In my new Business of Writing class at Lane Community College, we are getting down to the meat of inventing a writing platform. This week class members should come to class prepared to actually launch a blog. They’ve researched the major blogging sites and will choose one to get started with. They’re also charged with choosing a title, bringing a profile pic and giving serious thought to what content they will focus on for the blog. Building a blog following takes time, but tonight we’ll also discuss how to maintain the blog and other social networking sites and still have time to write.

Writing Tip for Today: Since Blogger and WordPress are free, don’t be afraid to try out your ideas. If you decide later that it isn’t working, you can try again with another blog, or just rename as I did with this one. One caution though–if you make your blog too narrow in focus, it may not make sense to new readers later on. GodSongGrace was supposed to be about a nonfiction book I was hoping to sell. Now it just confuses. Learn from my mistakes and keep your blog title simple and easy to locate.