On Blogging

The word “blog” seems quaint, doesn’t it? And yet, I remember when the word came into the popular vernacular. Am I old? That’s it, isn’t it? Sigh.

Anyway, I do remember a time when blogs were considered cool. If you had a blog, that meant you were an “online person”. And not many people were online people back in the late 90s and early 2000s. Not all of the blogging platforms were free (Blogger didn’t come along until 1999), so blogging wasn’t something that great numbers of people actually did on a regular basis.

But those that realized the potential of blogging, well, they treated us to some of the best writing across all sorts of subjects and disciplines. Not many of  the early bloggers are still with us in the twenty-first century, but John Scalzi is still getting it done at Whatever. This New York Times best-selling science fiction writer has penned many great essays on his blog over the years, but this is the one that I return to again and again and again: “Being Poor”. Make sure you have a box of tissues handy before reading.

It should come as no surprise that writers often make the best bloggers. Another favorite writer of mine, Chuck Wendig, keeps up a blog at his site, Terribleminds. His pieces are not only well-written, but thought-provoking. “The Doormakers Will Make No Doors” is one of his best.

One of my oldest friends, Nicole Willson, was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel for Tidepool. Is this a plug for my friend and her work? Yes, yes, it is. But she also wrote one of my favorite blog posts. It’s about the recent controversy at the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) organization and their icky embrace of AI. She put into words exactly what I was feeling about the whole mess. Good writers will often do that for you!

Another writer, another great blog post: The Body is Unruly, by Roxane Gay. Ok, so it’s on Medium, so maybe it’s not technically a blog post, more of an “online essay”. If you’re not reading Roxane Gay, what is wrong with you? You should remedy that today.

I could go on and on, but I’ll finish up with one of my recent favorite blogs: Web3 Is Going Just Great. Do you not understand the appeal of crypto? Got the feeling it’s all just a scam? Well, Molly White is WAAAAAY ahead of you. Read her blog to get better feel on what exactly is going on with the crypto bros. Oh, and you’ll probably laugh your ass off, too.

These five examples are some of the reasons why I have chosen to restart my blog. Will I ever write something as good as these posts? Maybe, maybe not. But I’m at least willing and able to put some of my thoughts out there for all to see. That’s what blogging is really about: putting your words out there.