I’m a grad student at Syracuse getting my MLIS through the distance program.  I live in Seattle, WA, and pretty much everything I do these days involves communicating with people online.  I’ve been blogging for years, starting with Live Journal back in 2004, though my main blog now is a WordPress blog on my website.

I write books for teens, and before I was published, I blogged constantly.  I always had something to say (to my, like, ten followers), mostly about my struggles as a writer.  I thought when I got published that’s when I’d really have a lot to say, but my post count has actually become almost non-existent.  Partially I blame Twitter, because now if I have something to say, that’s where I’ll say it instead of writing a whole blog post about it.

But also I feel more pressure about blogging in general, because if I post an opinion, people WILL tell me if they disagree.  Also my parents read my blog now and call me to discuss each post.  I still have plenty of struggles in the publishing world, but now that I’m an author, it’s not cool to post about them.  Especially if I ever want another book contract.  So I feel pressure to only post about positive things.  And I have no idea what my followers want to read from me, so I tend to not write anything, and then the more I don’t write, the more it feels like the next post has to be Important, but that just makes it harder to come up with anything, and when I do write one, I can’t help thinking, “What kind of phone call am I going to get from my parents about this?”

So ANYWAY, a lot of my professional life involves blogging effectively, and, while I know how to blog in general, I feel like I’ve lost the “effectively” part.  So what I’m hoping to get from this class is reclarification on building an audience, how often to post, what to post about, and how to deal with blogging as a professional, whether it’s an information professional, a writing professional, or whatever other professional projects I take on.