Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
Don't think I've ever used a pop-country song as a title or as a metaphor before, so this is kind of a big moment I guess...No Impact Man seems to want to give up his journaling and replace it with a multi-voiced editorial page, and that bums me out. I like journals better. I've said (written) it before. And I said (wrote) it again today, in a comment on No Impact Man's post:
Keep yourself at the center of it. Don't let it drift from your experience and your ideas. The best blogs, in my opinion, are personal. And broad. And a little bit unfocused. They're real windows into real minds.
I fear that if you go multi-voiced and post 8 times a day, you'll lose the thought narrative that the one man show produces.
Write about the work you do, whatever it is. Write about the craziest thoughts you have. And let the rest of the community provide the diversity of perspective.
-Ask readers to submit articles from which you can choose a weekly guest post (and take all submissions and post them on another blog somewhere, for the community and posterity).
-Pull your favorite comments out of threads and turn them into posts (with a little commentary from you, of course).
-Don't hire writers, but rather use the money you raise to seed other would-be bloggers whose ideas and styles and angles you love.
But don't lose your personal voice. That's what I come here to read.
Reading that again now, I feel like I sound a little not nice. Or like I think I know exactly what I'm talking about. Not the intention. But oh well.