Being continually on the prowl for exciting blogs to read — whether they’re new, or merely just new to me — I wind up checking out a good two or three dozen new sites per day. Even so, I’ve probably added fewer than a handful of blogs to the blogroll in the past six months. When it comes down to it, a good blog is hard to find.

Maybe it’s just me (which, I suspect, it’s not), but the amount of crappy writing out there is immeasurable. By which I mean that I’m not sure how many of the blogs I check out daily are actually crappy, and how many of them merely turn me off. One would think that those who seek to communicate themselves through writing would at least make an effort to not only write well, but to understand that there is more to written communication than the words one chooses.

Take paragraphs, for instance.

I visually “tune out” when I encounter long paragraphs on a blog. After two or three sentences, my eyes get lost and I simply scan along until I encounter some white space. (Magazines — whose readers actually pay for the content — have figured this out.)

Yes, I know dear Mrs. Jones taught us in third grade that paragraphs should begin with a topical sentence, continue with a few supporting details, then culminate with a conclusive/transitory sentence. Dear Mrs. Jones also had seventeen cats and died a lonely death without ever experiencing an orgasm, much less the euphoria of a stranger hitting her blog’s “Tip Jar” after reading a blog entry that affected them for the better. Dear Mrs. Jones did not blog.

In other words, good blogging is exempt from some of the rules of good writing.

Take that “writerly voice,” for instance. You know the one I mean: the entries which read as if someone is trying to write for posterity rather than writing as if they were sitting across the table from you. In the blogosphere, good writing comes across as intimate. Casual. Sexy, even. A one-on-one conversation which other people just happen witness.

Today a blog I clicked out of rather quickly featured an entry (sorry, no link because I’ve blotted the person’s blog out of my brain) which started like this: “Oh, on this quiet, still morning I woke quivering with dread despite being wrapped in the thick luxuriant blanket of Orpheus…”.

Look, if I want to read Dickens-esque stuff, I’ll grab a copy of Great Expectations off of my shelf. Dickens is gathering dust on my shelf because most I just don’t have the mental energy to choose to read one of his books during my leisure time.

That, to me, is what blog-reading is: something I do with my leisure time. Time which is rare. Time which is precious. Time which I either spend on something entertaining or educating or enlightening… but most definitely not time I’m willing to use attempting to decipher what the hell someone else has to say.

If I could say anything for posterity in the blogosphere it would be this: Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Make me think or laugh or smirk or drink or scream in the process. But don’t make me want the time back.

Not long ago, I met someone who’d never read a blog before. (Although, I should point out, he’s now reading mine.) He’d heard of them, but he still equated blogs with those ‘online diaries’ that many people still believe blogs to be. I explained that while I certainly do have my own ‘online diary,’ the vast majority of blogs that I read don’t resemble diaries at all. And, frankly, I don’t even read my own ‘diary site.’

“Do you blog about what you do in any particular day,” he asked.

Well, of course I do. If you’ve stuck around here for long, you know that already.

“But there’s a difference,” I told him, “between my ‘diary site’ — which I consider as such — and the blog that I mean when I talk about blogging.”

This baffled him. Apparently, it baffles others, judging by the number of “Oooh-I’m-so-jealous-you-bitch!” emails I get whenever I get an InstaLaunch. (Which, I assure you, hasn’t happened for quite some time.)

The difference is this: you can blog to entertain, educate or enlighten. But chances are, if you’re blogging about nothing but your own little life, the only one being entertained, educated or enlightened is you.

Sound pissy? Well, eh. They don’t call me ‘Venomous’ for nothing.

Gee, and all this time you thought it was all about the martinis, didn’t you?