Blogs are book promotion magic. That's my mantra, and I'm serious. Every author should blog. I tell it to everyone I run into: blog, blog, blog! Trust me! Blog! You'll drive traffic to your book web site, and you'll raise the visibility of your book online.

As often as I've advised authors to blog, I've fielded the question, "How?" Depending on how well I know the questioner, I'll either 1) stop what I'm doing and walk the person through places online where he or she can research the ins-and-outs of setting up a blog 2) refer the person to a search engine and a way to frame the query to turn up targeted, helpful responses or 3) advise the person to check in with his/her web site designer who gets paid to field such questions.

That's how I handle the question of "how to blog" if the question is a technical one. But if, as so often happens, the would-be blogger is just staring at a blank screen and having a bad moment or two about how to get started blogging, then here's an article that can help him or her to get past "bloggers' block." It's MSNBC.com's "The 11 lamest blogs on the Internet," and here's how it will help. Once you see how low the blogging-bar has been set by hacks, you'll realize that -- as a real writer -- you could blog more appealingly than that even if you were in a coma. That article is fun, though, and I think you'll enjoy it. After you finish reading it, start that blog! Please! Thank you.