John sorry I missed this when you first asked.
1. Yes - I know it's common now not to include the comma before the and in a series of things, but it doesn't make sense to me not to add it.
one, two, thee, and four seems different to me than one, two, three and four. It's the way I learned it though and quite honestly I don't think it matters much.
2. It's an ongoing process. In college I avoided any class that required writing papers in favor of multiple choice exams if I could. If you want to be a better writer than write more. I listen to advice and try to incorporate those things into my writing. If you keep doing that it starts to become second nature and your overall writing improves.
I also spent a couple of years taking creative writing courses and learning all I could about the craft of writing.
3. I follow any and all news that interests me. At the moment I spend the most time following news in the seo, design, development since that's what I do all day long.
I'm also a sports junkie (particularly baseball) so I follow sports news, mainly espn. I also read the general national, international, local, etc news mostly online at this point. I read a lot.
4. Depends on what I'm writing. Some things I'll let flow out of me, but most of the time I think about what I'm going to write first, then I just write, and when I'm done I go back and proof it and edit it. The crafting to me is part in the editing process and in part learning something new that I can keep in mind when writing.
5. At the moment I'm not really in the middle of a book. The last thing I read was the manual for my new all in one printer. Before that I was reading a book on Ajax programming. Not exactly literature. But I have and do read a lot of literature.
The good stuff. Years ago I came to the realization I could never read everything I wanted to in my lifetime. I decided if I could only read so much I was going to read the good stuff. I started with the classics and found the authors I liked most and started following the trail of who they liked and who they influenced. When I find an author I like I tend to read everything he or she wrote.
Reading absolutely helps writing. And the better the quality of what you read the better the quality of what you write. You'll pick up on their rhythms.
6. Didn't we just do this one. Whew, serious deja vu. I think I forgot to say how often I followed the news. The answer is every day or most every day. I like to know what's going on.
7. Finding things to write about can be hard. I'm going to cheat and send you to a post I wrote on
finding ideas for your blog. I think part of the trick is being able to see an idea in the ordinary things you do each day.
Adam is a good example of this. He makes a lot of calls to customer support. Instead of just making the call he writes up what was said and
turns it into a post.
Blogging ideas can come from anywhere and you will always go through ups and downs. Some days you will not have any clue what you should write about. Try to find something, but don't feel like the world will end if nothing comes. It's going to happen. The more you keep at it though more often you can come up with something.
You might be surprised, but a few of my posts that have gone over the best were written on days when the last thing in the world I wanted to do was write and I ended up reaching for a topic that I wasn't crazy about.
8. I believe in the conversation. That doesn't mean every post I write is part of some larger conversation with other bloggers, but when I see something else that interests me I do write about it always linking to the original source of the idea. It's actually a good way to get another blogger to notice you and even link back to you if they like what you wrote.
And since I just happened to write about this very topic I'll send you back to my blog one more time.
Blogging is a conversation.
Sorry for the links, but isn't this post long enough as it is.
9. Copy certainly plays a part in seo, but I generally don't pay all that much attention to trying to write for search engines with blog posts. If I specifically want the page to rank around a certain phrase I will keep that phrase in the back of my mind while writing, but I just write naturally.
If you're writing a page about red widgets, it's only natural you're going to use the words red and widget in your copy. I might make sure to add them in page titles and headings, but I'll always opt in favor of the person who will read what I wrote over the spider that will crawl the page.
People will tell each other to check out the page and even link to it. Spiders are kind of quiet and live solitary lives without many friends. When was the last time you saw two spiders cruising the boulevard together?
The links that people give you will end up giving more benefit than the extra mention of a word or two on the page.
If you want the page to rank though it is a good idea to get keyphrases in the page title at least and again in the headings for the page.
