When I told my brother that I was starting a blog and writing the first post, he asked, “What next?”

“The second post,” I answered.

Deciding whether to start a blog was, for me, similar to wandering through a bookstore while thinking about writing a book. There are so many blogs out there of every conceivable ilk that starting a new one is like letting fall a drop of water into the ocean. What possible difference could my drop make? Why would anyone read what I have to say when there are so many choices?

Starting a blog: Kind of like trying to get into a swimming pool with everyone else in your country.

Soup or Salad? I’ll Take Both

But that’s much of what life is about. Choices. If I don’t post, no one ever has the choice to read something I could have written. True, sometimes there are way too many options—just check the big city phone book sometime when you want to go out to eat and no one has any suggestions. Too wide a selection can be paralyzing.

On the other hand, perhaps something I have to say will cause a reader to think about something he hasn’t before. Maybe a visitor to this site will find an entry that helps her decide that she really does want to be a writer. And the results of browsing this site could last longer than the meal you waited two hours on a Friday night to order but took twenty minutes to eat.

Ideas echo in people’s minds. Words transform the world.

Of Books, Blogs, and Software Documentation

There is a fundamental difference between books and blogs. To publish a book, you have to convince someone with the money to print it that you’ll make him or her even more money. (Or you have to have the capital yourself.) With a blog, just get some free software, and away you go.

You can make money blogging just as you can make money writing books. I confess that I don’t intend to make money with my blog. At least initially, my motivation to blog is a different selfish. If I’m satisfied with the output, it’s a success. But there is more.

The other types of writing I do follow the same path. I am a technical communicator by profession, and my major objective in that field is to educate others to the extent that they can accomplish tasks that they consider important and even essential—especially when their jobs depend on their being able to complete those tasks. Writing that I do on the more creative side also has the object of making some positive difference to someone, not merely to entertain.

Writing itself is satisfying, but writing to benefit someone else doubles the fulfillment. An interesting phenomenon in my job is that even though I create help systems, software manuals, tutorials, and live training using different kinds of tools, the most satisfying part is the writing, which is focused on giving information that makes a difference to someone. To the person I’m teaching, knowing how to do his job makes a difference.

 That kind of satisfaction is worth blogging for.

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