Facebook read receipt is stressing me out.  While it’s a great way for group owners to track who is really participating in a group and who isn’t even clicking over to read, for group participants, it adds a new layer of immediacy to every level of communication from leaving a comment to getting your bum over to the site to read everyone else’s thoughts in a respectable amount of time.

In the past, when a message came into my email inbox or news feed from one of the dozens of Facebook groups that I participate in, I would either click over and read only if I was semi-busy (coming back to comment later), or not read until later in the day when I knew I could give it my full attention and respond.  No one knew if I read it and then set it aside to comment on later, or if I hadn’t seen it at all.  And it made me feel unrushed.

But now the message comes into my inbox and this inner monologue begins:

Crap.  Another Facebook group message.  If I don’t click over now, I’ll be the 28th out of 28 people to see it, as I always seem to be.  How do other people read Facebook in real time?  Why am I the only person who can’t seem to get a hang of time-sensitive social media?  I bet everyone calls me Twenty-eight behind my back in that group.  How am I always last even if I only wait an hour?

Fine.  I’ll click over.  Great, I’m finally 7 out of 28.  Fantastic.  No one can call me Twenty-eight today.  Crap.  Now everyone knows that I read it.  But I don’t know what I want to say.  If I don’t say anything, I’ll seem cruel that I read this post and didn’t comment.  I mean, if I hadn’t read it yet, that would be the reason why I hadn’t written anything.  But now everyone knows I read it.

I need to get work done.  If I hang out here commenting, I’m not going to hit my work deadline.  So I’m either a dick to my workplace or I’m a dick to the people in this group.  Thanks, Facebook, for making me into a dick.

Gah, fine, I’ll just answer now.  I’ll just type up the first thing that comes to mind rather than giving this thoughtful consideration just so I can get it off my plate.  There.  Publish.  It’s up.  I can delete this stupid message and move on.  I hate being in Facebook groups.  I should just drop out of all Facebook groups because I don’t have the time to dedicate to them without apparently looking like an ass.  Shit.  Did I just get another message?  You have to be kidding me.  There’s now another message on the site?  I give up.

But I can’t give up because people will see that I JUST commented on the other message so I’m obviously online.  And now if I don’t click over for this one, people will think that…

What if blogs started logging every single person who read their post?  So the author would know exactly who was reading posts several days later or not reading them at all (or reading and not commenting)?  What if every email came with read-receipt, and you knew without a doubt what time the message was opened?  What if Twitter started telling you exactly which of your followers actually read each Tweet.  Metrics would be great for knowing who is paying attention, but can you imagine the performance anxiety on the part of the reader?

Of course, I may be wrong.  People may not judge others at all for reading their Facebook post without answering a question.  People may not care if the same person never sees their Tweets.

But I doubt that.

After all, what is the point of the metrics?  How many people would keep someone in a group if you knew without a doubt that they never clicked over to read?  How many people would keep following someone on Twitter who they thought was a mutual supporter if they received a message in black-and-white that the person never reads their Tweets?  How many people would get pissed waiting for an answer to a time-sensitive email if they knew the email had been read hours earlier?

I do get cranky when I send out an Evite and can clearly see that people opened the invitation yet never bother to RSVP.  So, no thank you, Facebook.  I’d rather not be able to track who exactly has read a posting.  Mostly because I don’t want to be tracked myself and the pressure that brings to act in the “now” instead of acting when I can give something my full attention on my time schedule.

What do you think of Facebook read receipt?  Or did you not realize this has been happening for the last few weeks because you haven’t checked in with a group to see it?

Cross-posted with BlogHer

Penelope Trunk made big buzz a week or two ago when she wrote that even though she had gotten a book deal with a traditional publisher, she had opted to self-publish.  While I have a feeling the blog post she published is only part of the story since some of the facts just don’t add up and others are embellished, the question the post raises is a valid one: should more people self-publish?

I want to start out this talk by stating that while I opted for the traditional publishing route, I think self-publishing can be a very good option and there are certain people I would encourage (including my future self if the situation arose!) to go down this route if the second choice was to have the book languish in a desk drawer.  I think as long as you go into self-publishing with your eyes wide-open and an understanding of how it differs from traditional publishing, you can do very well for yourself.  And I also want to state here since I don’t want it misunderstood that while traditional publishing and self-publishing differs, I am not saying that one is better than the other.  They are two very very different processes that have very little in common, so I think it’s technically literary apples and oranges.  But I like apples and I like oranges; neither fruit trumps the other one.

So let’s dive into this.

Traditional Publishing and Self-Publishing is Apples and Oranges

Wait… let’s back up for a second.  What do I mean that they’re apple and oranges?  Unless you hire a team to edit, design, and market your book (and even if you hire a team to do so — I’m sorry to be blunt but quality and expertise matter), self-publishing your book is the equivalent of going down to Kinkos and xeroxing your manuscript, putting a glossy cover on it, and then waiting for people to buy it.  It looks like a book so we call it a book, but there is a reason why it takes a year or longer to get a book from manuscript to bookcase with a traditional publisher, and it’s not because they’re inefficient.

There are a lot of pieces that go into creating a book that will move copies, and that is what you are getting with traditional publishing: a team of people who know how to structure a story or frame an idea into a way that people will want to consume it.  They know how to design a cover that will entice people to pick it up as they walk by it on the table or see it online.  They know how to build buzz and get the book into influential people’s hands at the right time.  They know how to price things, and when to move the price, and how to deal with bookstores.  Do all publishers do their job as well as others?  Well… no.  There is a reason why some publishers are very successful and others are not.

Now, is that finished product better than the self-published book?  Maybe yes or maybe no.  It may have lost a lot of its rough charm in being polished up, stretched and molded by the traditional publisher.  So again, we are not talking about better or worse, but we are talking different.  And that is why bookstores will rarely carry self-published books.  They want work that has been vetted, that has gone through a process where they know the product will sell.  They may miss out on great books by going that route, but they have to go that route in order to ensure the quality of what they have on their shelves.  And there are too many decently-written-but-needs-a-good-edit self-published books out there mixed in with the gems that I am so glad have been self-published because if they hadn’t, they may have never seen the light of day because no one would take a chance on it in the traditional publishing world.

Publishers Make an Investment on Your Creativity or Intellect

The reality is that when a publisher takes on your book, they are making an investment in your creativity or intellect.  That is all a publisher is — an investor in the creative.  They coddle their investment and make sure it will pay off, but it is less about the writing and more about what sells.  There are fantastic books out there that no one will take on because they don’t believe they can make enough money off of it to make it worth their time.  And that’s why I’m glad self-publishing exists — because it fills the gap so seemingly unmarketable books don’t fall into the oblivion of a desk drawer.  But a lot of times, when an agent or a publisher isn’t taking on your work, it isn’t even a statement about the quality, but it is a statement on the saleability of your idea.  Yes, there are books that pop out of the mold such as 50 Shades of Grey, but those stories are few and far between.

There is a canary that you can send into the coal mine to see if self-publishing is worth it to you; if you have a chance of moving a lot of copies, and this canary is free (at least in terms of money; it will cost you a lot of time): it’s your blog.  Your blog is a good indicator of how well you’ll do with self-publishing because even with traditional publishing, it’s part of your platform.  It’s part of what you will use to sell books.

If you have substantial, on-going traffic, that blog may have enough kindling to start a purchasing fire.  How many page views or unique visitors is enough to deem your traffic substantial?  Who the hell knows — but let’s work with the idea that under 1% of your readership will pay to read something you wrote.  If you have 100 daily readers, you have sold one book.  If you have 1000 daily readers, you have sold ten copies.  10,000 daily readers and you’re up to 100 copies.  Okay, let’s go with a more generous 5%.  That’s 5 books/50 books/500 books based on those readership levels.  Are you starting to see how hard it is to make things add up?  There is no way to know what percentage will pay since your readership isn’t constructed out of paying readers.  It’s constructed out of non-paying readers, and that is another way that this becomes apples and oranges.  What people love when they are receiving something for free is very different from what people love when they’re paying for it.  If you price your book well, you may move copies to 50% of your readership.  That’s 50 books/500 books/5,000 books based on those readership levels, and hells yeah, it would be nice to sell 5,000 copies to serve as your kindling (hopefully once those 5,000 begin to spread word with reviews and such, the book will catch fire).  But if it were truly that easy to sell 5,000 copies of a self-published book, the traditional book industry would have folded a long time ago.  And it’s still standing; which makes me wonder how many copies the average self-published book sells.

The average self-published book sells 100 – 150 copies.

And if you read that article, you’ll see that the author fronted $7,500 to get a book of quality self-published.  You certainly don’t have to spend that much to get your book self-published, but you do get what you pay for.  And you will need to invest in yourself with self-publishing as opposed to traditional publishing where the publisher invests in you.  Work out in your head how many copies you will need to sell in order to break even on your investment.

But If I Have to Help with the Marketing, Why Don’t I Just Self-Publish?

Traditional publishing houses are expecting their authors to do a lot of legwork in the marketing of a book, and some people say that if they have to do that, they might as well self-publish.  But what they miss out on is the network, marketing skills, and boost you get from the traditional publishers’ name.  People were willing to take a chance on my first fiction book not because they knew me but because they liked other books my publisher put out.  I would have never tapped into that audience without them.  They moved an extraordinary number of e-book copies — many many many more than any percentage of my daily readers.  My readership for my book turned out to be a percentage of people who read my blog, but a much larger percentage of new people who found me via my publisher or Amazon or a review site.  I am so grateful that the world of traditional publishing brought us all together.  Marketing with traditional publishing is a team effort.  Marketing with self-publishing is entirely on the author’s shoulders and whomever they hire.

Back to that Canary-in-the-Coal-Mine Blog

So why did I call your blog the canary in the coal mine?  Because here you have your product — words that are plucked and shaped according to your writing style — and you are handing it away for free.  You can judge how many people like your product, how well you’re doing at getting eyes on your product, and frankly, get a little feedback about your product before you invest any money into self-publishing.  If you have steady, substantial traffic and a strong understanding of how to tap into more traffic from time to time, you probably are in a good place to self-publish.  If you have a small but loyal following and you only want to move a small number of books, go for it.  But if you don’t have people reading your blog when it’s free, it may make sense to invest in growing that readership first before you try to create what amounts to the same product — words — and charge for it.  There are plenty of things you can do to organically build traffic, and if you have decent content and are willing to invest the time it takes to connect with people, you can increase your readership.  It’s worth the effort if you want to self-publish a book (or use a traditional publisher) since that blog will become part of your platform.  It’s time well-spent, and building those relationships is actually what your traditional publisher has done to create their own network that they use to sell your book.  Can you do networking as well as a traditional publisher?  Then you don’t need them.  But if you can’t, you may now see why traditional publishers are still very much needed.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

There are a lot of places where I disagree with Penelope Trunk on her post.  Publishing houses ARE a brand, and yes, their sites do move books.  If you need a book about sharks and there are two — one by Random House and one self-published — which are you more likely to buy?  If it were my money, I’d invest it in a book from Random House knowing the facts have been vetted vs. going with the unknown, even if the unknown got better reviews.  I don’t know the reviewers, but I do know the quality of a Random House book.  Maybe that’s just me, but I think the fact that we can all name publishing houses points to the fact that houses themselves are brands.

And then there are places where I agree with Penelope Trunk; publishers need to get good at working the online world (though they also need to remain strong with marketing to the offline world).  I went with a publisher who is exceptional at creatively marketing to the online world, and I love them to pieces because they do such a good job being flexible and trying new things.  Smaller publishers tend to be able to go with new ideas just as smaller boats can change course easier than a large boat.  There are plenty of traditional publishers who excel at online sales, and there are plenty of authors who don’t really know the first thing about marketing.  So it isn’t an either/or situation.  It’s knowing where you excel, and also admitting that something may be outside your expertise.

Where does that leave you?  With probably a lot to mull over.  I hope this lesson wasn’t discouraging but was instead illuminating so you don’t have a disappointing experience.  I think self-publishing is a great thing when people go into it with realistic goals in mind, and a very frustrating thing when you are told by people that it’s the next! great! thing! when in reality it’s an uphill trudge to school both ways.  Self-publishing is a lot of work and requires money invested in yourself upfront.  But it can also have a really great payoff in the end; and I don’t just mean a financial payoff.  The emotional payoff has to be taken into account as well.

Homework: Okay, let it rip — what are your questions about self-publishing, what are your thoughts on what I wrote above, and I’d love to hear from self-published authors to chime in on what worked for them.

This was the 16th lesson for the MFA Sunday School, a once-a-week, free, online writing workshop. MFA Sunday School posts are uploaded on Sunday mornings, though you can read them or participate any time — the comment section is always open for people to post a link to their work or ask a question. You can subscribe to blog posts via the RSS feed, or look for them under the category heading “MFA Sunday School.” If this is your first time in “class,” you may want to jump back to the first post in the series in order to understand how things work, or peruse all of the past lessons as well as a glossary of terms by reading the MFA Sunday School Glossary and Course Archives.

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere–blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form: The August list is now closed (the September list will open 8/28)
  
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. The 2 Week Wait (infertility newborn humor)
3. Our little Family (infertility, adoption)
4. Outlandish Notions (parenting, finding myself, recovering after IF)
5. The Unfair Struggle (mfi, speedskating, life)
6. Our Pathway to Parenthood (FET, infertility, hope)
7. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings (parenting, food, life)
8. Stupid Stork (ivf, infetility, shenanigans)
9. It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) (pg w donated embryos, possible IC, pg @ 46)
10. My Bum Ovaries (premature ovarian failure)
11. Somewhere In The Middle (infertility, DIA, waiting)
12. Baking & Babies (infertility, baking, PCOS)
13. Not All Dreams Are Free (ivf, miscarriage, hope)
14. Breathe Gently (IVF#2, PCOS, Infertility)
15. Nest Building 101 (family, DIY, photography)
16. Waiting For Baby (TTC #1, femara, PCOS)
17. The Diary of a Calendar Brain (australian fertility challenge)
18. Life As I Know It (twins, toddler, life)
19. Adrift on a Dandelion Breeze (stillbirth, secondary IF, IVF)
20. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, husbands and wives)
21. Wanting Just One (ivf, infertility, endo)
22. Waiting to Expand (ttc #2, infertility, miscarriage)
23. Glitter & Rainbows (infertility, life after ART, craftiness)
24. Once Upon A BFP (infertility, cycles, life)
25. what a day for a daydream (post IVF #1, 2ww)
26. A Half Baked Life (food, mindfulness, parenting after loss)
27. Follow Every Rainbow (general IF)
28. Our New Normal (TTCAL, adoption, life)
29. Getting There (adoption, life)
30. Ready For My Bundle…. (ivf, single mom by choice, life)
31. The Quest for the Golden Egg (infertility, tcm, life)
32. Quietly Southern (PCOS, miscarriage, infertility)
33. My Life in a Nutshell (pregnancy after loss, anxiously expecting, general life)
34. IUI to Roux-en-Y (pregnant after WLS)
35. Type A + Infertility = Losing My Mind (infertility, pcos, endo)
36. Tried and Trying (ivf, infertility, coping)
37. Road2ourbaby (ivf ,mfi, sarcasm)
38. The Infertility Voice (first donor egg cycle, IVF, wellness)
39. Upper Middle Mom (parenting after IVF, twins, life)
40. MRKH Musings (infertile from birth, IVF surrogacy)
41. The Elusive Second Line (RPL, miscarriage, TTC #1)
42. Emma in Mommyland (motherhood, postpartum depression, random fun)
43. Just Cycling Along (TTC #1, ivf, endo)
44. Survive and Thrive (baby after infertility)
45. A Journey of Emotions (alternative treatments, maybe IVF, life)
46. Baby on Mind (infertility, IVF, adoption?)
47. Living Our Miracle (embryo adoption, premature ovarian failure, motherhood)
48. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
49. BFP Envy (IVF 1, TCC, hopeful)
50. Search for our silver lining (unexplained, adoption, change)
51. zero guarantees (suro-twins, motherhood, fun)
52. Searching for the Missing Piece (domestic adoption, IF veteran, RPL)
53. Three Quarters Full (infertility, parenting after IF, life)
54. BFP Envy (IVF 1, TTC)
55. Holly’s Narrative Dream (secondary infertility, writing, life)
56. My Life Is About The Journey (rpl, early pregnancy, anxiety)
57. One Day At A Time (adoption, life, school)
58. If You Don’t Stand For Something (MFI, geekiness, general life ramblings)
59. Conceptionally Challenged (life, “not preventing” break, infertility)
60. My BFP Journey Through Faith (ivf, infertility, endo)
61. Musings of a Hormonal Egg Basket (parenting after IVF)
62. Tales From Our Yellow Brick Road (ivf, pgd, balanced translocation)
63. Mommy-At-Last (twins after infertility)
64. My IVF Journey (ivf, infertility, ttc)
65. The In Between (multiple miscarriages, infertility)
66. Infertility Unexplained (miscarriage, IVF, infertility)
67. Window into Our World (parenting, infertility, pcos)
68. A Blanket 2 Keep (pregnancy after IF, life)
69. From Gutter to Stars (therapist, infertility, adoption)
70. Hapa Hopes (endo, FET, life)
71. It’s My Life (ttc/fertility, dating, career)
72. Our W Life (fertility, weight, stress)
73. for all the things we hope for (endometriosis, infertility, doula-ing)
74. Return To Go (PCOS, RPL, unemployment)
75. Our Growing Gardunn (secondary rpl, 4th loss, IUI)
76. Journey with Endometriosis (high risk pregnancy, subchorionic hematoma, ivf)
77. Closet Infertile (IUI vs IVF, TTC)
78. In Due Time (life, infertility, college)
79. Daydreamy Mama (kids parenting identity)
80. I’m Just Ducky, Thanks (rpl, gestational surrogacy, fear)
81. Wistfulgirl’s World (foster care adoption, homestudy, life)
82. Things Couldn’t Be Better (donor embryo, chaos, infertility)
83. Amanda (infertility, vacant, uterus)
84. The August list is now closed (the September list will open 8/28)

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments–12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is purple, the next month it will be green, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.

I was at a nursing home this week with the kids, and I was standing alone with the ChickieNob while we waited for Josh and the Wolvog to return.  I bent down and kissed the ChickieNob’s hair while we were talking, and this woman passing by in the hallway paused to comment that the ChickieNob is such a lucky girl to have someone who loves her so much that she would kiss her head like that.

It was a very sweet moment.

Until the woman gleefully asked, “and how did you get a girl as wonderful as this?”

I smiled and said jokingly, “I made her.”

There was a moment of silence.  And then the woman wrinkled her brow in confusion and said, “how did you do that?  How did you make her?”

There was a long pause as the woman waited for me to answer, and I looked down at the ChickieNob smiling beatifically since she knows exactly how babies are made and is very proud of this fact, though I’ve asked her not to share this information with her friends and to instead wait until their parents decided they are old enough to know the facts of life.

And then I realized that my options were to give a 90-something woman a crash course in sex ed, or to feign sudden interest in the patient’s rights board right behind me.  And yes, I am sorry to say that rather than have a discussion about special hugs in the hallway while “Paper Moon” played over a nearby speaker, I opted to learn that every patient is entitled to prompt and courteous service.

*******

The Olympics begin tonight, and we’re crazy ready for it.  Like all-out-crazy ready for it.  Okay, I’m lying.  This week like many other weeks got away from me, and I’m more like scrambling-to-make-it-special.  But damn it, when the lights dim tonight, we will be mentally in London.

The twins were born during a summer Olympics.  We missed the games while they were in the NICU, sleeping anywhere but home.  So the summer Olympics are a bit of a marker for us, reminding us how far we’ve come.  Perhaps not quite as far as the Olympic athletes, but far nonetheless.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Is There an Echo (Echo, Echo) in Here?” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “I’m a Writer Dammit” (Single Infertile Female)
• “Online Pregnancy Websites are Fun Until You Lose the Baby” (Portrait of an Adoption)
• “Are Bystanders Ever Innocent?…” (A Half Baked Life)
• “Rhetorical Questions” (Serenity Now!)
• “Role Playing” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “Find Your Blog Voice” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Thoughtful Thursday: This Used to Be My Playground” (Baby Smiling in Back Seat)
• “Correspondence, Connectivity, Screens, and Free-Range Joy” (Project Progeny)
• “Here Comes the Sun…” (Cullen’s Blessings)
• “And So It Began” (Freckled Citizen)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Days of Our Lives has a beautiful and heartbreaking post about the Aurora shooting, tying together a prayer she used during the adoption process to trying to understand the decision of the shooter.  My throat tightened with her last thought: “And that I can pray MacArthur’s prayer over the young men in my community who might not have a father to be saying these words and having such hopes for his son.  Hug your loved ones a little tighter today.”

Family Building with a Twist has a really interesting post about an ethical dilemma, namely while she would not allow a son to participate in Boy Scouts, she is trying to decide how she feels about eating at Chik-Fil-A and why it isn’t a clear-cut decision.  She ends no closer to knowing what to do as she unpacks various ways of looking at the situation.  Long before the Boy Scouts statement, we had decided like the author not to allow our son to participate in a non-inclusive organization, but it’s also easy for me to boycott Chik-Fil-A since… you know… I’ve never eaten there.  The fact that I describe their product as dismembered chicken corpses packaged in cardboard coffins should probably give you an idea that my issue goes a lot deeper than marriage equality.  I tried to think about a product I really do like: Special K (again, the cereal, not the drug).  What would I do if the maker of Special K came out with a statement that went against our ethics?  Could I give up the cereal in order to stand by what is important to me?  I’d like to think I could, but who knows until I’m forced to live in a world sans Special K. (Side note to the maker of Special K: please don’t come out with a statement opposing marriage equality.)

Mama Said Knock You Out has such a good post about a trick that back fires with her daughter… except it doesn’t.  I can’t really describe it without ruining how she gets the last laugh.  You’ll need to read the whole thing for yourself.

Lastly, Family Rocks: the Life of Peg has a bittersweet post about Thursdays.  She explains: “For some reason, Thursday has become my Jeanne day.  I think about her more on that day.  The tears flow a little easier.  Don’t get me wrong, I think about her a lot everyday, but feelings of grief are often intermingled with frustration and irrational anger, and tied up with the girls and our relationship.”  I both love and hate that she has this day.

The roundup to the Roundup: Strangely enough, I opted not to impart an impromptu sex ed lesson.  Olympics start tonight!  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 20th and July 27th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

There is a post that keeps coming up in the blogosphere in various incarnations that essentially states that the person is shutting down their blog (and sometimes starting up a new one) because their blog no longer fits them.  Perhaps you have written one of these posts either in your head or in published form.  People do this daily; close one space and begin a new one, either importing their old posts or starting tabula rasa.  And sometimes they don’t begin a new space at all; they either say goodbye or don’t say goodbye and stop blogging altogether.  Sometimes they feel as if they’ve outgrown their blog and no longer need it, or the space itself holds too many memories they’d rather not confront on a daily basis.  And other times, they’d very much like to keep writing in the same space, but they feel as if they don’t know who their audience is anymore because their old readership no longer fits their current situation.  Or maybe they know exactly who their audience is and don’t want to write what is on their mind for fear of offending them.

And when any of those things happen, a space that had once began as a refuge becomes a place of discomfort; what once brought clarity now brings mostly confusion; and what one was an anchor instead becomes a straightjacket.

Welcome to the drawback of niche blogging.

Niche Blogging vs. General Diarying

If you listen to blog experts who write on blogging expert sites, they will tell you that if you want to find an audience for your blog, you should engage in niche blogging, which means essentially that you write about one topic the majority of the time.  Communities spring up around common topics, and the best way to find readers for your blog is to find other people who write about the same things and comment on their blog.  Then they will find out about your blog and most likely want to read it because you are both interested in the same topic.  See — genius idea.  I, for example, could be labeled as an infertility blogger.

General diarists have an uphill battle in finding an audience because they write about themselves and until they’re a known entity, many people won’t find it enticing to click over and discover a new blog.  Mostly because they have no clue what it’s about.  General diarists get to write though about a whole slew of topics — anything that crosses their brain is fair game.  I, for example, could be labeled as a general diarist.

Wait, how could I be both a niche blogger and a general diarist at the same time?  I mean, it fits right?  I wrote about swearing yesterday and family trees the day before that.  And once or twice a week, I write about infertility.  So I’m definitely a niche blogger and a general diarist at the same time.

And why the hell not?

No, I mean seriously, who is the blogging empress who decreed that you need to be one or the other?  I give you full permission to start thinking of yourself as both at the same time, and writing accordingly.

Who Wears the Pants on Your Blog?

Some people are fully in control of their content.  They write what they want to write and don’t care if anyone reads it.  More people share control of their content.  They write what they want to write, but they also take their readers’ feelings into consideration (some more than others).  And then there are people who give control of their blog over to their blog.  Yes, this inanimate space dictates what they publish.  More on that idea below.

You: do you write whatever you feel like writing without anything holding you back?  If you feel like writing 15 posts in one week about peesticks, do you write 15 posts about peesticks, even if you get a comment on the 12th one saying, “really?  Another post about peesticks?”  Do you keep your blog solely as a record for yourself, and while readers are nice, they’re not necessary for you to keep being invested in writing?

Your Readers: these are the people you know and the people you don’t know.  While I only know a fraction of the people who read my blog, I can guess my general readership and know what they would and would not want to read.  You probably know your readership too.  Do you give your readership a lot of thought when posting something?  How much thought?  Would you post something if you knew it would be unpopular or upset people?  Do you worry about alienating or losing readers?  Would you stop writing in your current space if there was no one there to read it?

Your Blog: your blog has a personality.  It would be totally out of character for me to begin posting daily recipes or haikus.  You’re just not going to hear posts about potty training here (by which I mean that I didn’t write those types of posts back when we were going through potty training).  So sometimes it’s not the readers who are limiting you, but it’s the blog itself which is holding you back.  Maybe you don’t want to publish recipes anymore, but that’s sort of your “thing” so you now feel like you need to continue it.  Or maybe you don’t want to write about infertility anymore, but you think that since your blog is called My Big Fat Hairy Uterus, you need to keep posting about said internal organs.

This is a question where I think everyone will have a different answer: in terms of percentages, who determines the direction of your content — you, your readers, or your blog?

As a personal blogger, if you are not writing what you want to write — what you need to write — is your blog serving you?  Are you getting enough out of the time investment that comes with writing?

Are you happy with the breakdown of your percentages for what you’re allowing to determine the direction of your content?  And if you’re not happy, are you going to do something about it?

Do You Really Have to Move?

You’ve probably noticed that I don’t have a great love for closing up shop on one blog and opening up a new one; at least, not for myself.  I continue to live in the same house regardless of how life has changed and our family has grown.  Perhaps one day we will move if this house no longer serves us, but for the time being, we’ve made the house change to fit our needs rather than moving ourselves as circumstances change.  And I feel the same way about my blogging space; I’ve tweaked it to fit different stages of my life that I’ve gone through in the last six years instead of closing a blog and starting a new one as circumstances change.

I don’t mind when other people do this, though it’s just as pain-in-the-assy as captcha or music autoloaders.  When a person changes their blog url, I have to decide whether to delete the old space or keep it in my Reader for old time sake.  I have to update feeds, remember a new name.  Sometimes I’m successful with moving with the person, other times, I lose them in the shuffle.

So perhaps this post is also self-serving; by encouraging you to stay put, I don’t have to update things on my end.

But I really do hate to see people struggling with that decision to leave behind a space they’ve always loved.  To see people wondering where they fit in after a life change.  You fit in exactly where you’ve always fit in — you fit in that YOU space that’s created by… you.  Wherever you are is where you need to be, and the rest of us will follow you if you lead us.  Please know that you are in charge of your blog.

Last Thoughts

If you’re interested in hearing more on this topic, I’m moderating a panel at BlogHer next week for three other members of the ALI community  (Kathy, Lori, and Kir) called “My Blog No Longer Fits Me.”  Even if you are not at the conference, you will be able to follow along from home because there will be someone there liveblogging (and I believe taping, at least, audio if not video).  And you can participate too by leaving a comment below telling me in terms of percentages, who determines the direction of your content — you, your readers, or your blog?  Though please also write your blog name in the body of the comment so I can make sure I mention that if I read it aloud.