The honeymoon is over, baby…

Right now, I’m really enjoying Scott Karp’s blog Publishing 2.0. Scott has made a massive impact on the blogosphere in the few weeks that he’s been blogging with some well-argued, thought provoking posts. However, if my experience is indicative, Scott could be on the verge of finding out that blogging doesn’t get easier, the longer you’ve been doing. It only gets harder.

Now I may well be off the mark. Scott may be able to keep pumping all of these, long, intelligent threads, but for me, anyway, it went along something like this. You create your blog and suddenly you’ve got a platform for ruminating about all those really good ideas you’ve been shaping in your head for so long. Suddenly there’s a space for venting about those subjects you’re truly passionate about. As a result, it all comes too easy. Words spill from the keyboard like water cascading over Niagra falls. Ideas flow without pain or effort. It’s all too easy.

Then there comes a time, when you realise you’ve pretty much used up your store of really, great thoughts. You sit down at your keyboard and nothing’s there. So you hit your RSS reader, you scour memeorandum, you Digg. You find a couple of memes that you think you can add something to only to find out that bastard blogger you really respect has beaten you to it, and damn he’s done a good job. You start to wonder if these bastards do anything but blog. Don’t they have a day job to occupy their time?

You get really busy at work and next thing you know it’s four days since you last posted. In the meantime, your traffic has crashed through the floor so just to keep your head above water, you resort to linking to a few interesting posts floating about by people who have far too much time on their hands. You’re transformation into mediocre blogger is complete.

I reckon it’s somewhat like the music business. I read somewhere that you’ve got your whole life to write your first album and six months to do the next. Artists will cram every great melody, every great hook, every great story they’ve ever come up with into their debut effort, but from that point on, you’re always creating something new.

If you’re going to mix it with the big boys, blogging takes time. It takes discipline. And it takes perseverence. I still haven’t figured out if I’ve got what it takes, at least while my time is so occupied elsewhere. So to those long-time bloggers out there who have been churning out quality comtent for years we tip our hat to you.

P.S. The title for this post is from a song by a great, old Australian band called The Cruel Sea. Do yourself a favour if you’ve never heard of them…

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