"VOF Week 3: (Blogging in Riyadh; Resting in Khartoum)"

Have your say before it dies. Inevitably it will force its way. It does not matter when, why, where or how. Life has taught me to wait, because there is always a chance! With these feelings I entered the field of blogging 8 years ago.

Unemployed, insolvent, disconnected from the rest of my favored professional world, I decided to run the risk. At that time internet was "more secure than the nose of a lion". That was the first challenge.

In 2001, and with a help of a friend, I established my web site: http://halima.8m.net
Immediately the page pumped up. It was wonderful, or that what I thought.

I had a great appetite for writing. With variable journal style, I was writing day and night. For my self and for those who spend long hours in perfuming their bodies to sleep with their husbands in winter, conceive in summer and give birth to babies in fall, unaware that development train has headed towards a next station.

My page was a good opportunity to publish and archive my ideas, conducted interviews, articles, investigative reports and column to potential audience world wide.

By hyper links, I connected many popular websites to mine and, thus could succeed to draw more readers to the page.

In 2007 I established my blog. Here is the link: http://blogs.albawaba.com/halimam
Blogging is the gift of the 20th century. Through the open cyber people can communicate with each other and exchange information in no time. Web blogging is more than that. Journalistic style makes my blog, more close to a magazine than a personal page.
"Interaction between readers and me, variety of materials, actuality, avoiding self description, are on top of reasons that draw commentators and interested visitors to my page.

Although track back mechanism is an effective aspect that helps the online interaction between authors and readers, unless being patient, it will be hard to maintain this feature. This however demands a frequent updating of the blog.

However, receiving a positive comment, on what the blog author writer writes, is a matter of joy that pushes him to maximize efforts. Achieving this goal is one of the challenges that the blogger face every day.

As for me today's challenges are fake Barriers emanating from lack of knowledge of the simplest rules of the process of online publishing. It is not difficult to have a blog, the essential is to be patient enough to continue blogging. It is easy to start, how to continue that is the question. For me blogging in English, among those brilliant, women, on World Pulse is the real challenge.

Blogging in Saudi Arabia, where I live is much easier than in Sudan. Here it is economic,no failure of current, except, for occasional blockage of a number of websites or links.