Given the many other things that need to get done in a day, why blog? This is a question I have been repeatedly asking myself, especially in deciding what to write here.
There are lots of tips out there on how to blog. A 2008 Slate article featuring Arianna Huffington, Om Malik and others (book available here) gives the following tips:
Set a schedule and blog often
Write casually but clearly
Add something new
Link to other blogs
Be patient
Sounds simple enough. Really, I could have given that advice, and I’m an amateur! There are hundreds of websites dedicated to blogging tips and advice, getting more traffic, blogging for money, and the like. But many don’t answer the question, why blog? — which is the far more difficult question.
Andrew Sullivan, formerly of The Atlantic (now at the Daily Beast), writes why he blogs in a very thoughtful essay:
To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, as Montaigne did, pivot you toward relative truth. A blogger will notice this almost immediately upon starting. Some e-mailers, unsurprisingly, know more about a subject than the blogger does. They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.
I think my own purpose in writing in this very public (if not terribly widely-read) forum, is both to document for myself the ideas and experiences I encounter and develop (I will surely forget the majority of those that I do not commit to “paper”), and to mold, refine, and even cast aside ideas and arguments with the help of time and those who will share their own ideas, knowledge, and experiences here.
I guess you are not supposed to say in your blog that you sometimes have difficulty writing at all, but there you have it. I have considered, begun writing, and dumped several ideas in just the past week (let’s take the KCCA vendor issue as one example), not to mention many times before that, mostly concerned about posting because I hadn’t fully developed an argument, didn’t have all the facts, or wasn’t entirely confident in my analysis.
But herein lies the difference between an article and a blog (at least mine) — I don’t promise perfectly penned prose, but rather my frank thoughts, open to your ideas, looking for new knowledge, in the hope that we can think through issues together. That is why I blog.
Melina Raquel Platas 