Tag: writing

What is blogging

Ian Beck recently wrote about what blogging is (and what it is not). Perhaps my favorite quote:

Blogging is not giving a damn about whether people visit your site, and publishing for the sake of creating something interesting, public, and potentially useful for others.

That’s why content comes first. Without compelling content and quality writing a blog is far less likely to gain a following. Combine both of those features and you may end up with a blog that allows you to go full-time.

Reminds me a bit of Matt’s recent essay, which makes the point that a blog is where you go when you want flexibility and control in crafting your words and ideas.

Daniel Jalkut’s idea of a dedicated site for teaching the basics of blogging is a very interesting idea. It could go a long way toward helping people publish effectively on the web.

Velocity. A very beautiful essay from Frank Chimero.

Beginning. Shawn Blanc is turning his site into a full-time gig. A $3 monthly membership fee is part of how he’ll make the financial side of things work.

Moving to a Staff Blog. One school benefits by ditching mass emails and keeping all communication between staff on an internal blog. The information is archived, searchable, and comments beat the heck out of traditional email.

!@$#ing for a living

!@$#ing for a living. What if we had a publishing platform that cost $10 per month and allowed users to distribute half of that money among their favorite 20 bloggers? Sounds like a pretty cool idea and a win all the way around.

37signals on doing it “wrong”

All the “wrong” things 37signals did with Rework. Matt from 37signals writes about all the things they did “wrong” with Rework. Like usual, none of it affected things negatively as the book was a tremendous success.

How to write 1000 words

Fascinating video from Scott Berkun on how to write 1000 words.

It’s great to see how an essay changes form over the course of drafts.

Frank Chimero on content

A stellar essay from Frank Chimero on content (as told through the metaphor of watery soup).

You ever order soup at a restaurant and get a bowl that’s mostly broth?

The problem is the register at the restaurant is four-hundred bucks under what it was the day before, and everyone is running around screaming “No one wants to buy our soup!” Then they start looking for different ways to distribute the soup. Do they buy new ladles? Would people like it if the ladles were fancier? “Let’s buy new bowls. People would enjoy the new bowls,” they say. Customers could choose the bowl that best fits their personality, or how they’re feeling that day, or whether they’re having the soup for lunch or for dinner.

Pretty fun to substitute “news” for “soup” throughout the post. Reminded me of an earlier article about news systems trying to pass off watery broth.

Merlin Mann writes about “distraction-free software” and its problems:

[It is bad to be] leaving your starry-eyed customers with the nauseatingly misguided impression that their “distraction” originates from anyplace but their own busted-ass brain is really not “helping.” Not on any level. It is, literally, harmful.

Forked version of Notational Velocity

If you are a fan of Notational Velocity, a forked version was released today. It adds things like full screen mode and some other nifty views. I’ve used it for notes today and have to say that the full-screen edit mode is pretty slick.