Be Natural, Be You
I was telling
Ed about how annoyed I was about certain people who go on
PPS and ping their blog posts several times in order to get more hits. Wait, wait, I understand there's the thing about editing your posts and then when you hit publish again, you ping PPS again, that's why some ppl get multiple listings of a single post in PPS...
But multiples just don't count if that ping is about two or three hours apart. We know... no-lifers like yours truly who has PPS on the screen like most of the time, we do visit interesting sites and we do know if anyone edits anything.
Both Ed and
SL know how much of a judgemental bitch I am most of the time. Okay, it's not just them. I think a lot of people would paste that word 'judgemental' right flat on my head, and even myself. *Hands up* yes I make judgements, and I do them all the time.
Well, darlings, it doesn't help when you're doing what I do for a living. Every other day I deal with other people's writing, and it doesn't take an idiot in my line to sniff out something that doesn't sound right. Doesn't sound you. Doesn't sound real. Before doing what I do now, I didn't have this sensitivity, but
now I deal with authors every other Monday to Friday, and maintaining originality just isn't that easy anymore when everybody is trying too darn hard. And I get to read letters from wannabes a lot...
'Dear XXX,
I have before you a sample of my work. I am certain that it will make a very good book. I am a bla bla bla, bla bla bla, bla bla, enclosed also are certifications of my qualifications and bla bla bla bla bla...'
Regardless of how fluidly fantastic and how grammatically fluent you are, you want to be famous and you suffer at the hands of judgemental bitches like me. Who are forced to become bitchier and bitchier with every single passing hour. And if you try too hard, oh boy, you try too hard, and we can sniff it out like how a cat sniffs out a fresh/dead rat.
You got to be FRESH. You need to be ALIVE. You can't fake yourself.
This is precisely how academic professors can sniff out plagiarized work.
And also precisely how you may get listed on my
blogroll. All you have to do is NOT try, and be original. You don't have to write very well at all, because if you are original, you're you. It's like how we marvel at a 5 year old kid's artistic interpretation of a cat, even though it doesn't look like a cat at all.
Rant ended.
Now you might be interested to know that Dina Zaman (Yes, THE Dina Zaman) has joined the blogosphere.
Her blog is excrutiatingly natural and you've just got to go.
