What I Hate About Writing Blogs

I've been trolling around writing blogs for the last couple of years, and by and large most of them are crap. Unadulterated crap. And what makes me steamed about it is these people get followers. Now by and large the crap comes in two separate forms.

One: You don't say anything on the blog. For example, how many times have you hit the link to an author blog, especially on marketing and found "spaghetti theory" espoused? (My 11 year old aspiring writer/daughter tells me I must now explain spaghetti theory to people like her who don't, you know, cook.) Spaghetti is a neat little pasta, tastes better when it's fresh, but a pain in the tushy to make from scratch. (Somebody buy me the $400.00 pasta attachment for my mixer stat! *cough, cough dear husband! cough, cough*) Beginners in pasta boiling are taught your pasta is done when you take a bit out, throw it at the wall and it sticks. But at least with pasta, if you get it just right it's a moment of Zen. Now spaghetti theory, in many ways, may be accurate when trying to rise above the level of noise out there in the market right now. But it can't be all there is. I read mostly free stuff on my Kindle these days. A year ago when I got it, many of the free books from indie authors were pretty good. A number of them were things ONLY an indie author could have done. Case is point, if you haven't read Jospeh Lallo's Book of Deacon it makes a few wanders through the traditional monomyth format. An editor would have been like dude, you did that step a couple of chapters back! But it made for an interesting read and made it more real in a way. But I digress, back to point one.

My point is, there are a number of just atrociously bad indie authors getting to the top of the market right now. Clearly they are doing something right, at least in getting their books out there. So if spaghetti were accurate, it would be a push between good and bad authors. However the last couple months it's been bad, really bad, and worse.  So clearly these awful authors have found a marketing strategy and are using it, and probably ruining it for the rest of us.

Now worse than spaghetti theory in the "say nothing blog" are the make a point, be interesting, get your friends to review your work, type of post. You've read them all, the one who say grow your interest by labeling your posts 7 tips to.... and a number of people do. I wish I had a "do not click" app for my phone/computer/browser so if I've read a bad post from you, I won't get sucked in again.

But EVEN worse than that are the "teaser blogs" these are the blogs who promise to tell you how to do something and they give you some completely useless point and then ask you to buy their book. I HATE that.

The second kind of crap on a blog out there are the overly technical writing blog. You know the ones who think split infinitives are not only wrong, but so obviously wrong they don't need an explanation, just a rant. They say something about craft, but it isn't accessible. Craft, in writing, is important. Writing is a craft, a skill, something learned. On the other hand if you are ranting about dangling participles, I'm not likely to tune back in. And if I can't follow your rant on grammar, I'm not likely to pick up your book either.

Ok what do you hate about other people's blogs?