Blogging Is the Karaoke of Writing
Hey! I like karaoke!
I walked into a resort club one hot, steamy Saturday evening in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. I had my family with me, including my then-one-year-old son. I could tell from up the sidewalk that we were not in for a quiet, relaxing evening.
The sounds emanating from that club were both loud and somewhat screechy. It was karaoke night, and the crowd was eating it up.
The thing about karaoke is, you can have fun and entertain other people even if you aren’t particularly talented at singing. The other thing about karaoke is, if you are talented, it can be a great way to build your confidence for a possible swing at a more sustained pathway in life.
I can’t sing well to save my life. As much as I like to think I sound like Don Henley, my wife is reliably there to remind me that my day job is in no serious jeopardy. I still sing in the car, the shower, and in hotel bars when the mood strikes, and no one boos me. In fact, weirdly, the worse I am, the more people seem to enjoy it.
Which brings me to blogging
I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a regular blogger who doesn’t dream of someday publishing a book. A quick online scan of such platforms reveals a staggering amount of content on how to generate content, query agents, get traditionally published, self-publish, or why you should call yourself an indy author as opposed to a self-published one.
My feed is just throttled with little else.
And I have to hand it to partner programs on such platforms. You pay your membership dues, post content, and hope enough people engage it to at least reimburse you for the membership dues you paid.
And there’s always the dream that you’ll eventually throw something up that just catches fire and really pushes you out there.
I’ve mostly found that blogging is either people trying to parlay it into something bigger, or people just online journaling to get their frustrations out.
You know, kind of like how karaoke is either people substituting that experience for a dream of making it big in the music business that will likely never happen. Or just people getting drunk and acting out to the merriment of their audience.
Karaoke rarely ever leads to fame and fortune, but I’m sure it has in isolated situations. Of course, TV network executives oh, 20 years ago or so, started making a killing off the concept with shows like American Idol and The Voice.
Likewise, writing short-form thoughts, prayers, and emotions online has rarely ever led to fame and fortune, but we all know who the exceptions to that are, don’t we?
Enough people succeed just enough to keep the rest of us going. Maybe enough of your work has gone “viral” to encourage you to keep swinging for the fence.
And don’t stop blogging. At best, you’ll hit the motherlode with something that really resonates with a wide audience, and who knows where that takes you? At worst, you’ll pay your five bucks a month and indulge your hobby with no harm and no foul to humanity.
I’m aiming for somewhere between the two. I highly doubt I’ll ever be rich or famous from puking words out on my computer screen, but I hope to at least make a person or two think here and there. I know this much — I’ll never be bored!
Frank Vaughn is a regional Emmy- and Associated Press Media Editors Award-winning journalist from Little Rock, Ark. He is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas with a degree in Speech Communication, and the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Md., with an emphasis in journalism and media relations.
