Making the rounds suddenly is an exhortation to blog written in 2005 by Steve Yegge. I can’t remember where else I’ve seen it over this past week but the latest was this Michael Donaldson post. Here’s the key bit for me.
But I don’t think that’s what people really want. People want what you want, and your real voice is the one they’ll hear most clearly. Not everyone is going to think like you, but I assure you that some people think just like you do, and they’ll be interested in the things you feel most compelled to talk about.
That’s a key thing to realize about blogging: you can’t please everyone, and you won’t please everyone, so focus on making yourself happy. The rest will just happen naturally. Some people will visit your blog, and they’ll be revolted or bored by it and never return. Some people will disagree with you, but they’ll still follow your writing with a strange fascination, as if you’re a tightrope walker with a wobble in the rope. For those people, you’re playing snake-charmer, at least until you fall off the tightrope. And some people will simply love what you write, even if they never bother to say so. When they do tell you, it feels nice. That is, unless they’re obviously groupies, but I’ll talk about that more later.
The other key part comes early on and is what Donaldson cites: “Even if nobody reads them, you should write them.”