Some of you may know I am working with James on his new blog over at http://www.thepaisleyfields.com/blog/. As part of a site redesign, I suggested he create a blog. (The site redesign has yet to be launched.)

James is a great writer. His life as a country musician and a recently married gay man is not unheard of, but not exactly the standard either. His blog offers a way for him to share his unique perspective and connect with people on topics like heartbreak, love, acceptance, and of course, country music.

When he sends me the blog to edit each week, I feel so thrilled he wanted to write a weekly blog. I am also continually impressed by his writing. Then after all the hearts-exploding-into-flowers-and-stars moments, I feel guilty. I asked James to commit to a weekly blog, but I have not done that.

From the beginning, I have been VERY sporadic about posting. Partly, it is because I am busy. I have my job, school, writing fiction and poetry, editing, and volunteering to occupy my time. Then, of course, I also like eat and drink and, well, go see L’Assassins. (I saw L’Assassins this weekend, and the surf and rockabilly-tinged, garage rock band is fabulous.) I mean I live in Minneapolis. I like to see bands.

Another reason for neglect was that I was not ever sure what I wanted my blog to accomplish. But working on James’ blog, I started thinking more about this blog. To employ good content strategy, you need to define what your writing should accomplish. Do you want to make people laugh or cry? Do you want to inform them? About what? And what people?

I have always wanted this blog to be about writing and the importance of language. I mean, at least loosely. I have veered off course at times. But now I am planting my flag here. This blog will be about writing and the importance of language. And to amuse myself and hopefully some of you, I am going to include a link to a music video, inspired by my mood or the post that day.

So check out the L’Assassins’ video for “Kill Kill” below. I can assure you, it will make you want to dance.

An update on the last post I made, I did write 30 poems last month. Not exactly one poem every day, but there were 30 poems by the end of the month. So let’s hope I can keep the one blog post a week thing rolling…