Blog experts say you should stick to just one subject – whatever you feel most strongly about. That becomes what your blog is about.
I do nothing like that, of course. I write about whatever interests me at the moment – from Ford cars to video girls to jihad.
I am pretty much forced to do this because I write 500 words a day to practise my writing. That would be hard to do if all I wrote about were, say, video girls, as much as I may love that subject. I have to cast my net wider than that.
I pick something I want to know more about. Then I read up on it and write about it. You find out all kinds of interesting things that way. Like that the Mammy stereotype started out as a complete lie.
Then, just like when you are talking with a friend over dinner, one subject leads to the next. So I wrote about Bria Myles and other video girls, for example, just because I love how they look. But that leads me to write a post on video vixens, which in turn takes me into stereotypes and then, the other day, on to “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs”. And so on. And there are sideroads along the way too, like male gaze, anorexia, Sarah Baartman and Jim Crow.
And just like when your friend says something it can lead you onto something else, so a comment or an email sometimes takes on a life of its own and becomes a post. Like this one, which is a reply to an email. Or “Black women are beautiful”, which grew out of a comment someone made on the post “race and beauty”.
I used to get ideas from the search words that brought people to my blog, but that is almost completely mined out by now. It is how I came up with “thick black women” and “Alpha Kappa Alpha”. People were hitting my blog looking for those things, so I was happy to write about them.
When I think of an idea, I try to write it down so I do not forget. Like “Black Barbie dolls” or “Amy Winehouse”. I look at my list when I cannot think of anything to write about.
Sometimes it comes from what I am reading. Like right now I am reading Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father”, so there will be posts coming out of that soon.
For a while I was trying to put up one post a week on science and one on something in the news. Lately I have got away from that because I have been drawn into the whole stereotype thing. My interest can snowball like that. I go with it because I know I will write better and find out way more when I am hot for it. Even those blog experts agree that passion is what counts most.
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That’s right: we are the master of our
own ships.
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I love your blog. I want to write my fav blog top 10 posts but I am afraid I will offend some bloggers.YOu would most def be in that top 10.
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