As I continue my journey taking blogging 101, my teachers tell me it is time to my writing cap back on. Today I start honing my blogging focus.

I am reminded I why I blog. I create posts or articles for other people to see, read, and even appreciate my work. Today’s assignment is to publish a post that my audience will read. 

WordPress gave me the following assignment – “Today’s Assignment: publish a post you’d like your ideal audience member to read, and include a new-to-you element in it.”

Why would I want to do this?

• One great way to have focus is writing with a particular person in mind. It is an excellent way to focus both my thoughts and my goals for my blog.
• Mind expansion is a second reason for writing with my ideal audience in mind. Did you know that exploring new elements and post styles adds more tools to the storyteller’s toolbox. Yep, it does.
• Down with boredom! Publishing different types of posts and media create visual interest. It gets and keeps people reading.

I write to share my writing journey and to have a place to practice writing. Yes, I hope someone will read what I wrote. I confess I check the stats to see how many people read my blog. I also like to know where my readers live.  I write thinking about the person who also is working on transitioning from day job to being a working writer.

I am sharing a video I made eighteen months ago showing my bedroom and home office. About the only thing that has changed is my desktop computer is now a mini-Mac, and I have a few more guitars. My rheumatoid arthritis has diminished my guitar picking skills. 

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Jimmie Aaron Kepler is a novelist, poet, book reviewer, and award-winning short story writer. His work has appeared in over twenty venues, including Bewildering Stories and Beyond Imagination. When not writing each morning at his favorite coffee house, he supports his writing, reading, and book reviewing habit working as an IT application support analyst. He is a former Captain in the US Army. His blog Kepler’s Book Reviews was named a 100 best blogs for history buffs. You can visit him at http://www.jimmiekepler.com.

Welcome to the commune. Think 1960s commune. Like the old hippies collaborative village, blogging is a communal experience. You have to admit that you write to get people to read and interact with your posts. A private diary would be your preference if you didn’t want anyone to read your posts. Day three in my blogging course has me being brave. Today, I’ll engage with the blogging community, the first step in building an audience.

The assignment I was given today was to follow five new tags in the Reader (https://wordpress.com/) or another tool like my personal favorite Feedly and five new blogs.

Spending your time reading other blogs makes good use of your time. Why is this true?

Did you know that publishing posts is only half of blogging — engaging with the community is the other. It is true. Considering what other bloggers write will inspire you and sharpen your thoughts.

I love meeting new people online. I later meet some of them in real life at writer’s conferences or even church. Part of what makes blogging a rich experience are the relationships we develop with people around the world. That only happens when we engage — just look at The Commons. Plus, reaching out to other bloggers is the best way to have them return the favor. Even the Bible says in Proverbs 18:24, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

The first step is finding people you want to connect with. I am not talking of trolling, cyber stalking, and selecting someone because of their glamour personal photo. Instead, follow topics you care about to discover a world of blogs. In the WordPress.com Reader, topics are are organized using tags.

The easiest way to get started is to take a tour of the Reader. Next,  review the tips on using the Reader to find and follow blogs that speak to you.

As you browse them, follow five new blogs, too. On WordPress.com, you can follow any blog by clicking the “Follow +” button in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Many times the blog’s owner will return the favor by following you. This is especially true if you blog on similar subjects.

If you don’t blog on WordPress.com, you can still use the Reader to browse.

Happy hunting as you find some new blogs to follow.   Oh, I followed five new blogs that use the tag “writing.” Their links are listed below.

1. https://joesigurdson.wordpress.com/
2. https://daveversusshark.wordpress.com/
3. http://skywalkerstorytellerworks.com/
4. https://morganaene.wordpress.com/
5. https://lovebutterfliesandelephants.wordpress.com/

Oh, you don’t have to move to a 1960s style commune to get a communal experience. You can get the experience through blogging.

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Jimmie Aaron Kepler is a novelist, poet, book reviewer, and award-winning short story writer. His work has appeared in over twenty venues, including Bewildering Stories and Beyond Imagination. When not writing each morning at his favorite coffee house, he supports his writing, reading, and book reviewing habit working as an IT application support analyst. He is a former Captain in the US Army. His blog Kepler’s Book Reviews was named a 100 best blogs for history buffs in 2010. You can visit him at http://www.jimmiekepler.com.

When you register your blog, you set its address. My two WordPress blogs have an address of jimmiekepler.com and keplersreviews.wordpress.com. The address tells people where to find me ob the Internet. After they find you, the title is the first thing most readers will see.

The title and tagline reach out to grab the rear’s attention. They shout, I’m here. It’s me. This is who I am. This is why you want to stop and spend some time here. They give your visitors context. They help the reader decide if they’ll stick around.

One title is Kepler’s Book Reviews. The tagline is “Promoting books I’ve read and recommend.” The blog gets a lot of visitors. My main blog in jimmiekepler.com. The title is Kepler’s Coffee House. The tagline is “My journey from day job to an enterperneual author.” The title should reflect you. A title is typically only a few words, so consider adding a tagline as well — a phrase that appears under your title and helps flesh it out.

To come up with a tagline try listing adjectives that describe your personality, and play around with the words until you can tweak them into a name that’s catchy but uniquely “you.” Puns always work well. Start with certain familiar phrases, songs, and literary titles, and then mix the words up. Or use your name in a clever way. I’m still tweaking mine.

You should avoid repeating your site title in the tagline. Your tagline is a space to share some context about the content of your site. Take advantage of it.

Keep it short and sweet. Be original. As WordPress says – don’t let your blog’s tagline become another in the sea of “musings about thoughts” — make sure it tells us something about you.

I look forward to seeing tomorrow’s assignment.

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Jimmie Aaron Kepler is a novelist, poet, book reviewer, and award-winning short story writer. His work has appeared in over twenty venues, including Bewildering Stories and Beyond Imagination. When not writing each morning at his favorite coffee house, he supports his writing, reading, and book reviewing habit working as an IT application support analyst. He is a former Captain in the US Army. His blog Kepler’s Book Reviews was named a 100 best blogs for history buffs in 2010. You can visit him at http://www.jimmiekepler.com.

I’m taking a course from WordPress.com called Blogging 101. It has regal assignments. You are my audience as I work through the daily tasks.

For “Day One” let me introduce myself. Hello, my name is Jimmie Aaron Kepler. I have been blogging about as long as the term has been around. I have been online going back to the mid 1970s when as an US Army officer I used ARPANET back when NCP was used as the primary protocol before it switched to TCP/IP in 1983 I think it was. I posted to user groups and forums. I was using CompuServe as my point of connection and running a Sinclair ZX-81 (I still have it – it used BASIC language) and TRS-80 in the 1970s and 1980s. They line fee was like long distance was during that time – they charged by the minute.

I moved to the weblog – an online journal or diary by 1996 as well as having a GeoCities page where I posted regularly as preacher1953. Here I maintained family genealogy and blogged.

By June of 2003 I was on WordPress.com. It was a new platform having come out in May of that year.

The reason I have a public blog instead of just a private web-based journal is I want people to share in my journey. I have two primary blogs. One in Kepler’s Book Reviews (Kepler’s Book Reviews). It’s purpose is to share a review or summary of a book I have read. I hope others catch my passion for military history, science fiction, Indie speculative fiction, and the works of a few of my friends.

The second blog I have is jimmiekepler.com. Here I like to:

• share my writing life journey to encourage others,
• share a little about me,
• share of my growing up as a military brat,
• Share my Christian faith in practical terms, and
• share my life.

I know this is kind of quick and dirty, but it gets me working on the assignments.  My goal for taking the Blogging 10 course is to make my blog better by going over the basics again.

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Jimmie Aaron Kepler is a novelist, poet, book reviewer, and award-winning short story writer. His work has appeared in over twenty venues, including Bewildering Stories and Beyond Imagination. When not writing each morning at his favorite coffee house, he supports his writing, reading, and book reviewing habit working as an IT application support analyst. He is a former Captain in the US Army. His blog Kepler’s Book Reviews was named a 100 best blogs for history buffs in 2010. You can visit him at http://www.jimmiekepler.com.

Have you ever noticed that when the calendar changes from one year to the next many people reflect on their failures and success of the old year and make resolutions to express their hopes and dreams for the new year? I have.

For the writer and poet, each new year and every new day for that matter are truly an opportunity for a new beginning. As writers, this realization should excite us. Each day is a blank page for us to paint on with our word pictures.

The choices are ours. We can want to write and never do it. We can write and never submit our work. We can write, send, wait and experience rejection or experience the elation of selling/placing an article or story and seeing our by-line.

Maybe you are an Indie or Hybrid author who has pushed “publish” who now waits for sales and to be discovered by his or her audience.

Regardless of how the last year went, of which of the above choices you made, I have good news. The new year provides you with a wonderful opportunity to move onward striving for your writing dreams.

Today is the day you can put pen to paper, fingers to the key board and begin anew your dream of writing. You can transform from a “wanna be” writer to a published writer.

Go for your writing dreams in 2016.

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Jimmie Aaron Kepler is a novelist, poet, book reviewer, and award-winning short story writer. His work has appeared in over twenty venues, including Bewildering Stories and Beyond Imagination. When not writing each morning at his favorite coffee house, he supports his writing, reading, and book reviewing habit working as an IT application support analyst. He is a former Captain in the US Army. His blog Kepler’s Book Reviews was named a 100 best blogs for history buffs in 2010. You can visit him at http://www.jimmiekepler.com.