Writing is hard (a resolution)

Just read this column in the WSJ. I was not surprised at this:

"The latest word from Dave Sifry, CEO of the blog search engine Technorati, is that there are some 28.4 million blogs and the blogosphere is doubling in size every 5.5 months. Eye-popping figures like that have been thrown around a lot recently, but folks making revolutionary claims about blogging won't like other Technorati numbers: Less than half of those blogs are still getting posts three months after their creation, and less than 10% -- just 2.7 million -- are updated at least weekly. That means of Technorati's blogs, more than 90% are either abandoned or updated too rarely to merit the name -- nothing kills reader interest or visits more quickly and thoroughly than a stale blog."

This makes sense. The column author goes on to write that:

When my friend Greg Prince and I started our baseball blog, Fear and Faith in Flushing, our moods used to soar and crash based on the "referrer summary" of sites that had linked to us. After a while, we noticed something odd: Our traffic kept increasing, even as our referrers held steady or decreased. Then we realized this was a good thing: Readers were coming directly to us instead of through intermediaries.

(you should click through the link above-- both of the writers on the site are professionals engaged in a labor of love-- it is something to see, especially Greg's prolific writing)

But the takeaway for me was to not quit-- as easy as it is. No comments, few readers to date is depressing. I'm against blogwhoring, but I should probably do it. But I started doing this for me-- to improve my writing and learn about writing on deadline. That has been useful, and I shouldn't give up on it.