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Writers Write About Writing.

via withmartijn.com

It’s called review, writing reviews. If you’re into reviews what would you rather do, write about food and drink and travel, or blogs, or books?

My advice on BoomerPdx: Do it all.

One benefit of reviewing books is you get free books; a detriment to reviewing books is you get free books. So, if you want free books, review books. You’ll get a ton of them.

Jeff Baker from the Oregonian gets a huge load every week. He says you can’t judge a book by its cover, then explains how to do it.

At least with books, you get free books. What do you get reviewing blogs? New followers joining your blog? Maybe, but probably not. A nice thank you email is about all you can expect. Like the auto-respond from new twitter people, you’re supposed to feel special to get even that.

Do you get free beer if you review a brewery? I haven’t.

Free food when you review a restaurant? Not yet.

Reviewing anything doesn’t open the door to a new cashless existence. You won’t reap the benefits like the special gift bag for Oscar nominees. $168,000 for being nominated?

What would I find in my mailbox for reviewing gift bags? A gift bag?

The best reviews are ideas and the people behind them. You’ll get the same rewards as other areas of review, nothing, but you will get one extra: You’ll be the blogger who knows WHY he reviews things. You like it, you find extraordinary value in it, and you want to spread the good luck of finding anything that wakes you up.

Do you want to wake someone up, a creative person struggling for relevance? Someone producing things only they can do? Then ask if you want to wake up enough to get it right.

Guys like Problogger’s Darren Rowse and Quick Sprouts Neil Patel show bloggers how to get it right and then some. Mr. Patel even shaved his head like Seth Godin, which is style statement for who?

Reading blogger advice from those three will make you a better blogger, if that’s your goal, but will it make you a better writer? For the answer you need the correct question.

Do you write because you do interesting things worth writing about, or do you write about interesting things others would like to do?