Learning to blog

This blog, with 8 posts I have done within a month. It was a project for Pathways at Toastmasters. My main reason for taking it on, is that I needed a reason to write. I also needed a timeline. Writing on demand, at least twice a week, was not something I was sure I could do. I feel very competent and proud that I did do this, at least, and loved it.

With zero knowledge of blogging I was able to navigate the murky waters of blogging land, with its strange lingo like hosting, URL's, design, layout, theme and reading list.

The reading list, I recently discovered, is the blogs I like to read, belonging to others. It puts them under this heading, to be easily accessible. I find these blogs by clicking on my likes, eg. reading, in my profile, and this brings up tons of blogs belonging to people who like to read.

I seem to learn new things each day, quite often by accident. For eg. iPads are not very good for editing posts. I can see my full post in Preview mode but when I go to Draft mode, to edit, my post will not page up. Desk tops, or I believe, lap tops are better for editing.

I also found that using Safari as my web browser was not good for some things. I had to do some research to discover that Google Chrome was far superior. I was not able to reply to comments through Safari only through Google Chrome. I do not know, however, if this applies to all blogging hosts.

Having bungled my way through this I found out some things. Blogs are used by writers mostly to promote their books, whether e-books or paper books. They give some excerpts, and write some short essays, about their writing angst. They also give advise on writing which I find is very interesting. Also, hosting sites are usually geared towards 'birds of a feather'. Ones interests guides one to a certain host. There are free hosts, (good for new bloggers), and also ones that charge fees. The difference is, that the ones that charge, have a lot of fancy bells and whistles.

I read something interesting about these two varieties. In keeping with modern thinking, people generally, are getting fed up with fancy sites. They want just plain quality, not fanciness. It reminds me of when people used to type their resumes on colourful paper, with all kinds of unique fancy lettering. That phase, thank goodness, has passed. Maybe this plainness is just hopeful thinking for a new blogger.

The experience has been wonderful. I loved it so much that I am determined to keep going. Being retired now I need a passion for my second life. I call it this because our life span is much longer than it used to be. With my many years of experience I could do some opinion pieces, or talk about family, or write some very short stories. The options are limitless. I also find the idea exciting.