Post #25,000

One of the blogs I regularly visit is Mark Evanier’s News From Me. Mark is a real writer:  comic books, television shows, scripts, etc., he is also a curator of inside show biz miscellany. He sometimes goes where I fear to tread (i.e., comic conventions, musical theater) but he is so prolific that I just wait a few hours and he’ll be off on a new topic. He recently put up his 25,000th post, a number that that works out to be about 20 full-length novels!

Mark’s 25,000th post is an excellent overview of what it takes to create a successful blog. Everything he wrote in it is true for me except he has a readership that is a couple of orders of magnitude greater than mine. Here are some of his more notable quotes:

“What I like about blogging is (a) it's writing and (b) it's writing for me.”

“Here is a bit of advice for anyone who's thinking of starting a blog. Don't start by trying to figure out software and hosting and web design. Start by verifying that you can keep the thing filled because very few people will follow a blog that goes weeks without a new entry. See if you can write twelve posts of a non-time-sensitive nature in one month, three a week. That would be twelve posts of more than a few sentences…twelve posts with which you're satisfied. If you can't do that, don't waste your time setting up a blog.”

“What should you post? Well,the great thing about blogging — and really, really make sure you appreciate this — is that it's wholly up to you. You will not experience a freedom like that in many other portions of your life.”