I’m really enjoying following Robert’s quirky, fun, informative blog, and found reading this post very useful – apart from anything else, it confirmed my own dark suspicions about writing book reviews!
5 Things Your Mom Didn’t Tell You About Book Blogging
I tend to avoid book blogs like the plague, but he did say one thing that resonated: blog about what you love. In fact, that thought has been kicking around in my head so much that there’s already a post in my draft files with the title “Knowledge and Love.”
The other point I thought a good one was to be sure we’re in the posts we write. Neither you nor I have much trouble there, but I swear — if there’s anything that makes me grit my teeth just a little, it’s writing that resorts either to the academic and bloodless “One” (as in, “One assumes that…”) or that gawdawful “We.” When someone writes, “We all hate this or that…”, more often than not I find myself thinking, “No, I don’t hate that at all.” Then, I’m gone.
Other things I’d prefer not to see in a blog entry: apologies and self-denigration. I always think, “Well, if the writer doesn’t think it’s any good, why I am reading?”
And there you have it! Thoughts from the other side of The Pond on a Sunday afternoon!
…and your thoughts, Linda, are always worth a ponder…I do like the way Robert writes. He’s funny, well-informed, and very much his own person with quite an individual angle on the art and practice of writing. Yes, I agree about the blogging habits that turn you off. Me too!