Merlin Mann breaks a personal rule and lists some elements he sees as indicitive of a good blog. I’ll admit, I don’t put enough energy into Thinking Out Loud to make it a good blog, but hopefully it at least has some kind of voice and communicates some of my obsessions.
I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more. … Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s.
That’s a mash of two of his point, but I see them pointing to one important (and really hard to do) thing: be creative. This is especially hard when you put on your public face and try to be semi-professional, but it’s a good reminder. It’s too easy to be lazy or casual with a blog, but when you consider how lucky we are to be able to publish so easily (compared to, say, a colonial newspaper), we owe it to ourselves to blog with at least a little panache.
The one thing I’ve always wondered is: do we have to do it each day?