Bonus Post! Read one, get one free, Today Only

I have just been confronted with the fact that it takes a certain type to be a successful blogger. I have spent too much of my life being unsuccessful to stop now; this blog will bloody well have to take care of itself. The thing to do, evidently, is to (1) use snappy titles, (2) make controversial statements, (3) aggressively market yourself, and (4) specialize in some niche in which you have little competition. With unerring instinct, I have chosen to forgo all of the above, and except for the occasional expletive, have thus far avoided using tantalizingly gross language. Okay, so people who take the trouble to write, like to have their writing read. But there are extremes to which one ought not to go.  

Having said that, and taking to heart the exhortation of the good Bishop who said Manners Makyth a Manne, to which someone has appended: wrytynge makyth an exacte manne (obviously not Polish in origin, what with all the vowels), I think writing helps to develop clarity of thought.  

I do not claim to have arrived at that blessed state where my thoughts are clear. My fingers tap far in advance of my mind, and it is only with great effort that my thoughts are even this clear. If I were talking to you, you would have no clue what I was saying. So writing is my apology to the universe for letting me blather orally the rest of the time. Quite inadvertently, Amazon.com supplied me with a forum for my earliest efforts at public communication. I sent out for a book of Bach's Art of Fugue, and somehow found myself writing a review of it. What was there to say? It was a masterpiece when Bach wrote it, and neither Amazon nor Dover Paperbacks could affect that particular gem one way or the other. I stoutly declared this to be the case, and a Blogger was Born. Reviewing the by-products of one's extravagance on Amazon.com falls some distance short of blogging. You neither have a captive audience, whom you can bully at will, nor the aid of the host of the blogging site to help you publicize. On the other hand, there is something specific to write about, and you do get feedback. And you got a grade. Some of those reviews might not have been the most insightful, but I had bought the items, and I knew more about them than the prospective buyers, and often I had a unique angle on them. And I found that after I had started writing these reviews, my creativity in other areas was unleashed too. But I never had that burning need to be read at any cost that these power blog-jammers seem to have. I guess I'm preaching to a sort of choir, here. Anyway, I earnestly encourage anyone who has bought items from Amazon.com to write a review of their purchase there. Or even better, write one for Internet Book List, a site that specializes in book reviews. Check your speling, get your gramer good, and let your review fly! It is a lot of fun. And read the reviews of others. Your opinions of what (the reviews) should be like will probably be valid; the more reviews you read, I imagine, the more valid your opinion would be. (Critics will say that no amount of reading will make a good writer out of a sow's ear, and they would be right. There is no sure-fire way of becoming a good writer, except by acquiring a sense for what it takes to make a reader's mind echo your thought. But reading is an excellent start.)  

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