I would love to use the analogy of food and the consumer, but I do not fancy keeping things as grave. I will therefore stick to that of lovers, passion, desire. No, I am just talking about words, those who make them and those who use them. The two lovers. The bloggers and the readers.
I do not know which between the two is the worst blogger: The one who overpromises and under-delivers malnourishing fragments of posts a year later, or the one who overfeeds the eyes of the masses with words after words within a time difference of three hours. In between these two, I know my place as a writer. Sometimes, most times actually, I under-deliver. As I have previously stated here, blogging isn’t easy, but I speak for myself. The fear of standing naked in front of a reader’s eyes, the lack of confidence in your words, the zero willpower….in between these excuses our words get lost.
Regardless, overfeeding the reader and underfeeding him is one of practices I consider as a chief blogging vice, among many that you are probably aware of. There is lack of a standard in these two extremes. I respect people who have been blogging for a while now and have kept the frequency of it still alive. Those that have managed to establish a certain standard and frequency and have kept it going for a while.
The underfeeder on one hand proves them right. ‘Them’ here being those that claim that most blogs are just wordpress pages and nothing more. My blog, inkdrops, is currently a host of cobwebs and I doubt I’d find my way back if I walked there right now .We do agree that the place of the blogger has always been under attack. Sometimes I do agree with some of them who seem to have their swords always pointing at us. Just because a wordpress/blogger page has our name on it doesn’t make us bloggers. The same way a writer isn’t necessarily just someone who has the creativity in them, but someone who makes that creativity be seen, identifiable by echoing it in his/her words. A writer is someone who writes and keeps writing. So the ‘us’ that keep our readers malnourished…our vice makes us less of writers than we might want to claim.
On the other hand stands the overfeeder. This one forces posts down the throats of the readers to the extreme of a gag. Do not get me wrong. I respect a blogger who can write a post an hour after another. Some of us struggle with words in us that refuse to be born. However, I think we run the risk of watering down our writing. When I write, I want my writing to always be fleshy…to feed my readers with something good and not show traces of a tired writer who is just writing for the sake of writing or to run after those blog statistics. I want my readers to keep anticipating for that next post and not necessarily by underfeeding them or being lazy in it. Building up anticipation has always been a good thing. Good things can never be had in incalculable measures. There is need to give them just a little bit…even sugar no matter how sweet chokes when taken in plenty.. A small dose of something good leaves you wanting more.
The reader as I have previously said is the one thing that stands between the survival and the death of our words. Let us not make the reader suffer. Let’s not force things down their throats . We are lovers. Let’s make them want us. Make them lack…but don’t make them lack too much because they will forget you and move on to the next one. The appetite for reading needs to be sated, and if your blog doesn’t sate it, someone else will do it for the reader. This line of lovers-play is thin. Play it well.
© Jacque Ndinda | blog | Twitter|
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7 Comments
Wamathai
It is indeed a thin line & one has to carefully strike a balance.
12 Jul
Edwin
Like most other things, blogging (as I’ve come to know it) requires a measure of balance. Balance between giving readers useful, relevant content and venting your own thoughts for the world to see. A blogger also needs to balance between being consistent in frequency and providing consistently good quality. It’s not easy but I like to think that with practice, we’ll get the hang of it in time.
12 Jul
misterNV
I so desperately wanted to be an over-feeder just to fill this void I see in the blogosphere i.e. no one’s writing anymore. But today’s #WT made me think twice especially given the dangers of compromising the quality of my writing.
12 Jul
BintiMswahili
So yeah, thank you Jacque for pointing the spotlight at me. I stand here wearing the label not so proudly. It sucks being an underfeeder. It constantly bugs me, makes me question whether this writing thing is really for me. bleh
12 Jul
Michelle Adhoch
Absolutely fabulous!Finally someone that understands…Well said or rather well put!
12 Jul
Ndinda
I see I am not alone in there. I underfeed! A lot. At least writethinking gives me a challenge and keeps me writing. If it werent for it, a desert would be right here at the heart of the creative flow. In this regard, I am challenging myself. I am not just speaking for the sake of speaking. I will blog before the end of the day. I should have a post up tommorrow in the morning!
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Thank you all for reading and thank you for your feedback. It keeps me writing.
13 Jul
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