This is walto.com

Tag: writing

  • a blogger as a writer (via Newfound Technocalities)

    There is a certain blog I’ve been following now for well over a year. It is serendipitous, hosted on Google’s blog service Blogger. I found it by accident one night while reading a friend’s Blogger blog, by clicking on that little link at the top of the page that reads Next Blog; serendipitous was The Next Blog, and I loved it instantly.

    Honestly, I am somewhat jealous of the blog’s owner. She lives in central New Hampshire, an area that Edith and I have vacationed in frequently both before and after kids. She also understands the importance of simplicity, as exhibited in her photographs and the narratives that accompany them. I used to be one of a handful of followers of serendipitous until the blog was featured as a blog of the day several months ago; it now boasts well over 2,000 (that’s right, two THOUSAND) followers. I’m not sure how many of those folks are regular readers of this blog, but that is still an astonishing audience.

    So, I happened to be reading serendipitous this morning when I discover that the author is quite prolific, and maintains many other blogs. By following a few links, I came across this piece that she wrote, and I found I identified with the following section:

    Usually I post late in the evening, just before the end of my day. Throughout the day, I think about an idea, a notion, the content of the day’s post. I find myself composing phrases at odd times. If I come up with something I really like, I often make a note to myself. I even started a running list of ideas about which to post – old stories and memories, things that are on my mind, that sort of thing. When I finally do sit down to blog, I have my dictionary application open so I can check spelling and reference the thesaurus. I compose the day’s post, then I reread and revise. Mull over my choices of words. Vary my sentence structure. Make sure the paragraph flows. Try to be concise but clear. I work hard on the ending trying for a big finish. When I think I’ve got it right, I publish – and then shut down for the night. But in the morning with coffee, after I’ve caught up on the news, after I’ve checked email and the weather, I read the post again. If it needs tweaking, I do it then. I find it helps in the revision process to have that little bit of distance from the original writing session. … Read More

    via Newfound Technocalities

    I should not be surprised at all that other blog authors have the same approach to writing posts, but she describes exactly my thought process when coming up with ideas to post.  I guess good writing habits are not unique.

  • Recurring Theme

    A recent comment has given me pause; apparently, there is some sort of recurring theme to this site, and aside from the obvious, i.e., ME, the comment made me stop and think.

    Yes, obviously first and foremost the site is about me, or at least what I’m currently thinking or what it going on in my life.  I write about my wife and kids, about being a Dad, living in NJ, but then there is this OTHER stuff:  the constant looking in the rear-view mirror to write about events from 20 to 30 or more years ago.  Some would believe that this site is not forward-looking enough, the it celebrates the past at the sake of the present.  I’ve heard that criticism before, and the recent comment makes me consider it again.

    Am I living in the past?  I don’t think so; again, there are plenty of posts about the current goings-on of my daily life.  No, I think what’s happening here is I write about the past as my way of preserving it; the people and places of those posts are mostly gone from my day-to-day, and I miss them, terribly.  Not the events, but the people.  I’ve been living now for close to 20 years in the metro-NYC area, over an hour from the friends with whom I shared so many memories, those people who, along with my own family, form the nucleus of the person I am, and I don’t want to let go of them.  I write to remember those people, and to maybe try to explain their importance to me in my life.  I’m not trying to recapture, repeat or re-live the past, but rather to remember it for what it was, and maybe find new meaning in it now.

    For example, I am an erstwhile artist; I used to draw and sketch but I lost my muse many years ago.  However, I’d been writing in my spiral bound notebook journals for the most part since 1976, except for a couple of years taken off in the mid-80’s, another few years in the early 90’s, and then essentially 10 years off until I started writing this site in 2004.  My journals were much more personal and intimate, as I was truly only writing for myself with no real intention that I would ever share that content with anyone.  I did not care too much about sentence structure, or elements of style, but I’ve been very much aware that my blog content is different, and I write with a different perspective.  I’ve been writing for a long time now, and my writing has matured.  I care about writing for an audience (even if no one ever actually registers to read what I write anyway) that cares about good writing, and I’ve focused my creative energies on becoming a better writer rather than on drawing.  Sure, from time to time I am tempted to pick up a sketch pad and my old pencils and draw again, but it just never happens., not out of lack of interest but more out of lack of time and inspiration.  I do feel that one day, I will get the chance to sit with my kids and draw something, again, and perhaps inspire something in them to take forward and find their own muses, but will that then mean that I would be living in the past, doing something that I used to do 30 years ago?  There is no doubt that I have lived and learned, grown and matured, since those days; should I deny my self, my talents, my interests, from my children and my friends, old and new, out of some perceived notion that I have not grown or moved on?  Of course not!

    Does that make sense?

  • Writing

    writingWhat do I know about writing?  Not a damn thing, but I do it anyway.  I used to write more freely than I do know, but I’m a better writer now, technically, than before.  I used to have an audience of one:  me.  I wrote for my own sake, when I was my only reader, in a manner which was much less cautious and much more open about thoughts, feelings.  I wrote in spiral notebooks, in ink, or sometimes in pencil; I wrote in cursive, and other times in printed letters.  From 1976 through the early 1990s, I wrote sometimes daily, sometimes much less frequently.  Journal writing kept me very much in touch with what was going on in my life.  Today, however, as I write in this blog, I am very aware that I am no longer my only audience, and I find myself hesitating to write openly and freely as I once did.  I sometimes struggle with composition of sentences, with word choice, with context, and my writing is more labored than it used to be.  I often feel that the writings here are forced, and uninspired, or fail to do justice to the feelings I am trying to convey.  I sometimes think that my writing is just shit. 

    Someone, a reader of some of the pieces I’ve written here,  told me that my writing, in comparison to some other pieces written on other blogs, is “captivating” and “100 times better” than reading what feels like “really good homework from some high school kid.”

    That’s fine, I guess, but I still don’t know.  OK, so maybe my writing is better than some other stuff that’s out there, but it’s still not as good as I would like it to be – it’s still missing its voice.  I need to find it again.