Mesh Notes (Blogging)
May 16th, 2006[ General ]
I hate the term blogging and all it’s baggage.
“I want a blog, I want to start blogging”
A blog is a tool, it’s a self-publishing system, that’s it. It allows you to easily manipulate your website. I forget, when word processors came out were we saying “I want to word process”?
Do we call someone who writes a book a booker, or a magazine a magaziner? No, we call them writers. While blogging is a fascinating new tool at best, in the end, it’s just writing. You don’t need a blog or even a computer for that. Stop by a convenience store, buy a pad of paper and a pen, go sit somewhere and fill it with words. Once you’ve done that for a few months then start worrying about where you’ll host your blog.
You want to blog? Great, start by reading lot’s of books and practicing writing. If you don’t have a love of the written word then you’d better develop that or not bother. I’m not trying to discourage anyone from blogging, I’m trying to encourage people to write and you need very little technology for that. Not having a blog is no excuse not to be writing. If you are going to blog, great, but please, treat it more like writing a book then using some cool new tool.
What do you need to start blogging? If you haven’t read it already, I’d start here with Brenda Ueland’s book. By the way, Guy offers a money back guarantee for Brenda’s book so it’s a risk free purchase.
I’m not even going to touch the term blogosphere….