How Do I Write a Blog On SustainLane?

We want to know what you think. About anything. No parameters - you can write about whatever you want? Like the sound of that? Get blogging. Check out this FAQ if you want more tips and tricks:

Content abridged from alistapart.com/articles/writebetter

The Rules

There are, in fact, rules—even online. Rules are not restrictions... Grammar, spelling, punctuation, rhythm, focus, syntax, and structure aren’t especially romantic terms, until you get to know them. Writers want to make sense.

Declarative sentences are good. Web readers demand pith.

Bold statements are dangerous, but they won’t kill you...

First–person point of view is not the only point of view. I should be necessary, or else avoided. This is not to condemn first person, but to suggest that it needn’t be the default choice. If first-person perfectly suits your subject matter, use it. But maybe second– or third–person is more effective. Consider your options.

The advice “write only what you know” increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.

Offer Something New

...Take The Nick Hornby Challenge. In High Fidelity, the narrator is described as a professional critic. He’s good at it. Music criticism is what he does. Then he starts an independent label and produces a record made by a couple of talented, shoplifting skate punks in order to, as his girlfriend says, “put something new into the world.”

The web is a tremendous hodgepodge of media. There are sites about books, sites about music, and sites about sites. Plenty of weblogs center on consuming and critiquing other people’s work, and all this recycling and redistribution has its place—a very important place that we’ll make note of later on. But why not make something new...

Amuse Your Readers

If you want to share an anecdote or story from your life, pretend the readers weren’t there. Because they weren’t. “You had to be there” never makes a joke funny.

Anything makes a good subject, as long as you take your time and crystallize the details, tying them together and actually telling a story, rather than offering a simple list of facts. Do readers really want to know how miserable you are? Yes. But they’re going to want details, the precise odor of your room, why you haven’t showered in a week, or how exactly somebody broke your heart. One–liners won’t suffice.

At the same time, you don’t want to over–explain yourself. Understatement can be thunderous, or humorous, or heartbreaking. Or all three.

Have a sense of humor. Being a writer is funny. Don’t take yourself too seriously...

Have a thick skin. If your post gets singled out for attack by some malicious web devil, relax. You’ve gone public and you have to expect both rational and irrational criticism. People rag on Shakespeare all the time.

Read the entire article by Dennis A. Mahoney at alistapart.com/articles/writebetter