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Comment by settsu | Hacker News Reader

But at what point does it become no longer "blog" and just generic "content"?

Personally, I'd strongly insist that the whole point of blogs was to do whatever the fuck you want.

Because that was the point when they emerged: they democratized publishing the way the internet democratized the share and spread of information on a worldwide scale.

For better *AND* (you better believe) worse.

Now, if you're concerned about reach, engagement, monetization, etc., well that's a related but absolutely distinct discussion.

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This doesn't have to be about making your writing more generic. Both Mark Twain and George Orwell wrote about the need to be concise when writing, and you'd be hard-pressed to describe either of them as generic.

For me, I write a blog because I want to communicate what I'm thinking to other people. If I didn't, I'd just write a journal and keep it next to my bed. Therefore the effectiveness (and affectiveness) of that communication is important to me. In my experience, doing that well means being concise, having a clear structure, and a lot of the other pieces of advice in this post.

The primary goal of any aspiring writer on any medium should first and foremost be to write.

Recommending certain guidelines or approaches is certainly fine. Self-reflection and self-improvement is usually an admirable goal but not at the cost of just doing the damn thing.

And, frankly, invoking seasoned professional authors is just silly when the topic is amateur blogging.

And let's not pretend unwarranted criticism—or even just unnecessary expectations—so often just ends up being unhelpful and literally counterproductive or, much worse, a form of gatekeeping.

> invoking seasoned professional authors is just silly when the topic is amateur blogging

It's all communication. Obviously there is nothing wrong with someone blogging haphazardly, just as there is nothing wrong with writing a web app in Brainfuck.

The best way to practice writing is to write, but that doesn't mean that the writing is the goal. I write to communicate, and if you haven't understood what I've written, then I've not met my goal. That's true even if it was still very good practice to write out those words.

I agree with you that unwarranted criticism is unhelpful, and I agree that in blogging, we shouldn't hold others to higher standards than they wish to be held. If you've found a form of writing that brings you joy, then carry on and enjoy it.

But at least for myself, I want to keep on improving in my writing. That's why I (aspirationally) try and learn from great writers like Orwell and Twain, and why I find advice like this useful. I know I'm never going to do this professionally, and I'm quite happy to enjoy writing as a thing for me and me alone, but part of that enjoyment will always be pushing myself to write better.

It sounds like you're making the kind of choices that will undoubtedly hone your writing, and for that I sincerely commend you. (This is certainly an area I could improve in myself.)

A concern I have would be that someone is too eagerly trying to employ a formula that they perceive—or have been told—exists and never develop their own style. Never experimenting or trying new things. Then conclude that they aren't not a good writer and have failed, when they simply never found their own voice, which then sparked something in them and others.

Some of the most notable bloggers I can think of that I have repeatedly come back and read time and again—even ones whose writing style I don't particularly care for but whose views I find compelling and a unique contribution to a given topic of conversation—each of them notably has a very particular, distinctive, and typically consistent voice that they blog in.

I'd say that the first and foremost goal of a writer is to communicate. Writing is the medium chosen to do that.

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