Blogging Bloggers and The Bloggers That Blog About Them

This post is long overdue! Here finally is the link to a blog-writing workshop I attended last month. It was led by online writing guru and local garden gal, Merry Bruns. At left is the pic I grabbed off her "About us' page, she'll be "thrilled" that I used it. I think she looks damn good though and should post this on every one of her web pages. She used this Washington Gardener blog as a case study -- not necessarily one to use as an exemplary blogging example, mind you, but more as one that is a work-in-progress.
The "Writing for Blogs" workshop was well-attended, I think chiefly because it was free and on a fairly hot topic. Most of the attendees were professional writers of some sort -- ranging from government publications to corporate PR who seemed most interested in starting a blog in their work capacity. I don't know why I assumed before the workshop that most of the attendees would be free-lancers or writers-for-fun-not-profit who wanted to blog for a creative outlet. I thought it was going to be a bunch of hippy-dippy creative folks sitting around with their poetry journals just awaiting an online audience.
Instead, I see a room full of very serious suits and hear cranky questions like, "Just how much time is this going to take in my day?" "Is there ANY money at all in this?" "Aren't people just going to copy and steal my work?" Not bad questions per se, but none of these are big concerns to me nor to other regular bloggers I know. My head is in such a different space than these folks. "It is what it is," would be my answer to all of the above. Luckily, Merry, not I, was their instructor that day and tactfully and succinctly addressed all their concerns.
Sometimes I need a reality check and I got one that day -- reminding me that corporate DC (aka K Street Corridor) life is just not for me.