Blame it on broadband

Until we signed up for broadband a few months ago, I had never read a blog. It’s not very exciting to browse the web using dial-up over an elderly modem. It’s more a case of having to find information and “please, let it not take too long.”

Now I have a couple of blogs that I read regularly, one of an American friend in Europe and one of a writer in England. Others, I browse as the spirit takes me and as time allows.

The English blog Wife in the North has smart writing about a woman’s everyday life, but has aroused some controversy. Its author recently signed a deal to turn this account of a London family trying a lifestyle change in Northumberland into a book. Naturally, jealousy bubbled freely in the world of blogdom.

I flicked through a couple of articles on the deal last night and one slightly bitter comment caught my eye. A writer discussing how few blogs can successfully be turned into books, highlighted the fact that many writers get distracted by their blogs and end up not writing much at all in the “real world.” I’ll save debates of realit(ies) for another time.

Motivated to not be one of these blog bludgers, I sat down and wrote the first couple of pages of my book. There’s a lot of material I can’t write about until I research it more fully, but it’s exciting to be on my way.