Writing

I wrote in a diary at one time... briefly... I never have gotten into the habit of journaling, although writers should. I guess I never looked at it in the right way, until I figured it out in terms of blogging, more or less.

I enjoy writing. I enjoy words, and the process of putting words on a page. I can't say I enjoy the rewriting and correction process. Not that I don't believe in editing, but when you get through editing, you still have to work on that next draft. Until I got a computer, I rarely went to that step. Oh, maybe with a poem...something not too long, but as a language arts teacher, I am rather embarrassed in retrospect at the number of first drafts I turned in. Now, I will say that they were not necessarily horrible pieces of writing, or at least not any more horrible than any of my classmates, but they were definitely NOT finely crafted. Ahhh, my friend the computer. With a computer, I can edit, cut and paste, correct spellings, and adjust margins, not to mention change page breaks and pick and choose fonts and font sizes. I mean! It is wonderful and fun, isn't it.

Now, writing every day in a blog, I can write to an audience - or at least feel that I do - I can and do revise (not that I'm perfect) and I LOVE spell check. I'm not just writing my thoughts to myself, when I already had them. I am talking to my friends, and trying to say something entertaining, or at least meaningful to some degree. I have to collect my thoughts, and put them into some kind of order. I have to try to make sense, and follow a storyline, or a train of logic, or something. Its fun! (OK, you know for sure I'm a geek, now - I'm outa the closet on that one a long time ago) Now that I am writing every day, or close to it, I'm going to have to start doing the writer's job of collecting ideas, observations, what-have-you to use. Collecting them in some other than an in-my-head-hmmm-that's-interesting kind of way. Well, I mean, I knew that, but now, I KNOW it... Come on Fran, help me out here. I know this is you in some way too.

And speaking of Fran, thanks for being an inspiration for me with the writing stuff.