First Blog(s)
October 2, 2009 at 7:41 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 CommentsTags: first blog
Here it is. The first assignment with a deadline: write a blog this week. As I had never really written a blog before, I had no idea what to write. Searching for inspiration, an idea struck: I typed “first blog” into the search box for http://www.wordpress.com. Number of results: 337,959 (soon to increase to 337,960).
The results were interesting, and some themes developed for the most common way that people approached their own first blogs. The “related tags” box alone gave away most of them: “blog”, “first”, “hello”, “welcome”, “introduction”, “first blog- personal notes”, “personal”, “me”, “introductory post”, and, of course, “first blog”.
Skimming through the first few pages of hits, one user filled an entire blog with “This is only to test my first blog This is only to test my first blog”. Well, I thought, that is one easy way to get around the first-blog-writers-block problem. Further on, the writers began to show a trend of ‘chatspeak’, many uses of, for example, “gonna” and “gotta”. I think I’ve found a new pet peeve.
The blog “Examining Pulchritude” had an enjoyable first post, entitled “The Original Unoriginal First Blog”, that spoke about the anxiety of writing the first post on any blog. From then on, many authors seemed to relish the true freedom they had on their blogs: they could truly write about whatever they wanted! This created many long, rambling paragraphs that could almost be categorized as stream-of-consciousness writing.
In any case, I hope that I will avoid many of these problems in the future, since no one likes a hypocrite!
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Hey this is cool!
I actually had a whole rant-y ramble-y first blog post too, about absolutely nothing in particular at first. Then I deleted it. Exciting – yes.
I think writing ‘gonna’ or ‘gotta’ is okay depending on the context, but what i really hate is when people get their grammar very wrong (like ‘their’ instead of ‘they’re’) or when they start using aimspeak like lol or lmao.
Great first blog! =]
Katherine
Comment by keallen— October 5, 2009 #
The trouble is, even after 5 years (!!!) of keeping up the library blog, I still get “blogger’s block.” Let me know if you find a cure…
Comment by Frances Harris— October 13, 2009 #
OK. You have to know that as an English teacher, I love this meta-cognitive first blog blog. We English teachers live for students engaging in the writing by looking at their own technique, problems, fears, blocks, etc. What a great way to start. Now you make me want to go back to see my own first blog, which I wrote last summer (2008) as part of the University of Illinois Writing Project. I seriously doubt if it was as honest or enjoyable as yours.
Apart from the meta-cognitive stuff, what a great idea to see what others had done. I wonder how many of those were forced on them by time-conscious English teachers?
Comment by S.Rayburn— October 16, 2009 #
Good Luck with your blog! http://tokensofwisdom.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/hello-world/
Comment by Tokens of Wisdom— February 14, 2010 #