Since I just hit my 13th anniversary of writing this here Ramblin’ with Roger blog thing, I’d thought I’d describe why I do it.
I’ve mentioned before that my friend Fred Hembeck had started a blog, that friend Rocco had tipped me off to same, and that I read everything Fred wrote, which meant going back about two years.
And Fred was prolific. He wrote every day, usually pieces a lot longer than I write currently. Then I would comment on his blog, and he would mention me therein. I gave him a couple ideas; for instance, I found a page of record album covers based on other album covers, which still exists.
So I thought, maybe I could do this myself. But what would I write ABOUT? I only had two topics that I KNEW I would have to cover. One was the Daughter, who was a little over a year old. I said to myself when she was born that I would write about her in a baby book that people give to parents of newborns, where you track when the child first crawls and walks and gets the first tooth.
There is incontrovertible evidence that I was TERRIBLE at this exercise. Instead, I would write about her every month, on the 26th. And I have, every month, although it’s often been as much about ME having a daughter after I’m five decades old.
The other topic was my appearances on the game show JEOPARDY. It was taped in September 1998 and was broadcast in November, and I was afraid the details were starting to fade.
I started writing in my Blogger blog on May 2, 2005, and I have written every day, at least once a day. In the early days, it was tough because Blogger didn't let me schedule posts. I remember writing at a library in Lake Placid during a break in a work conference.
I was inspired by what the late Steve Gerber, comic book writer of Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, the Defenders, and other Marvel comics I loved, posted about writing in April 2005, essentially saying, “Writers write.”
Oh, the duck. At FantaCo, I was editing something called X-Men Chronicles. I had extra pages to fill, and so Smilin’ Ed artiste Raoul Vezina and I pieced together a story about the rodent buying a case of a popular comic book. I appeared as a duck because… well, I don’t know.
Around that time, Raoul drew the duck for my friend Lynne. In 2010, when I was getting my own URL, Lynne’s husband Dan, who recognized me from the caricature when he met me on the street back in 1985, scanned the drawing, and I have used it ever since, on the Ramblin’ with Roger blog, Twitter, and Facebook.
For ABC Wednesday
I loved reading about your blog history here Roger! It is so interesting as we have been blogging around the same time! cheers, Nora
How lovely, Roger!
R for Roger!
R for reminiscing about your blog!
The caricature is very creative. Didn’t know the story behind it 🙂
“Writers write”.
May we find enough reasons & topics to do so everyday!!!
Its so sweet to have a gift like this you can (and do) use.
Have a splendid, ♥-warming ABC-Wednes-day / -week
♫ M e l ☺ d y ♪ (ABC-W-team)
http://melodymusic.nl/22-R
That is so interesting. It feels good to look back at origin too. 13 years!!!
I am at 10.
Happy ABCW!
Roger, congratulations on your longevity.
Very interesting!
That’s a lot of years – congratulations!
Congrats on your blog anniversary and the delightful post of the process of blogging ~ Lots of Rs in their too!
Happy Weekend on its way to you,
A ShutterBug Explores,
aka (A Creative Harbor)
I thought that was funny when you wrote you didn’t know what to write about at first. You, a librarian? hahaha. Cheers, Roger!
I started blogging in 2006 and also every day, Blogger was not at all like today, I had also troubles because I couldn’t schedule. It also has changed there are now so many bloggers ! When I started in Belgium nobody new what a Blog was !!