AUTHORITY BLOGGER? COME ON, MAN

Am I an authority blogger because I say so?

An Alpha Male on my own recognizance?

In ordinary online discourse, yes.

So why don’t I make my claim?

I mean, shouldn’t I?

I’ve got a few thoughts.

As an authority blogger in the current milieu, my terroir doesn’t include spreading shit-talk.

Or buying readers, buying award badges, or assigning blame for my failure as a writer, a blogger.

I’m good with doing what I’m doing and reaching readers who want more than another blowhard spewing twisted facts and stats.

It’s not for everyone.

After all, it’s been said writers come in two varieties, those who do it and those who dream of doing it when they find the time.

We’re still talking writing.

If you’re doing it, keep doing it. As if you need to be gassed up. You’re going to keep writing no matter what.

I know that, you know that.

But then there’s the aspiring writer, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

They’ve been aspiring since tenth grade and when they finds the time to write, look out world.

They take classes, attend conferences, and secretly believe they’re not good enough.

So they take more writing classes, travel to more writing conferences. But the feeling lingers decade after decade.

Not good enough to write a blog, a poem, a short story, a novel, a screenplay, or a non-fiction book.

Still, those aspirations won’t go away.

They want to Be Somebody while harboring bitterness behind their sweet facade of hurt feelings.

Why? Because they need more than their effort gives them.

They need an insider, a family friend in the business, a partner who pays the bills for their daily dalliance.

Maybe you know someone and want to help them?

Do they want your help? You?

 

Where To Start? Authority Bloggs Says What?

I met a young woman walking a dog in Culver City.

It wasn’t her dog.

“I’m a professional dog walker,” she said.

At the next writing conference I attended she was billed as a ‘Hollywood Insider’ dishing the dirt.

It wasn’t dog dirt.

An instructor for a writing group said her experience in EST was more important than attending the Iowa Writers Workshop, if I remember right.

She said her daily warm-up writing was gaining more traction than her serious writing.

Everything was more than enough proof of good things happening if you keep going.

One of my favorites:

A writing student went to a museum opening before class where everyone would read a page of their story.

He drank museum opening wine in tiny cups and nibbled on cheese, then off to class.

He read his story while a woman in back clipped her nails.

Maybe it was the wine, but he said it was the loudest clipping he’d ever heard, like someone chiseling rock.

Afterward he asked the professor about the clipping.

“The clipping bothered you? But you stuck with it and that’s all that matters.”

So reading through distractions is good, and if that’s good, so is writing through distractions.

 

Don’t Question My Authority Blogger Authority

I could create a list of bogus awards and recognitions like a valor stealing paper shuffling REMF from the Vietnam Era.

Or I could inflate my readership numbers and who would know?

All I’d need to do is slip into my Writer’s Cape and start making stuff up. It’s a very popular pastime, you know.

As an authority blogger with respect for my reader, it’s never going to happen.

Never?

Unless someone makes me an offer I can’t refuse I’m not changing anything from my clean, well-lit, place.

Neither should you.

Until then, get to know your roots.

Dig in until something grabs you and won’t let go, then dig some more.

 

I’ve done the digging, and I see others digging. Hey Barry.

We don’t always know how much others are doing.

Like listening to a song on the radio where we never hear the practice tracks, we’ll never know what writers go through to produce their work in the end.

The Eagles Don Henley said this about a song, “Four minutes long and twenty years in the making.”

Watch little Don working his kit.

That’s the sort of authority I’m talking about. Driven.

Driven to know the truth about things, people, and places.

Your truth, not some bullshit excuse of a truth you heard on TV.