It’s almost five years ago since I started blogging. I can’t believe that I’ve kept it up for that long and that I still really love doing it.

I’ve kept a written journal of some description or another since I was 18, and I feel quite embarrassed at some of the stuff I wrote. Mind you a lot of things I wrote in a private for-my-eyes-only journal, I wouldn’t even consider writing on a public website.

I’d tampered with typing my journal back in the 1980s, printing it out and sticking it in the written journal but that was fraught with danger. What if someone from work found what I’d printed before I had a chance to collect, or what if someone found my electronic document? I think I did that once or twice before giving up.

So the written journal only tended to really happen when I was travelling or when I felt like it.

Then about six years ago Oprah.com had some sort of online journal setup, kind of like a blog I guess, and I remember thinking that it could be the way to go to get away from longhand.

Then one day I received a webreference.com newsletter which mentioned the Bloggies and I had a cruise around some of the finalists and I thought that this blogging thing could be a really good way to go. I setup a blog on Blogger or something similar and realised that this was something I wanted to do, so I ended up getting an account with Typepad. I blogged using that platform for about three years after which – wanting more control over my blogging platform – I went with self-hosted WordPress.

When I did my first blog post, you can see (if you read it) that not much thought went into its content and when someone actually commented I nearly fell off my chair.

During the last five years my blogging has evolved enormously. Here’s how.

• I’m sure because I write a lot for my blog that my writing has improved. In fact one regular reader has commented on this. I’ve also had feedback that my blog writing style is engaging.
• I’ve met a fabulous online community of people which has enabled me to go join a blog meet in Perth, one formally and one on the side with an individual blogger. I’m sure meeting people in person strengthens online relationships.
• I also get regular comments on my blog and I wonder if I would have continued blogging without this. The validation, sympathy, good wishes – whatever – help make it worthwhile.
• It’s enabled my passion for photography to flourish. While Flickr isn’t blogging, it is social networking which blogging is a part of, and I do use my Flickr photos a lot on my blog. I’ve also met real people through a local Flickr group.
• Meeting people online has brought opportunities like this Aussie Bloggers forum and blog that I would have never otherwise heard about.
• My blog has also come to the attention of PR agencies who are looking to tap into bloggers to help market for the companies they work for. This has brought me things to try out like a mobile phone, Lego, fruit juice and DVDs. It’s therefore caused me to setup a Reviews and Giveaways section on my blog – something I’d never really thought of prior to the opportunity landing in my lap.
• I also entered my blog in the last 9rules membership round and was accepted.
• I run ads on my blog and while I don’t make much money at all it helps out with the hosting costs. It feeds my hobby and if I start earning more that wouldn’t be a problem. It also helps me give back occasionally.

The above list is probably not exhaustive and if I didn’t work nearly full-time and if I wasn’t a full-time mother and could therefore devote more time to my blog goodness knows where it could take me. A different job maybe? A girl can dream can’t she, or does it have to be a dream?

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The same goes for your blog. I’m not suggesting you post every day, unless you want to, but writing every day is a must.

I call it motivation momentum. When you’re writing every day, you’re motivated to write every day. You don’t fall out of the groove. How many blogs have you noticed with reduced posts these days? Yes, mine included. People took time off “writing” over Christmas and are now struggling to get back their motivation momentum.

I can sit and stare at my blog for days, watching my stats diminish by the hour, knowing that if I just wrote a post they would go back up. After a few days I throw one together and my stats rise – briefly. Then they go back down, and I’m back to square one. Clearly stats aren’t why I started my blog. I started my blog to help me focus on writing every day. The positive stats flow from that.

This desire for motivation momentum helps explain the popularity of such insanity as NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo as people struggle to gain momentum on their own. And for November I write furiously. In fact last November I wrote some 70,000 words including 3 university assignments, a 50,000 word novel and some 19 blog posts. Most days I wrote for five hours a day. At least 2 a day.

But where is this momentum now? I lost it somewhere around Christmas. The tempting distractions of shopping, parties and friends proved too much for me and now while I can sit at a computer for hours a day, my writing is virtually zero. I wrote 14 blog posts in January. Less in February. My average last year was between 20 and 25 posts a month. And here I am writing less than half that. I’ve lost my momentum.

This doesn’t just apply for writing. I lost my exercise momentum as well, somewhere around uni exams last year I stopped going to the pool to study, and never went back.

What about you? Have you lost your motivation momentum when it comes to writing, your blog, or some other part of your life? How do you get it back?

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When I talk to people, even in the professional theatre scene here in Melbourne, they’re always surprised to realise that there are puppet makers and performers in Australia. The funny thing is, they couldn’t be more wrong. We’re not just here; we’re large and internationally known. Australia is home to some of the best puppetry in the world. Heard of Walking with Dinosaurs? It’s a huge animatronics dinosaur display, and the puppets were built and designed by an Australian. Do you remember the cult TV show Farscape? Produced right in Homebush, Sydney, with puppeteers and builders from our own country. Ever see Richard Bradshaw on Sesame Street with his shadow puppets? Yep, another Aussie. (I’m not even mentioning a particular Aussie show that is a hit overseas… it has to do with genitalia)

Yet you never hear about the puppetry community here. You’d never know it existed. And I’m starting to change all of that.

I became interested in the art of puppetry while studying theatre at university. After graduating, I started up a small blog, really on a whim, and posted some pictures of an experimental puppet that I was building. I wanted to share with people how I made my puppets, and learn along the way. It’s been a few years now, and I’ve found out a lot. In particular, practically everyone in America who’s into puppets is online. American puppetry companies don’t just sell their products online, they perform online, teach online, everything. It made me think: where’s all our puppet blogs? Where are our puppeteers? Why aren’t they online, talking about their work?

My best guess is they’re too busy; but most Aussie puppet companies, builders and performers don’t even have their own website. To fill this gap, I started posting informational articles on my blog about where to buy puppets, or where to find a puppet show for your kid’s birthday party… I’ve collected and collated information on a range of topics, from finding a puppetry festival to where to learn about puppetry in Australia. You’d be amazed at how many people are actually out there working professionally in this craft; and even more amazed at the number of people who want to know about it. I get emails all the time asking for help, someone’s looking for materials, someone else is wanting to buy or sell a puppet…

Over the past year or so, my blog has become more than a blog. It’s become one of the few places online for Australian puppetry. I’m now one of the few Aussie puppet makers to sell parts and patterns online (hell, I’m close to being the only one!). And my site is becoming a vast resource for the overseas community too. It seems I’ve found a niche.

In March this year, Perth was home to the world’s biggest puppetry festival: a biennial event run by the oldest theatrical organisation, UNIMA. UNIMA is the puppetry union and is made up of branches around the world. Everyone who is anyone attends the biennial festival, and delegates came from South Africa, Korea, Japan, America, the UK… and of course, from around Australia. I was lucky enough to attend the festival, with a small travel grant. I was the only attendee to do a liveblog from the event, and one of only three attendees discussing it online at all (the other two were Aussies).

You wouldn’t have known that for two weeks puppeteers from around the world swamped Perth’s halls. There was barely a sign anywhere. Until open day. In the middle of the two-week event, a large free open festival was provided for, and everyone gathered to see the Million Puppet Project, the largest gathering of puppets in the world. The hope was to break the world record. (I think we did, but missed out on the million puppet mark) Students from schools, people from around the world, all submitted their puppets; all of which went to needy children afterwards. It was hot that day, but the festival was packed, with children, parents, adults, delegates and performers pouring into the Perth Concert Hall. Free shows were presented, along with workshops, displays and other activities.

It was my first time in Perth – being a Melbourne girl – and I spent the entire two weeks taking part in masterclasses, seeing shows, meeting other puppet makers, checking out exhibitions, and enjoyed all of it. I only wish more people would realise that puppetry isn’t just for kids, and isn’t just a classroom activity. We’re a vibrant and nutty bunch. We’re not muppets; we love what we do and do it well. It’s time for Australia to start accepting puppetry as an artform on the same level of traditional theatre, or of film and TV. And it’s time for Aussie puppeteers to start getting online and opening themselves up to a wider audience: we should hear more about their shows, builds and activities. Australia has some of the best puppeteers to offer. So why does no one know we exist?

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(For the purposes of clarification – by blog fiction, I mean something in blog format, and containing mostly fiction. There are a lot of different definitions floating around there – mine is very
general)

Recently, I read a post by a fellow fiction writer. He was asking – why have a personal blog, as well as write fiction? While composing a long and rather windy reply, I happened upon an interesting insight.

I originally started my personal blog with the intention that it would be an adjunct to my fiction blog, read by friends, some fans of my fiction blog, and few others. Months later, the fiction blog still gets the lion’s share of my time and focus.

Guess which one’s in the Top 100 Australian Women’s Blogs list?

Yup. The sideline personal blog. Weird, huh? Not really, come to think of it. See, looking back, I think that I made a crucial but not fatal error in my logic process. I thought like a vaguely successful writer with a fan base. I’m not a vaguely successful writer. I didn’t have a fan base. And the important thing to know about fiction blogs is this – <b>most first-time visitors won’t come back</b>. The story they read – or skim – won’t be captivating enough, or it will be the wrong genre, or there’ll be a personality mismatch. On the other hand, people visit my personal blog because it’s, umm, personal, and often amusing, and then sometimes they get hooked on my fiction because it’s got the same sort of amusement factor as my personal blog. There are, no doubt, personality mismatches – but people find my personal blog
via links, or comments I’ve left, on blogs belonging to people I get along well with. Which means far fewer personality mismatches.

From this accidental experience, I’ve come up with a new theory of fan-base-creation.

The internet can be used to find people of like mind, and it’s people of like mind who are most likely to read and enjoy a person’s fiction.

There. Bleeding obvious, wasn’t it?

One warning, though. If you’re considering starting a personal blog merely to attract people to your fiction blog – think hard. It requires a genuine effort at sharing yourself – a fake exterior or a simple intellectual discussion is unlikely to help. A personal blog must be exactly that – personal – or it will hinder you more than it helps.

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Why the ACT Government has only in the last year or so decided it was cute to try and use SMS language on anti-DWT (Driving While Texting) awareness signs like the “DRIVE N TXT U B NEXT” is beyond me … they missed the boat by about 10 years and is embarrassing.

I wonder how many people still use SMS language and shortcuts given that technology nowadays means its no longer necessary. From what I’ve observed people in general want their messages to be well-formed, correctly spelt and appropriately punctuated and formatted – and that applies to phone SMSs and other short messages such as those posted on Twitter.

What are your thoughts on SMS language? Is it dead? Is it cute? Does it have its place still? Was it a temporary travesty of the English language?

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Today I recieved a flyer from the local shopping centre telling me Santa arrives next weekend! Where has the year gone? Apparently Christmas is only a few short weeks away (shh! don’t tell my bank account).

Along with the many Christmas parties, end of year break ups, planning family celebrations, holidays, finding caretakers for pets and then the new year celebrations, your blog will probably be wanting some attention over the break.

Some people (me included) have used the down time to fiddle with their blogs – change hosts or themes, and generally do a bloggy tidy up.

But what about your readers? Are you going to cater for them over the break? Are you going to pre-post before you head off on holidays? Or will you be staying home and tinkering in the back rooms of your blog?

This year we are off on a long family holiday, about 5 weeks all up. Fortunately I’m planning on taking at least one laptop with me – probably two (shh! Don’t tell my hubby though, he’ll have a fit!) and will be blogging as we go, as we have so many exciting things planned I want to share with my readers.

What about you? What are your plans to take care of your blog over the holidays? Or are you staying home and planning a complete overhaul?

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For example I co-coordinate the local Canberra Twitter usergroup … basically a bunch of local Canberran Twitterers who get together for lunch or drinks every couple of months, and we usually have between 6 and 14 people turn up to those events. It’s a lot different from chatting via Twitter and can be occasionally awkward to meet someone you’ve been chatting to via Twitter for months and think you know them but when it comes to social small-talk you realise you know them in a different way to what’s applicable to that particular situation. You may know their day-to-day struggles they experience with their job but not even know if they’re married or have kids. But it’s nice to have a completely rounded relationship with people you consider friends … and so we have these meetings to put faces to names, real names to aliases.

Another such group is the local Canberra flickr photographers group. Just like the local Twitter group we’re not sponsored, endorsed or supported by flickr in any way. We all love flickr and it doesn’t bother us that we promote flickr and have built a massive community around flickr (over 600 members online with close to 70 people turning up for big events like the annual flickr gala) and get nothing back from them … though if anyone from flickr is listening and feels to support us it would be nice to have some financial support for events like our gala *grin*. But flickr was the hub that enabled local photographers to find each other and coordinate our regular meets – in fact our next meet is this Saturday for Floriade and the Nara Candle Festival in Canberra. Flickr has provided the platform for this interaction to a point but clearly many people want to take that further beyond the webpage and now some of us have close friendships that started offline and matured offline.

In fact I met my girlfriend through flickr as we are both members of the Canberra flickr photographers group – so for that, flickr, thank you!

Websites can only go so far and they shouldn’t try to cover off all interaction needs of their users but expect that offline communities will be spawned and attempt to facilitate and support that.

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If you are not a blogger but are curious and interested to know if blogging is for you, there are ways you can give it a go without making any commitment to it, time wise or financially.

Two of the major and popular hosted blogging programs, WordPress.com (not wordpress.org which you host yourself) and Google’s Blogger (blogspot), are free and simple to use. Once set up (which is easy to do) the only skill you really need is being able to type; two fingered will do.

You can set your preferences to private if you are not ready to publish your words to the world, if you only wish to communicate with a chosen few or just want to journal your own thoughts or experiences for future reference..

• Blogs are a wonderful way of keeping far away family and friends up to date with the happenings in your world in words, photos and video clips.
• You may want to journal just a particular time in your life: a holiday, your baby’s rapidly changing first months, a child’s wedding, your own wedding, the renovation of your house….
• If you are researching a subject for work, study or hobby, recording it using a blog gives you an easy to access record, with more flexibility than a word processing program.
• You can just use a blog as a private personal journal, recording your thoughts and feelings. Writing stuff down can be very therapeutic, helping rid yourself of of frustrations or depressed thoughts or helping you organize your thoughts if you have a problem to solve.

The possibilities for a subject matter are endless and blogging software allows for ease of categorization and dating, making it simple to find things again later. Online blogging software allows you to post entries from anywhere – while at work, travelling or visiting friends.

If or when you wish to make your blog available for all to read, remember that everyone can write and share something that someone else, somewhere in the world, would be interested in reading about – knowledge, expertise, skills, experience or experiences, favorite pastimes, opinions, beliefs, a sense of humor….

Writing publicly and having your blog read by others can be a wonderful confidence boost although blogging is not all about one way communication. Having contact with others that share your interest areas is the real bonus with blogging. Communication takes place via the blog commenting system initially but email or real life contact can be established and you will likely find your way into other online groups of like minded people. It can take some time for people to find your blog, so do not be discouraged if you do not have many readers for a while. There are many ways of helping people to find your blog.

If you are not ready to set up a blog of your own you can still venture into the world of blogging via community sites, such as Ning where all you need to do to start is to join up; your blog is then ready for you to start entering content. Some of these also allow you to maintain your privacy or share with a chosen few.

Although you usually do not have the same control or amount of features and are less likely to reach a lot of people these sites do have some advantages. Some have existing groups that you can join or you can start one up yourself, some have features that cater for particular subject areas such as travel.

I will give more details of these community blogging sites in my next posti – if you are a member of any you find worthwhile please let us know in the comments to this post. In the meantime if you are interested in learning more about blogging please join our forums where you will find information and motivation to help you get started (or ask questions and someone will help you)

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• they miss their family, friends and/or pets
• they miss the familiarity of their surroundings

I recently spent three weeks in Europe with my partner. It was a short trip and I didn’t miss my family, friends or pets… and I didn’t feel alienated by the unfamiliar surroundings, in fact I fit right in and can’t wait to get back. But towards the end I did start to experience a strange sort of homesickness that I can’t think of a good word to describe.

Websickness? Internet separation anxiety?

For the first week in Krakow, we had internet access in our apartment, I spent 30-45 minutes keeping up to date each day, and all was good. But after that we went to Rome where access was decidedly more difficult – and we were way too busy seeing the sights to expend much energy looking for connectivity. Then camping in rural Germany – obviously a wireless-free experience. It was internet cold turkey and I was not coping well!

So what was I missing? The feeling of connectedness with my friends, family and the wider world that I get from Twitter and Facebook and Flickr. Writing on my blogs and getting feedback and comments. The daily routine of checking in on forums like the Aussie Bloggers Forum and the various mailing lists I participate in. Not to mention the 200-odd blogs I regularly read that I was missing out on!

In fact, I think that if I just had one of those things – maybe a half hour email check each day or if Twitter actually worked reliably over SMS – I wouldn’t mind the absence of the others. But taking away the whole internet was too much in one hit.

Does this mean I live online? How do you cope with extended periods without internet?

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Then I spawned.

When I announced that I was pregnant on my blog I was very positive about it, of course this wouldn’t change the subject matter, I’d still be writing reviews of all the movies I’ve been to see lately, I’d still be posting regular photos of me (complete with superb “MySpace Angles” and high contrast) and of course there would still be plenty of gory details about my love life. My biggest fear was ending up as one of those women who had nothing better to do that write about their child’s bowel movements, a fear of becoming a dreaded “Mummy Blogger”, I told my readers not to fear, that would never happen to me!

Lets just say, that didn’t go to plan, as I progressed in my pregnancy I wanted to write more about what I was going through, and knew that my audience of twenty-something single men couldn’t care less about how my foetus was currently hiccuping and that my internet “fame” would probably suffer if I was to start discussing the less than attractive side effects of pregnancy, not wanting to disappoint anyone I just slowly stopped blogging. I started up a little blog, not even self hosted, told my family about it and wrote about baking, decorating for Christmas and just how badly I was waddling at seven months pregnant. It was almost liberating, I stopped caring about comments – I think I averaged about one a fortnight when I started out, I wrote freely about everything I was going through, and when my son was born I officially stepped into the world of mummy blogging.

I don’t have the fabulous technorati ranking anymore, I have a select following of readers of whom I think my husband is the only male in there, I have been to the cinema three times in the last two years so there are no more movie reviews and I think my love life has similar statistics so no more writing about that. I’m officially a lame “Mummy Blogger”, but I am happy, there’s no expectations, no one moans that I haven’t posted for a couple of days, because there just isn’t enough people to miss me, and best of all I have a wonderful detailed history of the first years of my son’s life, there’s no flicking through baby books any more, I can tell you the day he walked, and his first words just by looking through my archives and finding the video clips posted to celebrate the occasion. No longer am I fearful of the stigma attached to being a parent blogger, I revel in my lameness and don’t even long for the bygone days of Interweb fame.

And at least I’m not a Cat Blogger

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