Building a Platform

I'll start out this morning with great news - we sold our house! Although we had an offer in 4 days and 4 hours, we actually came to terms we all could live with in 7 days and 5 hours! And my griping about what a waste of time television is will stop for awhile....We have the series "Sell This House" to partially thank. Now, I can worry about packing while writing and then finding everything I need to set up my temporary office in our weekend cabin when we arrive...

Now, for some more good news. I blog for two reasons - it gives me an outlet for some of my pent-up thoughts my editors usually don't want to hear. Just as important, it also helps me build a platform for my business. Be it a writing blog to entertain and help writers, and maybe gain a few students for my online classes or writing about my current book or caretaking of my mother.
Well, it was that blog (www.daughtertrack.blogspot.com) that this week landed me a gig with a website. I've been listening and reading a lot of discussion surrounding blogs this past year. From "the blog is dead," to "it is alive and thriving." People who believe blogs are dead use the rapid growth of MySpace at the same time the number of new blogs are decreasing as their argument. The experts in the pro-blog camp use the fact that a really high number of new blogs are still appearing daily. As a matter of fact, one expert told us in a blog workshop this spring not to set up MySpace pages or pages on similar "networking" sites because those do not have the legitimacy factor.
I can see two points. I know of a young adult author who uses MySpace to build her platform, but she's building her platform and catering to her audience.
Still, I don't think the blog is dead or even dying. I think more people are realizing the power it has to help build a platform. And while I wouldn't want this particular platform subject to be the majority of my career, the assignment I secured will only add to my package as I pitch the book about me and my mother.
And it's pretty gratifying knowing that at least one editor has read my pent-up thoughts and thinks their worth paying for.