Felix Salmon posted some great advice about blogging for journalists. All of the points are very good, most of them are familiar, but this — one of his slogans — really stood out for me:
“the object of quality in a blog is not the individual blog entry, it’s the blog itself”
It reminded me of an analogy that recently helped me understand my own learning curve as a blogger over the past two years (and beyond):
Blogging is like basketball.
I used to hate playing basketball. I was so used to playing hockey and soccer — sports in which scoring a goal can feel like winning the whole game, and a goal-against feels like a disaster — that I tended to care too much about every point.
The basketball attitude is that if you don’t have a good look at the basket, then either pass it off or keep dribbling until something opens up; eventually it will. When you do get a great look you have to take the shot and hope it goes in. Hesitating in those situations is the worst thing you could do. If the shot doesn’t go in, then there’s a somewhat decent chance a teammate will grab a rebound and turn it into something. If not, it still isn’t necessarily a disaster.
Better to forget the misses and start working towards the next shot…
Don’t worry about hitting the “publish” button. Not everything you write will be good; some of it will be downright bad. And you’ll get called out for that, and it won’t feel very nice. But publish anyway. If you were having a conversation in the pub, you’d say silly things sometimes. Just move on. More interestingly, you’ll find that a lot of what you thought was bad turned out, in retrospect, to be very good. And vice-versa.
It isn’t about perfection. It isn’t about total control. The keys to success are maintaining a steady rhythm and keeping your head in the game — in the moment.
After you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ll grow a nice thick skin, but at first you’ll probably get riled up by some of your commenters, both on your blog and on other blogs linking to you. Try to be zen. Alternatively, you might get riled up by the *absence* of commenters, or people linking to you, and ask yourself if you’re just shouting into a void. Again, be zen.
Anyone who aspires to any kind of blogging success — journalists especially — should read the whole thing.
By the way, I love basketball now — both watching and playing — though not quite as much as I love blogging.
