meta-blogging again: at what point does the recursive loop of a blog discussion of blogs and the state of blogging rip a hole in the spacetime fabric and produce a black hole?

hey, what's that sucking sound...

~~

So I had mentioned to a friend of mine (when the subject happened to come up, re: blogs, updates, how it can get to be a pain in the ass) that the only way to build up an audience-- even just a small blog audience-- is to update daily. I call this the "Tayler Principle", though of course I invite Howard to come up with his own name for it.

Howard Tayler is the guy that writes/channels/draws Schlock Mercenary (I know I've dropped a link or two to that one around here somewhere) and he has updated that comic every single day since June 12, 2000.

Every Damn Day. For 5 Years. And Counting.

You want an audience? You gotta do the same damn thing.

I forget when I first stumbled across Schlock, but I remember writing about it for tabulas, so it's been within the past couple of years. I read a couple of the (then) recent comics, then went back to read the whole thing from the beginning... oh my, it was rough. But he stuck with it.

so the first corrollary to the Tayler Principle is:
It doesn't matter how rough things are, if you're doing the same thing every day, then you'll improve despite yourself.

Howard has gone from something that looks like it was coughed out of MS Paint, to some very solid artwork (I might even call it pretty, in a web comic-y kind of way) and is now in the final stretch of self publishing his own graphic novel.

A small media empire, built one day at a time.

##

Some blogs have themes, or missions, or agendas. These folks are determined: they have their own domain name, slick formatting, pages and pages of updates and archives, they link sources like crazy. This small fraction of the entire bloggomass are what might be termed "web journalists" (A Journalist in the newspaper/radio/tv/reporter vein, as opposed to merely 'one who keeps a journal')

However, the vast majority of web logs are set up and run by folks like me (and you, likely) and we're just posting crap. (at least, I'm posting crap. If you want to delude yourself about what you post, go right ahead.)

Even at that, if I were to update everyday, crap would eventually turn into content. I'd develop regular features. Folks would see fit to comment on my drunken rantings. A one-off rant would turn into a regular column. A joke dialog added to the bottom of one post would become a recurring 'character' in later entries. A stream of consciousness entry would become a fiction project. Eventually I'd have my own lexicon, turns-of-phrase that I coined, and re-use, to the point that people are throwing the same bad puns back at me in the comments.

I think Wil Wheaton's blog is a fine example of an evolved personal blog. (Granted, he had a hook to draw in his first readers, but IMO he succeeded despite that. I think when they eventually write his obit, they will mention the impact he had on blogging, maybe even before they get around to that role he had in a so-so syndicated TV show... or not.)

I'm thinking, I'm somewhere in the middle of this process. I need to figure out why I waste my free time typing missives to the uncaring internets. Then I should emulate Tayler-sensei a bit, and take whatever it is I'd like to do, and do it every damn day.