A reader whose physical location gives him a bit of a unique twist on events wrote to ask:

The hard part, however, will be the actual writing. This is the part that scares me witless, as recently I haven’t done much more than make some pointed Facebook posts or write a couple letters to the editor of our local newspaper. Would it be enough to comment on local events, cite items from the newspaper or television and attempt to dissect them from a libertarian point of view? Is it acceptable to link to other people’s content, such as your own? Is this something I would have to update daily? Can I remain safely anonymous while doing this (assuming anybody at all will read it)?

I’ll do my best with these questions, one at a time.

(1) The blog itself will improve your writing. There are two things that can make you a better writer: reading works by good writers, and practice. Writing is similar to chess in that regard. Studying annotated games by the masters will help you in your own games, and the more you play, the better you’ll be.

(2) Your idea of commenting on local (or any other) events is great. Resist the temptation to write a 2000-word essay for every blog post. People like short blog posts. (Yes, I know this particular post, offering you advice, is longish, but do as I say, not as I do.) Don’t dissect every line of an article unless it’s unusually atrocious and you can dissect it in an entertaining way.

(3) Bloggers link to other people’s content all the time.

(4) The more you blog, the bigger your audience, if only because the more posts, the greater the chance people will stumble upon one, one will be linked to by others, etc. But it’s your blog. Do what you want. You don’t need to be a slave to it.

Readers who put your blog in their rss readers will get all your posts whenever you post them. Once in a while, encourage people to do that. Many people still visit blogs manually, and may give up on one that doesn’t feature regular updates.

(5) As for remaining anonymous, I’m fairly certain that can be done, but maybe my readers here who are more knowledgeable can tell us for sure.