I meet Mark from The Phantom M-pire during the June session of IWSG, Let’s Open it Up to the Group. 

His comment, “Hi Sydney, You have a lot of great advice here already, so I won’t pretend that I can add anything that hasn’t already been said. I will say, though, that as far as my ‘in the zone’ experiences go, they’re a lot like yours. I do that quite often and, sometimes, it’s like having a fresh pair of eyes on the story. Best wishes and keep writing!

Humble, encouraging and supportive. What more could you ask for? So, Mark, Why do you blog? 

I’ve spent the past five or six days really thinking about that and the answer came to me, late at night, when I was finishing up a blog post on how I’ve been trying to grow tomatoes in a bucket, of all things.

Way back when……back when I first started discovering and reading blogs, I started to get enchanted with getting a glimpse into a total stranger’s life. Their ups and downs, good times and bad, all that stuff. Why this appealed to me so much, I really can’t say. It was like I was kind of/sort of having a conversation with a total stranger and they were sharing their deepest, most intimate, thoughts with me. Of course, most of the blogs I was reading/following were of the “mundane” (to most people) variety and included such topics as comic books, writing, day to day activities, etc.

The more blogs I began to read, though, the more I thought ‘Hey, I like to write. I could, probably, do something like this. I had these thoughts of people coming across my blog and thinking ‘Wow, this guy is pretty neat!’ or something like that. A bit how I thought when I came across a cool blog. So, I set up a quick and easy blog on Blogger, because it looked to be the most ‘user friendly’, at the time….and went to work.

Then I realized that, while I thought I was a pretty neat person, I wasn’t necessarily all that interesting. I mean, I live a pretty normal life. I don’t cliff dive, jump out of planes, live in a cabin in the mountains, draw pictures for a living…..nothing like that. After a while, I resigned myself to the fact that I really didn’t have much of interest to “blog” about, so I stuck to just being a viewer. My blog went to the mothballs.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I decided that I really wanted to be a writer. I’ve always loved writing and drawing as well as just creating things…..I figured writing would be where my greatest strengths lie.

I took part in National Novel Writing Month in 2011 and, actually, completed a novel…well, I mean, as far as getting 50K words down. I’m still working on the story so, maybe someday I’ll write an ending to it. Anyway, participating in NaNo brought me in touch with a ton of writers….many of them had…you guessed it….blogs.

Still a fan of reading blogs, I checked many of them out and, again, thought…’Hey, I could do this.’ So, that’s what I started to do….again. The main difference being, I was doing it for the exercise of writing….not because I was trying to be interesting or a neat-o type person.

I’ve had a few people say that they thought I was pretty neat and, honestly, that feels great. I am still a huge fan of reading/following blogs and still love glimpses into total stranger’s lives. I also hope people think the same thing when they visit my little corners of the blogosphere.

If they don’t, though, it’s o.k. My writing and my blogging is for me…for my writing exercise and to help hone my skills as a writer.

So, long story longer…..I blog because it’s a great writing exercise, it’s fun, and best of all, I’ve met a ton of great people along the way.

Thanks again, Sydney and happy one year anniversary in the blogosphere!