“Nearing 30 and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell reclaims her life by cooking every single recipe in Julia Child’s legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of one year. It’s a hysterical, inconceivably redemptive journey — life rediscovered through aspics, calves’ brains and crΓ©me brΓ»lΓ©e,” so says the Amazon blurb for the book cum movie, both titled Julie and Julia.

The Philadelphia Inquirer pegged this book as “irresistible, a kind of Bridget Jones meets The French Chef.”

One of the scenes that caught my eye in the movie was that of the ingΓ©nue-cook Julie hatching the idea for blogging her cooking experiments. Persevering with her dream in a tiny apartment with a teeny-tiny kitchen, Julie travails for a full year, sometimes in triumph; other times dissolving in tears. Check out her resolve in this clip just over a minute.

 

I was way more than twice Julie’s age when I began blogging, and I didn’t hitch my wagon to a brilliant star like Julia Child, but I had strong reasons too for sharing my thoughts with the world back in February 2013 when I launched my website. Here are a few, some of which have evolved over time.

 

  • Connect with friends regularly through my blog. Make new ones there. Expand my horizons by visiting others’ blogs to read and comment.

 

  • Write to put my thoughts into words. Often when I write down random thoughts, new ideas emerge.

 

  • Create raw material for longer works: Sometimes a blog post becomes a scene in my book. For example, A Moment of Extreme Emotion on my blog in 2015 was expanded to became Chapter 27, β€œLunatic in London” in my second memoir, My Checkered Life: A Marriage Memoir in 2023.

 

  • Sharpen my writing skills. I inspect sentences now intending to use fewer words. β€œHow can I condense that thought, compress that idea?” I ask myself.

 

 

As a beginning blogger, I did not dream that one day I would publish a book. Along the way other bloggers/authors encouraged me to imagine my blog posts as raw material for creating a memoir, a legacy for my family–and more.

Many, many bloggers have inspired me. Shirley Showalter ignited my interest in beginning a blog. Some, like Robbie Cheadle, have recently listed her reasons for continuing to blog. If I read and comment on your blog, you goad me to continue. Thank you!

 

How a Recent Post Came Together

I began with long-hand scribbles on a tablet.

 

Then, I fleshed out the main points, typing them into WordPress and adding photos.

You can find the published postΒ HERE.

 


 

If you are a blogger, why do you blog?

When blogging becomes stale, what do you do?

Advice to beginning bloggers?