Why Would Someone Want to Read This Blog as a Book?

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously was a successful blog published as a book and then as a movie.  Julie Powell focused on working with Julia Child's recipes.

Readers of this blog know that the posts may vary from day to day, based on what is "top of mind" for that day.  With this post I have 240 separate entries ready to edit and am now visiting public libraries and book stores to see how I can organize these entries in a way that will be both interesting and marketable.  (If anyone reading this has suggestions, they will be welcome.)

I have created categories (for chapters), though I am not fully happy with those categories yet.  I will probably edit the posts a little for publication.

I am also checking out a book on the stories of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) for inspiration.  My goal is to have this ready for the publisher this week.

I reviewed my earlier draft books (from 2001) and don't feel compelled to rework them at this point.  Publishing this blog as a book is something new.

NSB-Project

Yesterday I was approached by a former colleague who had volunteered with me on a CPR Sunday project we did for the American Red Cross and the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in November, 1991.

Her goal was to create a new community service project or event for New Smyrna Beach, Florida.  At this point it is just a dream and I agreed to help her get it started and planned.

DrM-Resources has set-up a collaborative project page and is posting discussion questions to start the brainstorm.  After watching Julie and Julia, I believe that the evolution of this community service project/event would be a good candidate for a blog, focused on the positive and on overcoming challenges.

The blog could both document the planning and be a resource to others considering taking on such an event.  CPR Sunday was based on a successful event held in California and the NSB-Project could be the start of a series of projects/events to benefit communities throughout the USA and the world.

We are at the planning stages and have only two people actively registered on the collaboration web site so far.

Bloging and Writing--A Success Story (and a fun movie)

Bloging can certainly lead to writing and publishing, and for Julie Powell, it led to both a book and a movie.  I saw Julie and Julia for the first time today courtesy of Netflix.  Wikipedia.org has an entry about the movie and there is a blog that looks like the one in the movie.  The book is available from Amazon.com.  (I certainly enjoyed the movie, by the way.  Thanks, Julie.)

I started this blog on August 10, 2009.  One of my original goals was to have the discipline to do a daily blog that will allow me to begin publishing.  I have several partially completed books and, like Julie Powell in the Julie and Julia movie, I wanted a more reduced time-line.  Julie Powell focused on "365 days and 524 recipes".  I was more open-ended and, as a consequence, do not have as focused a product as Julie's blog.

I've had some feedback from friends which have helped me clean-up my blog entries and conversations with these friends and more have given me lots of ideas to post in this blog.  Every day I ask myself what I'm going to write about and the day always brings something forward.

I never know how many people are reading the blog and I post entries which can help anyone who reads it.  It is helping me to maintain my focus.

My plan is to look at my blog when I have 180 or so posts (or more) and to see if there are related blogs which could be chapters.  I'm not sure how much editing I'll need to do and we'll see.  I am an electronic publisher and can publish my book whenever I think it's ready.  So far, that "being ready" has been a challenge.

I looked at the summary of my blog--seen at the top of each page--and believe that my posts are delivering on the intention presented in that summary.  I'm glad to see that Julie Powell has a success story from her bloging efforts.  That holds more hope for me.