Dear Reader,

Blue Sink has been a little seed in my mind for a while now.

In Feature Writing class at Eckerd College, I learned that there are all kinds of things a freelance writer can do to break into a market. They can subscribe to or otherwise get their hands on all of the publications in which they would like to be published, study those publications, then gear their submissions to suit.

They can become an expert on something, do gobs of research on that subject or even get a degree in it, cover an event related to the topic, then work each individual story into multiple pieces for multiple publications in order to leverage the time they spent getting credentials.

Or, they can be jacks and jills of all trades, finding story ideas everywhere, querying every publication that pays for submissions, ever-broadening their network of editorial relationships.

There are even side tricks, like selling local leads to national news services or sending out question-and-answer emails to celebrity publicists.

That all made wonderful sense to me, but there is yet another way. We can go ahead and publish our own stories.

Anyone can think of a niche, buy a domain name and some hosting, and get started. It’s democratic, but it also puts more of a burden on the reader to determine value. Why should you read this? What do we know? Couldn’t anyone do what we’re doing?

With Blue Sink, the goal is to establish a hub of people who want to write and read about West Pasco County. Nobody from Clearwater or Tampa is going to come here and do it for us like we can do it. It’s up to us to tell our stories. Traditionally, news and hobby publications in the Tampa Bay are trying to serve a much larger community that also includes West Pasco. But our area is coming into its own.

The more often we can better connect people in our own neighborhoods to each other, the less often they have to drive somewhere else to find people with their interests. The more efficiently we can make business connections in this area, the more often we are putting money back into our community. That may sound lofty, but wouldn’t it be easier if you could browse a magazine or online resource and know that almost everything you click will pertain to you? Or to post a comment on a story about your town and know that people who see it are directly affected by that story, too?

So that’s my vision for the site. It’s going to take a while to get there. Only some of us are trained journalists, and all of us have day jobs. Actually, I’m really speaking for my self. The women helping me know their stuff. I’m the one who has some professional chops to hone. But we are definitely on to something.

We could use your help adding value to this site. Post comments. Send us story ideas. By all means, send us stories. Tell your friends.

Thanks for reading,

Kristi Leach
Contributor and Editor