My Blogiversary

It's been a year. I can't quite believe it.

I suppose my first foray into the blogosphere actually came some time in February '06 when Diana Peterfreund had me guest blog about the weekend I signed with my agent and won 3 lottery type prizes. (4 if you count signing with an agent.)

But it took until mid-June of last year for me to attempt to create a blog of my own.

Now, I'll be the first to admit I've been a pretty inconsistent blogger. And keeping up with both my own blog and a post a week at Drunk Writer Talk has proven harder than I thought it would be, in spite of plans I'd had for "easy stuff" like posting the interview column I do for my local RWA chapter once a month. Somehow I've only managed to post a measly 3 of those. Terrible.

I suppose I'm getting to that point I've seen so many other bloggers hit. The point where you ask, "Why am I doing this?" or "Is it worth my time?".

For an unpublished author, such as myself, there's no big publicity payoff. In fact, I'm not even sure to what extent readers of books read author blogs. When I started blogging I had a few purposes in mind, although to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure these reasons were as clear to me then, as they are now. (But it sounds better to have had a reason beyond, "Everyone else seems to be doing it," which was probably closer to the truth.)

The reasons?

#1 To get my name out there in googleland. Used to be when you goolged Maureen McGowan you'd get a huge number of hits and would have to dig for several pages to find one that was actually about me. In fact, even when you added "writer" to the google search, another woman who shares my name, but writes Xena Princess Warrior fan fic, would come up way ahead of me. (At the time, the only online presence I had was my name on my local RWA chapter's site, and a few contest finalist announcements.) Now when you google my name, most of the first few pages are actually about me.

#2 To show editors who might be looking at my work that I'm serious about the business and about self-publicizing. (Although see the comment above about not really knowing how much publicity one gets from blogging.)

#3 But I think the main reason was, or at least the main pay-off has been, networking with other writers. I've met several other writers through my blog -- some who are becoming good friends -- whom I don't think I'd have otherwise met. I also feel like I've gotten to know several other writers much better and assume they feel like they know me better. (This begs the question about cyber relationships and how well you really know someone with whom 99% of your interaction has been online... I feel a major digresssion coming on... But one of my new blog-resolutions is to save my digressions for another post, so more on that next blog year.)

And finally, an unexpected side benefit of blogging has been that a few friends I don't see very often feel like they can catch with me through my blog. Of course, if they'd post comments... Maybe I'd feel more connected to them, too... Hint, hint...

All in all, I've enjoyed my year-o-blogging -- even when I started to hyperventilate on learning my mother had discovered it. Gasp. Hi Mom. The bad words I've used are just for my on-line persona. I don't use them in person. Honest.

Happy Blogiversary to me.