Are You Blogging Through Rose-Colored Glasses?
Twoflower didn’t just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew – he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears.
Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic from the Discworld series.
As you write your blog, you are viewing the world through your lens, your filter, your perspective on the issue. Like Twoflower, is your view so narrow that you are blogging through your ears and brain as well as your eyes?
If your blogging niche is narrow, then you might put on your blinders and stay on your narrow path, but does this mean your perspective is narrow, too? Aren’t you still open to new ideas and concepts? Or is your mind made up and this is the only point of view you will ever have or share?
Even if your blog focus is wide open to anything and everything, doesn’t your perspective color your opinion and writing? Does it help or hinder your blogging?
I recently heard an interview with Stephen Colbert, an actor and comedian known for his show, The Colbert Report, which I’ve never seen. He spoke about how his character, a correspondent and reporter originally created on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, was a master and fool who never knew enough about the subject of the moment, always pretending to know more than he did, making wide sweeping assumptions or asking idiot questions. “I’m the average dumb American,” he said. His character’s persistent naivety allows him to make fun of the subject, but also keeps the audience guessing as to what idiotic thing is going to happen yet. Colbert has turned his character’s tinted perspective on the world into a work of art.
If your blog persona has a specific colored view of the world, and it works for you, you’ve found a great way of expressing yourself on your blog.
Which begs the question for the rest of us: What perspective does your blogging persona have on your blog?
Do You Have a Perspective on Your Blog?
Do you voice an opinion on your blog? Do your readers know what that is?
My consistent readers know that I’m deadly serious and concerned about comment spam, content theft, and abuses against bloggers, taking strong stances on those issues, but they don’t know how I’d vote, if I vote, or if I even have a political stance on anything. They don’t know my religion, and some don’t even know if I’m male or female. In fact, while many make assumptions about who I am and my personality, few know much “personal” about me. I’ve made that a policy on Lorelle on WordPress. It’s not important to that blog that you know “me”. I save the personal side of my life for my other blogs.
What is your “personality” and “perspective” policy on your blog? Do you have one? Do your readers really think they know you? The real you? Do you let them? How?
Does your perspective on life, politics, religion, and work spill into your blog? How? Is it happening naturally, or is it part of your blog game plan?
Have you ever thought about what color glasses you are wearing when you write your blog? And how you are expressing your view of the world through your blog.
I stay pretty focused on my blog – it’s straight forward. My mission is to help people understand the topic at hand and make it enjoyable for them to read.