These Days, Everyone's an Expert

I conducted research on how to produce a compelling blog that attracts readers.  It did not occur to me that the answer I sought melded with the question I asked, that the advice I would receive regarding blogging would come from bloggers themselves.  Try doing the search yourself and you’ll discover that results will contain, except for a few exceptions, links to blogs.    

I've read some of the blogs on blogs.  I harbored the belief that the blogs written by bloggers influential enough to obtain precious real estate on the first page of a Google results return must possess some expert knowledge on blogging.  However, in perusing the articles, I found the bloggers relied on information which to me seems self-evident and lacking any real insight.

For example, some blogs advise writing about what you know.  This sounds like profound advice, the kind that once you hear it, you slap your forehead and exclaim, "Of course!"  However, this cliché lacks any substance or meaning.  I cannot comprehend how anyone can write anything without first having knowledge of the thing about which they write.  Now, not all writers insure the information they print can meet the vigorous standard of truthfulness; the writer may possess an incomplete understanding of his subject.  But a writer must by the mere breach of the subject possess some experience with it sufficient to impart some his wisdom on the matter, regardless of its veracity.  (Perhaps the advice should be framed as "Do your research!")  

I find that the same issues exist in the leading instructional books. On writing  Recently, I purchased some of these books on the writing craft hoping to glean some tidbits from them which might aid me in my writing, allow me to plot more effectively or to create more interesting characters.  I admit that I read one of the books I purchased quickly and without reviewing the material in detail.  I admit the other book I have not completed.  But from the material I have scanned, I failed to come across any new information that I did not already possess or that did not already occur to me.    

Granted, I studied literature in college, matriculated with a Literary Studies degree.  The Galena Park School District employed me as an English teacher whose responsibilities included teaching young impressionable minds how to write.  However, these books promised me, an amatuer writer, something they could not deliver, a deeper understanding of the craft of writing which I could utilize in my own attempts to compose professional quality pieces.    

Further, I paid the writers of these books, both in time and money, and received in kind only the disappointment of a promise unfulfulled.  I little doubt that there exists amatuer writers who read the material in these books and find new nuggets which help them in their craft.  I do not doubt that these books have merit and are useful for learning how to be a better.  

No, my chief complaint arises from the fact that these books promised to a well-defined catagory of writer, a population which includes me, certain benefits of reading their book which they failed to deliver.     In the end, I perceived the books as nothing more than pseudo-instructional manifestos about writing filled with self-aggrandizement.  An old saying comes to mind, one I heard so many people repeat to me when I made living as an educator: "If you can't do, teach."  

In the end, people relish in pretending that they know a lot about everything, including writing.  Extempory speeches quoted in quasi-intelligent ramblings based on "a book I read once" or "research I did on the internet" imbue people with undeserved importance and superiority, a valuable nuggets of thought meant to establish a dominance in the conversaton between two people.  Ultimately, such bloviating based on partial and incomplete understanding of the subject reveal foolishness of the person spouting the parade of facts whether correct or not, whether derived from reliable sources or not.    

In the end, prudence suggests that one should err on the side of saying too little, for the less said, the less likely one steps into a trap of one's own making.