Julie and Julia

I love that this movie is about an ordinary person who takes a risk, starts a blog, and "finds herself" while channeling her inner writer. In some small ways I can identify. When I started this blog two years ago (my goodness, that's a long time) I had no idea that it would turn into a hobby and a powerful tool for developing as a writer. In fact, it wasn't until I joined my writing group that I actually started to consider myself a writer.

Now as a teacher of writing, I think the blog is one of the greatest tools available to developing writers. I click "publish post" and instantly my work has an audience. Perhaps an audience of five, but an audience none the less! With a blog, anyone can have a voice and share their writing with the world. More and more, writers are getting paid to write their blogs and these little web worlds are beginning to change the face of journalism (for the good or the bad, you decide).

I was reminded of myself multiple times throughout the film (which I fittingly watched with my writing group). Julie realizes that the Julie/Julia project had made her very self-absorbed, worried that her readers could not get along without her regular posts. The egocentricity of a blog is true. Every time I post on this site my writing revolves around me, my thoughts and my conviction that someone would care what I made for dinner, did throughout the day, or thought about the latest episode of Real Housewives.

The sheer joy Julie expresses the first time she receives a comment on her blog is dead on. When I finally realized people read this thing I became so much more motivated to write. Chris showed me once how to check my readers; there were people reading from all over the world! By no means am I the hottest thing in the blogosphere, but I'm realizing that people read even if they don't follow or comment. This is exciting. In fact, it feeds the ego centrism (see above paragraph).

Glad I saw the film, makes me think about where this little blog is taking me. Maybe it is purely recreational. But maybe, someday, it could lead to more. My husband says I must cut out posts like this before I could ever make it big.