It’s Monday and Dr. Tanya is back with her weekly Blogging Insights prompt. She provides us with a quote about blogging or writing and asks us to express our opinion about said quote.

This week’s quote is from American journalist Jeff Jarvis.

“The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them.”

This quote reminded me of that old piece of advice that you need to learn to walk before you run. Back before I started blogging, I told an acquaintance that I enjoyed writing for fun. He suggested that I start a blog. He said it’s writing but you publish what you write and it’s out there forever in what he called “the ether.”

I asked him what people write about in blogs and he said they write about whatever they want to write about. I thought that was a cool idea so I asked him how to go about starting a blog and he referred me to blogspot.com (now commonly known as Blogger).

I opened an account at blogspot and followed the instructions on how to create a blog. It was pretty simple, and before I knew it, I had actually published a few blog posts. I asked my friend to read my posts and let me know what he thought.

In as a constructive way as possible, he suggested that I spend time reading other blogs to see the kinds of things other bloggers were doing. Not only what they wrote about, but how they wrote about their topics.

Reading the blogs of other bloggers, especially those who had decent followings, helped me quite a bit. I was able to discern what I especially liked or didn’t particularly like about the various blogs I read. And all that reading helped me define my own style and voice for my blog.

So yes, I fully embrace this quote. Take the time to read other blogs and then use what you learned. Don’t plagiarize or try to replicate another blogger’s style. But incorporate what you liked and think would work best for you. And then do your thing…on your blog.