No, I'm not stalling!
It's just tough to do segments like Ask Me Anything or Mike's Mailbag when nobody's asked or e-mailed me anything. Furthermore, it's tough for people to ask or e-mail me anything when I haven't posted my e-mail address. Whoops! It's marchandchronicles -at- yahoo.com.I feel strange writing for an audience that hasn't yet arrived. At times I'm completely impatient and petulant. A while back I e-mailed Hugh Hewitt to fact-check him for what I'm sure was the 19,837th time about a rather insignificant detail in one of his posts and he replied. This impressed me; he must receive thousands of e-mails on a normal day, and on this day he must have slogged through 19,836 other e-mails that basically said "Hey, you were wrong about this rather insignificant detail in one of your posts," and yet he took the time to personally admit the mistake, thank me for reading and wish me luck with this blog that you're reading right now. But when I wrote what I feel was both a generous and thoughtful review of his book Blog and e-mailed him the link and he neither linked me on his site nor responded with a reply, I was upset. I thought about e-mailing him again to say "Hey, why aren't you linking me?" but thankfully didn't.
If you are reading, Hugh, I apologize for even thinking it. He's a giant in this field, and I'm a gnat. He links to people who've been at this for months or years; I'd been blogging seriously for, at the time, less than 48 hours. It was rude and selfish of me to even entertain the notion that he owed me a share of his readership and my big break just because I, though I was completely honest in my review, was still attempting to suck up to him. He doesn't owe me diddly squat.
Therein lies the problem: I want to get noticed. To be noticed I have to get good. To get good I have to practice, and that means repetition, even when nobody's looking. Especially when nobody's looking.
Most of my life I've been at war with patience and self-discipline. I'll need both if I ever want to gain readers.
Of course, some positive reinforcement wouldn't hurt. Or constructive criticism. I'll even take non-constructive criticism; right now I'm not picky. I promise I'll write back. I might even link to you in a future Ask Me Anything or Mike's Mailbag.
posted by Marsh @ 4:08 AM
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