Thank you, Pinkie, for the award and the shout out! I am humbled (and happily flattered) that you think me so wise! 🙂

Alas, for time constraints (life has been *really* busy, enough that it’s taken be awhile to respond to this and other award tags), I will forego nominating anyone else. Outside that, however, I am pleased to share my story, as humble as it may be.

The Rules:

1. Say thanks to who nominated you and leave a link back to that person’s blog.
2. Give the story or history of your blog.
3. Give two or more pieces of advice for new bloggers.
4. Nominate 10 other bloggers and link their blogs.

The story of my blog? Well, it begins with an idea!

I grew up consuming stories. I would read, watch cartoons, television shows, and movies, listen to stories on tape and records (yes, I am that old), and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on. But for me, it wasn’t enough to just consume it, I had to think about it. I’ve apparently been saying, “The characters ought to have done this instead,” for longer than I can remember (according to my mother), and I’ve never really stopped. 🙂

Well into adulthood, I kept commenting on whatever I was reading or watching. Combine that with my skill with words, born of my love for writing, and there were quite a few pseudo-reviews I wrote in emails to my family. As I was thus talking everyone’s ear off in this fashion, a very good friend of mine one day suggested I start a blog. I mean, if I was going to be commenting anyway, I might as well avail myself of the larger audience (and possibly bother my friends and family with it a bit less, LOL).

That idea rolled around in my head for a short while, refusing to leave, and one day I just decided to do it. 🙂

I looked around, found WordPress, jotted down a bunch of ideas over a day or two. The biggest initial problem was finding a name for my soon-to-be blog. I’d grown accustomed to the online handle of Merlin, so that was going to be in the name, but Merlin’s what? Merlin’s Tower sounded nice, but a bit more foreboding than I wanted. The same for Merlin’s Vault. Merlin’s Den spoke a bit to my wolffish side as well, but somehow it just didn’t quite fit.

That same friend of mine offered the title “Merlin’s Musings” for consideration, and I loved it at first sight! The rest, as they say, is history. 😉

Of course, I wanted to build up that history as quickly as possible. As I was unemployed (though searching furiously) at the time, I had plenty of time on my hands to work with, so I made it my business to produce an archive relatively quickly. From there came a daily schedule that lasted for a bit over half a year, if I recall correctly, even after I had successfully found a paying job.

Variety being the spice of life, I did something different every day for those first few months. Sunday’s were for quotes, and over the course of time, they have become the longest-standing staple of my blog, the one I have never missed (outside some very extenuating circumstances, of course). Monday talked about favorite things in Top Picks, Tuesday Review had a self-explanatory title, Wednesday was about Masters of Storytelling, Thursday was about music (and anything else that crossed my mind), Friday was the day of Challenge Accepted, and Saturday’s posts became “This Week on TV.”

Obviously, that schedule has gone through a great number of changes since those early days, just as my skill and style and the setup of the blog itself have gone through changes. Which goes into both pieces of advice I have for new bloggers.

First, you are the boss. Whatever anyone else may want of you and your blog, you are the one in control. That means it is entirely up to you, and you alone, what you do and what you produce. So… do whatever it is *you* want to do with it! 🙂

Second, along the same lines, don’t be afraid to shake things up. You are free to try new things and experiment. You are not beholden to how things are, or were. You can make of your blog whatever you want to make.

…which goes into a third piece of advice: if you want to make any income of any sort with your blog, then you need to learn a lot more about marketing, production, and such. I suck at that sort of thing, and that is why this is squarely my hobby instead of my self-employed job. 😉

And on that note, I think I shall close with just saying:

Good luck!

And have fun!