Emerson on blogging

Instructions from Emerson on blogging:

"The way to speak and write what shall not go out of fashion is to speak and write sincerely. The argument which has not power to reach my own practice, I may well doubt, will fail to reach yours. But take Sidney's maxim: "Look in they heart and write." He that writes to himself writes to an eternal public. That statement only is fit to be made public which you have come at in attempting to satisfy your own curiosity. The writer who takes his subject from his ear and not from his heart would know that he has lost as much as he seems to have gained, and when the empty book has gathered all in its praise, and half the people say - "what poetry, what genius!" it still needs fuel to make fire"

- Essay IV, Spiritual Laws