Free is when you don’t have to pay for nothin’ or do nothin’.

We want to be free, free as the wind.

-Frank Zappa, You Are What You Is

I am a professional writer, which means simply that I write for pay.  I do this on a freelance basis, and my body of work (like that of most freelancers) covers a wide variety of topics that are related only tangentially, if at all.  Like most freelancers, I write frequently, but am paid sporadically for doing so.  Most of what I write, I write for free, either hoping that it will lead to paid work down the road or doing it purely for my own edification.  And I post on message boards, and on Facebook, and so on, and obviously I’m not getting paid or noticed for doing any of that.

So a blog, to me and probably to many others, is simply a more concentrated and well-ordered way of writing for free.  Like any kind of free writing, it may or may not lead anywhere financially or creatively fruitful.  But anyone who uses the Internet probably writes for free anyway, and so those of us who hope to live off of our writing would do well to be organized about our unpaid work.

That’s why I’ve started this blog, if you care to know.  I don’t promise that every thought contained herein will be fascinating, but neither do I expect that very many people will be reading those thoughts.  Perhaps, in that magical Internet way, this blog will organically lead somewhere.  But in the meanwhile, I won’t be imposing a shape on it.  It will be about anything and everything that I, and maybe a few friends, happen to find interesting.

And if none of that amounts to much, well, neither did most of my writing amount to much before it found its way into blog form.  I’m writing it for free, and you in turn are free to read it, and equally free to ignore it.  At least now you have the option, whoever you are.