How to Be a Blogger.
First link to the companion piece, How to be a Week-Two NaNoWriMo Writer that ‘inspired’ this post (by which you mean ‘gave you an excuse to recycle something you’ve already used’).
Sit down at the keyboard to write today’s blog post. Seconds later, find yourself standing, instead, in your kitchen in front of the kettle.
Sit down again at the keyboard. Armed with a nice cup of tea, you will definitely now start writing.
Very quickly check your blog traffic. Fall into the gaping maw of an existential crisis (if nobody reads my blog, does it really exist? Do I exist?) Compose funny lines about writers shitting in forests and nobody hearing them.
Drink tea.
Reconsider your ‘funny’ lines about writers shitting. Reach for the bloggers’ friend: the delete button.
Attempt to stroke your cat; get scratched.
Check blog traffic again; get scratched – inside your soul.
Feel quietly pleased, surprised, confused (while realising that if you were German you would have a single word to describe all three of these functions simultaneously, and that word might be Verklockenblockenknocken) by the occasional site views in countries you’ve never even heard of. Wonder what they might be gaining from your blog. (Whilst secretly knowing, deep in your soul, that they wound up here by accident and went straight back out again, like you do in a public toilet when somebody’s left you a shit in the pan).
Feel shame for your xenophobic German joke. Mention your German ‘A’ level. Write for a bit about how you’re one of those rare folk who actually likes the German language; that you’ve actually read The Catcher in the Rye in German (or at least, the whole first half of the first page) and the opening line of Heinrich Böll’s Das Brot der frühen Jahre is one you will always remember: ‘Der Tag, an dem Hedwig kam, war ein Montag…’
Decide you will appear both more intelligent and enigmatic if you leave these lines untranslated.
‘Hallo, ich heisse Hedwig.’
‘Verklockenblockenknocken.’
Das Brot der frühen Jahre (1962): so good they filmed it
Realise you’ve backed yourself into a bit of a corner. Where can one go from a xenophobic joke?
Leave the wasteland of your blog traffic behind, and head into the London-Congestion-Charge of your spam queue. Wish everyone was as keen on your blog as ‘nike pas cher’ in:
{Idaho|Carolina|Ohio|Colorado|Florida|Los angeles|California}!
who was:
{bored to tears|bored to death|bored} at work
so decided to:
{check out|browse} your {site|website|blog} during lunch break.
Learn from ‘clashofclanshakez’ that you’ve ‘ended his 4 day hunt’. Remain unenlightened as to what he was hunting for.
Rather like this one from ‘air max pas cher’ (while also enjoying the fact that you know this means ‘cheap air max’ in French, thus affording you an opportunity to show off your French A-level):
Typically the feathers seem splendid.
Congratulate yourself on your splendid feathers. Scroll down to the foot of your last three posts and find yourself, all three times, invited to ‘be the first person to like this!’ Have a cry. Or some tea. Or some wine. Or some heroin.
Hope people who’ve read How to Become a Week-Two Nanowrimo Writer will get that you’ve repeated that line deliberately, the way Martin Amis says it’s all right to repeat things, and not because you’re lazy (even though laziness is partly the reason you used it).
Wonder if more, or fewer, willy jokes is the way to go.
Glance up; see the bright orange glow of the new subscriber box, like a bottle of Perrier at the foot of a Saharan sand dune. Somebody likes you!
You’re on a roll now. You’ll cast your net and catch some more followers… With this in mind, tweet your blog for the twelfth time in seven minutes. Fiddle about with the tag line:
This nanowrimo writer posted a blog! And then THIS happened…
Here be words and willy jokes…
Wonder if all this is the twitter equivalent of Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle with her tea tray…
Ah go on, ya will ya will ya will ya will ya will… read my blog.
Decide that, since you’re on twitter anyway, you might as well click on that link to another writer’s blog…
Laugh smugly to yourself. This is balls of a magnitude rarely witnessed. As if anyone would willingly read this pile of—
See that the post has 359 likes. 1.5K tweets. 972 comments.
Consume tea, wine, and heroin all in the same cup.
Lynsey White 
This comment is left to cheer you up, but also because I know what you are saying.
I get comments like, “Wow, I love the way you write and will be back to read more posts later” by people who never visit or comment again. I get followed by someone who I find is actually a holiday company trying to sell vacations, and I have over 3,000 followers the vast majority of whom I am sure never visit the Blog after they start following it. It is heart-wrenching and demoralising but I still keep blogging. Why,
Because I really love writing and the fact that few people read my Blog or buy my book doesn’t stop that. To write is to collect my thoughts and insights and use them constructively and I cannot stop doing that. Another plus is, despite all the rampant shallowness I have made some genuine connections and friends. It is not all false and senseless, and only perseverance makes that point evident, so never give up. You are on my Blogroll which means I genuinely admire your work 🙂
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Peter, I dream of being as successful as you! To me you’re the epitome of a good blogger: you never seem to post unless you have something to say, and from my POV your audience seems very loyal. Thank you for the comment; it means a lot, and let me also return your compliment!
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