If you want to get into a writing groove, there is nothing better than starting a blog to do it.
Getting your work out into cyberspace can reap all kinds of benefits for you as a writer.
First, there's the idea that anybody can stumble onto your blog by accident and get intrigued by what you're saying. Now you have an audience!
Second, you have a public place to direct interested parties--family, friends, agents--to see what you're thinking and doing.
Some people post chapters of the novels they're working on as blogposts. Others like to write about their writing--creating what I call "notebooks." Think of Dostoevsky here. Others simply want to develop their writing chops and find the casual nature of blogs helpful in reducing writers' anxiety.
I encourage clients to start blogs for personal growth as well. There is something about writing that helps to process experience. I think here of someone who started a blog to cope with bouts of cancer. Her initial goal was to have an outlet for all the frustrations she felt with doctors and treatments. But as she got into blogging, her horizons expanded into writing about her own inner growth through dealing with cancer. Her life has taken a whole new turn as a result. Her blog has given friends a new understanding of her and also offers people who don't know her some thought-provoking ideas for themselves.
Most of all, it has given her a voice she never knew she had, which gives her a real boost. I believe that having some form of self-expression is crucial to human happiness. Blogging makes it easy to experiment with writing as that form.
