Why Write a Blog?

I have become less and less regular about posting at Out of My Hat.
But if you read regularly (or irregularly as my posts are irregular), you already know that.

Oddly enough, in a couple of weeks I'll be standing before my writing club to talk about ... blogging.

Over the course of the next few days I'll be re-examining why I chose to start this blog, how it has evolved over the past few years and why I continue to publicly rant/preach/write/share about whatever might come to mind.

I know that many of my readers are also fellow bloggers (or former bloggers). Perhaps you'll share why you blog by leaving a comment.

A quick scan of the "Blogs I Frequent" list in the right column shows quite a number of blogs are are no longer being written. I guess I need to update that list. I think that the quick tweet or slightly longer Facebook status update has replaced blogging for a lot of former bloggers. I recently read (and I can't remember where to give the source) that serious writers don't blog, the write to be published.
I assume they meant that they write to be published by somebody else or to be published for pay because even a simple blog like this one is "published."

So for my little fifteen to twenty minute session,  I plan on sharing some sites that offer to publish your blog, some tips to publishing to get hits or build your following, some of the many different types of blogs that are out there.

If you were going to talk for fifteen minutes on why you read blogs, what would you say?
What do you, the reader, look for in a blog?
(Is it cheesy to solicit my readers for help with my presentation?)

If I look back to my first post, I can read some of the reasons that I started blogging (and no I haven't written one additional word to that book!) and see that they pretty much still work for today. Perhaps I should be more purposeful about blogging. As it is, Out of My Hat is just a sort of catch all kind of blog with random posts at random times about random subjects.

I guess it is appropriately named.

John <><