A communications disruption could mean only one thing: invasion.

“A communications disruption could mean only one thing: invasion.” – Governor Sio Bibble, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace

The Blog

The blog is the daily torture, joy and cleaned up journal of your writer. Pick any day; it’ll fit into one of those three categories. It’s one of the ways that he and his fellow writers keep their skills current, play the PR game, and let off a bit of steam while they wait for their books to be published. They practice at being profound while witty and generally pretend to live normal lives. Your writer’s blog will not be openly catty about friends or family although co-workers will often be considered fair game. Topics regarding the soul-sucking nature of the writing profession, crazy childhood pranks and pets are de rigueur. His blog will be an outlet for his fears, frustrations, hopes, dreams and even his neuroses, but they will be more polished, prettied up and pulled together than when you first hear about them. He needs to appear like a rational, pulled together professional, which he’s not, and he’s going to need your support on that front.

The blog will be fun to read and should be followed closely. As the writer’s close personal friend (which will earn you absolutely no credibility with his more writerly followers), you have an obligation to read the blog daily and comment often. Now, don’t go starting to fret about the time commitment. This is a quick and easy obligation, especially since it will be fun to see your creative writer friend in his element. The only thing you are absolutely required to do is keep all of those humiliating fraternity, bar and dating stories about your writer friend, the ones that you’ve had rolling around just behind your right eyeball for the past seven years – the ones that are just itching to get out – to yourself. If you don’t, and he goes big, he’ll later deny that he ever met you when he’s chatting up the staff on Oprah.

Whenever possible (meaning always), you should encourage your non-writer friends, and even mere acquaintances, to read your friend’s blog, as you will later be strongly encouraging them to buy his book and attend his book signing. It’s best that they know a little about him before hand, don’t you think? Oh, one more thing about comments, remember that wry humor and sarcasm are hard to pull off in print (ask any writer), so keep your comments friendly and light. At all costs, avoid over-using those little smiley faces, but that’s mostly just because I tend to hate them.