Do you blog? Blogging can be a great habit to keep you writing, as well as offering you the opportunity to connect with other writers. You probably noticed nearly all of our featured writers during NYWM keep a blog.

Blogs can be personal, professional or somewhere inbetween, but no matter what form a blog takes it can offer a great platform for your work. The regular writing required to keep blogging, plus the challenge of creating new content all the time will hone valuable skills.

If you’re a complete newbie, read this post from Lifehacker on selecting the best platform to host your blog. Writer’s Digest has two good posts on creating a simple writing blog and things blogging writers should know. Lisa Dempster also has an interesting series on her blog entitled Writers, Money and the Web (part one here) which is an excellent look at the place of digital writing and blogging.

Opportunities and Events

If you’re new to the blogging caper and located in Melbourne the lovely Karen Andrews is running a course at the Australian Writers’ Centre, Blogging for Beginners.

High school students in South Australia should look at the Langhorne Creek Writers’ Festival competition, which close on August 30.

The Hervey Bay Whale Festival Childrens Writing Competition closes on July 19 for primary and secondary school students in Queensland.

A prominent political blogger and writer had this to say about blogs

I’m a writer by profession and it’s totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age—and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don’t. If this is a deterioration in my brain, then more, please – Andrew Sullivan

 Tell us whether you blog in todays poll…

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