You Wanna Write a What? On a What?

My blog is two this month. Means two years ago, I was a blogging virgin, and I believed a post was still a post. In fact, the first time I heard the word blog was a little baffling. I was at a writing workshop in a small town rural library. A published Saskatchewan author was mentoring writers from all over Southern Saskatchewan.

Let me set the scene...

We were sitting around the table. The author in charge asked us to introduce ourselves, the genres we write, and what we hoped to get from this weekend. Now this was a long time ago, back before I had Internet at my house and way back before I left comments on posts.

We were quickly looking to the woman to my left. She was dressed in burgundy with some accentuating bling that showed she actually put effort into her wardrobe. (Unlike me, rubbing at a sad stain of baby vomit on the nicest blouse I owned. Eurk.) She smelt nice too. Weird what I remember. But I was used to smelling baby puke, I guess.

Anyway, she says something like this; "I blog."

Yup. She said I blog.

Up until this point, I had almost understood everyone at the table, (the sci-fi writers were speaking their own language and even though I love sci-fi, I didn't know which planet they were from) but I blog clearly had them stumped, too.

Just an aside, blog actually comes from the words: WEB LOG. Eventually it turned into one word, weblog, and that looks so cool people started saying we blog and so we became bloggers. See how we work, just creating words?

Well I could see the dictionaries looming on the shelf. But! I figured it would be rude to ditch the group to look up this word.

So I waited, figuring she'd dish out more clues. Eventually, I could ask her in private. Well, the author in charge did not miss a beat. If she didn't know what blogging was she did not let on. She said, "Tell us about it." There that would help. Well, I'm going to paraphrase here because I don't remember her exact answer but it went something like this, "Well, I was thinking about making my own blog."

So now it was a noun? Something she could make and had to attend a writing workshop to help her with. These clues were getting me nothing.


Oh and then she said something that truly stumped me. "I enjoy leaving comments on posts and would like to sound professional."

Comments on posts? Holy Writing Wizards. I mean... what the heck was she talking about? I suspected that maybe, just maybe, she was creating words. Us writers, we do that.

Break time. I beelined for the dictionaries. Blog. Was it a type of writing like a book or poem? How was she leaving comments on posts? 

Well, the dictionaries were by the author's book display and when she saw me rush toward them... well...  I never got a chance to look it up until I got home and well, a post was still a post, and blog- be it the verb or the noun- wasn't in my ancient dictionary. Wow. Time to update my dictionary.

I had talked to her about it and got the impression it involved the Internet. Which was like a sea of information I couldn't access so I left it at that for a few years.

Getting dial-up Internet meant I could contribute to writing groups. I hit it off with a few writers and they referred me to their blog. Now at first I ignored such invites cause it felt a lot like they were giving me directions to their private posts. Why was everyone so trusting with these posts?

Then on an agent website I see the words, "MUST HAVE A WRITING PLATFORM INCLUDING A BLOG". huh. It was requested by an agent? So I went to check out these links I had. I was sucked in instantly. Not because some agent wanted it, I mean really who would do that? It was because wow...

They basically had their own mini website on which they could self-publish their thoughts (each entry being a blog post) and ideas whenever the heck they felt like it. Others could comment, like a game. OMGosh! Why the heck hadn't anyone told me such a thing was possible???????? Oh yeah, they had, I was just stuck in a field somewhere looking at a post I couldn't comment on.

And so two years later, here I am. On a blog. Waiting for someone to comment on my post.

My fav part about blogging is chatting around our posts about writing.

The worst thing is that I don't have enough time to post weekly. I don't want to give it up and so I fit it in when I can. I visit new blogs, familiar blogs, and posts that intrigue me. I wish I could read every post. (Okay I might be coming off an addict. Hi. I'm Tanya and I have a bloggling problem, going on two years now. I went to Google about it and was referred to several posts I could comment on.)

Sadly, I watched some bloggers I adored vanish this past year. Just gone. Some posts are still there, buried under a sea of grass and weeds.

But!! I laughed a lot, too. Blogging is fun, it's unique, and it's very in-the-moment real.

I blog.

Best words ever.

Happy Blogoversary!!! (Look at me- just creating words.)

Why do you blog?