This is what I woke up to find in my In Box concerning yesterday’s post on Blogging Thoughts and Philosophy:

How DARE you! Talk about stereotyping people and trying to fit them into nice little categories. What a bitch. And who the hell set YOU up to be an authority on blogging. I've been at this for over a year and would never have the gall to write something so arrogant. I may have only 5,800 hits but I know none of my readers feels like I talked down to them the way you talk down to yours.

So I replied:

Over a year, really? Gee, this Saturday will mark my second month of it. I certainly didn’t mean to try setting myself up as an “authority” on blogging. I simply wrote what was going through my head yesterday and some observations I’ve made over the past two months. Sorry if you were offended.

In response to which I received:

Two months? That's it??? I just looked at your Site Meter. And I saw you'd started it with a count of 160. But two MONTHS? What's your secret?

Needless to say, I was sorely tempted to write back with an unprecedented heaping of Venomous Bitchery. But I was a good girl. I sat and thought about the question and the opportunity to sway some good karma in my direction. And I came up with this list of 10 Venomous Tips To Blogging.

1. If you are blogging because you are bored with your life, ask yourself why your readers should find the details of your boring life interesting.

2. If you are convinced that the details of your life are not boring, ask yourself whether you’ve ever found a friend to be painfully boring when describing the exact same situation.

3. If you want your readers to be dedicated, don’t post entries complaining about not having dedicated readers. Not only does it get offensive to those who take time to read your page, but sooner or later folks will wonder why they should read you if nobody else does.

4. Don’t try to be Glenn. Find your own stuff to write. (Hey, you: the one who’s been wondering lately if I’m referring to you. Yes, I am.)

5. Stop writing about how you’re too busy to write.

6. Witty does not mean mean.

7. Fisking, unless incredibly well done, is trite.

8. If you want the formula for how to come up with analysis without merely regurgitating posts from someone else’s site, try this: Read other people’s blogs. Then go surf the net. Then think about what you just read and write about it. Just link back to the blog posts and web sites that got you to thinking that way in the first place. (If you forgot to write them down, look through your browser’s history.)

9. Comment, comment, comment on other blogs. But don’t be a troll.

10. If blogging is not fun, if it makes you feel inferior or bad about yourself: don’t do it.

Bonus tip:

Join, join, join, join*, join, join or add your site to the indexes, listings and other rankings out there. You would be amazed at how many people look for new blogs by going to one of these places and clicking on the top few “recently updated” links, while adding yourself to other sites like Blogrolling allows people that track their incoming links religiously (like me) to know you’re one of them. And yes, I do go visit the places that link to me, if only to check them out; so do a lot of folks. Just don’t expect an automatic link back or I’ll come envenomate your presumptuous self.

*The free part only requires registration.