I can’t even tell you how many times a day I roll my eyes at the Internet. Wouldn’t a livestream of my eye-rolling be oh-so-adorable? No.
Because no one cares how many times I roll my eyes at bloggers who write rambling, unedited posts about completely unremarkable things. “Navel-gazers”, or self-absorbed twits, is the term we commonly use to describe them.
Don’t be an attention-begging Internet fame-whore. The Internet has enough of those.
Write to learn about yourself and other things, not because you want to thought-vomit all over your blog.
Listen: we all do it! Of course, we’re all navel-gazers to a certain degree because we’re all our own best reference points.
How can we judge the world without judging ourselves first? The world DOES indeed revolve around us. But the center of gravity shouldn’t show in your published blog post.
You have to learn how to be your own best editor. Be tough with yourself! When you write blog posts, tell yourself, “Nobody is going to care about this. That sentence is going to make someone roll her eyes.”
Have a total inferiority complex, border on the insecure, and only share what you think people will really want to read. Don’t act like your parents gave you a little too much encouragement as a child. No one likes those kids.
Here’s an example: in the blog post I wrote yesterday, “Commitment Is Calling the Landline“, I deleted rambling paragraphs about how some dude broke up with me, how I judge people based on Facebook pictures, and how one person’s Facebook status scared the crap out of me.
If I had left those things in my post, you probably wouldn’t take me seriously.
I needed to write those things to understand what I wanted to Write. But I needed to delete them before giving you something to read.
Offering a personal experience as a solid example is one thing. Telling a personal anecdote that drives your blog post off course is a pointless bonanza.
You CAN be self-referential without being self-flagellating.
Any time you catch yourself writing a sentence that starts with “This one time…” or “I used to…”, just reread that part a few times and truly ask yourself if it’s necessary.
Maybe it is! Maybe you do have something important to share, but make sure you stay exactly on course. Perhaps that one personal anecdote IS the focus, meaning everything ELSE needs to go.
Deleting chunks of something you’ve written may seem scary, but it’s actually liberating – no longer will you remain stuck inside of yourself like that piece of lint in your…NO, DON’T LOOK!
(Photo by meddygarnet)
But remember when everybody did love that sort of thing? How live webcams in coffee shops would be looked at for hours at a time?