What Makes a Successful Diary?

This is designed as a late night meta musing. I have been here at Daily Kos for just over three months now and have written tens of Diaries at this point. Certainly, I am no Kid Oakland or Jeff Lieber nor do I come close to the writing talent or skill of teacherken. Still, I have been rescued a couple of times and made the rec list once (for my happy birthday to Rachel Maddow, yea I know) and I have been generally happy with the response to my humble efforts. Once I was even linked to by a random person out on the web and that was really cool. I know that many here do not actually choose to write diaries or write only occasionally for lack of time or maybe out of reticence regarding criticism. I still have that feeling of anxiety before publishing, this time is no exception. Despite that feeling, my confidence has grown and I have come to find my own definition of a successful diary.

When I first came here I was confident that I would write the most ground breaking and interesting diary ever yet to appear on Kos. Of course, this idea was horribly egotistic as well as conceited and quickly crushed. You can go back and look at my first effort if so inclined; I choose not to link it out of mild embarrassment. Since that rather inauspicious beginning I have no longer write out of the desire for some personal rec list glory. Beyond the breaking Obama news or Clinton acting Crazy diary you cannot really predict what will or will not capture the mind of the community.

Now when I write I try to make sure my contribution is fairly original and that it is worth knocking someone else’s diary of the recent list. I know how bad it feels to see your work knocked off the homepage by two lines and a poll already diaried. Most diaries get beyond this basic framework, imo but the ones that do not i find frustrating. The one that i knocked off on my homepage was the Kid Oakland diary already on the rec list so i do not have to worry too much.

There are several different measures that people might use to measure the success of their diary. The numbers of recommendations, comments, or tips all seem to be easily identified measures to judge the success of a diary. In addition, there are several different lists that an author can make that might give a feeling of accomplishment. First there is the most obvious rec list. Second, the Diary Rescue list often contains some of the best and overlooked diaries of the day. Seeing your diary on that list is something I would consider a success. The last list is the Jotter high impact list. This list has the 150 diaries with the biggest impact on it. You can see people who viewed your work rec it and commented in it. Not a list but a big honor is having your work front-paged.

Some people though do not write for stats or recognition. I think for many of the daily kos authors the simple cathartic release of ideas into words can be a success. There are multiple rants on varied topics each day that might not get a huge community response but  make the author feel significantly better. Some diaries are used as a means to express grief or sorrow. Some are calls to action whose success might not be realized in the cyber world but rather in the actual world.

For myself I tend to measure in tips or comments. 10 tips or 30 comments make me feel like the contribution was worth it. Sometimes though I post at strange hours where the likely hood of breaching this level of response is not all that likely and obviously I take that into account. I said comments or tips for a couple reasons. Tips are usually given when people agree with what you wrote; at least that is my experience. You can write a diary that receives 100+ comments and if 95 of those are all in disagreement with you your tip jar might not be filled to the brim. However, I think getting a discussion of 100 comments would more than make up for the fact everyone thinks your wrong. One of the key purposes of DKos is to generate discussion and interaction and if a diary gets that going than that would count for my definition of success. Therefore, either 10 people liked it or people felt energized enough to get a 30 comment discussion going makes me happy.

This is not always the case. Several of my diaries have not made this level yet I consider them a success. The reason for this is that some of the few comments in the diary expressed thanks or appreciation for my efforts. Honestly getting one of those comments makes me feel like any effort I put into writing was more than worth it.

That’s pretty much it for me and what I consider a successful diary. I am interested to hear what other people think about when they choose to write a diary. Does any one else even consider if a diary is a "success" or not? Maybe that’s just me. Feel free to comment on what makes you decide to comment or rec. I have constantly wondered why someone might rec and not tip so if you have a thought on that I would love to hear it. My last thought in this diary should be mt observation that generally the best received diaries are ones from the heart. So if you have not written one but you have something heartfelt to say i recommend putting it out there.