The Benefits of Blogging: Learning Again

I've been blogging here for going on three years (man, has it been that long?) and it's been been pretty informative. So, since I'm in a bit of a nostalgic mood as the third anniversary approaches, I wanted to share some of my insights on blogging with my fellow progeeks.

I often advise people to try blogging – sure it's not for everyone, but I find it's very useful to pursue, because if it is for you, you'll gain a lot of benefits. So, don't take this as pressuring you towards blogging, but I want to share an interesting professional benefit about blogging as I do–on careers and so forth.

One of the benefits of blogging is that you learn something twice.

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Guest Post by Leona Wisoker: Ideas and Fear; or, The Fear of Ideas

(I'd like to thank Leona Wisoker, a talented writer who's also had me blogging at her blog, for this contribution on writing, ideas, and fear – something a lot of us know of.  I reccomend her blog as she has some fascinating insights.)

I used to be paralyzed by the thought that I had nothing worth saying, no skills with which to say it, and nobody who would want to read it anyway. Even after landing a four-book contract deal, publishing a handful of short stories, and running a relatively regular blog for almost two years now, I still hear those statements in my head nearly every day:

It's a fluke. It's not real. People are just being nice to me. If I was a 'real' writer, I'd be signed with a Big Name Press, like Tor or Baen. I'm an upstart and I'm going to get squashed very very soon now….

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Media Mutation

I noted a few posts back that many industries, geeky industries, are in transition – or should be.  I noted that movie theaters face many challenges, and perhaps even the and of what it means to be a movie theater, or its expansion into something else. I noted publishing is changing. Many, many industries and businesses are in transition, and those in them need to keep up or the changes may well crush them.

So, yes it's important to realize that businesses are changing in this bizarre, wonderful age of technical and media mutation. Yet, if you think about it, media itself is changing. Why should we expect the media to stay the same after all -  it relies on technology which is ever-changing, so it's going to change and morph and modify itself.

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