Having finally found the paint job for the site, it’s now time to turn to the substance. (Style first, always, baby.) How, in 2009, can we substantiate the substance of S.O.S? Building a Better Blog? What in the hell is going to make this pile of ASDF more than SDFA?

The blogs I read most often are:
a) Bookslut, which I read for the links (and the gossip)
b) About Last Night, which I read for the quotes (and the criticism)
c) ArtsJournal, which is a news roundup site, which I read for everything that’s important to me.
d) any of the blogs belonging to a really upbeat, successful, usually mainstreamed and outside-my-genre working writer, which I scroll through for process and for an unreasonable amount of unfulfillable hope and expectation.

Since I can’t actually be Jessa or Terry – don’t have the wardrobe – and my attempt at starting a similar news roundup site for the theaterworld has stalled, I might as well try to be a working writer.

I think I have to continue exposing process gears all over the garage floor of this blog. Only in that way will the blog become something I would want to read.

I have to write about what it’s like to write.

…

[any time now, hotshot…]

…

Well, a great way to start doing that is to avoid doing it by writing a post about how I’m going to start doing it.