We are immensely happy and glad (contrary to Nikita's belief) to announce our next Guest Writer,the articulate and well-read Nikita Mujumdar.
When I asked
Vaishali why she hadn’t asked me to write a post for her blog, even
though she was clearly accepting collaborations, and she
grudgingly agreed to let me be a guest blogger, I wondered - what
should I write about?
My initial thought
was to do a piece entirely about Eleanor of Aquitaine, but then I
received a message that read “I have been asked to tell you not to
write too much about the royal family.” So I had to, rather
unwillingly, scrap that idea and think of something else (Notice that
I said something else, and not something better, because
Eleanor of Aquitaine led a very fascinating life).
Then I thought: Why
not write a guest post about writing guest posts?
[Bear in mind that I
am in no way an expert at writing for other people’s blogs. Because
I have such few friends, there is no one who asks me to guest write
for them, and as a result, I have only done one collaboration, ever.
But I have over 2,000 hours of writing experience, most of it from
maintaining a private journal that no one is allowed to read, so this
should be fun!]
HOW
TO WRITE A GOOD(ISH) GUEST BLOG POST
1. Read the blog for
which you are going to write. I read all the posts on Prolix as
preparation for this and also because I was getting quite bored. And
I figured out three things; one, they love making lists (Which is why
this is a list! Oh, I’m a genius.); two, they’re always trying to
teach you new words; and three, even though their tagline is Spanish
for “About everything under the sun,” they obviously don’t
write about everything under the sun because there are no posts about
the Duchess of Cambridge.
The point of all
this is that I now know the theme which I should adopt. The list
aspect is one, of course, but if you scroll down, you’ll notice
that I even added my own word-a-day thing. And I didn’t write about
the Duchess of Cambridge.
2. With regard to
the previous tip, if possible, keep the page open on your browser.
This way, you can read it as many times as you want, and it won’t
add to the number of views that the blog has had. Because you don’t
want a rival blog to do better than yours. Besides, it’s cheating
to get so many views from one person. The only thing that’s worse
is refreshing your own blog a hundred times.
3. Don’t be
disappointed if you aren’t getting paid. You probably aren’t so
good anyway. But the fact that no money is changing hands, means that
isn’t work, and so you aren’t obligated to meet deadlines, and
you can talk about Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother as much as you
want (Unless you get an explicit message saying otherwise).
If you are getting
paid, please get in touch with me, and we’ll talk about the
prospects of my working with this website that you write for.
4. Though I grumbled
about this rule at the beginning of the post, it’s quite apt. Don’t
only write about things that you like. It’s predictable. All of my
friends and other people who know me are going to click on the link
expecting it to be about Prince George (Well, it’s not, so ha!).
Instead, write about something completely out of your presumed
comfort zone, and then subtly insert references to your favourite
family. You may find it dull, you may find it boring, but no one
probably knows who Blanche of Lancaster was anyone, so it’s just as
well that you didn’t write about her.
5. Make sure that
the people you are writing for know the link to your blog, and also
that they include it at the end of your post. Because what is the
point of spending 15 minutes on a Saturday evening, which you were
originally planning to use to do nothing, writing words for
someone else if you aren’t going to get a few views of your own out
of it. My blog, by the way, is bloodsweatandtiaras.blogspot.com. Just
in case in the editors are negligent and don’t even look at this
sentence.
Oh, and have a good
conclusion..
Word of the Day:
Obsequious - Obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree.
Quote
of the Day: “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”
__________
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