Why I Blog by Judy Alter
About twelve years ago one of my daughters-in-law said casually, “You ought to start a blog.” Back then, blogs were neither as common as they became or as dismissed as they have been lately. I barely knew what one was. “I have nothing to say,” I stammered. “Oh, yes, you do,” was her quick reply. “You’re a grandmother, a writer, and a cook. You can write about all those things. You should call it Judy’s Stew, because it will be a stew of writing, cooking, and grandmothering.” And that, my friends, is how “Judy’s Stew” came about way back in 2006. I’ve been blogging, more or less every night, since then. Today rarely a day goes by that some mystery author, discussing what works for sales and what doesn’t, puts blog in the “doesn’t work” column. They’ve lost their punch, nobody reads them anymore, there’s no proof that they lead to sales, and, and, the most frequent excuse, “I just don’t have time.” Sales are not why I blog. I blog because over the years I’ve...