My daughter Emily is a Computational Linguistics Professor. One thing this means is that she spends a lot of time on the computer. She has found a way to keep a diary about her two little boys and the life of her young family using blogging software available free on the Internet. She’s given her blog address to her parents and friends, who are an eager audience for hearing about her children’s goings on and her observations of them. There is an immediacy in blogging that guarantees she won’t forget details that make each day special and at the same time allows a peak inside the hours she spends with her children.

Many of us think of journaling regularly but don’t overcome our inertia and do it. Emily’s example can help motivate us. Here’s a sample of the kind of short writing Emily has been doing for a little over a year now, since the birth of her second child. Her oldest is four:

I Remembered! Rosa Parks (3/26/06)

I remembered the “why” question I had a good answer to recently: When Rosa Parks died last year, the Metro Transit system dedicated a seat to her on each bus (in the front, of course, possibly the “same” one she so famously refused to give up). The dedicated seat has a little (vinyl) plaque on it, and there’s a poster in the advertising section with a Parks quote and a brief explanation.

One day, we were all taking the bus back from a Science Center adventure, and Toby saw the plaque. He asked me what it was, and I explained what Rosa Parks did and why it was important as best I could in terms he could understand. He was very interested in the whole story (I meant to follow up with a book from the library, should still do that), and at the end, asked why the transit system dedicated a seat to her. That one was easy: “So kids would ask about it, and moms and dads would tell them the story of Rosa Parks!”

When I asked Emily to send an entry that she liked, she wrote that she liked this one best right now “because it describes a moment that I’m proud of (a time I had a really good answer for one of Toby’s questions, and felt like I taught him something important).”

Emily
This is an entry that I’d meant to post about for a while, but couldn’t remember while I was at the computer. About a week before writing it, I was thinking about it and thinking about how it would make a good post, and then musing from there about Toby’s ‘why’ questions in general. The next time I got to the computer, I remembered what I’d been thinking about “why” questions, but I couldn’t remember the Rosa Parks story. So, I posted about Toby’s why questions in general, how he uses them on a variety of occasions including “while Mommy seems to be paying attention to me, I’ll ask why about some part of what she said.”

A few days later I was taking Rafe for a walk to get him to sleep and I really worked on trying to remember the why question I meant to post about — and was happy when I did!

Sheila
What made you start blogging?

Emily
Vijay [Emily’s husband] and I follow several of our friends’ blogs, and really enjoy it. It’s fun to keep up with people day to day, some of whom are far away. One day Vijay asked me if I was ever tempted, and I said that I was. I had been hesitating though, largely because of privacy issues. I knew that if I kept a blog I would do so with the intent of having people who knew me read it. But there are many people who know me in many contexts, and the thought of just keeping a general journal that anyone in the world could read (including my students and colleagues) didn’t seem right. One of my friends (Kevin Black) keeps a blog that is mostly reviews of movies he’s seen. Making a theme for the blog seemed like a good way to focus it on information that I don’t mind the world at large knowing. The theme that jumped out at me was my kids. Other details of our lives come out in the posts, but working with this theme I can write things that I believe are interesting to others (especially the kids’ grandparents!) while keeping it within the realm of things I don’t mind colleagues and students discovering.

Sheila
What did you know about blogging before you started?

Emily
Most of what I knew I knew from reading friends’ blogs. In some cases they’re surprisingly personal. Once Jim posted about the present she was going to give her husband for his birthday later that day, and I had to wonder if he read her blog and had the surprised ruined. One of Vijay’s friends from high school has posted in his blog about what happened when he disappeared for a while after failing out of MIT.

Sheila
Tell us a little more about the blogs you read and more about why you read them?

Emily
I read three blogs on a regular basis: My oldest friend’s (Jim’s) general blog, her husband’s blog about movies, and her cousin’s blog about her Watson Fellowship research trip around the world. I’ve also read at least one blog by someone I don’t know: A linguist on the other side of the country who seemed to be on the verge of switching theoretical frameworks (there’s a big rift in my field right now). But she stopped posting on a regular basis, and eventually I stopped checking.

I’ve also read a sort of community blog called languagelog.org where several linguists post about linguistics-related things they notice in the media and the world at large. One more thing I quite enjoyed was a fictional blog by Darth Vader.

Sometimes I’ve followed the links in LiveJournal looking at the blogs of friends of my friends. But those blogs are generally uninteresting to me. Mostly, I find that blogs are interesting if I know the person already, or if I somehow manage to read enough of one to get to know the person.

This is similar to some Usenet newsgroups I’ve participated in about pregnancy and breastfeeding. Stories unfold in people’s posts there that can be quite interesting (dramatic medical difficulties with pregnancies, a woman whose husband died suddenly when their child was an infant, a woman who’s had 12 kids, including only one set of twins). Once I’ve come to know someone in one of those communities, all of their posts become interesting because I “know” them.

Sheila
Okay, back to your personal blogging efforts. How did you choose the site you are using?

Emily
It’s the one that all of the blogs that I read are written in, and it seemed pretty useable. Some of the features I like are that the formatting is easy, it’s possible to leave comments on people’s posts (and reply to comments on posts), and it allows you to link to friends’ blogs on the same site.

Sheila
How does linking to friend’s blogs work?

Emily
LiveJournal is a social networking site as well as a blog site. If you list another blogger as a friend, you can see their posts on your “friends” page. This gives you one-stop-shopping for catching up on all your friends’ blogs at once. LiveJournal also has a feature that allows you to mark certain posts (all, if you wish), as private, so that only people you specify as friends can read them. You can also learn about your friends’ friends by reading their “friends” pages (but you’ll only see posts that aren’t private).

Sheila
Is the fact that you have readers an incentive to keep posting?

Emily
Certainly. I post fairly regularly for a couple of reasons. The first is that I want to keep a pretty accurate record of what my kids are doing and saying. The longer I wait on any given event, the more the story is likely to drift from what actually happens. In effect, this is done for the benefit of my future audience (myself, my husband and the kids, when we look back at this later). The second reason is that I imagine my present-day audience wanting to know what’s happening now. This keeping-in-touch is extra motivation for posting regularly.

Sheila
I know I’ve made a few comments on some of your blog entries. Do you make comments on other people’s blogs? What motivates you to do that? Does the blogger mention your comments or write back you?

Emily
I do. Sometimes blogs become conversations. For example, Kevin referred to a movie as a farce in one of his reviews, and that reminded my of my favorite farce (Le dîner de cons/The Dinner Game), so I recommended it to him in a comment. A few weeks later, he watched The Dinner Game, and I enjoyed reading his review of it. The software is set up so that readers and the original blogger can reply to comments, and sometimes comment threads turn into long conversations. The owner of the blog gets an email notification, so even when a comment is posted on an old entry, you know about it immediately.

Another way that blogs turn into conversations is through people linking to each others’ posts. Most blogging sites provide a feature called “permalink” which means that each post has a URL that will remain constant (as long as the hosting site is still around). Many sites also allow you to “trackback” and find out which blogs are referring to your posts. It is because of this interconnectedness that the ensemble of blogs on the Internet is referred to as the “blogosphere”, a term which suggests an interdependent, encompassing system.

Finally, I post comments (and enjoy comments posted to my blog) because most blogs are written for an audience. Comments let the author know that the audience is listening, and this is quite gratifying.

Sheila
Can you tell how many times our postings have been read and by whom?

Emily
LiveJournal doesn’t (yet) make access logs available, so no. I believe that other blogging sites do. If you’re technically savvy enough, you can figure out how many different computers accessed your page and where in the world those computers were located.

Sheila
Can you edit or remove posts if you change your mind?

Emily
Yes. You can edit or delete posts and even delete comments that have been left on your posts. The one caveat there is that there are websites that periodically take “snapshots” of the whole web. This means that even if you delete a post from your blog, it might be archived somewhere else on the web (in Google’s cache or at archive.org, for example).

Sheila
I’m learning how comfortable you have to be that your subject and writing won’t be of much interest to anyone who could misuse it. I believe like you do that telling personal stories is universal and worthwhile and that fear of what someone will do with the material only squelches the desire to write. Maybe we even lean on that fear as a way to avoid our best material. But, I am sure in addition to resolving security issues, there have been other surprises for you in this project. What are some of them?

Emily
I’m surprised that I have been as consistent about posting as I have. I’ve also found myself composing posts before I get online. They’re generally pretty short, so it’s almost like I’m drafting and editing them in my head before typing them up.

Sheila
How does that work for you? Generally, I don’t know how my words will say what they will say until I’ve written them.

Emily
This is mostly true of the posts that are about my reflections on parenting, rather than the ones that are direct reports of something the kids did. It usually starts with a short phrase that comes to me when I’m busy doing something else. An example that I haven’t yet turned into an entry is “I am the laundry fairy.” This phrase came into my head the other evening when I was quietly putting away laundry in the kids’ drawers after they had gone to sleep. I was musing about how for them, the clean laundry just magically replenishes itself. (Well, not entirely: Toby seems to enjoy helping me with the laundry, but I’m not sure how well he tracks the whole process.) I don’t usually compose the whole post like that, but if I remember these key phrases, it helps me remember what I meant to blog about when I get a chance.

Sheila
I am beginning to see more fully how the life of a blogger can keep you focused on personal writing, which I think is great, but how does all the writing and reading fit into your day or week?

Emily
The reading I do in various kinds of downtime: While I’m nursing Rafe, when eating lunch at my desk in the middle of a busy day, in the evening when I’m just too tired to get out of my chair after finishing a little work after the kids’ bedtime, or in the middle of my workday when I need a short break in order to come back to something tricky with a fresh perspective. The writing I tend to do in stolen moments (for example, when the kids are happily playing together, but still need my supervision: in a moment like that, I can’t start work on anything serious, but I can jot down a blog entry).

Sheila
Sounds like you are never far from a computer or you have your laptop handy. Let’s switch to pet peeves–do you have some about blogs?

Emily
My biggest pet peeve about the blogs that I follow is that my friends don’t post as often as I’d like them to! When I look at blogs written by people I don’t know, I find some of the posts too self-centered — but they’re not really any more self-centered than the ones I do read, it’s just that the material only becomes interesting when it’s someone I know. I’m also sometimes surprised by the way that people and events are referred to as if they’re already in the common ground, which they are for the writer and the people who know her well, but not for new readers. But again, that goes with the territory.

Sheila
What seems praiseworthy?

Emily
Many blog entries are very rich — Gwen’s posts about her trip around the world are full of interesting details about the places she’s in (South Africa, Tanzania, India) the people she’s met (female scientists she’s interviewing about the status of women in science in their countries) and her observations and trials traveling in and striving to understand all of these different cultures. I also enjoy Jim’s posts about her daily life. It’s very much like visiting in person, especially since we can converse in the comments feature.

Sheila
What makes you keep up with writing your blog? What do you see as the benefits to you of doing this?

Emily
I have at least three audiences and that equals at least three motivations for keeping this blog. As I said earlier, I keep the kids’ grandparents informed about fun things that come up in their lives. I also I give my friends a way to keep up with my doings, the same way I enjoy reading their blogs. Although my current motivation for keeping the blog is for the people who are reading it now, as I said before, keeping it for them helps me make something I want in the long term (a record of these days for me, Vijay and the kids to look back on in the future). This is very much like the way that posting pictures to the digital picture frames (CEIVA) installed at the grandparents’ houses gives me a day-to-day reason to keep the digital pictures we take organized, so when the time comes to make hard copy albums, a big chunk of the work is done. Also, I’m finding that what I am able to record in the kids’ baby books is less interesting than what I write in my blog. That’s because the books ask for different, standardized kinds of details and because it’s much easier to type something on the computer than to get out the physical book and write in it.

Sheila
What are the drawbacks if any?

Emily
There are the privacy considerations. I feel like I should be nervous about anything that involves posting information about my kids in a public forum. On the other hand, I’m mindful of this when I post, and I don’t think that there is any way my keeping this blog is putting them in danger.

Another kind of drawback is that if I want to use this blog as something to keep well into the future, I need to be mindful of the fact that the site I use might not be around forever. This means I need to create my own backup copies at home, preferably hard copies rather than (or as well as) electronic. I haven’t done this yet, but plan to do it at least once a year.

Sheila
I agree. I love these stories of the kids and you and Vijay as creative parents facilitating their beings. Don’t lose them! What else would you caution others who might want to try blogging about?

Emily
Most blogs are written in a style that suggests either writing-for-self (diaries, journals) or writing for a small, in-group set of people. But blogs are out on the Internet, which means that any one in the world can access them. In addition to privacy issues, it’s also important to consider copyright.

Sheila
What do you mean about copyright? How does one copyright a blog site full of entries, part there and part to come in the future?

Emily
I’m not really sure about this one and don’t know that anyone is. I did a search on the Internet about blogs and copyright, and found only information about what to do if a blog is infringing on your copyright material and advice on how to avoid copyright infringement as a blogger. My guess is that it might be sufficient to put a notice at the top of the page that says “This material is Copyright © [name] 2006-2007” and then keep updating the year range as time moves on. Many blogs are quasi-anonymous (posted only under pseudonyms or handles), though, so people don’t do this very often.

Sheila
What you would suggest a potential blogger think about before they start?

Emily
I would suggest considering the audience: whom do you expect or want to read your blog? Writing on a theme seems to be a good strategy, while not excluding the possibility of bringing in off-theme tidbits.

Sheila
Well, before we end, Grandma Sheila wants to share one of the entries that surprised and impressed her and still makes her laugh. Here’s your account of a conversation on your walk home from daycare with Toby. It’s a longer entry because it reports a very long conversation:

The Universe according to Toby (10/5/06)

Toby and I had a fascinating discussion about the Universe on the way back from school today. I wished I had a tape recorder so I could get all the details, but I’ll just have to try to remember them as best I can. It all started because I was telling him about a spot I heard on Talk of the Nation Science Friday about some astronomers who are trying to reopen the debate about the definition of a planet. In that context we were talking about the Pluto, Eris (erstwhile Xena), and Ceres.

Toby said that Ceres couldn’t be a planet, because it’s an asteroid, which means it’s too hard. A planet has to be soft enough for space ships to “plop down” on it. So I pointed out the concrete we were walking on and asked if Earth is soft. He said not this part, the outer crust. He explained further: Up above the sky there’s the outer crust. That is hard. There’s also a soft part where space ships can plop down. There are two asteroids around the Earth, so the space ships have to come in the right side (not where the asteroids are).

I asked him then why we could see the stars at night, if there’s an outer crust up above the sky. Toby said that the stars are smart enough to know which side they can get in, and what we’re actually seeing is the reflection of the stars. Later in that same conversation, he asked me if I knew where the moon’s light came from, and explained that the light we see coming from the moon is really coming from the sun and then bouncing off the moon. It seems he knows a lot of space facts (from various sources, including some edutainment software he was playing a lot a few weeks ago), but those facts haven’t added up to really being able to picture how the Earth he knows from his own experience fits into the broader picture.

In the same conversation, I told him that one of the questions people often wonder about is if there are planets around other stars (and now we know that there are!) and if so, if there are living things on those planets, and if so, if any of those living things are smart, like people, and if so, if any of those living things have figured out how to make space ships, and if so, if those space ships might come to Earth. I then asked Toby why he thought people exist on Earth.

His answer was that the sun is actually smart. No one knows this, but the sun uses its gasses to think. It used to be all alone, but then it decided to “grow up” the planets. So the sun is the mom, and that’s why it’s the biggest. And then the sun decided to make people on Earth.

Also in the same conversation, Toby asked “Wouldn’t it be funny if there was another boy just like me on another planet and his name was Toby too?” I asked him if we would want to write that boy a letter, if he existed. Toby said yes, but thought there should also be a space ship that could bring the letter to the boy. So I asked him what he would write, and Toby said, “I like you because you’re just like me.” On further discussion, it turned out that the little boy was like Toby in all respects, and did all the same things at all the same times, and had the same little brother and mom and dad. But, the whole planet wasn’t the same as ours. Only our family. That planet was different in that it had no oceans, only land. When people needed water, they got it by milking something called a “watergoat” who has special plants in its tail which make water which is then stored in the udders until someone milks it.

Coming back to the theme of the sentient sun, Toby said that the planets can decide things, too. Like Jupiter could decide not to have stripes, and just be orange. But it doesn’t. But, Earth can’t, and that’s good, because it might be inconvenient for us. I said, “Like what if the Earth decided not to have continents anymore, and it was all just ocean.” Toby agreed that would be bad; we would all just sink. But then we thought about swimming until we found something floating “like a houseboat that no one was using and we could live in.”

Sun as deity, Gaia, doppelgangers, and goats that create water. What an entertaining walk home!

And you know, it seems like son number two is going to be a real talker (is this a linguists dream–having verbal children?), too. So I can’t really close without sharing a couple of entries about Rafe and his words:

Not What I Meant (12/3/06)

Rafe has a runny nose (it’s December, he goes to day care…). I was wiping it and said, “Can you blow sweetie?” Rafe put his hand to his mouth and blew a kiss.

And:

That’s Why They’re Called “Bored” Books (12/3/06)

A couple of months ago, we realized we weren’t in the habit of reading to Rafe, and thought we should fix that. At the time, we tried reading to him (I remember trying Goodnight Moon a couple of times), and he would only sit through the whole thing under duress. Within a week or so, though, he caught on to the fun. The first book I really saw him enjoy was Blue Hat, Green Hat. I don’t think he really understood it (all of the other animals are putting on their clothes the right way, but the turkey keeps putting things in the wrong place), but the word “oops” (the last word on each page) consistently got belly laughs from the first reading. He wanted it read over and over and over again. Another that seems to be a first favorite is Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb. And now he most often wants Shoes, followed closely by The Wheels on the Bus and Tumble Bumble. You’ll get to the end of the book and he’ll immediately say and sign, “More.” (As an aside, I remember Peter having distinct words for “more” and “again” at about this stage, which I found impressive. Rafe just uses “more” for both.) Sometimes, he gets his hands ready for the “more” sign on the second to last page or so. This is all particularly ironic with We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, because the last line is, “We’re NOT going on a bear hunt again!”

Now we know why they’re called “bored” (board) books.

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If you have people who would really like to hear from you and who could become an audience that encourages you to write, or you have a book writing idea in mind for which keeping notes and making journal entries of your observations would be beneficial, you might want to start a blog. Think of the formula for success this way:

1. Use an easy-to-access system that works for you at a time when you normally go to the computer–after answering email or before, for instance.

2. Find a focus that you are interested in–for Emily that is getting down her observations of her children’s growth in learning and relating to others and the world. Since she is a linguist, she often uses technical terms when explaining what she’s heard her children say. She uses her strong science skill for observation in combination with her joy at mothering her boys to create vignettes that leap off the page and into the heart (I know I am the mom and grandmother talking, but I think from the samples you’ll agree).

3. Find an audience that is looking forward to reading what you have seen and heard, tasted, touched and smelled and learned. Not only are the grandparents and a circle of close others that audience for Emily now, but also her sons and her future self are important audiences to come. The writing is a gift for all of us. Your writing might be for this kind of audience or it might be for people in a specific profession or encountering a certain kind of life circumstance: living with chronic illness, care giving, adventuring, researching, etc.

4. Don’t think of blogging as one more thing you have to do. Take Emily’s advice and see it as an organizational tool for something you want to do anyway!