Anatomy Of a Blog Post

You know, my readers always ask me, “Mongo, where do you get your ideas for your posts?” I tell them, “Who are you and what blog are you reading?” Ok, so no one ever asks me where my I get my ideas. Those four people lead busy lives and I’m sure this blog is just a distraction while they’re waiting for real web sites to load.

Oh, but in my mind… Yes, in Mongo’s world, my blog is visited more than Huffington Post or TMZ or Stephen King’s “King of Pop” column in Entertainment Weekly. Those other, fluff sites, use me for points of reference and…and…and…not buying it, huh? What? Even in my own fantasy world, I can’t get respect? Fine. Well, whether you want to know or not, I’m telling you anyway.

In all actuality, the title is the hardest part. I can bullshit about anything at length and have been told by my wife that I go to Erie to tell a story. But encapsulating the entire message in one phrase or choice of words is so daunting that I’ve pre scripted a bunch of titles to which I will eventually write posts on in the future. That’s why I sometimes have future post titles lingering out there for weeks. Well, that and I just don’t have the free time to write like I’d want. I mean if I did this as a full time venture, I certainly wouldn’t be all over the place with topics. No, I try to cover every single thought in the world under the sun and in the damp, dark, recesses of my mind. Believe me folks, there are some places you don’t want to visit.

As you can tell, I’m certainly no marketing genius. If I was, I’d focus on one theme and dedicate an entire blog just to that topic. Using articles that would help people in that vein I would keyword my titles and posts with specific words that world drive traffic here from search engines the world over. But I don’t. Nope, I just write what I’m thinking and sometimes a simple conversation with a friend over last night’s episode of LOST can generate a blog post. I write for me and my four readers and I never ask them what they want to read about. They’re still waiting to see if Izzy and George are leaving Grey’s or whether or not a scrapbooking room is worth redoing a hell of a lot of drywall. It’s not like I see a lot of traffic either. I think by my last count, I get maybe 17 visits a day…most of which are me fixing a mistake or posting or checking the hit count. After all, I haven’t generated a cent off this blog even with the obligatory Adsense ads all over the damn place, a search bar at the top screaming “GOOGLE ME G”DAMNIT!” and a various links to products I represent. So, it makes you wonder “Does he write posts to try and generate traffic, or does he try to generate traffic and have posts as filler?” I’ll never tell. Actually, I will.

Most of the time, as I said, I come up with titles well in advance. I feel like I’m being clever with a title and just hope I can figure a way to have the tail wag the dog into a post. I’m just waiting for the opportunity to throw up, Qatar Hero. However, sometimes titles just hit me at a moment’s notice, like Chris Webber, You Owe Me 80 Bucks. The topic of that one happened over 10 years ago but I recalled the events during 2008’s March Madness.

Perhaps, it’s seasonal one like a tire story in the winter or Election Night of the Living Dead.

Although, on occasion I do get all torqued up on caffeine or carbohydrates and just go completely nuts like iRenaissance or From the path of truth, John Hughes hath led me astray. Ok, that last one is a double dip as I just included it on my “clip show” post last entry. I just liked the sound of the title and it was fun to write. I am a child of the 80’s and tend to dip into that Terence Trent D’Arby wishing well often for inspiration.

Mostly, titles are puns or wordplay as I often fond of using. There was one post, which had to be removed for personal reasons, called Modis, Opera, and I was a play on the word modus operandi. Another one called LunchBox 360, was a childhood tale of video game nostalgia while waiting for the school lunch period to end. In either case, I took a familiar term and changed the meaning or spelling of the actual word or something close to a topic you would know, say XboX 360.

Now, there are times when I’m just in the mood to create a Top X list in the spirit of Nick Hornsby on the topic of movies, or television, or music. Still, no matter what the topic, I try to pepper in some pop culture references. Nothing too obvious or hammer over the head, in your face, kind of references, but the stuff of pure pop that only true observers would recognize. As much as I admire Diablo Cody for being a student in the art, and I can’t even really bash her for her style. She’s got an Oscar, ya know? Sometimes I feel like she’s reaching for a reference or trying to create a situation that doesn’t call for it. I consider these attempts The Family Guy approach. While, I love that show, it’s gimmick is that it tells a 15 minute story with an hour’s worth of plot broken up with a “just like the time I…” cut to a shot of something from a popular book/movie/show/etc. The same thing with Cody, she’ll go on about a particularly acerbic topic and point to a pop cult reference where it’s not needed. It’s like mixing up a metaphor and a simile.

I will say that one of my favorite topics to discuss is me. Yes, I am that egomaniacal. No, I mean I write from my experiences growing up these last 30 odd years, moving from school to a career, single to married, and man child to Father. Sometimes, the best stuff comes from experience and I’m exploiting the hell out of my daughter’s childhood for material. It fills the gaps while I try and remember what happened to me one time at band camp. They always say, “Write what you know.” Well, I don’t know everything about a little, but after 140 some posts I think I’ve managed to cover a hell of a lot of ground in a short time.

Ok, we’ve covered titles and topics. Let’s talk structure. I am ashamedly a poor student in grammar. Since the invention of the Internet, the written language has undoubtedly suffered at the hands of emoticons, spell check, and 1337 speak. "Teh", "Meh", and "OMG" have become commonplace and people are becoming more tolerant if not guilty of using it. At least half of my readers are real sticklers for grammar and I can only hope they look at substance over style. I wish I would have taken more writing classes in my quest for a degree. The main reason I started to blog was to try and keep what little grasp I had on the English language. Ultimately, I point the George Cukor finger at shame with one hand and type long run on sentences and paragraphs with little regard to punctuation or details. In essence, I’ve opened up a new post and my skull and just spilled everything out and hit published. Then, I go back, fix the spelling, images, and spacing. In Mongo land there is no measure twice cut once. It’s all on the fly, baby. It takes me back to my college days when I would get a writing assignment. I would throw a bunch of ideas all up in the air and hold onto them. Then, the night before the paper was due, I stop spinning the plates, letting everything crash onto the page. After a couple of hours, I’d print it and turn it in on my way to class. There was no outline, rough draft, final draft, finished paper. There was assignment, and turned in piece of work. Nine times out of ten, I’d ace the topic or class just on my own storytelling merit.

That’s where the fun lies, in storytelling. As all four readers echo as a Greek Chorus, “I love a good story.” So, I guess if you want a definitive reason for why do I write this blog, it’s that I love to tell a good story as much I love to hear one. The art of storytelling is severely underrated and under appreciated. Before the Internet, and before the written word, people used to communicate all of the history and drama orally. Someone was responsible for remembering a specific topic, much like the characters of Fahrenheit 451. If I had the time and technology at my disposal, I’d probably run a video blog reciting my posts with different inflections of voice and characterizations to add to the effect as if I were Patrick Stewart retelling A Christmas Carol while portraying all the parts. But if I can’t do that, I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll take a topic, spin it around a few times with its head on the handle of a baseball bat and then let it loose on the page. Far off in the distance is the point or the end and along the way the tale tends to lean one way, then the other, and eventually, after falling down on a tangent a few times, it makes its way to a conclusion. Much like this one.