Why I Blog

[A friend teaches composition at a community college. She will point her students to various examples of writing, including my blog. I sent her this statement to share with her students:]

You asked me: why do I write? As a student, I wrote only when professors required me to do so, and those writing obligations were about topics I didn’t care about and on deadlines I didn’t choose. Over the years, I’ve realized that writing when someone else sets the topic and schedule squeezes the joy out of writing for me. I enjoy writing much more when I pick my topic and schedule.

I operate a blog on legal topics (http://blog.ericgoldman.org). I’ve written around 4,000 posts over 20 years. That translates to about one blog post every workday for 20 years in a row. My posts range in length from 200 to 10,000 words, with an estimated average of about 700 words per post. That means I have blogged around 3 million words over the past 20 years, or the equivalent of publishing 60 non-fiction books.

My blog posts share my unique perspective on the world with my readers. As a professor, I spend hours each day consuming information. By blogging, I can let readers (metaphorically) look over my shoulders, and I can highlight for them the most interesting things I’m seeing and put those developments in context. My readers come away from my posts more knowledgeable about what’s happening and with a sense of how they can use that information.

Each blog post generates a few dollars of revenue for me–not even close to minimum wage. I obviously don’t blog for the money! And yet, blogging produces many payoffs for me. As a professor, my blog has boosted my reputation as an Internet Law expert. As a result, my blog produces additional opportunities to share my expertise, such as media interviews with reporters and invitations to speak at events. Furthermore, because my blog demonstrates my expertise, I have been hired to provide expert testimony in litigation. Some of those projects have paid me tens of thousands of dollars. Finally, through my blogging, I have made virtual friends and connections across the globe.

One last point: people often assume that blog posts are hastily drafted and unfiltered, but not in my case. I never post first-draft writing to my blog. I quickly write a raw first draft to get my ideas out, but I then edit my posts from top-to-bottom at least twice (and sometimes many more times than that) before publishing them. I often set aside my drafts overnight so that I can do additional editing passes with a fresh perspective. For important posts, I ask other experts to review my drafts so I can incorporate their feedback. My motto is that the real magic of writing occurs during the editing. I wish I had learned more about, and practiced, how to edit my works while I was in school.