Take a walk down the writer's path

Long before most writers even knew what blogging was, I was happily skipping from blog to blog to blog learning all I could about this wonderful new publishing platform. How exciting, I thought. Talk about instant gratification. Here you could compose your piece, upload it onto the blogging platform and voila: Publishing history was made. It was fun even if my writer friends didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. The year was 2002. In 2003 I got serious, opened a Typepad account and started my blog Down the Writer's Path. My intention then and now remains the same: to offer writers practical solutions for leading an "imperfect" writing life.

Blogging is added to my writer's tool kit

When I began writing, online publishing wasn't a consideration. Even then I took the long view and looked at writing as a life path. My goal was mastery and from everything I heard from the masters themselves, it took ten years of writing just to begin to achieve any sort of mastery. So I set about learning all I could. I explored all the many genres and tried to understand what made them tick. You could say I was a generalist in an age of specialists. Art Spikol would've said I had a "grasshopper's mind."

When the first inklings of a writing life online appeared, it stirred my curiosity. Like most writers who answered the call to blog, I struggled with managing my daily life, working fulltime, writing and posting online. No matter how many ways I diced the day, it still only had 24 hours. Some months I hit the keyboard hard, others were dominated by publishing deadlines, the need for revisions, and the continual demands of a full-time job. Still, I continued blogging because I enjoyed having a place where I could capture my thoughts and share them with others. The same reason why I blog today.

Blogging is an online form of writing that offers immediate publication and the opportunity for interaction with the readers. I say it's a form to be respected and should be used by most writers today.

Should most writers add blogging to their writing arsenal?

Traditional publishing, e-publishing, now online publishing

In the midst of blogging I landed three publishing contracts for travel guidebooks. My co-author and I worked feverishly to meet deadlines. One year my body raged with pneumonia. In addition we had to meet the demands of marketing and promoting one book while writing a another one. All while I continued working the fulltime job. The blog survived despite the weekend road trips, the marathon writing sessions, the bookstore demands, and life in general.

In another life I must have worked for the circus as a plate-spinner. Those were the years when I staggered through the days in an attempt to keep all the plates spinning. At the same time my efforts to learn how to write for children came to fruition. More writing, more contracts, more promotion. But the call of blogging remained.

Now available in Kindle ebook: Exploring Texas History

Change in publishing platform: Typepad to Wordpress

Today I'm coming out of a long tunnel into the light after nearly ten years of caring for both my elderly parents. My dad died two years ago but I still care for my 96-year old mom. The strain of the growing responsibilities and the decline of my dad took a lot out of me to the point where I pretty much stopped writing. My health suffered. So I spent the last several years making health a priority and, for once, allowing something else other than the writing take take priority.

I'm back. The words are flooding my mind, they slip down my arms through my fingers and spill onto the keyboard again. The river flows. And, of course, I'm online again.

During 2010, Down the Writer's Path underwent a major transformation. No longer at Typepad, it is now among the growing legion of Wordpress blogs. I am still in the process of implementing changes so the transformation continues. In addition, I've added a Down the Writer's Path Facebook Fan Page.

Every blogger has a different reason why they answered the call to blog. Why do you blog? Use the comment section to share your reasons.

Future books, e-books, e-courses, audios, videos and more

It's hard to predict the future but for the time being I will continue to write and to care for my mom. Will blogging be the only writing I do? No. Why should that habit change? I will continue to work on a major fiction project as I expand my work with Down the Writer's Path. For me the blog is a way to share all I've learned on my journey down the writer's path and how I've managed to live that rather "imperfect" writer's life. That means there will be more blogging, more books, more ways to share what I've learned. Writers have so many more avenues to publish now than when I first started that it's almost hard to figure out where to begin. But begin I will.

Check out Down the Writer's Path, sign up to keep abreast with what's going on, and consider joining the fan page--and, of course, check out my work on Squidoo.