I realized a few days ago, I have been blogging for five years now. At least once a day, so I’ve easily written 1800 blogs. My book originated on my blog, if you can believe that. I never intended to write a book. I never intended to write at all. This all happened because of astrology. Or more specifically because of a guy who hates astrology and I’ll tell you the story.

During the fall of 2000 I was hanging on a business-oriented message board. And I’d read an article about British telephone commissioning a study where they found people talked more during the full moon. Being an astrologer, I thought this was interesting. I also thought it would be interesting to the board…business types are always looking for an edge.

So I posted a link to this article like a lamb. Like an idiot! And some guy got on there and flamed the hell out of me. “How can you believe such utter bullshit?” he wanted to know.

Well, I was surprised. And hurt! It was not me talking up astrology. It was British Telephone, for chrissakes! So what’s this guy doing on my ass?

Well, I had no idea. But I posted a response. And he posted a response. And I posted a response…and the next thing I knew six weeks had passed and a crowd had gathered.

Now I had no concept of how much writing I’d done, so when my man printed a copy of the thread and it was 400 pages long, I was pretty shocked.

See, I didn’t specifically know I had anything to say about astrology or anything else. So I was marveling at this whole phenomena…all these words pouring out, and continuing to write of course. On that board, I mean.

And then in April 2001, I discovered “blogs” and started one (on xanga.com) where I continued to write and write and write and write.

Now here’s the funny thing. I wrote for at least two years, entirely in email! Like maybe a couple thousand pages.

“You need to be using Word, Elsa.” People told me this.

“Using what?” I asked. “Why? What’s wrong with email? It has a spell-checker, what else do I need?” I was even annoyed to be bothered me about this. Why would I want to solve a problem I didn’t have?

But anyway, it’s now five years later. And I have written tens of thousands of pages and a 600+ page book. All because some guy didn’t like astrology.

So how did you start blogging?