Blogging form

Thanks for the tips, Steve. I'm going to pass them on to my department when we meet next month. Coincidentally, I actually assessed a blog as part of a short talk on writing I gave to a group participating in the Pole to Pole expedition starting in August. My young neighbour Eric is part of the expedition and hosted the group in Gibsons for some training and getting to know one another time. I looked out my window one morning and saw a face I recognized from Yukon days, the expedition leader Martyn Williams, who has been doing this sort of thing all his life. Martyn remembered me from my time as editor of the Yukon News and asked me to talk to his group on writing, but writing....yikes! I've been making my living talking about writing for many many years. As a contributor to Eric's campaign, I had been reading his blog and, with his permission, used that as the basis of my session with the group about writing. This weekend I've been talking to my daughter Annie about some of the same things, because Annie is going to try to keep a blog going as she cycles down the west coast, from Vancouver to Tiajuana, with the Agents of Change group. As I think I told you before, the Agents are trying to raise money for microcredit, small loans given to small, often one-person businesses, as a way alleviating global poverty.
   Interesting that two such ambitious kids should end up living across the street from one another.
   I advised the Pole to Pole group and Annie to avoid generalities; to be aware that blogs can be read by anyone and that would include people to whom local references mean nothing without some description. I like the personal tone of blog entries, yet feel that a certain formality in the writing gives a blog substance. Some blogs I've read have more emotion/opinion than information and it's hard to appreciate emotion without some sense of context. Yet blogs exist for different purposes. My comments may apply to travel/adventure blogs more than the kind you maintain on some of your other sites, which seem to be strictly informational. I'm sure we will have a course on blogging and other writing for the web as part of our creative writing offerings. Meantime, I'll be thinking about it and awaiting your always interesting thoughts.