I know that some of you out there share a desire to write, and have already received a gentle push to set up a weblog, but I’d like to stress again how important it is to write a little bit every day, and how very much the blog concept has helped me to accomplish this. We’re all busy. We don’t have time to sit down and write. We intend to…but life sticks too many obstacles in our path like our job, housework, homework, partying…etc.
This service, Typepad, is one that charges a small monthly fee, but it offers a professional format and loads of flexibility. There are other services that are free (for now, anyway) and are plenty suitable for your purposes—to write. I am amazed that I have been able to produce something daily for two weeks now. Yes, there’s always the ability to simply open a Word Document and write into that—I have one called “Tidbits” which I usually enter posts in first, as I am doing now—to cut and paste into Spinning. But without the one extra step of requiring that Spinning be updated, I doubt that I would be writing on such a regular basis. It need not even be stories; just your thoughts will do, and then they need not be posted, or posted to a private log as I have learned to do. Although if you are really serious about being published some day, you’ll have to get over being shy about having others read your work—that’s the idea after all, isn’t it? If copyrights are your concern, it is easy enough to check this out with the U.S. government copyright office or other legal websites, but basically once the idea is written down, it’s yours. And, if someone happens to lift your stuff, there’s always the good old American option of suing. You’d probably make more money this way than what the guy got paid by the publisher!
Please, do yourself a favor and try it. It WILL help you discipline yourself to write. (Hop on bandwagon yelling “Writers Unite!”)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology