You are oh, so lucky. Born Finnish (me too), moving to Australia (a country I’ve always wanted to live in).
You’ve got it “all.” I envy you.

Jack Paynes last blog post..Playgrounds for Scam Artists

There is that interesting group of non-native readers, which, surprise surprise, consist “the rest of the world”. When both the reader and the writer are non-native, they tend to think similarly about these issues. Both are a bit unsure of the language, and both forgive each other for the mistakes. And still, both need to rely on English, as they both understand it better than each others native language. The truth is though, that the better you write and the less errors you make, the more people you will be able to address and attract. Whether or not you consider that important is up to you of course.

Mike Kings last blog post..Leadership: Understanding What It Is

It is my observation having checked out many blogs that there are distinct classes of them, in terms of their reasons for blogging: fun, money, fame, passion or simple indulgence. But I have yet to convince myself that there are too many that do not seem to be completely unconcerned about their popularity by site traffic. So you see, the difference is in degree-not in method. A vast majority [my hunch] want to keep their site live with activity some way-by writing fresh articles or otherwise.

While I see the point in para 1 very clearly and agree with it fully, I don’t have any significant difference with the points in para 2; except compelled to emphasize that some writers [including me, you'd point out-I know] use them not to ‘pretend’ sophisticated but there is some kind of literary passion that wants to express itself-when there is a perceived opportunity. After all, if everything had to be like a product catalog, where on earth would be space for poetry, literary exploits and other forms of creative writing?! Not all readers-perhaps not all-are the casual type; like me, for example: if I happened to notice a new word, phrase I have always felt gratified I had a chance to learn more, even when I read for not for English language lessons but for knowledge.

For reasons identical to above, I think being too perfect sounds being a text book writer: some degree of ‘being what it is-what they are’ is fun, I think.

But I’m not for a moment even, have any hesitation in appreciating each and every thing about quality blogging written here, just that I felt maintaining that I’m me, anyways!

And one last thing-I don’t know if you or your spouse suggests that there possibly can not be good English writers among non natives-let me assert that there possibly were and there continue to emerge more accomplished writers among non natives. I can retrieve names or extracts of such works when I have time at my disposal.

Pushhyarags last blog post..Do I Deserve One, Yet?

I’m not sure how I manage to post three strips a week, to be honest with you. I look at the likes of Charles Schulz and wonder how he managed to do a strip every day of the week for fifty years!

Still, like you say, it’s quality over quantity. I certainly think My Dear Hard Drive fits that description nicely. Long may you continue!

Tony Singles last blog post..Favourites of 2008 #3 [Trottersville #94]

I hope we’ve kept the quality up, because three times a week seems to suit us. But any more than that and I think the blog would start to suffer for it. It’s a precarious (whoops, big word!) balance to strike! :p

Tony Singles last blog post..Favourites of 2008 #3 [Trottersville #94]

As for blogging regularly, the key is REGULAR not OFTEN. Regular doesn’t mean every day necessarily; it means every week, every three days, or every month even. It means that you don’t let your blog die out, but you make regular updates to it, what ever time span the regular might be. Although, I admit to not blogging regularly in the sense of even time spans, but I write often enough to keep the blog alive and kicking. Setting regular update schedule is good if you tend to slack off or not have an inborn need to write something often, because then you can go for weeks before “feeling like it” again and that can eventually lead to the blog drying up and dying.

As for the usage of sophisticated words, again, the key word is “seem”. It SEEMS pretentious. Poetry and creative writing don’t rely on sophisticated words however. Poetry and creative writing rely on creative usage of words, not using creative words. There is a niche group of people who do enjoy reading poetry with a dictionary in the other hand, or as an exercise of expanding vocabulary, but I would dare to say most people are not like that. Us bloggers often try to relate to Most People, which is the reason why we should aim to write to Most People. But if you want to write a niche blog to people who enjoy Big Words, then by all means, it may even be a great way to market your blog! But if you do, then it is all the more important to polish the writing so that the big words are not linked together by sloppy sentence structures, because that, I promise, won’t appeal to anyone.

And I wonder how it is possible for you to do a post 3x a week with all those cartoon strips you draw. The strips are so polished and so witty, they’re just amazing to me.