Last month, I participated in what I consider my most important speaking engagement ever. My seven year old son’s class invited me to speak with them about writing in honor the National Day on Writing. It was indeed an honor. We spoke about the writing process, the types of writing, the types of writing careers and ways to enjoy creative writing outside of school projects. My favorite part of the discussion was when I opened the floor up for questions. Second graders ask the best questions.
Like:
- “Do you complain about Mr. Ng on your blog?”
- “Who tells you to sit up straight and hold your pencil the right way?”
- “Do you do blogs before you do real writing?”
- “Who draws the pictures when you write?”
What I found interesting is how most of the questions stemmed around blogging. What was even more interesting was how many parents were interested in blogging and had no idea it could be a sole source of income for so many of us.
I learned some interesting things that day:
- The majority of people who aren’t into the whole blogging/social media subculture feel that all blogs are hobby blogs.
- Many people don’t think they read blogs, but they do.
- Many people outside of the blogging community don’t know the difference between a blog and a website.
- Many non bloggers have no idea of what actually goes into blogging – beyond typing in some words and hitting send.
- Many people who aren’t into social media don’t quite get Twitter and can’t tell the difference between Twitter and Facebook.
- Many of the people who read blogs or who have heard of blogs, have no idea people do this for a living.
- Many people think it’s all kind of silly.
Having this chat with both kids and adults enabled me to see I take a lot of things for granted. We all participate in this whole big community, but there’s a great big world out there just waiting to be converted.
I’m up for the challenge…are you?
Deb Ng is a professional blogger and founder of the Freelance Writing Jobs network. Feel free to follow her on Twitter @debng.
