A Blog Walks Into a Bar…

The three dots after Bar is called an ellipsis, but you already knew that—otherwise there would be no sense in calling this satire.  Originally, I planned to tell everyone—yes, that’s you—about winning the Southern California Writers’ Association Will Write for Food contest, but decided not to when I discovered the last winner they posted was February.  When my winning essay does get posted I will post a link to it here.  In the meantime, this week will be devoted to that most satirical of all enterprises, the blog.

Writers shop this market for fresh ideas to put
in their blogs (Photo courtesy iStock.com).

Blog is actually shorthand for weblog.  Apparently, back in the nineties, when the web, known as the world wide web (that’s where the www comes from, but even that has become archaic), was fresh and new, some websites were created with the sole purpose of listing links to noteworthy sites.  In a way, these early links provided the infrastructure for the modern Internet and gave rise to portals like Yahoo, Bing and Google.

In the evolutionary process, actual thoughts and information began to replace the list and the links were more purposely designed to create a conversation.  Sometimes these conversations were just a virtual form of dialogue among friends, or people with similar interests, like movies, television shows, sports, politics, knitting and food. In other instances, it was professionals or business people providing a service for their customers, like chiropractors, accountants, grocers and shoe sales people.

The window on the right of the near side is where I
hammer out these gems (Photo courtesy iStock.com).

Besides winning the writing contest this month, attending the SCWA meeting last Saturday gave me the opportunity to hear an enlightening presentation by a young adult author, Elana K. Arnold.  Her blog elanakarnold.blogspot.com features questions she receives about writing and her review of other authors’ work.  Then, there’s Caleb Jacobo, a member of SCWA who has a blog he subtitles, Welcome to My Public Writing Journal at calebjacobo.com and features everything from his economic and political philosophy to middle grade stories.  Another member of SCWA, who self-published her memoir about taking her teenagers to Belize for a year, Freeways to Flip Flops and promotes it at Costco, has a blog, Gutsy Living: Life’s too short to play it safe at soniamarsh.com that includes webinars on ways to market the next great book.

A blog with which I share a special relationship—it’s written by my nephew is These Things I Know at joshrank.blogspot.com who also migrated from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin to Southern California with a momentary detour to Atlanta. His talents expand beyond the blogosphere to a couple of self-published novels, playing guitar and banjo, vocals and brewing a mean cup of java.

How a writer feels after finishing another post
for his blog (Photo courtesy iStock.com).

Finally, if you like to travel, either in the physical world or via virtual or electronic conveyance, then I would highly recommend venturing with my editor, Lisa Findley. Lisa, who I’ve never met in the physical world, but has assisted in bringing my novel to fruition, is currently on her second leg of a world tour.  You can join her in Peru through her blog Greetings from a Stowaway at lisafindley.com if you hurry.

So, do yourself a favor (no I’m not being satirical) and visit these blogs. Be sure to come back and let me know what you think in our comment section.  If you happen to find some other wonderful blogs along the way please share them with us, too.