(Okay, so there’s no ‘i’ in ‘blog’ to begin with. Work with me here.)
This week on the Housechick blog, posts may not use the word “I” or “Me.”
Working through my feed reader this morning, there was a post that started, “I just listed a home at…” and that’s as far as I read. I don’t care that she listed a home. I don’t care about her, at least not in any specific manner. It turned me off big time.
So I decided, this week, there is no “I” in my blog.
It’s harder than I anticipated.
I tend to tell stories on my blog: ‘I’ve noticed that…,” “My client said to me…,” and so on. The point of the story is to elaborate some kind of real estate related idea, but it’s all framed with an ‘I.’ And the stories usually aren’t even about ‘I’, they’re about them. The clients. The buyers, the sellers, the other agents, the lenders, the other folks.
And I think it’s okay to use the I voice. That’s part of what individuates one blog from the other, it’s a direct view of the author. But I still think that the new visitor cares first about the information and it’s relevance, and second – if at all – about the author.
It’s not about me, it’s about them. Duh, right?
As a writing challenge to myself this week, I’m making a concentrated effort to put the focus back where it belongs – on contextually relevant information. With no mention of ‘I’ or ‘me.’
I’m working on a couple drafts to be published later this week, and so far, this is hard. I’m writing what I want to say, and then I have to go back and heavily edit, reword, rephrase, re-perspective. But it’s an interesting exercise.
Anyone else up for this challenge too? Here, I’ll give you a couple of “yous” to start with.
you you you you. also, yours and you’re. they. ‘us’ and ‘we’ are acceptable, if ‘us’ and ‘we’ is me and the reader.
There. Off you go. Happy editing. I’ll see you on the other side of this challenge.
