I am not a writer who has a blog. I am a writer, and I am a blogger.
I often get the feeling that many writers who self-identify as writers who have blogs instead of as bloggers don't feel that blogging is a specific type of short-form writing and certainly don't understand the community building aspects of it, which could be incredibly helpful to them. Their blogs are often pretty much a hole on the Internet that they throw a hodgepodge of things into every now and then.
Therefore, I am referring any writers seeing this to Jen Robinson's Book Page and her post in which she rounds up nine blogger posts on the recent KidLitCon held in Austin. I suspect that a lot of writers aren't familiar with KidLitCon, since the blogging events held at BEA have been getting a lot of attention in recent years. But KidLitCon is a blogging convention that goes back seven years and involves many bloggers who got involved with blogging early on, when blogging was new and edgy and the litblog that just serves as a conduit for writer and publisher produced content hadn't been thought of.
Children's literature blogging started with these people.
In addition to checking out the individual links for recaps, note Jen's list of the subjects covered at the conference. This is the kind of stuff writers can use to help them with their blogging, whether we're talking writers who have a blog or writers who are also bloggers.
Thanks for sharing this, Gail. We did talk in my session at the Con about your point that you can think of blogging as a way to practice writing nonfiction essays. It was great to have your feedback, as one of the people who also started children's literature blogging back in the day :-)
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