Phil: I was listening to the radio a few days ago and there was a piece on biscuits. Obviously my ears pricked up as it’s one of my favourite subjects.
The surprise was that the interviewee was Stuart Payne the owner of the website “A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down“.
Years ago, I was a big fan of this site. It is, as the name suggested, all about having a nice cup of tea and a sit down – with a biscuit. Confectionary based websites are A Good Thing as far as I am concerned. I used to sit at work and electronically wander over there occasionally for light relief from whatever I was supposed to be doing.
The site gained a cult following which lead to a book based on it. As you can see, I bought a copy as soon as it was released and it is full of fascinating biscuit-based information. Sadly, this was the beginning of the end. Look at the site now and you’ll see that the left hand sidebar includes a survey on olympic biscuit choices which you might think makes it a year out of date. It doesn’t. The sidebar refers to the 2008 olympics. The Wifey’s column is even deader with a last update in 2007.
It’s not the only one. Suzi Brent’s Blog “Nee Naw“, the observations of life in an ambulance control room also produced a book and then closed in 2010. The reasons for this are mysterious. In a final post Brent says, “my fifteen minutes of fame also had its downside, and without going into detail, in the end I felt I had no alternative but to bring Nee Naw to its end”. At least the blog is archived for new readers to enjoy.
“Random Acts of Reality” by Brian Kellett spawned two books (Blood, Sweat and Tea and More , Blood, Sweat and Tea) but a change of employment from the paramedic role that provided content for the blog left him with less “newsworthy” content. If keen, you can still find him raging against things on Twitter.
It’s always sad when a blog you have been following dies. The writer will have become a sort of friend. You’ll look forward to reading their writing and feel a slight connection to them. When, all of a sudden, the posts stop, it is both frustrating and worrying. Are they OK? What happened?
Interestingly, all these blogs were written under pseudonyms – Nicey, Mark Myers and Tom Reynolds respectively. Maybe there reaches a point where the real person feels they have to emerge from the shadows? Does this restrict the writing, especially on a work-based blog when your colleagues work out that they may be characters in your stories?
Rest assured that neither Candice or I have any intentions of shutting up anytime soon. The blog both keeps us plugging away at this writing dream and is an integral part of our long-term marketing strategy. As soon as we have something to announce about progress, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime we’ll be rambling away, hopefully in an entertaining way, even when we are massively succesful and sitting on the set of the Hollywood production of The Book.
By the way, those are our real names.
nolanparker 
Maybe the most amazing thing is that some of these blogs run as long as they do. As you know only too well, a project like this requires more time than you originally anticipated. And then there’s the ongoing reality that writing is work, even if you don’t run out of inspiration.
The bottom line is it’s a labor of love, both ways — reader and writer — when we’re connecting.
I suspect that for a lot of blogs, running out of inspiration is the problem. Plenty of them start with big ideas but no focus. Without this, working out what to write next is very difficult.
Work blogs probably also suffer from the lack of variety of daily tasks. Even dramatic jobs like paramedics must find that eventually, most of the cases become mundane. Even if to those being treated, they are rather exciting!