Postcard For Reader

Thoughts On: Not hiding your blog. (Or, how I keep using WORD for school projects.)

So I made a brochure for WORD for my advanced PR class because my teacher wanted me to do my final on WORD instead of the club I had been working with all semester.

Oh, and I got to help Jennifer Castle, author of The Beginning of After, with her presentation at school because my young adult lit teacher knew about WORD and asked me if I wanted to be involved. I got permission to blog about the entire ya lit class because the professor knew about WORD.

Last semester I got to write an essay comparing Harry Potter to some random work of classic literature that I'm not remembering, which my teacher only approved because she knew of WORD and knew I knew what I was talking about.

In high school I got to do part of my final English project on WORD. I also got WORD linked on the library website, got to create recommendation and ordering lists for the fiction section of the school library. One of the other English teachers there still recommends WORD to his students.

Outside of school, WORD is connected to my local paper, the Poughkeepsie Journal. I cover BEA for them -- and covered ComicCon this past year, which was lots of fun -- and they occasionally run stories on bigger events going on at WORD.

Some of the local bookstores know about me, and apparently a lot more local people than I thought because somebody in my Shakespeare class works at one of the local bookstores and overheard people talking about me. (She then described me as a 'local celebrity.' Lol wut.)

You might be asking what I'm trying to get at here; what's the point of all of this?

To those of you who keep your blog secret, who don't let anybody know about them -- friends, coworkers, teachers, even family -- you might not have to. Yes, some of you are going to encounter assholes who think you're stupid for wanting to do it, or who make cracks about you getting free books or whatever.

But I can bet you that nine times out of ten -- especially when you're talking to a teacher of some sort -- they're going to be impressed. They're going to wonder how you find the time to do all of that and juggle your normal every day activities. They're going to ask if you want to tie it into something you're doing in school, or if you have a recommendation for something they can read, or if you want to come with them to a really cool book signing they were thinking of going to but were shy because they didn't have anybody to go with.

It can be fun to let people know.

And hell, it can be productive at the same time.

I mean, just look at this! I had fun working on it and it's for a school project. You can't get any better than that, right!?

Click to enlarge. Twice the printed size.

So don't be afraid to talk about your blogs. They are a part of your life, after all.