I only know a couple of people, still living that is, who are writers. One of them is retired, unfortunately, and the other, although I keep inviting her here for a variety of reasons, is, in the parlance ' a technical writer under contract to the US Government '.

Then there is me. I know that's not, technically correct grammer- Please excuse me.

The fact that I am here, now, online and writing this, is due in no small part to my 'strongly encouraging' the late Alexander P. Hixon, Jr. ( Ph.D. Columbia, 1976 ) to publish online. He never did. He died prematurely. Before he passed he appointed me as his representative, in his words " across the board ... on the internet." That was actually in 1982. He passed in 1995 as I recall. I've been out here ever since.

The question remains, in some minds that is, does that make me a writer?

Hi Nola,

I'm a writer (minimal pubs yet, but working on it) and I've had a blog for, oh, about three years now. I originally started it as a place to practice my writing, and it's been great for that. One thing I can tell you is that darn few writers get "discovered" for their blogging, unless they're news or political writers. Huffington Post is the most obvious one I can think of. Other writers already tend to be established when they start blogs, or they use them as part of their publicity machine. My friend Jennifer Ouellette, a science writer with two books, started her very popular science blog, Cocktail Party Physics, after she wrote her first book and it certainly helped publicize her books. But she'd been working in the field for 10 years already. Most of the writers I know don't want to post anything on their blogs that they can sell somewhere else simply because many magazines consider the work a reprint then. I would think this would especially true in travel writing.

Some of my favorites who've turned their blogging into book deals (and I'm pretty sure all of them got famous through their blogs). For me humor is key because it's so hard to find smart and funny writing:

Catherine Newman - A mommy blog... it's long on details of domestic life, but some of the funniest stuff out there.

http://www.benandbirdy.blogspot.com/

GoFugYourself - Mostly photos of celebrities in bad outfits. But the writing is so clever and funny that they're now correspondents for the NY Post at every Fashion Week.

http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/

Chocolate and Zucchini - Good mix of personal stories and great food writing.

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/

One of the problems, and most people are simply not aware of this fact, is that authors simply do not make any money to speak of. I have had two, perhaps three friends who had multiple books in print [ Roughly Twelve Each ] and they got pennies per copy. Both were highly celebrated and published by the finer houses.

In one such case, it's why I strongly encouraged him for years to publish online.

Singulus is right; most writers, whether they write fiction or non-fiction, don't make much money. This is why most writers are loathe to write for free, as you're doing on a blog. Far better, I think, to use it as a place to perfect your craft, and perhaps write drafts, or cull from it and develop particular pieces, and then submit, submit, submit. Freelance writing isn't for the faint of heart or for those without another steady income. It takes years to make a decent living at it, unless you're very, very lucky.

NOLA, Lee is right. Getting discovered through blogging is highly unlikely. But it's an excellent way to get yourself out of the academic mindset and find a style of your own. Blogging also encourages you to keep learning. Very often, bloggers run out of material fairly fast, but most sujects are inexhaustible, if you keep doing the research.

If you focus on one subject, your blog can eventually be an entre into publishing. More than one blogger has turned their blog posts into a book. Most self-publish because it's a more reliable way to get into print than going the agent/publisher route.

I've been blogginging on one topic for over a year, and now I'm working to expand some of the posts and organize them into a coherent whole. When it's ready, I'll be using lulu.com, which has many publishing-on-demand options. You can give your readers the choice of print or ebook, among other advantages.

Of course, if I keep hanging around TeeBeeDee, and other fun places, I may never get it finished.

I'd suggest you give yourself some time to polish your new skills through blogging, and then start branching out into freelance writing.

I totally agree... great writing is a craft that must be practiced.

But I also think a blog can be a great way for you to "brand" (or re-brand) yourself. Because most working writers end up covering one specific subject (health, technology, finance, entertainment) and it's hard to crack into another category. Blogging can help you do that if you don't have clips in that field.