Friday, April 07, 2006

Why I Blog

Long before I ever started blogging I started writing. I'm not going to run through my resume here, but I started in radio journalism at 17 and ever since have been getting paid, in some way, to watch my fingers move across a keyboard.

That said, I still have trouble selling freelance work. I spent some time making a living as a freelancer in the late 90s and found it to be a frustrating profession. I'd spend hours working on an article only to receive barely enough to cover a quarter of the work. So I landed a full-time job in PR and have not looked back.

But every once in a while a story pops out and lands in my Word file. I this past winter I took a blog post from my personal blog, expanded it and submitted it to the Boston Globe West section. They have a column called Suburban Diary in which anyone can submit a story. I received some good feedback from the editor, did some edits to get it down to the word limit, submitted again and waited.

I saw many good pieces get published, and a few not so good. But mine never came up. This week I finally received a note saying that it was officially rejected.

Frankly, I can't figure out why, but that's the Globe's decision.

So why do I blog? Because I want my writing to have an audience.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What if God told you why you should blog, and it wasn't to fulfill your need to have your audience.

Or could you accept that God put that desire in you, versus you ACTUALLY having an audience?

Would you accept His statement?

Chuck Tanowitz said...

That question assumes quite a bit.

Anonymous said...

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Anonymous said...

I guess the point is, don't ask the question, unless you can do something useful with the answer.

I'm glad you understand why you blog. You're way far ahead of other bloggers.

And I read your posts.

I'm just curious as to if you were really interested in Purpose.