You Too Can Be A Blogging Success Story!

A gauntlet has been tossed to me by Merry Jelinek, thus this post. I feel silly doing this, but I cannot let a challenge go unanswered.

My Advice on How to Write a Marvelous Blog

1) Write, write, write! Don't even think about punctuation, spelling, grammar, repeated words and phrases, cliches, or any of that nonsense. Go for black on white, words on paper. Who cares if anyone reads your prose, after all? After all, remember the immortal words of Thomas Gray:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Go on: let your blog be that sweet flower blushing unseen -- and unpunctuated -- blooming all alone in the cyber-ether. Mix your metaphors with a will, too! Who cares if anyone reads your blog, learns from it or is vastly entertained? The point is writing it.

(Catch that repeated 'after all' in the first paragraph? Do that a whole lot and don't be the least bit ashamed!) Take my advice and throw in a lot of poetry and arcane quotes, and everyone will be so impressed by your erudition that they'll never notice your crap phrasing or poor choice of words.

2) Don't go to a lot of trouble to research anything or check your sources. If you're writing about the earthquake in Peru and you can't be bothered to find out how many people were killed, just throw in some random figure. Who's going to complain? And if anyone does, just tell them to get a life. Trust me: only nerds and geeks worry about that sort of thing.

3) Make sure to give full rein to your gutter mouth! Use plenty of four-letter words, not just the odd one to pepper your prose and add a real punch, but as many gratuitous expletive-deleteds as you can stuff into your text. Remember to use them as nouns, adjectives and adverbs. Some people will whine that this can be off-putting, but just listen to the people around you and you'll see how wrong -- and morally repressed! -- the nay-sayers are.

4) If you can't think of a single thing to blog about, go ahead and write about your blocked sink or how dopey your brother-in-law is, and don't bother to be clever or too concise. (Cleverness and looking for 'just the right word' is highly overrated and a huge waste of time besides.) There's always plenty to write about: for instance, if you're pissed off at one of your neighbors, have a go at them and don't pull your punches. After all, it's your blog, and bitching about others in a mean-spirited fashion is half the fun! Sure, some bloggers who post about trivial subjects or gossip are either very good writers or otherwise cleverly manage to work in a useful moral point, but this is totally unnecessary.

5) If you're not pissed off at anyone, pick someone public you're pretty sure everyone hates and roast them instead. If you're not sure why everyone else hates this figure so much, just copy what they say or write. You'll look cool, and if anyone complains that you're shallow, so what? At least you know you're in the majority!

6) If your kids have just brought home superb report cards, don't be shy -- now's the time to share! Post them on your blog. Everyone will think you're really smart, having kids with grades that good. Other sure-fire blog success tricks are filming your kids' piano and poetry recitals, sports meets, speech competitions, and awards ceremonies (be sure to film the WHOLE thing, from the first fifteen minutes of coughing and throat clearing to that last tiny clap).

7) Remember that it's all about you! Don't bother responding to anyone else's comments, and don't waste your precious time visiting their blogs either. You'll have oodles of people commenting on your blog once they read all your vapid, self-indulgent, poorly-written musings.

8) If you must visit other blogs, make sure they're written by people even duller than you. You'll look great in comparison, and they'll be so thankful that they'll comment on your postings every time.

9) Overdo it with the hyperbole, bold-face, italics, CAPITAL LETTERS, and -- above all!!!!!! -- exclamation points!! Some idiots will tell you that overindulging in these will make you look like a weak writer who has to rely on this sort of thing because your writing skills aren't strong enough. PAY THESE NERDS a b s o l u t e l y NO MIND!!!!! Let 'more is better' be your new mantra and go right over the top!!

Gosh, that was fun. I now tag Carolie, Eryl, and Kanani.