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| Hearsay: |
Can blogging every day help your writing? The answer is: not. Not help. Not help for writing you do.
As a mere stripling, I was advised that if I hoped to become a good writer, I should write every day. More than that, I should read good writing every day. This can be accomplished on the internet as easily as it can by reading a book or magazine. But if you’re the sort who prefers People to The New Yorker, well, again, what’s the point?
So my riposte to Topsy was, while the internet may be a nifty vehicle for delivering one’s polished prose and penetrating insights to an impatiently waiting world, it can’t help you become a better writer if you, pardon my French, suck.
Also, blogging makes brain messy. Brain is where me keeps that grey stuff and my hat.
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April 27th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Can throwing stones at neighborhood cats make you a better baseball pitcher? Can whittling shavings from a stick make you a better carver? The process of simply dumping consecutive words onto paper or screen does not make one a writer. It’s missing the whole awareness/feedback cognitive cycle.
What makes daily writing a growth experience for an aspiring writer is the engagement in that self-critical, mental process – not the physical text scribing act itself.
For anyone who is trying to become a better writer, and, moreover, is also willing to pay attention to their words and reflect upon their effectiveness, any act of language composition is a self-improvement exercise. Without that closure, it’s just the textual equivalent of urinating in public.
April 27th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I mean, everyone has to write first drafts, yeah? I think of the blog as a huge first draft. And yes, it’s about finding time every day to think about words.
There are tons of poorly-written blogs, but any more than there are poosily written stories turned into workshops all across the country? And don’t you have to start somewhere? (And isn’t it silly to ask a bunch of bloggers to weigh in on this?)