THE CHALLENGE OF BLOGGING

THE CHALLENGE OF BLOGGING

The challenge of getting published by traditional media is daunting. A proposal or finished work must somehow make it through what seems like a labyrinth before it arrives in the hands of a person who has the vision and power to get it into the machine that is publishing.

Think of all the great writers and artists—maybe you're one of them— struggling to be heard. Beyond that, there are talented people who would write more if they had a forum. There are also people who are experts in certain areas, and all that potentially valuable content stays trapped within them because they don't have an outlet. They don't have access to the "machine."

Actually, they do. Blogging is the easiest way to bring yourself to the Web and make your voice heard. I began blogging simply because it was so easy. All I had to do was type in a box and click a button, and my text was published to the Web and incorporated into a community of people waiting to read it. If my words had evaporated into a void, that would have been the end of it.

But they didn't. They were ingested, perused, and linked to. Commented on, emailed about, and repeated. All this was very exciting. It was as if I were a published author. My interest in publishing to my blog snapped to attention—I had an audience. Out of the woodwork came opinions, editorials, and thoughts on things I hadn't realized I even had thoughts about. My blog was helping me shape my character, and I found myself publishing several times a day to a responsive audience—not a wide audience mind you, but responsive nonetheless.

Today's Web has become fertile soil for personal publishing. Not only is it easy to get your voice out, but your voice is heard, acknowledged, and in many cases, responded to by interested, intelligent readers who have found your work most likely because they sought it out and are happy to have found it.

Blogging is the new and future platform for instant publishing, but it is not alien technology. After all is said and done, a blog is a web page. The same, but totally different. A blog is alive; it's you—on the web. Blogs are fast, simple, and streamlined web pages that funnel your thoughts and work to the web as quickly as you can type. What makes a web page a blog is the format and the frequency of updates. It's the proliferation of tools and services that make it so easy to create and maintain blogs that has created the phenomenon.