abby « Robin Writes

What makes a blog popular? Beats me. No, really, I have no idea. I have a handful of “fans,” if you will, but it’s not like thousands of people read my posts. Too bad, I guess, but I’m okay with that. Maybe someday I won’t be, and I’ll stop.

Anyway, I can tell you what I like and don’t like about a blog post and that determines how much of one I’ll read:

Current information, and accurate, is a must. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are also important to me—why? Because if a blog is poorly written, I assume that the writer is an idiot. Simple. I read blogs to learn things, and if someone can’t actually, you know, write, then I assume they’re uneducated and therefore aren’t going to teach me a thing. I mean, this punctuation stuff, that’s taught in grade school! Likewise, if someone links to his blog but the intro in the post is garbled and ridiculous, forget it. Not going there.

Videos annoy me. I’m a writer and a reader, so if I click on something interesting and then have to watch a video, I’m done. If I want to see live and/or moving pictures, I’ll turn on the TV. Same reason I don’t like to go to a meeting, be handed a packet, and have someone read aloud. Ugh.

I get irritated, too, when I see a lead-in paragraph on something interesting, click the link, and go to the SAME lead-in on another page and have to click yet another link to get to where I was going. Sigh.

I like to see regular posts, too. Maybe once a week, maybe more. If a blogger hasn’t posted in months, what’s the point of following? It’s kind of hit or miss . . .

Blogs with themes are nice, too. Cooking, or raising kids, or whatever—just something that’s not all over the map, you know? On the other hand, if a writer has some skill, they can blog about almost anything as long as it’s entertaining. Like a book, or a story. No, no, I don’t mean a serial on a blog; I mean just funny, or captivating, or, well, entertaining. It has to do with voice, just like a novel.

Some people do make money by blogging—yay for them! I don’t. It would be awesome if some big company would sponsor me, or sponsor giveaways, but Adsense and all those pay-per-click thingies don’t always deliver.

So why do writers blog? Or why should they? You can ask this question almost anywhere and get a half-dozen different answers.

I blog for a few reasons:

To get the word out about new books, to pitch my own, to provide information for authors and writers, to discuss the industry, and of course, prepping info—including my own methods.

But I also blog to practice my writing. It certainly helps to do some stream-consciousness putting-the-words-on-the-paper stuff, and practice makes perfect. Sort of. It’s a good, regular exercise in honing one’s craft. Simple.

I encourage all writers to blog, just for that reason. Even if life gets in the way, you know you’re committed to doing X-number of posts a week or a month; kind of like all the “regular” chores you have to do every day. This quickly becomes habit, and gives you a regular creative outlet; plus, it’s more exposure to your work, which is always good if not immediately apparent.

Once, we placed a classified ad for a business we owned. Got nothing. Not a single phone call. Then, three months later, a woman called us. She’d kept the ad for that long. We got her as a client, and then her sister, as well as her sister’s brick-and-mortar business. That $5 ad brought a big response, eventually.

Exposure and networking are a lot like that—you never know when it’s going to click.

Two big things in the news lately: internationally, the Ebola breakout, and almost-nationally, an incident here in St. Louis yesterday.

There are many, many articles on the web about how to protect yourself from Ebola, so I’m not going to cover that specifically—the best advice is to isolate yourself if the disease makes it way to your area. And that, of course, requires being prepared.

In north St. Louis County, yesterday afternoon, a young man was shot and killed by a police officer. Those are the bare facts. There are all kinds of comments, statements, speculation, and so forth flying around the Internet, but it boils down to this: no one knows the whole story. Yet.

The aftermath, however, was pretty cut and dried—a large group of people, some news accounts say 100 or more, gathered in the immediate area after the shooting. Shots rang out in the crowd, but no one else was hurt or killed. Police from several jurisdictions arrived, some with riot gear and heavy-duty weapons, and people shouted, “Kill the police!” Things eventually calmed down, with no further incidents.

Google it if you’d like more information—the details aren’t relevant to my topic today.

What would you do in a situation like this, if you lived nearby?

I’d stay inside, doors locked and secured however I could do so, and be prepared for home defense. I’m sure many or most of you would also choose this option over joining the mob—and I use that in the sense of a dictionary definition of “large group of angry people.”

How long could you last?

These folks eventually left and went to their homes, presumably, after many hours; at least midnight or so is my understanding. Surely, if you prep at all, you could have lasted six or eight or ten hours, barricaded in your home.

But what if they hadn’t all left? What if the crowd grew? What if the crowd became violent towards others, or began destroying property? How long could you stay inside? If the police acted to quell the situation, would you be safe or become collateral damage?

In many neighborhoods, this is a valid question; in others, not so much. In other words, in some places an incident such is this is highly unlikely, but that doesn’t mean impossible.

Picture it: a nice, suburban area; many neighbors are at least passingly familiar with faces and who lives in which home. An occasional speeder on the main drag, maybe a few mailboxes smashed here and there, but mostly quiet and safe.

And then. Perhaps a police chase through the area, perhaps an escaped mental patient; maybe a crime wave, with weapons and murder or—just about anything. It can happen. Has happened.

Chances are, in a suburban area, your utility systems would remain in place. Unless they didn’t. Then what? Could you manage? Enough water, ways to stay cool or warm, enough food? What if it was unsafe to leave your house for several days?

What does this have to do with Ebola? Same principle, different reason. With a pandemic, an outbreak, the common wisdom is to isolate yourself. You’re protecting your family from illness and probably death, instead of guns and crazies and the possibility of death. Either way, hunkering down and waiting it out are your best options.

People who prep aren’t nutjobs, necessarily; they’re just ready, prepared, for anything that could happen. You should be, too.