When I decided to create blog capabilities on my web site, I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I just wanted to be able to say something, as the spirit moved me, to more than one or two people at a time, and create a dialogue – which is tricky for some of us.

Here’s how I learned that:

A client of mine who never stopped talking, (ever), sent me an article to review. Everyone is nervous when they send their thoughts and ideas out into the world and I usually hear a disclaimer or two about why it isn’t as good as it could be, or why it’s downright awful. Then I read it from a fresh place because as writers, we can’t see what we ourselves have written with an open mind. We just have to do it.

When my client handed me her precious article that was partly an interview and told me she was not good at dialogue, I didn’t think much about it. Most people aren’t good at dialogue until they fail at it a few times. I know that was the case with me. And she might be better than she knew.

I found some time the next day and read her article, only to discover that there was no dialogue. There wasn’t even a conversation, because this writer only used monologues. No two people ever spoke back and forth, sharing ideas and commenting on what the other had said. No wonder she was feeling strange about the dialogue in her article.

How odd, I thought, until I realized that it wasn’t the slightest bit odd. It was exactly the way she lived her life. She talked so much and listened so seldom, she hadn’t learned what a conversation was in real life. How could she possibly recreate one in an article? She was a professor in a well respected university in the South and I wondered how effective she was with her students when she couldn’t listen.

I see that the way we live our lives will determine what we write and what we don’t or can’t. For my client, if she becomes strong enough to fully see her own reflection in her writing, this could be a breakthrough in her day to day life as well as on paper.

Please feel free to send me your thoughts, ideas and questions about any aspect of writing that comes to mind. I will do my best to answer you and to have a dialogue. A real one between at least two people. As I said to Steven, my illustrious Web Master:

What if I gave a blog and nobody came?