Cover Bands & Cover Blogs.

When I was in college I roomed at times with guys who wanted to be the next Metallica. They wanted it so bad Metallica was about the only music they played. That will do fine for a small band in a small college town and not much more than that, I could tell they were not real serious about a career in music.

I have noticed the same thing with my blogging. For quite some time I would hit up the big-fish blogs usually Michelle Malkin's blog for material. I would provide a quick regurgitation of the story, a quick take, and sometimes I could come up with a cute line. I was after one thing and that was trackbacks. I find as a rule a trackback ping on Michelle's site usually yields at least one trackback ping to Blogger Beer. I have been picked up by some medium fish blogs (The Jawa Report being probably the largest) and one small fish blog has pinged two separate Blogger Beer blogs. Some fairly quick and easy promotion. On blogs without trackback I would leave a comment that usually ended with "see Blogger Beer for more on this."

The problem with this is it makes a blog a cover blog. Fine as it is, but probably never going to break out beyond the slithering reptile stage. I am working to break out of cover blogging. I find a good book to be helpful in providing inspiration for writing and my current read is helping me to spark multi-blog discussions on a very important current topic.

I am not going to entirely give up cover-blogging as it can be enjoyable and sometimes a story needs to get out!