Blog Commenting and Criticism: A Guide

It is easy to criticize a blog.  It is best to do so inside your own damned head.

Comment all you want, assuming you can figure out how to do it without selling your virtual soul to Google (I haven't, figured it out, that is).  Praise is always good and questions show you are thinking about the substance, if any, of a particular post.  Many blogs ask questions, some over and over, and you should feel free to answer.  Unless the question is something like "Huh?"

Don't bring up extraneous issues, like facts or pronouncements of FOX News.  Such items will confuse the blogger and make the next post seem completely opaque or like one from last month.

Many readers criticize a blogger because they envy the blogger's writing skill and, rarely, philosophical agility.  But mostly, they are really jealous of the blogger's courage to express the shallowest and meanest of thoughts for dozens to read.  Such critics are probably only able to occasionally express their own rude snappishness at the living room LCD when Serena makes yet another bad boyfriend choice on "Gossip Girl" (she drives me... viewers nuts with that stuff).

At heart, Bloggers don't like criticism all that much and know where you live and what car you keep in your parking space or garage, especially if it is always there, like a Toyota, maybe.  On the other hand, most bloggers no long have recognizable physical forms and only exist in that layer of the Cloud known as the Blogosphere.  Or an unnamed Caribbean Island.  So maybe, you are pretty safe after all.

Still, do not openly criticize bloggers in comments unless your corporate-free-speaking employer orders you to.  Criticism might have a chilling effect on the diversity of opinions that is (or are, in England) the key element of the Blogosphere.   No two bloggers have the same opinions or read the same British tabloid.  Moreover, each blogger has his, her or its own stylistic choices, focusing, naturally, on commas and parenthetical asides. 

And, if you try it for a couple weeks, you 'll find blogging is not as easy or rewarding as it looked.  After slaving for an hour on your occasionally daily post, you'd expect to get the best table at the nearby Red Lobster, but there really isn't one.  That pile of nano-dollars you earn when your sisters click on Google Adsense ads, in which they have no earthly interest, won't quite buy you a bread stick at Olive Garden.  Celebrities you selflessly promote remain aloof.  Does Oprah so much as call?  Do you get even a brief text "hi' from any tub-hawking. bare-kneed starlet you might have mentioned a couple times?

So, comment, sure.  Even be anonymous, if you want.  Go right ahead.  But, whatever you do, don't expect a civil answer.

The Blog in the Forest

If you posted a Blog on a avatar of a tree in a virtual forest and no one reads it, is it a blog at all?

Well, it is now.

Those of you have visited before--you don't have to raise your hands; I think I know you all pretty well--you will note that this blog site is kind of mucked up with commercialism.

Sorry about that.

Life is no day at the beach.  But the Haitians already knew that. The truth is, it's hard to make any money as a writer who does not have a current novel to sell or does have a screenplay about eggs that are neither robots nor primed to explode after the opening credits.

My mother had always wanted me to be a surgeon/columnist.  But I hated the idea of putting my opinions in writing less I decide to run for President and I literally could not pith a frog in high school bio.  My middle school aptitude tests told my guidance counselor that I was best suited for farming potatoes and, after shipping most of the spuds during a blight to England, swapping sacks of them for babies in the dead of night, all the while operating from a Gypsy caravan.  Maybe, the Irish-Romanian heritage thing trumped my uncanny skill with long division and isosceles triangles.

So, I had to pursue other work, with screenplays and/or fiction getting some limited attention.

Along comes Blogging and those maternal dreams may be partially fulfilled.  At least, it is fun.  Of course, the gods who oversee jobs and executive compensation do not figure that doing something you like is acceptable homage to them.

I guess Google operates in a cloud above those gods.  Google's Blogger told me I could "monetize" my blog.  That sounded really good since I am not monetizing anything else at the moment and Christmas is taken.

So, Google was nice enough to place some ads on my Empty Glass Full blog site.  If enough people click on the ads, I get about 30 cents a month in nano-dollars.  Hey, more than I had coming in.

Then there was Amazon.com.  Great place.  I use it all the time and their Kindle operation was the first place to offer ebook versions of my, uh, twentieth century novels.  So very yesterday, I know, but I appreciate their willingness anyway. When Blogger offered to monetize my site further via an Amazon associates program, I figured, Wow, maybe, 60 cents a month.  And I may get to share my page with Taylor Swift.

So there it is, off to the side, but real obvious and... colorful.  Amazon access through my blog site.  Pretty cool and very convenient.  It ain't pretty, but making money usually isn't, unless you're, say, Megan Fox.