Mark Twain on blogging

"Alas! that blogs so voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host but can show a hundred fair pages of blog concerning the first twenty days ...... and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can show twenty pages of blog for the succeeding......" Written in the nineteenth century these words were published in "The Innocents Abroad", his amusing account of a voyage from America to the Mediterranean and many of the surrounding countries. I mistyped 'journal' as 'blog'.

His point was that journals were started with great enthusiasm and with high-minded resolution to keep them going. In the dull days of the slow voyage by paddle-steamer across the Atlantic the travellers kept to their ambitions. But as soon as they landed somewhere interesting they found little time to write.

I'm about to move into the third month of this blog. Already I've failed to keep up my daily additions. And I've veered pretty quickly from reviewing a single topic, noting its contrasting coverage in the mainstream media (MSM), to general waffle, anecdotes and, although many may not have realised, humour all loosely tied to 'something in the papers'.

Speaking of MSM, I've had a few bits and pieces printed in the 'quality' press over the years and many letters to the editor both in them and my local papers. My blog rarely attracts 100 readers a day; even the popular ones in the genre seem to get but a few thousand visitors. The stuff in the MSM was probably seen by hundreds of thousands of people and even the local letters were probably read by tens of thousands. My letters in the Sun in 2001 (about what a rascal William Hague was) may even have been seen by millions of people.

So we've a bit of a way to go yet in the blogsphere..........