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I have a blog; a very unpopular blog that is probably read by two or three people. I write essays and "blog posts" on there.

I also majored in literature and philosophy and had to write essays a lot. I got a lot of As.

The first thing to learn is that every group of writers follows different rules.

Think about why you want to publish your writings. Learn that context matters -- that is, your target audience matters. People reading my blog posts don't want the same thing as the people reading my essays at university. My university essays have a different tone and style. To be sure, the essays on my blog are the least popular, because they are very academic. That's okay. I like to write that way sometimes.

Often the things that others find interesting in our writings are things the writer would have never guessed. Because of this, it's all right to swallow your pride and just hit "Publish." Some of it will be horrible, some of it will be great. And there is always the stuff in between.

From a strictly academic perspective, the easiest type of essay to write is a comparative essay. Compare books, ideas, or topics that are similar enough to warrant a comparison; e.g., sexual parallels in Fifty Shades of Grey and Marquis de Sade's literary oeuvre, if you're going for a wide appeal. I just made that up. It's all experimentation.

Another academic "lesson" is when you're stuck writing an essay, it's time to bring in another example.

These are standard techniques that possibly engender a style that is stale and stiff. The more you cater to your reader, the more entertaining it'll be, because you'll speak her or his vernacular.

Having said all that, I have only published my poetry in very small publications. Nobody is interested in my short stories or essays (outside of academia), and I am by no stretch of the imagination a blogger who others read assiduously.

I am read by a very small circle of writer friends.

We have a joke.

We're good at things that don't have much value in modern culture.

It's a big joke.

And we're the punch line.




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