on Catholic Writer Chick. It is to be fervently hoped that that happens! And if it starts to, I WILL advertise for help in selling advertising--so any of you who have that kind of bent and background, don't hesitate to comment here. In the meantime, I'm going to begin posting more frequently about writing in particular and the Catholic world view (at least the world view of this Catholic chick) in general. Happy reading and writing! What are we reading lately? FIRST LADY by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Enjoying it, wouldn't necessarily run out and buy every other of her work, but at least I'm not pitching it across the room like the last SEP I tried to read. Jury's still out on whether it ends up being "satisfying," but it did bring to mind an unfortunate (and rather silly) mindset that propels a lot of women's fiction, especially romance, and which I first noticed on soap operas years ago. I'll post about THAT curiosity shortly. In the meantime, have to get back to at least pretending to look like I'm working... More later, Janny