I’m told that it’s become fashionable to shut down your weblog. In fact, quitting the blogosphere may be the next big trend (right after everyone rushes over to jump in on the popularity of MySpace.com.)

There are plenty of valid reasons to quit blogging. Maintaining a weblog is a chore, and often a time sink, for everyone. Most writers have to pour their energies into day jobs, relationships, kids, writing time and pursuing a career in a very tough industry. A weblog that serves no purpose is the ultimate time-waster.

However, a popular weblog is worth the effort. If visitors find your blog interesting, they’re going to link to it, discuss your posts and draw more traffic to your site. Writers know that the more traffic they get, the more books they’re likely to sell – which paired with the free blogging services available makes blogging an effective, low-cost form of self-promotion.

Yet blogging is for everyone, and I do mean that literally. If you thought competition for publication was tough, check how many weblogs are out there. At the time I wrote this, Blogpulse, a blog-tracking service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, offered these statistics about the blogs it watches:

Total identified blogs: 28,124,606
New blogs in last 24 hours: 50,131
Blog posts indexed in last 24 hours: 807,794

We’re competing with over twenty-eight million other bloggers, and we’re all looking for the exact same thing: readers. The good news is, about fourteen million of them appear to be teenagers who are only interested in boys, or girls, or who said that terrible thing about Jamie during lunch period.

Some writers do make it work, and blog popularity sells thousands of books for them. But what if you’ve been blogging for six months, or a year, and it’s still not working? Why not just give up and dump the useless thing?

I don’t have a one-size-fits-all answer, but here are some things to try before you click on “Delete This Blog”:

1. Plan ahead: If you’ve been blogging by the seat of your pants, try planning your content better. Write your posts 24 to 48 hours before you publish them. Stockpile posts for days when you don’t have the time or inclination to write.

2. Offer features: Start writing weekly or regular blog features that appeal to your visitors. A growing group of bloggers do a weekly meme of thirteen things about themselves every Thursday and link to each other’s posts. Make the feature day work for you, too: I put up a ten links every Monday (my worst day for blogging) and an open Q&A post every Friday (my lightest day of the work week.)

3. Post daily, or as often as possible: If you post regularly, your visitors may come back. If they see the same old post hanging there for weeks or months, they probably won’t. Also, posting excuses as to why you’re not blogging is like saying the dog ate your homework. Make a schedule, and a commitment: either blog or don’t blog.

4. Mix it up: Offering a variety of content can help attract a variety of visitors. Don’t write solely about your books, your work and your struggles. Talk about the industry, time-saving ideas or gadgets, genre trends, bestseller lists, the future of publishing or anything writing-related. Try writing a series of themed posts, such as “Plotting Week” or “Six Steps to Publication.” If you’ve mostly been blogging in diary form, experiment with how you write posts. Browse other weblogs and find a topic that interests you (and remember blog courtesy and post a link back to the original source.)

5. Tell a story: You’re a writer. Your visitors are readers. Show them your stuff. Tell an anecdote from real life, or flash a piece of short fiction, or write a parody about something that drives you crazy.

6. Promote intelligently: If you have self-promoted in the past with disappointing results, be more creative with how you do the next book. Avoid the hard-selling, insincere BUY MY WONDERFUL BOOK! Or READ THIS GLOWING REVIEW! posts; they’re beyond boring. Instead, have an unusual giveaway contest, tell your readers a bit about the process of writing your novel, post an interesting snippet, or offer some book-related trivia.

7. Make your blog interactive: If you haven’t already, install or enable a blog comment feature. Yes, it’s risky, particularly if you allow anonymous comments. Yet some of the best content out here can be found in a weblog’s comments, so it’s worth a shot. If you don’t like the results, you can always disable comments later.

8. Smash the vanity mirror: As wonderful as you must be, do you think anyone wants to hear about you 24/7? Find another fascinating writer out there and interview them for your blog. Get some industry insight from a willing editor or agent. Spread the word about another writer’s great book. Discuss industry topics that affect other writers. Participate in and link to terrific discussions on other weblogs.

9. Give something back: Give away copies of your books via your weblog whenever possible. If you don’t have a book in print yet, put up links to other writers’ contests or giveaways, or give away copies of their books. Link to sites that offer beneficial freebies, such as writing articles, e-books or freeware.

10. Have fun: Relax, enjoy what you post, and make your blog a fun place for you. If you’re having a good time, your visitors will feel the same way when they stop in to read.

For those who are still feeling down in the dumps, two last resort ideas: 1) change your blog template, or 2) create a brand-new weblog somewhere else (with a link to it from the old one.) Starting over with a fresh look or at a new place can jumpstart your creativity, and you may end up with the blog that everyone wants to read.

Related posts:

1. Blogging Tips for Writers

I’m reading a romance novel. The heroine pops in to say Hi and give me some back story. There’s a calamity of some sort, which is the cue for the hero to enter. Here he comes, strutting down the chapter runway. He’s big-gorgeous, or dark-gorgeous, or rugged-gorgeous. Then the hero opens his mouth and says:

Forgive me for having a penis.

Okay, he doesn’t say that. He says and/or does something nice and PC, to facilitate bonding. Something the author thought was sweet. Something no man alive would say or do during such a calamity unless you were holding a .44 pressed against his head. Or someplace further south. Something like:

“I’m so sorry, Miss,” said Luke as he stepped out of the Corvette and knelt to pick up Bethany’s crushed groceries. He gazed up at her. “I didn’t see you, so please let me pay for everything I’ve ruined. Were these Shitake mushrooms? I should have gotten some for the stir-fry I’m making tonight.” He gave her a gentle smile. “Do you like Japanese?”

This doesn’t stop here. Throughout the book, the minute this guy opens his mouth or does something, he’s wrong. He sounds exactly like the heroine, or her mother, sister, aunt, or best girlfriend. That’s because our hero is a girl in a man suit.

No offense to any lesbians reading this, but I’m hetero, and two ladies don’t do it for me. I like man/woman romances. It actually doesn’t matter to me what the man looks like; tall, dark, short, blond, white, black, alpha, omega, whatever, I’m there. I like men, period. I also like men to sound and behave like men. Which they can’t do if they’re only wearing a man suit.

As writers, we women need to be aware of the differences between the genders, and get them on the page. Men and women are biologically programmed to look, act and speak differently, and that’s made our species successful. This is not something to mourn or homogenize; I think we should celebrate our differences.

This is how I’d write the fender bender scene: “You okay?” Luke said as he got out and looked at Bethany. He reached down to grab a crushed bag and saw the Corvette’s dented bumper. “Oh, great.”

Having your hero swagger around, adjust his package and swear in every other sentence won’t solve the problem of a girl in a man suit. True, some men are loud, aggressive, and blunt, but others are quiet, soft-spoken, and sensitive. There are all sorts of men in between, too. I live with a strong, silent type guy. While he is quiet and has yet to swagger, everything about him is undeniably masculine.

If you’re not sure how you’re depicting character gender, try this exercise: remove all the names, dialogue tags and gender giveaway words from a scene with the hero and heroine (for best results, don’t use a love scene.)

First, read the dialogue out loud. Can you hear the gender difference between the two characters, or do they sound like twins? Now, look at your action in the scene. Can you tell their gender from their physical behavior? If you’re not sure, do this exercise with another person and ask them to identify the genders of the characters.

If you find your heroes are sheroes, then you need to do some research into writing more realistic male characters. My advice is to go to the source:

1. Hang out with some real live men. Note their body language, speech, and mannerisms. Observe how their behavior changes, and what triggers those shifts.

2. Talk to men. If you want to know what men would say, do or feel in any given situation, ask one.

3. Go to places where men congregate, and watch them in action. Listen to how they talk and act with each other as opposed to women.

4. Ask a man to critique your work. It’s tough to find guys willing to read romance, but men are great at spotting and flagging sheroes.

More Research Sources:

Doreen Kimura’s Biological Constraints on Parity Between the Sexes and Sex Differences in the Brain

Judy Siennicki Gender Differences in Nonverbal Communication

Hara Estroff Marano’s The New Sex Scorecard

Laura Pope’s editorial Gender Differences Make Life Interesting

Edith Weiner & Arnold Brown’s What’s the Difference?

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