On blogging and writing advice

I couldn’t agree more with this post over at The Renegade Writer by Linda Formichelli. I like this bit, especially:

Well, yes — you want to establish your expertise. But what I’ve found is that many bloggers make inflated claims about how great they are. Here’s a hint: Most bloggers are not rockstars, ninjas, mavens, gurus, or black belts in anything other than martial arts.

From what I can tell, blogs about blogging are almost always designed to benefit and make money for one person and one person alone: the person who owns that blog. They champion style over substance, quantity over quality and have no qualms encouraging perfectly normal people to lie about who they are and what they do.

If you have a blog or you’re thinking of setting one up, feel free to read around and follow any sensible-sounding blogging advice. However, don’t start writing and publishing in a certain way, simply because some cyberponce says you have to in some useless, half-baked list of ill-informed non-thoughts.

Also, never pretend to be someone or something you’re not.