For Writers: Writer Blogs

Now that I've actually had some sleep, I thought I should write up what it was that led to my post last night. I went trawling through Twitter and looked for all the blogs from all the writers I follow. I thought perhaps I might post a few things I found that I didn't stick around for.

Not What I'm Looking For

• Nothing but Promotion - I read through the first few pages and if it was nothing but book promotion, I might have skipped back a couple of pages to see what else they had to offer. If it was only promotion, I didn't bother. I moved on.
• Click for More - One of the blogs had the posts truncated so you only saw the first few lines of the post and you could click more if you were interested in reading. I didn't. I just left the blog.
• Extreme Politics - I understand we all have opinions. I do. I understand politics are HUGE for people. I have my beliefs just like you have yours. Your writing blog should be about more than just your political opinions and statements. I ended up unfollowing them because I don't like people trashing on LGBT issues, fat women (and just women) and/or stating "I'm not a racist, but..."
• Life Trashing - I am SO GUILTY of this!! SO GUILTY!! I do it a lot. My life takes a crap somewhere and I want to post about it on Twitter and my blog. DON'T DO IT. Once in awhile is okay, but when your blog is full of nothing but how much you hate your life and how you'll never be a writer? I get tired of reading it. Coincidentally-- I went back through my blog and cleaned up the life-hating. I also went through my Twitter feed and cleaned it out as well. Eek!

I did find a few examples of what I think makes a good writer blog and I would like to share those things with you as well.

Yes, please!

• Diversity - They not only talked about their books, but their writing. They posted snippets or opinion pieces. Some of them posted political commentary, but it wasn't talking about beating people or being hateful.
• Well-written - Two of them in particular were just well written blogs. I'm not saying they were perfect examples of publishable material, but you could tell they understand the basics of sentence structure and putting down a decent paragraph instead of run-on sentences and a new line every ten words.
• Book Promotion - Yes, I look for writers to tout their own work. Just... not all the time.
• Writing tips - Writers know, sometimes by firsthand experience, what it takes to make something work. They post about it, rather it is from their own personal experience or something they've learned somewhere, they post about it. A lot of my Twitter feed is full of reblogs of good writing advice. Sometimes writers blog about other people's articles. That's great, too! It gives their perspective.
• Polite Discourse - While they may not agree with what has been said in other's articles or in popular media, they post on their blog  with a sense of decorum and in a conversational air, much like you might disagree with someone at a dinner party. It's not a rant, it's a statement of fact, in their opinion, why it is wrong. I don't feel threatened by reading it, I want to engage them in conversation about their opinion and share mine. I want to engage, not unfollow and never read their work again.
• Entertaining - I was entertained by the blog. It might not be bright flashing lights and carnival colors, but I wasn't bored reading. I wanted to read more. I spent about an hour reading back through blog entries on a couple of the blogs just because I enjoyed what they were saying.

I'm not perfect and my blog? Breaks a lot of the things I've been talking about. However, this is a movement to the future! I want to be more like the writers whose blogs I like. Therefore, look for a little more comment from yours truly, especially when I read over a couple of the blogs I liked. They have things I want to talk about.