Doing the Blog-Thing Wrong All Along

With the advent of blogs, while more is being written, the writing’s getting worse. Personally, I am as careful with the text of a blog as I am with the page of a novel.
José Saramago

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has a purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross


I’ve been somewhat neglectful of my blog as of late, but that’s not out of lack of motivation or out of laziness. The truth is that I’ve been short of time because of the convergence of several important events: the conclusion of the 2008-2009 academic year, a demanding stretch for teachers as great amounts of effort are expended to wrap up the year on a high note; the upcoming release of Meet Me Under the Ceiba (September 30), which has obligated me to learn more, and rather quickly, about the business of promoting my work; and the polishing of Harvest of My Gathering: Essays from the Tropics, whose manuscript has begun circulating among publishers. It has been a busy couple of months, indeed.

In trying to learn how to promote my books I’ve visited various websites and blogs that offer sage counsel. One site in particular offered excellent advice on how to write for blogs. But what I read saddened me: it turns out I’ve been doing this wrong for the past five years. The author argues that the attention span of internet readers is minimal, and that in posting more than fifteen lines of text a writer will be left with only a handful of readers—those who are most devoted to the writer or the ones that have plenty of time on their hands.

I agree with this assessment. In fact, I’m one of those readers whose attention will soon drift unless the subject or the writing absolutely grabs me. The article therefore suggests that it is better to make a brief comment about the topic at hand, followed by a link or two to lead interested readers to further information. This way it’s easier to make frequent posts and the writer is guaranteed greater traffic.

Nevertheless, in spite of knowing that the practices preached in the article are true, I can’t turn away from the type of writing I’ve been doing these years. When I started my blog, my hope was to write a collection of essays worthy of compiling in a book. And after polishing the best entries these last eight months, I am proud of the result that is Harvest of My Gathering. There’s a unity and smoothness to the readings that has exceeded my expectations.

What my blog has become since its inception, for me at least, is a sounding-board where I publish what I am thinking at the time, share a few of these entries with readers of The Panama News, and then allow the writings to breathe for a spell in the hope that with further revisions they’ll acquire the wisdom and grace of a fine wine. Although traffic through my blog may remain low, I know that the essays I post here are the best work I am capable of producing at a given moment; and I certainly cannot ask more of myself.

Thus, happy with the outcome, I shall continue violating the guiding principal of blog writing, which is: keep it simple and short. But I break these conventions with the full knowledge that within another five years, if I bestow upon my entries the same passion I gave to those of the first five years, I will have enough material for More Essays from the Tropics.


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