A New Blogger Nabbed Me as a Follower
Then she broke her promise.
Having just gone through the nerve-wracking process of writing and submitting an article, I was dying to hear someone else’s experience. After a quick search, I found a post by Jill, a new writer with a detailed plan to become a freelancer. She was planning on submitting that week and told readers to come back on Wednesday for an update. Yes!
I immediately followed her blog and made a mental note to check back the following week. Finally, someone to commiserate with. The following Wednesday, I checked her blog a few times.
No updates.
Thinking that she could have forgotten, I checked again later that week. Then the next Wednesday. And the next.
Zip, zero, zilch.
Why do writers flake out?
Having made and broken oh so many writing promises to myself, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I could even take some stabs at Jill’s reasons: She hadn’t met her weekly goals, and was too ashamed to say so. Or, life got in the way and she’d convinced herself that blogging her goals was a waste of time.
Had she met the goals, but become intimidated by her growing list of followers? Shouting your goals into an empty void is a lot different than sharing potential failure with a captive audience. Maybe she’d just gotten stage fright.
An “audience” of one is still an audience that matters.
Whatever the reason, I’m disappointed on a few levels. Jill seemed so organized, and her confidence gave me hope that I could do this, too. Now it seems that she’s already fizzled. But more than that: I’d give anything to have just one person this excited to read my posts, yet it’s been three Wednesdays now and she doesn’t seem to care. A few people have left comments, but she hasn’t responded or shared an update.
I guess this is the danger of following a new writer (or of being one): they assume there’s no “audience” yet, and so don’t worry about breaking promises to a few uncommitted readers. I’ve been there — I almost did the same thing today, but then I remembered Jill, the no show.
This week, I promised to ignore my perfectionist tendencies and publish five posts, no matter how rough they were. Today is the day I’d planned my second post, so I’m putting this out there even though it needs a lot more words and smoothing out.
Isn’t that the point, though?
If we wait too long to share — for whatever reason — there’s a good chance we’ll never get around to it. Writing for your readers (even 1), means showing up no matter how good of an excuse you have not to.
