Benedict Cummerbund

It will come as no surprise to the three people out there reading this that I haven’t quite decided on what form this blog should take yet. So far, the only thing my posts have had in common is that they both talk about the fact that they are part of a blog. In other words, they both break through the fourth wall in a mildly amusing, self-referential way. But I can’t keep that up forever – if I only ever write a blog about having a blog, eventually the text will condense in on itself in a big ball of words, turn into a black hole, and swallow the universe. And then I’m really going to struggle to get more readers, unless there are some people living beyond the known plane of existence, on the lookout for a blog written by an author who hasn’t had his books published yet.

Which, let’s be honest, is unlikely.

So I’ve decided that it’s time to write about something other than the blog itself. Now, the astute of you out there will realise I’ve already blown it with this very post, however you’ll be pleased to know that I have been thinking up some new rules and groundbreaking ideas for my next entry. Some of these ideas are quite radical and may scare a few of you, but here they are nonetheless:

1)       Stop making excuses to have some sort of list in every blog entry. They were funny at first, but now you’re only using them to make what you’ve written look longer because you can have lots of line breaks.

2)       Having said that, the lists can be funny if you immediately contradict the previous point, so if you are going to have a list, make sure you do that.

3)       Think more about what you are writing. Don’t just sit bleary-eyed at the computer at 8.19 on Sunday morning, typing out a stream of consciousness and uploading it to the site…

4)       … Or if you do, don’t tell anyone that’s what you’ve done.

5)       You are now in the stage where you are waiting for the books to come out, so why not use this opportunity to talk to people about how that feels? What is it like waiting to see what the cover designs will look like? What other things do you have to do as an author in the run-up to a book launch?

6)       Write about some famous people in the blog so that more people might accidentally stumble upon your site looking for someone they’ve actually heard of. A good list of names you might want to think about randomly dropping into an upcoming post to get a decent cross-section of visitors are: Vic Reeves, Samuel L. Jackson, Charlie Brooker, Stephen King, George Lucas, Beckie McDonald from Coronation Street, Barack Obama, Tony Stark, Angelina Jolie, ‘H’ from Steps and the Pope. Also, if you’re struggling to think of a title for a blog post, why not just use a celebrity’s name at random?

7)       Put more pictures of the cat in, because people love cats.

8)       Check your spelling, because you had to correct the last post twice after uploading it. If you’d actually had some readers who immediately read everything you uploaded, it would have been embararassing.

That’s what I’ve come up with for now, so expect to see some (if not all) of these ideas having an influence on my next entry. In the meantime, here’s another picture of my cat Matilda, this time looking as though she’s just been caught trying to make herself longer than the cushion:

Until next time!