The Importance of Being Perfect Online

The Wild Writing Women are giving a workshop on travel writing at a writing conference in San Francisco this weekend. Last year, at this same conference, my fifteen-minute presentation was on the topic of blogs - what they are and why new writers need one. About five minutes into the presentation a woman raised her hand and asked me to further clarify what a blog was. I clarified. Then another person asked me to re-clarify: Was a blog on the Internet or was the Internet on a Blog, and did you need an email account to use one? At that point I  turned the topic to online writing, self-publishing, and the importance of quality, then I sat down and shut up while Cathy lectured on the Art of the Essay. She got more applause than I did.

I'm going to dare to bring up the topic of blogs again this year, because I hope against hope that by now they've heard of facebook and maybe I can somehow relate it to that. They will know and use these online tools sooner or later, whether they know it or not, and I want to let them know that writers are not like other bloggers or facebook members in that they cannot afford to make spelling and grammatical errors in their casual comments. Every comment, recommendation, review, what-are-you-doing-now entry must be carefully crafted, as if a hiring editor is basing your competence on that one view of your online personality.

That's my whole point, really.

So if you find a spelling or grammatical error in my blog or facebook what-am-I-doing blurb, please let me know so I can go back and correct it.