As a format, blogging has matured over the past two decades into a style of writing in its own right. Whether you know anything about literature or creative writing, you should immediately be able to spot the characteristics of blog writing: conversational, passionate, provocative, highly personal and open. Blogs are closer to the original essays of Michel de Montaigne, the father of the modern essay, before this art form was possessed and transmuted into the rhetorical framework we all learn in high school these days. Remember that the strength of the blog format lies in its intimate and personal tone and delivery. People don't go to blogs to read an impersonal, "just the facts, ma'am" type of news article. They go to a blog for personality, exhortation and conviction. There is no place in a blog for hedging, passive constructions or wild equivocations. A blog is an exploration of your own thoughts and feelings on a given topic. As Flannery O'Connor wrote: "I don't know very well what I think until I see what I say." » That's why you...