Why I'm going to try this (and why I hate myself for it)

This is going to be a personal blog. Not personal in that it will be about my life, but personal in that it will not focused on one thing or covering news or history about something. It will be my thoughts and feelings, I guess, but it will also be a space in which I can explore areas of writing I'm not able to explore in other places.

I hate blogs like this. I mean, I don't really because I read a fair number of them. But if everyone had a blog, life would be pretty shitty. Actually, that's kind of what Facebook is, and it's why I'm not on Facebook. Personal blogs (and Facebook/Twitter, albeit in shorter format) do two things simultaneously:

1. They make you out to be a total narcissist because you think your thoughts are so great that you have to share them with the world.
2. They sacrifice your own privacy by letting everyone in the world know what you think about whatever you choose to post about.

Of course, if you don't care about the first, you probably don't care about the second, since who cares who knows what you think since it's so important? In fact, most models of success on the internet demand that you put both of these problems out of your mind, since self-promotion is vital to getting the word out about your work and maintaining a high profile. My success with Fuck You, Penguin was able to avoid this because the novelty of the concept allowed the site to take on a life of its own. Once the book came out, though, the novelty had worn down. Combined with my lack of desire to maintain the blog, my disinterest in continuing to promote the site (or really to even begin in the first place) led to a slowing interest in the site (it still gets a lot of hits, but few comments and is rarely mentioned online anymore). This can be compared with any number of hit blogs that have continued to be updated and continue to release sequels to their initial books.

My point here is that self-promotion (or at least self-driven exposure) is a mandatory element of having an internet presence. With so much of the publishing world being driven by the internet at the moment, this means self-promotion is a mandatory element of being a writer. So even a lot of people who are extremely reluctant to be online nevertheless have Facebook pages, twitter accounts, and blogs at whatevertheirnameis.com. Unsurprisingly, these accounts see upticks in activity from their owners right around when their new book comes out.

Of course, it's not all crappy market sense - blogs are awesome. They give you complete creative freedom, allow you to talk about things in a short format that you couldn't otherwise talk about, and interact with readers on a real-time basis. They also allow ideas to grab hold in a democratic fashion. Penguin is a great example of this: had I pitched that as a book without the blog and good buzz/a large number of followers behind me, they most likely would have laughed in my face (not in the good way).

So, I'm going to now be the obnoxious person who thinks what they have to say is so important, the annoying guy who shares too much and rambles on while no one pays attention, and the dilettante writer who posts his top 5 sandwiches next to an ode to Nicolas Cage. I hope there are a handful of people reading this who stick around, but mostly I hope I stick around, as the internet is littered with my half-started blogs I never continued (and a few I spent way too much time on). Enjoy.