Blog On

About this time last year:

Andrew Karre (my fabulous editor at Flux): You really need to blog.

Me: I’m too old to blog. I don’t even know what a blog is.

Andrew: You should go to the Kidlitosphere Blogging Conference. It’s in Chicago. You can drive.

Me: Okay, I guess.

So I went to last year’s Kidlitosphere Blogging Conference in Chicago. It was fabulous—well worth the $80 ticket I got for going through an electronic tollbooth without paying, probably when I inadvertently found myself off the toll road and entering, then exiting O’Hare Airport. I have a vague memory of it. There was no attendant, I had no change. What was I supposed to do?

Anyway. Like I said, the conference was fabulous. I wrote a post about it for the Flux blog, setting myself up for the conversation that follows:

Andrew: Now that you know what blogging is and you’ve actually blogged, you need to start your own blog.

Me: (whining) But I have no clue how to do that.

Fifteen minutes after this conversation:

Andrew: I just made your blog. Blog!

Me: Thanks. I think.

I’ve been blogging ever since. I love doing it. Being a novelist, I get so dead-set on Getting the Novel Done that I rarely take time to do explore other ideas that occur to me along the way. It turns out, what I’m mostly writing on my blog are little 500-700 page essays I’d never have taken the time to write if it weren’t for the little voice in my head saying (among many other bossy things) “It’s time to do a post for the blog.” Over the not-quite-a-year that I’ve been blogging, I’ve also enjoyed writing about some books I love—most recently, My Tiki Girl, by Jennifer McMahon. I interviewed one of my favorite authors, Peter Cameron, about Some Day This Pain Will Be Useful to You for The Edge of the Forest, and I’m looking forward to doing some reviewing for The Well-Read Child in the future.

I can’t say I have the widest audience in the world; it’s not uncommon to get as few as 16 hits a week—most of which (any week, for that matter) are likely to be my family and friends.

(Cool. Just checked Site Meter (which Andrew also set up for me). Thirty-three this week—and it’s only Thursday. Who aaaarrrreeee you?)

In any case, I’m on my way to the Second Kitlitosphere Blogging Conference in Portland, Oregon tomorrow morning. I can’t wait. I look forward to seeing some of the bloggers I met last year, meeting new bloggers, and learning all I can about how to be a better blogger myself.

See you there?