Before the spring of 2018, I'd never written a blog before. Letters? Sure. Journal entries? Uh huh. Short, humorous treasurer's reports to read at professional meetings? Yep. Essays, both formal and informal? Hundreds (and that may actually not be an exaggeration). Books?! Yes...but blogging was an entirely new writing experience for me. If my writing here still feels tentative or a bit disorganized, that's probably because what follows was exploratory writing for me. I'm trying to get a feel for how my blog should come across.
Writing a blog is, necessarily, different than reading them. But to understand how to write one, you should first have exposure. And so...before you post anything of your own, spend some time getting to know the idea of a blog. Look up a definition...or definitions, if you prefer. See whether people disagree about what they are. Explore the history of the word itself. What is the etymology of the word "blog?" Don't ask me: find out!
And, most importantly, read some blogs. Not sure where to start? Well, let me give you a few examples. First of all, try a variety. No idea where to begin? Look at a "best of the best"--as with this sampling of news blogs from LifeWire.com or a handful of travel blog recommendations or a blog about how travel blogs and pandemics don't mix. Interested in politics? Stonekettle Station calls itself "a bastard cross between a blog and a pubic forum" that "doesn't do either very well." But Jim Wright--a brash, irreverent Navy vet living in Alaska--has made me do more thinking about current politics than some of the most "educated" or more politically-experienced bloggers out there. Or, for a taste of something completely different, you could pop over to the scrumptious blog Baking Martha, maintained by Martha Collison--a young Brighton woman who just happens to have been my favorite contestant [to date] on The Great British Bake Off--for recipes and images tempting enough to get me into the kitchen. Nearly.
I invite you to find blogs that are related to things you care about. I promise you, they're out there. You'll find blogs on writing, maintained by authors whose works you've admired for years or educators whose work and ambition you hope to emulate. On the other end of the spectrum are those whose blogs will frustrate you, so riddled with errors and haphazard language are they. As Steve Martin says, "Some people have a way with words. Others...not have way." Consider the latter cautionary tales about what you don't want to do.
Be selective, then. But be as specific as you want. You can go searching for a blog on 17th century tea services in rural England and find something [here's what I found when I did that search, in fact]. Your goal is to learn something: maybe facts, yes, embedded in the content on the pages of those blogs--but something, too, about what makes this sort of writing tick.
Your objective this week is to poke around, find out what others are doing, and learn from their efforts. And then...and only then...you'll find and read my announcement about your first blog and create your own.
So pay attention.
