A Couple of Days off
From Writing
I am at 27000
plus hits on my blog and have over 500 pages I have wrote that if they were
full size would be about equivalent to the novel ‘War and Peace’ of which I started
years ago and found way to dry a reading after a while, and have since refused
to pick it up again, this is just my opinion. If you have read it then kudos to
you as you are one in a million who have attempted and succeeded and probably couldn’t
tell me what it was about today. Most people read to enjoy what the writer has
written and in my opinion again, if I am not able to catch your interest in the
first paragraph then the chances of you completing everything I write are slim.
Not that everything
I write is worth finishing or appealing to the masses. And sometimes it may
only appeal to me as a writer trying to be understood. I try to write on
subjects I feel you as a reader would be interested in, although you may not
have experience in those areas, surely I hope you may glean just one thing from
it. Writing every day in my blog is an exercise to me as I try and streamline
stories I have to tell in a format that inspires other stories from me or will
illicit similar stories or parallels from you the reader can relate to, of
similar situations that have occurred in your life.
Life moves on was
selected as the name of my blog after careful consideration and some web
searching that encouraged me to utilize the well-known phrase as the broad
forever forgiving banner I post my stories under. Just like the banner,
everyday my life does go on, having celebrated my fifty ninth birthday
yesterday and I took some time over the past couple of days after finishing a
series of blogs on my personal happenings around the issue of abortion that occurred
in my life. Regrets, I have plenty but regrets in life are like words used in
anger, often misunderstood, full of passion yet worthless when you still have
to live your life. To the contrary they are full of lessons to be learned by someone,
though not me, and only as long as I can relate my experiences to someone else
as I am too old to worry about the issue anymore. I have slipped over the
threshold where it is of no concern to me or the kids I never had. At this
point I am just relating what happened to me, to maybe help someone else
someday. Or better help those who know me personally to understand my flaws,
and understand flaws in themselves, and that no one is perfect, no matter how
high you hold them in esteem.
I think it is
part of a writer’s duty to express those flaws in terms the reader understands
and can relate to. If everyone had a perfect life than how boring books would
be. I can imagine the smell of hazelnut in a cup of coffee, but till you drink
of the bittersweet taste do you realize a fondness, or a rejection of the
taste. I have never been fond of it while others doctor their coffee with
hazelnut and sugar so much that one can hardly taste the coffee. This analogy
refers to the senses I invoked while describing the coffee as either being with,
or without hazelnut, and I am sure most if not all people have tried hazelnut
at one point or another. Some people love it because it is cool and will have
it no other way. Some truly love the taste; I truly despise the taste as well a
majority of Americans can also do without it as opposed to those who have to
have it in one form or another. This is a weak example of reality and relating
to the reader. If the character you are describing drinks hazelnut extract in
his coffee, then one might find that person to be a little trendy and not typical
as compared to your normal coffee drinker. It might be in character to describe
him or her that way based on what your character is like, and actually enhance
the reader’s view of that person or totally disregard them on that basis. Experience
of the author has a direct impact on your writing. You need to live the stories
you tell to some degree.
I need to be
descriptive and offer insight into the personal side of life. Have I lived my
life enough to be a writer? That is a question a lot of writers have to face at
one time or another. You either read and copy, or live and tell in order to
write successfully. You have to research if you really don’t know anything
about what you are writing about. Gut feelings are nice but are hogwash in a learned
person’s hands. I wonder in amazement at young people who have never lived much
of a life, are becoming writers when they hardly know what they are talking
about. How can you speak freely of the sacrifice of a farmer when you have
lived in a city all your life?
To me, I think writing
is a learned process I am finding as I go along. I write from my heart and mind
relating experiences, and inventing as I go along in a hopefully cohesive
planned manner to ultimately come to a conclusion. Tough job even for a professional,
let alone an amateur like me. I have written enough now that I find myself
missing it as if the world needs to know what all is going on inside my head. To
me that is a scary thought, but most of the time what is going on with me is
also what is going on with you. It is just that I have the time and opportunity
to talk about. A friend of mine whose opinion I cherish greatly once told me
that writing is cheaper than therapy, and I really believe that is so and
suggest that anyone who thinks they have a story to tell, should try and tell it as it is good for the
soul to unload now and then. You never know who is listening and how it may affect
their life if the story hits home.
I am just reflecting over my past year of writing,
of which I am now finding time to finally go back and critique myself as I view
my old blogs and try to understand where my mind was at the time. It is
interesting to see how my writing style has changed to some degree as well, I think
my overall structure and a continuing need to be brief and summarize to avoid
not being read is important in blog writing to be interesting enough to hold
the readers attention. I mean if all I do is fill a blank space then what am I accomplishing.
I judge how well or how poorly I am doing, by the reader counts. Some days I have
5 readers and other days I have 60. I look more at an average as I write on a variety
of subjects, and understand people don’t check my blogs daily. This is alright,
and they may not read every one, but for the most part I have a following of about
30 readers per day. If I drop too far below that then I know I must be doing
something wrong and need to change. Still sometimes I will continue just so
others can see that I completed the story line I was working on.
In summary,
through this all I am learning how to write well I hope and look forward to
writing again this next year. Maybe somewhere along the way I will go back and
edit my book and publish it as I should, good or bad. I would also like to
start a new one and would like to share it with the reader’s on here first. I found
when writing ‘Trip to Sequoia’ I was glued to the stats to see exactly what
parts inspired people most when reading it for the first time. Some things I
thought were great were actually nothing when it came to those who were actually
viewing it for the first time. Maybe it was my delivery of what I was trying to
achieve. I don’t know, but having that response instantly was worth noting and
worth trying to understand. I have been away from the book for a while and I’m
ready to read it again with fresh eyes, like it was my first time and make more
editing changes. I had people interested in buying it before and never acted on
it because I had done it in such a hurry that I knew it was not the best I could
do. Now I have that chance to go back and polish it and hopefully get it to a
saleable place.
In the meanwhile I
am going to keep on keeping on. Continue with the blog, and hopefully hit a
40000 hits goal this year, as well continue to learn more about myself as a
writer and an artist, and a carpenter of old world values of which I will
describe more in detail later. I also hope to encourage you the reader to
follow and respond if moved to do so, and let me know what is right and wrong
about what I am doing. Also we all must keep in mind that if we succeed or fail,
that it is not so much of an overall
quest we should achieve, but that we must remember that regardless of our action,
that all life still moves on, and it will, whether we want it to or not.
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