guest blogger: Elizabeth Westmark

I want to thank Deanna for the invitation to visit. I discovered Deanna’s writing about two years ago, and try to read her fine words wherever I find them. They resonate with my heart strings and my brain in a felicitous duet.

Deanna planted a seed for this post by suggesting I might write my “blogging story.” Here ’tis.

“Our challenge is to edit Life’s choices, but not too carefully, and to remain fully awake in each moment to precious possibility.”

Those words were the final sentence of my very first blog post. The year was 2003. It was September, and the cable television news stations were full of candidate profiles for the upcoming 2004 elections. I remember listening with one ear while I cooked supper.

“. . . and the candidate’s spouse is keeping an online web log of campaign events.”

I put down a mixing spoon and sprinted into the living room.

“Buck! What did that reporter say?” My husband tried to explain, but I kept interrupting him.

“No — I mean that word. What was that word?”

Naturally, he thought I had (once again) taken leave of my senses. He has seen that look in my eye before! I went back into the kitchen, muttering to myself. “Web log. Web log. What on earth is that? I’m going to look it up.”

Dial-up internet service was still a minor miracle, so it took me a little while to get the full scoop on web logs, which had not yet fully morphed into blogs. Once I did, I was riveted by the concept.

The impetus for me to start a blog was curiosity, plain and simple. I had no training in http (hypertext transfer protocol) and blog templates were not nearly so seamless to create in 2003. Then, as now, one of the great rewards of blogging is that it forces us to learn constantly, and to reach beyond our initial grasp.

The first time I pushed the “publish now” button, I didn’t really believe it would work. It was exciting to see my post, called “Lunch Hour,” on the screen. But when my first commenter posted, that’s what set me on fire. It was a one-word comment: “Amen.” By following the link, I was able to find his blog and learn how to create a blog roll. Then, I was off to the races, finding and linking up with other pioneers in this wonderful new world.

Since that first blog post, I have pursued writing like a dog worrying a bone. There are days, even months, where I forget where I buried it for awhile. But I always come back. It wasn’t until 2008 that I realized I had written a lot of words, and that maybe some of them had “the stuff” to be polished and published. That realization started another chapter in my life. For the first time, I began to think of myself as a writer, and it made me incredibly happy.

My first published story was based on a blog post. My blog doesn’t attract hordes of readers, but like good friends in the real world, you don’t need many like-minded, genuine folks to form a meaningful community. It’s a writer’s learning lab for our small circle, and a great source of warm fuzziness that brightens my days and nights.

The blog archives are maintained with the help of “cloud” computing back-ups, so that anytime I want to pull out the files and explore old pathways of my life, the material is there: words, photographs, and even several videos — a multi-dimensional scrapbook of memoir raw material. Whenever I feel a writing dry spell coming on, the years of blog posts are like some great steaming compost pile of ideas and themes.

You can find the second blog post I ever published at Switched At Birth by clicking here. It was posted on September 19, 2003. It still breaks my heart a little to think of how four good friends broke their relationship and were never, like Humpty-Dumpty, able to put it back together again.

Thanks for reading — and thanks again, Deanna, for the invitation to “guest blog.”

I’m happy as peaches to have this chronicle of a writer/blogger’s beginning. Here’s more about her:

Elizabeth Westmark’s essays have appeared in Brevity Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Camroc Press Review, and Dead Mule, among others. She maintains two story-telling/memoir blogs, a food blog, and a microessay blog from her home in a Longleaf pine preserve near Pensacola, Florida, where she is writing the memoir of a small forest, essays, and short stories.

Thanks, Beth!