Blog, Don’t Jog! Better yet: Blog and Jog (not at the same time)

I’m quite excited to say to my students, family, friends–really anyone who will listen to me–that I blog now.  A few crabby people asked:  “Who actually reads your blog?”  Crabby people are annoying, aren’t they?  I mean, I don’t know who reads my blogs (ok, my husband’s been keeping up pretty well) but that’s not the point, I say to the crabby people!  Preparing for an upcoming speech about the writing process, I found this NY Times article that gives a really good reason why you should blog:  it could lead to a book deal.   But even if blogging doesn’t lead to a book deal, blogging helps me to generate ideas that could lead to books.    And I’ve read more than a dozen blogs that at some point say:  I feel better now that I blogged about this. 

So hold on crabby non-bloggers and blog nay sayers.  Blogging is a good thing.  Like town criers of the past and the op/ed pages of the newspapers, bloggers raise public discourse.  And who knows, in addition to possibly  feeling better because you blogged about it (you know who you are, venting bloggers) you may even score a book deal.

So resolve to blog!  Even if no one reads it.

 Nichola D. Gutgold is associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State Lehigh Valley and author of Almost Madam President:  Why Hillary Clinton ‘won’ in 2008 (Lexington Books, 2009).