My first visit to BN was in the 90s in San Jose. I fell in love. Books, coffee, stuffed chairs, classical or jazz playing softly.

I bought California Fault: Looking for the Spirit of a State Along the San Andreas by Thurston Clarke. (Remains one of my favorites.)

Bambi.

My father read to me so many times, that I had memorized it. One day, I pretended to read it on my own. As I “read” it, I suddenly noticed the spaces between words and realized each group was a separate word!

Five years later, I read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and found that Scout had discovered reading in much the same way. “I could not remember when the lines above Atticus’s moving finger separated into words. . .”

On December 25, 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird, the film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Harper Lee, opened in theaters. The book had been published July 11, 1960.

The 1960 United States presidential election was the 44th presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960.

Democrat United States Senator John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee.

In 1962, George Wallace was first elected governor of Alabama. I was sitting on the school bus when a boy got on and yelled, “Wallace is going to run all the n****** to the state line!”

An image, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Classics Illustrated) of a man swinging a bullwhip at black slaves running away, sprang to my mind. I was afraid.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.