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Writing about writing

As I was writing yesterday's entry, it dawned on me that I'm really writing this blog in more of a journal-type style, as opposed to writing-for-an-audience style. By "journal-type style" I mean I'm just logging on every day and writing about whatever's at the top of my mind that day without much thought to how interesting, engaging or clever the writing is. The whole point of my starting this blog was to really get my butt in the chair and start practicing the craft of writing. I love to write, but it's been a really long time since I last sat down to actually craft a piece of writing; to write something with the purpose of it being intriguing, poetic, funny, insightful and/or generally enjoyable to read. And yet as I've been making these blog entries, I haven't taken any time to think about how I'm going to write what I'm about to write about; what kind of witty observations I might make, or clever comparisons or poignant life lessons I might discover and communicate. I'm just going about it like a rote task like brushing my teeth; I've made this commitment to do it every day, so as long as I get something posted - regardless of the quality or content - I'm good to go. But I really would like to develop my actual skills in my writing. So rather than just looking to fulfill the commitment I made to myself to write here every single weekday - barring any interruptions due to extreme hospitalizable illness or other natural disaster - I probably should be taking more time to think about what I'm writing, and why. Currently, I'm pretty much writing a thoughtless blurb about what's occupying my frontal cortex at the moment, and I don't even know if the frontal cortex is actually a classified zone in the brain or what it's function is but that too just popped into my mind as I was writing this, so there....it gets stage time in this particular entry. I'm realizing I have a very noncommittal side to me; as I was writing that last paragraph and thinking about what to write next, what I realized is that I'm not completely willing to say "alright then, from now on I shall think about my entries before I write them, I shall come up with a purpose, a message for my entry, and spend time creating clever and witty comparisons before they get forever documented in cyberspace." No; instead, it's enough for today that I am just recognizing this in my writing endeavour. Perhaps one day I'll formalize that into a more concrete commitment to approach this as practicing a craft rather than completing a task. Until then, I'm just going to keep on blogging. Because I can. Period.

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©2023 by Kelly Wagner

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