A few of my friends who write for Political Blogs asked me if I’d like to do some stories for their sites- personally I think that what they’re actually asking is for me to get my husband to do the stories but you know, whatever…
Once- out of curiosity – I asked if they had actually ever read what I’ve written because I can’t imagine why a person who does political analysis would ask someone ( like me for example ) who does David Tennant stories (every darn chance I get -oh wait, mostly I do them for the pictures…never mind those don’t count as stories- not even to me ) and stories about Space Boogers and cops getting into high speed chases with stolen donut trucks… to write for them.
So I sent links to some of my favorite stories ( and I use that word loosely ) over and I get this call that in part goes like this:
‘Do you ever do any serious stories?’
and I said
” Sure. When I want to see my stats treading water in a toilet bowl I do serious stories. In fact sometimes I flush them straight down The Porcelain God on purpose. That way I have an excuse for running David Tennant posts and Dancing Fruit clips for days on end. I But look, I can’t play with my readers. A few times I’ve done a series of serious posts and I had to resort to writing about singing waffles and exploding pigeons to get them to come back. And let me tell you, that just about did me in. Do you know how hard it is to find sources about singing waffles?
Just as an FYI- if you never, ever want to be invited to participate in any kind of forum to take part in a serious Political discussion with sober people- make sure you mention David Tennant, toilets,exploding pigeons and singing waffles in the conversation.
It worked for me.
Irregular Bones 
A person I know with obviously better taste in movies than me handed me a dvd of some arty-farty subtitled film. She said I would love it. On dvd case it was written “….intense and agonizingly brutal.” (Really!) I handed it back to her and said “why in the world would I WANT to sit through two hours of something that is ‘agonizingly brutal’ when American Idol is only an hour. Duh.
You are the ultimate time manager Lori…plus you are pretty darn funny.
Thank you, Anita Marie. 🙂
Anita:
You could always mention this: it’s pretty darn serious. Ha!
http://www.ronnierayjenkins.com/topics/education/Goodbye_MomGoodbye_Pop/
Anita: If you get the chance…check this out. I got a call from CNN this morning.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-235059
Thanks.
You’re a writer Antia Marie, changing genres can seem difficult but it’s just a matter of learning the language… I think your humour would marry with political writing very nicely.
“When I want to see my stats treading water in a toilet bowl I do serious stories.”
Interesting… I’ve been thinking about that recently as well…
The pieces I write about “issue stuff” seem to drive people away from my Salted site. I wrote a piece in January about how easy it is for people who know how the Internet works to find the people who don’t know how the Internet works… and my stats are still down by half. (I think I actually scared people into leaving their blogs.)
But my second blog, feartheseeds — which only ever had five posts, and all of them opinion pieces — had over 300 responses. And my third blog, cultural snafu — which was all opinion, had 30,000+ hits and 1500+ responses despite only being updated for three months.
The thing is, all of my blogs have had pretty much the same core readership… I’m kind of trying to figure out what it is about Salted that keeps the Issue People away.
Thanks, by the way, for keeping csn:afu in your blogroll… I’m still trying to find the time to start updating it again.
Exploding pigeons yay!