How do I join 100 Bloggers?
Sorry... this project has ended. :(

How can I help if I don't want to start a blog myself ?
Change your mind <g>. Seriously, if you're not interested in starting a blog yourself, at least spread the word. Let people know about this effort wherever, whenever, and however you can. Ask the people you most respect to start a blog, post to your favorite mailing list, put this URL into your email signature, or chat about it in whatever chatrooms you frequent.

How do I create a blog?
It's easy, I promise. For this project, I am recommending people use Blogger. Blogger is well-established, free, and offers free hosting for your blog as well. The process is pretty easy:

If you feel like you need some guidance, consider these resources:

• Blogspot Visual Tutorial: walks you through the process of setting up a blog and hosting it at blogspot.

• Blogger 101: Blogger's tutorial, covering all the basics with embedded links to more help.

• Blogger Tutorials: This is a VERY visual tutorial which you might find especially helpful.

• Blogger Screen Shots: a tutorial that covers the basics of Blogger with screen shots to help you figure out what's what.

• Blogger Tutorial with Your Own Webhosting: if you have your own webpage already, this tutorial will guide you through the process of setting up a blog that will be published to your existing website.

How do I add the 100 Bloggers button to my blog?
If you'd like to add the 100 Bloggers button to your blog or website to show your support or to spread the word, all you have to do is copy and paste the following HTML code someplace in your Blogger template:

<a href="http://lthredge.com/100"><img src="http://lthredge.com/100/images/button.jpg" width="200" height="44" alt="Learn more about 100 Bloggers."></a>

How do I get into the habit of blogging?
Blogging is an acquired habit, but once you get used to posting in your blog, you will come to do it regularly and with relish. To get started, here are some tips:

• For the first couple of weeks, blog every day no matter what. Even if you don't have anything earthshattering to say on a given day, at least post a few lines about what you did that day or what's going on in your life or even something about what's going on in the world. You need force yourself to blog at first, but only because it's so easy NOT to blog.

• Blog when you're used to being online. Set a time to blog every day, like when you usually check your email. Tying blogging into your regular online habits makes it easier to find the time to blog and to remember to do it.

• Tell people about your blog. Mention it to your friends or to people you chat with online. Knowing that you have an audience is a great way to prompt yourself to give them something to read.

• Post about your first experiences in leather/kink. Even if you don't have any yet, you can start by talking about your interests. Having a topic to start with is a good way to get you going, so begin by recording your history of leather and kink experience in as much or as little detail as you like, over as few or as many posts as you'd like.

• Read other blogs. I have a short list of leather-oriented blogs (http://lthredge.com/links/blog.shtml). Reading other people's blogs gives you a better sense of all the different kinds of things people blog about. Reading their posts can also give you something to blog about, either in responding to what they have to say or sharing your related experiences, or just pointing out to your readers that that other blog had a damned good post they should go read.

• Don't give up. Even if you don't blog for a week, come back to blogging.

How do I think up topics for posting?
Singletails has handily provided some (well, more than "some") suggestions:

• Are contests good or bad?
• Why have contests proliferated in recent years?
• What's up with those 'scene names' that pansexual players seem to have?
• If you're a gay male scenester, how do you feel about pansexual players?
• Should transgender folks be permitted into exclusively (born) male or exclusively (born) female space?
• If someone represents himself or herself as exclusively a Top, doesn't that indicate that either he or she is lying or doesn't know what he or she is talking about?
• And how about all those guys (I don't know of any women) who fetishize dressing up in leather but don't or won't do anything in the way of BDSM?
• Is everybody really kinky, but only a brave few decide to express that?
• Is breath control okay?
• Is the bar scene dead?
• How is being a "cyber-slave" different from being a real time slave? Are they even comparable?
• How about those folks into Nazi roleplay?
• Is S/M sex, or is it something different?
• Are monogamy and S/M compatible?
• Safe Sane Consensual or Risk Aware Consensual Kink?
• If you get aroused hearing or reading about non-consensual torture and abuse, is that okay?
• Just what is the appeal of bondage?
• Is straight-up bondage a total bottom scene?
• Do you have snuff fantasies? Either as snuffer or snuffee. What do you think that means? How does it work its way into your play?
• Are power imbalance relationships viable in the long term?
• Would a negotiated scene wherein the Top gets the bottom intoxicated in some way or another be alright?
• What about those two guys in Berlin who apparently did a consensual cannibalism scene?
• Has S/M changed for you since September 11th?
• Is the Duchess of Malfi the greatest piece of S/M theater of all time or what?
• What did you think of the movie Secretary?
• Are S/M and being a good Christian incompatible ideas?
• Is Christianity a way of doing S/M?
• What do you mean when you say, "I love you"?
• Is there a spiritual aspect to all this, or is it just brain chemistry? Or, does the fact that it's all just brain chemistry not preclude it being spiritual?
• Bestiality: any thoughts?
• Are you out about being kinky at work? With your family? With your friends? With anyone? Are you okay with that? How do you decide who gets to know?
• Did you like the movie Jackass: The Movie, or had you seen that all before at Delta or Inferno?
• It's pretty much an unassailable claim that Vin Diesel would make a great slave, but what is it about Vin that would make him such a great slave?
• Can someone be too young to engage in S/M? Can someone be too old to engage in S/M?
• Ever get bored with this whole thing?
• Use him like a toilet and move on, or does there have to be a connection there for you?
• How do you decide whom you are going to play with and whom you will not play with? Are there objective criteria? Is it okay to be shallow in this respect (i.e., "no facial hair, no second look")? Does the person have to turn you on? Is it all about 'energy?'
• Would you Top a member of the sex that you wouldn't do the vanilla thing with? Would you bottom to a member of the sex that you wouldn't do the vanilla thing with? How come?
• It's often said that the dungeon is no place to work out issues of child abuse, or low self-esteem, or pent up anger... Do you agree or disagree?
• If you were profoundly morally troubled by the U.S. military intervention in Iraq, how does that jibe with your penchant for a high-and-tight and wearing fatigues and jump boots?
• It's just a motorcycle. What's the big deal?
• What was it like the very first time you Topped? Did you tell the bottom that you had never done this before? Did you feel great afterwards? Or did you feel silly afterwards?
• What's this thing about Tops wanting to Top Tops?
• Why are so many bottoms not okay with being public about being bottoms?
• Why are there more Tops than bottoms? Are there more Tops than bottoms?
• Do former bottoms make the best Tops?
• Is there a kink movement? Should there be?
• Any unresolved issues with your parents find their way into your dungeon?
• Do you think that science will one day discover a genetic and biological basis for kink in the same way that seems to be the case for homosexuality?
• Is there a person whom you have never met (celebrity or whatever) that you would love love love to get into your dungeon? Why? Just what is it about that person that draws you to him or her?
• Is S/M popping up in pop culture a good thing or a bad thing?
• Renaissance Faires: What is up with that?
• Now, explain to me what rubber is all about.
• Is gift giving and bug chasing an S/M thing?
• Is S/M just a grown up version of games we played as children?
• "Date with Proctologist Ends Predictably": Best Onion headline ever?

How do I talk about people when they might be reading my blog?
Audience is always a tricky issue in blogging. If you make your blog public, you need to assume that anyone and everyone will read what you have to say, whether or not that ends up being the case. But that shouldn't stop you from saying what you want to say. One good, basic practice is to make up names for people (Singletails' infamous "Boss Sunshine" is a good example) or just use an initial (like my lover J.). In the end, WHO you're talking about is not as important as WHAT you have to say.