How to Blog Successfully in Two Separate Space-time Continuities

This kiwi represents the splitting in half of Pithy Postmodern Title. In time, each half will grow into a whole new kiwi. Probably.

Image © FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Since my last post, I’ve been thinking a lot, not just about the relative merits of search-engine-optimisation, but also about what this very blog is actually for, and how successfully it’s achieving the loose goals I’ve set for it.

It’s become clear to me that I’m trying to do two very different things in a single space, and it’s causing me to trip over my own feet. This is meant to be a blog that engages with the writing and literary community, and at the moment it just isn’t doing that. Not even close.

So, I’ve come to a decision – Pithy Postmodern Title is to be hacked mercilessly in two. This blog, which you will notice has already been renamed Pithy Postmodern Writing, will continue to be updated regularly with writing advice, links, suggestions, resources, intellectual exercises, and the like.

I’ll be making more of an effort to get eyes on the page, through more representative post titles, more concise writing, and tangibly useful information for writers within every post.

All of the the other guff – the amusing rants, nonsensical humour, whimsical poetry, etc – will be spun out into a new blog called Pithy Postmodern Soapbox. This blog will stay true to the principle of giving search-engine-optimisation the finger, and trying to grow an audience organically, simply by being unique.

I’m quite excited about it, because I think there’s real scope for it to forge its own identity and do some really interesting things. Stay tuned.

The new blog can be found at www.pithysoapbox.blogspot.org

It’s looking slightly empty at the moment, but that will soon change. Why not follow them both, for a double-dose of Jamie in your face?

Are you a blog? Have you ever been hacked mercilessly in two? [Insert pointless, unengaging question here]? Comment, e-mail, etc.

3 Ways To Write A Great Blog

‘Blogging’ is a difficult topic to illustrate, so I have selected this grumpy dog. Deal with it.

Image © Maggie Smith

I recently wrote a post on how ‘write what you know’ is the worst writing advice ever. Well, I’m here today to confess that I was wrong.

No, the worst writing advice ever is, inexplicably, located over at Jody Hedlund’s blog - hidden within the subtext of her first point, here. Jody is normally a font of writerly wisdom*, so it’s particularly disappointing to find her willing aspiring writers to be boring.

The advice she gives is this:

Pick blog post titles carefully.

The subtext, as I see it, is this:

Make sure your blog post titles are as simple, transparent, generic and obvious as possible, because humans are witless, easily-confused chumps, who will refuse to investigate anything that fails to promise clear and immediate rewards.

Jody goes on to say that ‘this is not the day and age for cutesy, creative titles’. I have decided to regard this as a personal attack on my good self – the fact that Jody has never met me (and has no idea who I am) is frankly irrelevant, such is my rage.

Furthermore, here we have a professional writer advocating that other writers be less creative.

Of course, it isn’t fair to point the finger at Jody. It’s not her fault that we live in an age of search-engine optimisation and attention spans shorter than a mayfly’s todger.

That said, there’s something fundamentally distasteful about whoring ourselves out to potential readers by deliberately dumbing-down, particularly if you’re the kind of person who enjoys writing whimsical or cryptic titles.

I’ve even read advice insisting that every paragraph should start with a phrase chosen to bump the post to the top of search results! And let’s not be coy – a lot of this is done in an effort to boost advertising revenues or book sales, not simply because the blogger has something to say.

Why stop there? Why not optimise every sentence? In fact, why not start every word with a dollar sign, $just $to $be $safe?

I don’t know about you, but I can immediately tell the difference between an interesting/entertaining/thoughtful blog, and one that has been mechanically crafted to generate traffic. Sometimes the latter type can still be worth the read, but it’s sacrificed its soul nonetheless.

I suppose now would be a good time to fulfil the promise of my own generic, carefully-crafted blog title, so here we go:

3 Ways To Write A Great Blog

1. Follow good writing advice, not good blogging advice.

People who blog for its own sake are soulless traffic-whores, know as bloggers. People who blog to express themselves in an interesting/entertaining/thoughtful way are called writers. One is indifferent to the concept of creativity, the other thrives on it – which are you?

2. Write blog posts that you would want to read, not blog posts that you think the internetz will like.

If you write some generic crap that doesn’t particularly interest you, just to appeal to others, then not only will your writerly muscles become flaccid, but you’re probably duplicating the work of 100,000 other soulless morons.

Write about something that appeals to you, enjoy yourself, and hope against hope that your uniqueness will generate that following you’re hoping for (I’m still waiting for this to happen).

3. Go for a walk.

This is good advice for any writer. It clears the mind, and invites fresh ideas. Probably. Also, I couldn’t really think of a suitable third point, so I went with this.

There you go – 3 ways to write a great blog. Not ‘how to be a successful blogger’ or ‘how to generate blog traffic’ – how to write a great blog.

You’re a writer. Be creative. Don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise.

 

* I linked to some great posts of Jody Hedlund’s just a few days ago. They’re well worth a read.

Don’t Write What You Know

 

This cat is boring. Don’t write about it. No-one will care.

Image © Carlos Porto

To me, ‘write what you know’ must be the worst advice ever. Who comes up with this nonsense? Yet it sticks, presumably just because it can be expressed in a short, memorable sentence.

If I were to write purely about what I know, I’d either have to write a book about the tedious grind of being an entry-level chef, or a compendium of inane factoids about Doctor Who. Cynically, I’m going to suggest that most other writers probably have equally ‘understated’ lives. Did I euphemistically use the word ‘understated’ – I meant to say ‘shit-boring’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that writers as a group tend to lead boring lives – I’m saying that humans as a group tend to lead boring lives. I happen to know some of them personally, and they just won’t shut up about it – sometimes I wish I had the balls to just yawn in their faces and walk away.

Anyway, most of us wouldn’t want to read a book based on our own tedious lives and useless knowledge, so why should anyone else? Sadly, I get the impression that an army of failed-authors-in-waiting are even now slaving over their fifth, unpublished, semiautobiographical work, about an ordinary person who solves predictable crimes at the weekend with the help of their cat.

I think the problem arises because people take ‘write what you know’ literally – a much better piece of advice might be to write what you understand. There must be an almost infinite number of topics I can get to grips with, without having first-hand experience or a university degree in the subject area concerned.

So I suppose this is my advice to other writers, and to myself – for god’s sake, DON’T write about what you know. It bores the shit out of the rest of us. Research something fascinating, bizarre or implausible, understand it, and write about that instead.

Are you writing a novel about an ordinary person who solves predictable crimes at the weekend with the help of their cat? Please don’t e-mail me at pithytitle@live.co.uk or leave a comment below. Just stop writing.

Rage Against The Myopic Classes

 

This is a picture of me looking intellectual and studious, so you know that everything which follows is 100% true and unbiased.

I like to write on the bus. It may seem like an unusual place to do anything that requires concentration, but provided Cardiff Bus Company has remembered to put on more than four buses, and I am therefore able to find a seat, I often manage to knock out a page or so. The bus is potentially a place free of distraction, where one can cocoon oneself in asocial productivity.

Potentially.

All too often, the cocoon is penetrated by the coarse, discordant racket of whatever disposable music the brainless arses of Britain have unquestioningly purchased this week at the behest of Radio 1, and now feel compelled to play to the rest of us through a zero-point-naught-watt phone speaker. When this happens, I stop writing, and instead spend the entire journey in a state of silent, coronary-inducing fury. Sometimes I quietly snap my biro over my knee and jam the two jagged ends into my ears in a desperate bid to block out Kanye West.

I loathe the sort of people that do this. I mean really loathe – and I know, in your heart, you do too. I’d go so far as to say that they need some kind of collective name, so that we can all direct our loathing more precisely. ‘Bastards’ would be good, but it’s a bit too broad.

The name should reflect the fact that these people are so dense, thoughtless and socially-unaware, that they either think it’s totally acceptable to pollute public spaces with their personal music preference, or they realise it’s unacceptable, but simply don’t care about anything other than the satisfaction of their own immediate desires.

I’d like to propose the name ‘The Myopic Classes’*.

The ‘Classes’ part is not something I’ve chosen carelessly. The class divide in Britain is alive and well, but it’s no longer based on wealth, status or breeding. The two-tier class system of today is based on education, empathy, social-awareness and civility. A stark divide exists between those who possess all of these faculties, and those who possess none of them. You can see it in some people’s eyes – two dispiriting windows into a mind devoid of all though and emotion, save for a burning sense of crass, hedonistic entitlement.

Sadly, I suspect that Britain probably doesn’t have the resources to educate every individual, and rehabilitate every community, to the level necessary for the eradication of the Myopic Classes. A psychotically optimistic Marxist might claim otherwise, but I’m a realist.

If anything, the situation is likely to get worse, not better. Already, for example, the government budget for free book programmes is being drastically reduced. This means that more undisciplined and culture-starved children will never get the opportunity to read for pleasure or enlightenment, as their feckless, Myopic parents squander the child benefit money on X-Factor phone-ins and Katie Price Signature Series Dignity Removers. It’s a cycle seemingly without end, and Britain is churning out vacuous morons at a frightening rate.

As you may be aware, I’m not a social historian. I couldn’t tell you how, why or when this divide occurred, but I trust the evidence of my eyes and my experience, and I can tell you without reservation that it exists. I’m sure you’ve noticed it yourself - unless you’re one of my mysterious readers in Malaysia, Brazil or Russia. In that case, I can only hope that you don’t have to deal with the knuckle-dragging zombies that most of us in Britain encounter on a daily basis. Who knows, perhaps Malaysia is a utopia of intellectualism and social enlightenment. Perhaps those lucky Malaysians have never even heard of N-Dubz.

The rest of us may not be able to relieve ourselves of the Myopic Classes, but perhaps we can relieve them of the tools with which they torture us. In a future post, I will bring together two seemingly unrelated subjects – social decline, and high-energy radio frequency weapons (HERF), with exciting implications for the future of noise pollution on public transport.

Yes, that’s right – I’m going to blow up some chav’s excrement-spewing phone with a homemade ray-gun.** Hurrah!

Has your writing schedule been affected by the Myopic Classes? Has some ignorant, foul-mouthed oik ever ruined your day in the pursuit of their own selfish agenda? Why not vent your entirely justified fury by leaving a comment?

 

* ‘Myopic’ essentially means short-sighted, unthinking and narrow-minded. Not knowing what ‘myopic’ means does not qualify you for membership of the Myopic Classes. Not caring probably does.

** ‘Chav’ is a piece of British slang, generally used in reference to exactly the kind of person I’ve spent this entire article describing. Feel free to borrow it for use in your country of origin. If you don’t have chavs in your country of origin, please tell me how you do it.

Be the Pyramid

Yesterday I sent a text. It started as a rant. It migrated to my notebook. It became an essay. This is it. Be the pyramid!




Rubbish day, rubbish job, and only one day of freedom in which to pursue my own goals before I have to do it all again. This isn't life, this is servitude. Why isn't someone trying to put a stop to this?! Are the many forever doomed to drudgery for the benefit of the few? Can we not all just make our own fucking dinners?!*

What kind of pathetic excuse for a human being can't even tend to their basic needs - food, shelter and warmth - without scurrying cap-in-hand to supermarkets, estate agents, energy companies and banks? We all toil for them relentlessly in a bid to claw some joy from our lives through the medium of cash, but within moments they've clawed it all back.

Who are 'they'? Shadowy, inhuman figures manipulating every aspect of our lives to serve their own diabolical ends? No. They are us. We are they. All of humanity is to blame for this tragic farce. As an organised collective, all we seem able to do is create horror for ourselves. Any ideology or model that requires humans to interact en-masse seems doomed to failure. Communism, socialism, democracy, capitalism and liberalism have all arguably tried and failed to provide us with the happiness and satisfaction we crave, and we, humans, are the common element.

Yet as individuals, we shine. Just look at the most celebrated of all human achievements; the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, and Hamlet are all essentially the work of individuals acting alone. Even the biggest and most remarkable of projects, requiring a massive collective effort to complete, can all be attributed to the isolated genius of a single architect; the Domesday Book, Glastonbury Festival, and the Pyramids, for instance.

The Pyramids are a particularly apt example to demonstrate this phenomenon, as the phenomenon itself can be said to reflect a pyramidal structure. The many at the bottom slave away to feed the egos and actualize the fantasies of the few or, commonly, the one, at the top. In the case of certain great individuals like Da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Shakespeare, they represent the pyramid in its entirety. They enslave no-one, and are slaves to no-one. They feed their own egos, and actualize their own fantasies. Imagine the freedom they must feel.

Essentially, if we were to stop allowing ourselves to be part of each others' pyramids, we could stop piling pressure and misery on each other, and start fulfilling our dreams. If everyone could somehow be their own pyramid of one, perhaps we could all be Da Vincis, Michaelangelos and Shakespeares. If we stopped trying to do things together, maybe we could actually achieve something great.

Be the pyramid.

Also, put 'be the pyramid' on a t-shirt.

And wear it.


* This isn't some bizarre euphemism or clever symbolism - I work in a kitchen!