As a format, blogging has matured over the past two decades into a writing style in its own right. Regardless of whether you know anything about literature or creative writing, you should be able to quickly identify the characteristics of blog writing: conversational, passionate, provocative, highly personal, and open. The blogs are closer to the original essays of Michel de Montaigne, the father of the modern essay, before that art form was possessed and transmuted into the rhetorical structure we all learn nowadays in high school. Remember that the strength of the blog format is its intimate, personal tone and delivery. People don't go to blogs to read an impersonal, "just the facts, ma'am" article. They go to a blog for personality, exhortation and conviction. In a blog there is no place for hedging, passive constructions or mealy-mouthed misunderstandings. A blog is an exploration of your thoughts and feelings on a certain topic. As Flannery O'Connor once wrote, "I don't know what I think until I see what I say." That's why you...