Where did you write your first article?

Your first published article is likely a memorable one. We asked our community about the first article they remember writing and where they published it. Here are their answers:

Lauren Pritchett practiced with blogs before writing professionally:

Do my childhood newsletter articles count? Haha.

Since the early 2000s, I've tried to maintain some sort of personal blog to practice writing for the public eye. But one of the first articles I wrote in a professional setting was published in an issue of the San Diego Attorney Journal. The article was called "How to Create a Great Landing Page for a Law Firm Website." 

Ben Cotton also started with a blog before writing elsewhere:

If you don't count my blog, the first article I wrote was probably for the USENIX LISA Conference (RIP) blog. I befriended Matt Simmons by way of mutual comments on our personal blogs, so when he was asked to build a blog team for the conference, he invited me to join. It was a great experience for me. I got to interview and sit in sessions from some of the top system administration practitioners, so I absorbed a lot of knowledge quickly.

Seth Kenlon wrote his first article for Linux Journal:

I've been self-publishing within the film trade and IT since 2006. I think I gave a technical talk in 2007 at a local Bar Camp (an unstructured tech "unconference"). My first paid article was Video codecs and the free world for Linux Journal (Vol. 2008, No. 166).

Jim Hall also wrote his first article with Linux Journal:

I used to maintain two blogs: one about IT leadership, and another about open source software. But my first "real" article was It's about the User: Applying Usability in Open-Source Software for Linux Journal in 2014. I'd just completed my Master's degree, and I wrote a version of my Master's capstone paper as an article. It was way too academic for a technology magazine like Linux Journal, but they ran it.

After that, I started writing a lot more articles. And with every article, I got better at writing. I stuck to the topics I knew well and that interested me. My hobbies were Linux, programming, and open source software - so that's what I wrote about. Eventually, I branched out to other places like FOSS Force, Opensource.com, Fedora Magazine, and Linux Magazine for Linux and open source topics, and Gov CIO Outlook, CIO Review, Enterprisers Project, and National CIO Review for IT Leadership topics.

Robin Bland shared her first article with us - thanks!

My first article was right here on Technically We Write. I write about the tools that I use most of the time at work.