The past couple of years there has been an explosion new blogs — everything from crackpot conspiracy-theory bloggers to stay-at-home-mom bloggers blogging it Erma Bombeck-style. And we all have our reasons for doing it. Some do because they’ve heard about pro bloggers making six figures and getting book deals. Some do it because they love to write. Many do it simply because they are experts in a certain field and it’s an easy way to impart knowledge and promote themselves. For me, it started-out as equal parts reason #2 and #3, but, admittedly, I’m now hoping for a little of #1 — if not six figures, maybe low to mid-five figures.
This blog didn’t really begin as a blog. Back in 2000 Jim Chandler of Thunder Sandwich fame, was doing some writing over at the now-defunct Themestream.com, which was a writing community site similar to Helium.com. Jim encouraged me to join. I did, and shortly thereafter started writing two separate columns — one was Diary of a Mad Editor and the in other, I reviewed films. The movie review column wasn’t nearly as popular because there were just too many other writers doing it — writers who worked full-time for newspapers reviewing movies for a living and had a following. But no one was writing anything like Diary. The column became popular and at the time of Themestream’s demise, I had many subscribers. After that, I tried, unsuccessfully, to resurrect Diary on Suite 101 — although my profile is still available on the site, you won’t find any of my writing there. I then started posting the articles on a section of my Asterius Press website. I didn’t think of it as blogging, really, because I didn’t update these posts very often. Then, after a few years of posting occasional editorials on that website, I installed Wordpress and really went to town. And, sure, there have been setbacks that have stalled this blog’s progress, but I’m still here . . . and so is this blog.
It’s hard to believe, but this thing will have been in existence, in one form or another, for nine years as of January 2009 in spite of everything and I am excited because never has there been a better atmosphere for bloggers than now. As such, I’m probably going to do more posts directly related to blogging in the future.
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