It's been almost a week and there have been lots of quality posts by a horde of great writers. I've also received an avalanche of emails from everyone and while I haven't responded to very many of them - please forgive me - everyone should know I've read every single one. Rest assured that if you sent me an email, I got it, read it and am now looking out for your work.
But there's been one issue I have to address about the posts. While the quality of the writing is high and the opinions generally informed, almost no one is doing any sort of real blogging. What does that mean? What is real blogging? In short, linking to other sources of information through use of HTML.
Guys, I can't stress this enough: you need to have at least basic copy editing and HTML skills. Hell, you don't even have to have HTML skills since you are able to use a WYSIWYG editor. But I need to know that you understand blogging is partially about opinion and partially about the opinion of others that you need to feature with the help of multimedia content. That means posting videos, audio, linking to other blogs or news sources, using blockquotes and so on. While everyone is clearly working hard to put on original content, I haven't seen very much use of the editing and HTML tools at all.
So let's see what you've got. Start exploring what others are saying in the various media forms that exist today.
And, oh yeah, keep it simple! There's no need to write a one thousand word essay with huge introductory paragraphs, thesis statements and conclusions. Get in, get out and make it interesting.