#54 Start two new blogs, because...why not?

Home Office by Carlos Porto

I started this blog two years ago to combat my utter fear of never seeing my writing in print anywhere, ever. This one desperate act led to more experiments writing web content, and soon I was blogging regularly as well as providing content for sites like Associated Content, Yahoo! Contributor Network, and Demand Media.

I call myself a fiction writer. It's right there in my profile: I'm "currently writing a novel for young adults." Yeah, I've currently been writing a novel for four years, ever since I quit teaching, and who knows how many years I will currently be writing that novel.

The truth is, writing fiction is hard for me. I love dreaming of stories, jotting down notes, forming plot outlines. When it comes time to actually write fiction, however, I'm usually thinking up ways to avoid it.   

Yet it's nothing for me to write in my journal for hours. Much of what I write ends up as content for an article or a blog post. I suppose blogging is a natural fit for me. I've come to love blogging as much as I do keeping my personal journal.

A few months ago, I put together a photo ebook with Nathan's photos from our trip to Oahu in February of 2010. Making the book was so much fun, I knew I wanted to make more. I planned another project around Illinois landscapes, because Nathan already had plenty of photos I could work with.

So that was how two more blogs came about:

PhotojourneyBooks.com, which I've already mentioned on here, and NotChicagoIllinois.com, which sprang from my photo ebook idea about Illinois landscapes.

At the very least, I have a better chance of engaging readers with my blogs than with the novel I'm currently writing avoiding.