When Is It Okay To Feed The Writers Ego?

The following article was originally written for Blogcritics, where I have been a regular contributor since February of this year.

As we speak, there is currently something of a hot debate taking place over at Blogcritics within our private e-mail group. It seems that what goes on behind the scenes there can be quite the little soap opera at times.

Anyway, the subject of the debate revolves around the comments section there. Specifically, the writer's comments. The question is when and how often is it appropriate for a writer to comment on his own articles, a subject some there have privately referred to as "feeding" the comment box.

Here at my own personal blog, this is not exactly a hot-button issue. The World Wide Glen gets something like about 100 hits a day. Which isn't bad. But Blogcritics is read by something like 100,000 people daily. So for the writers there, getting their work good placement on the site can be a pretty big deal.

So anyway, this whole subject got me to thinking of the broader (and certainly the truer as it relates to this particular discussion) issue of the Writer's Ego.

The Writer's Ego is that ever present little thing anyone who has ever been published knows all too well.

He can be your best friend when he's actually doing the job he's paid for--which is giving the writer the confidence (some would say the "balls") to put his or her thoughts out there for the whole world to see.

Or he can be that nasty little devil that sometimes makes those around the writer choose to regard you (often rightly so) as a pompous, arrogant prick. When on it's worst behaviour, the Writers Ego can make you do things so stupid it would make the worst blacked-out alcoholic blush.

The Writers Ego at it's core begins first with the desire to write at all. From there it really starts to manifest itself when the writer comes to the realization that he can actually write, and has something important enough to say that other people might actually be interested in reading it. From there The Writers Ego can either become a healthy non-inhibitor, or it can become something more akin to a dangerous addiction.

I use the analogy to addiction because the most common manifestation of a Writers Ego is the buzz the writer gets from seeing his work published. The rush is seriously comparable to what I'm sure an alcoholic feels when he downs a shot of Jaeger or a junkie shoots a fix into his veins.

For me, when I first started getting my work published the rush was positively indescribable. It was a mixture of honest pride in my accomplishment combined with a a genuine burst of elation and exhilaration. It honestly felt like being high.

I can remember at my very first professional writing gig, (for a small community newspaper here in West Seattle) getting such a rush off of seeing my first review published that I actually grabbed a stack of about 25 newspapers and then spent hours in a coffee shop reading over and over that first article.

The rest of the newsroom thought I was nuts carting out all those papers under my arm, and I wont even go into what the waitress at the coffee shop must have been thinking. But that habit actually continued for several years. To this day, there are several boxes of old Rocket magazines (the Seattle music rag I was a contributing editor at for about ten years) sitting in my basement gathering dust.

I made about $20. an article at that community newspaper. I made even less at the Rocket. Which brings me to another important point as to the function of the Writers Ego:

Motivation.

Most of us writers make precious little in the way of actual income sharing whatever pearls of wisdom we choose to impart to the world. For every big-name journalist out there pulling down the big bucks of a steady gig at Time or Rolling Stone, there are hundreds if not thousands of us starving writers, and now bloggers, who choose to share our thoughts and observations with you the reader for little to no pay.

Fewer still of us have actual social lives, so yes the stereotype is somewhat true there as well (though not in my case of course...nudge, nudge...wink, wink...).

So what drives the bus here in terms of an actual reason to write?

The Writers Ego of course. Which in this case manifests itself when we writer's see the reaction to our work by you the reader. At Blogcritics, this reaction is measured in two ways. One is the little system of accolades our peers there have put together. This comes in the form of things like the Blogcritic Of The Day and the weekly Editor's Picks, both of which are published there.

Occasionally our work is also syndicated through Advance.net to several newspapers throughout the country. I'm proud to say that my own work has been chosen as an Editors Pick on a number of occasions and that I've also been syndicated. Good for me right?

But I also have to admit for example, that my own Writers Ego pretty much pitched a fit when my recent review of Bob Dylan's New Album wasn't chosen as an Editors Pick last week.

I thought that was the best damned review I'd done in awhile, and my Writers Ego loved it so much I must have re-read it fifty times. It was however spotlighted over the entire Labor Day weekend on the music page though, so I probably wisely kept my mouth shut about the slight I felt it received.

The other way a lot of us writers measure reaction, and hopefully feed the ever ravenous Writers Ego, is through the comments made by our readers. Which leads me back to that controversial little discussion currently raging among a few of the writers over at Blogcritics.

When and how often does a writer respond to one of his own articles via the comment box?

When I first began writing for Blogcritics back at the beginning of this year, I didn't respond to my articles at all. I was actually afraid it might be considered tacky. Then I read somewhere that one of the basic rules of blogging etiquette was to respond to those who took the time to comment on your article. Made sense, so I now make it a point to do my best to respond whenever someone comments on something I wrote.

That is, at least within reason.

My review of Neil Young's Living With War CD from earlier this year has generated something like 400 comments at Blogcritics (I think it got like two or three here at The World Wide Glen).

So my Writers Ego should be positively elated right? Wrong.

More than half of these--well more than half actually--have come from one person who has an ax to grind with the politics of that album. As of right now, the discussion there has very little to do with the review I actually wrote and I've simply taken myself completely out of it. Frankly, this is a case where Writers Ego or not, I wish that article would just die the nice dignified death it should have months ago. So this would be that rare example of a Writer's Ego actually not welcoming the comments at all because the thread has turned into something of an embarrasment.

Hey, even the Writers Ego has feelings right?

So the other question--the one so hotly debated at Blogcritics--is when does a writer inappropriately "feed his comments"? The net result, and benefit to the Writers Ego of course, is the better placement it will get you on a site that is as "busy" as Blogcritics. You get enough comments, and your story gets nice placement in either the "Most Popular" sidebar or better yet, the "Hot Topics" splashed dead center of the page.

The uglier flipside to this of course, is that in "feeding" comments, you place the importance of your own story over those of the other writers there. And when we're talking about something like 1400 contributors at Blogcritics, that's potentially going to be a whole hell of a lot of bruised Writers Egos to deal with.

Personally, I think it's something of a judgment call.



I know for sure that I have done it, just as many others have. Hell, I'll confess right here and now I've done even worse. There have been a couple of times (only a couple though okay?) where my Writers Ego has sat and watched an entire day go by without a comment to something I just wrote.

Mr. Ego, being the nasty little devil he is, then put an idea in my head. Why not post a comment under a different name? A pseudonym, yeah thats it. One comment certainly should begat another right? And besides, nobody'll know the difference anyway.

Right?

Well, actually they will. At Blogcritics there are some very good comments editors. And they know the IP addresses that each and every comment come from. I actually found this out recently when my ever trusty Writers Ego actually had me believing for about ten seconds that Neil Young himself had responded to one of my articles.

When the comments editor exposed the apparent hoax, my Writers Ego was a little disapointed. But I also learned a very important lesson and I wont be posting any comments under a pseudonym ever again. My Writers Ego is just going to have to learn some patience from now on.

So when is it appropriate for a writer to comment on his own articles?

Again, it's what I'd call a judgment call. Certainly, blogger's etiquette dictates we acknowledge our readers who take the time to comment. They are after all, helping feed our good friend the Writers Ego and should be recognized for it.

I also think that when a writer has something to add to his story that might have been missed it can be appropriate and perhaps even necessary. At Blogcritics, my blogger buddy Jet In Columbus suffers from diabetes (as do I though I was fortunate enough to get diagnosed sooner than Jet).

Anyway, Jet has recently had some very severe health problems as a result.

So he recently wrote what I feel is a very important article dealing with preventing the effects of that disease. Personally, I feel every man over 50 in America should read Jet's article (it also deals with certain male issues).



Jet has also posted a number of comments which (I feel at least) add to the information presented in the original piece.

This is what I personally would call an instance where the so-called practice of "feeding" is justified. The topic is an important one and the information presented in the additional comments was both valid and in this case warranted.

But thats just my opinion.

As for the rest of the time, I think that good old common sense should come into play. It's no secret that there are plenty of threads going on right now at Blogcritics that are basically little more than a discussion between a few people, and some of them happen to be the writers themselves. Personally, I don't have a problem with that. They have even made for some pretty damn good reading in and of themselves in certain instances.

These are after all, writers we are talking about here.

Writers with Writer's Egos.

As always, your comments are welcome and appreciated. Like you needed reminding right?