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I’d rather write than talk. Nobody interrupts! Posting monthly or less now--see below. |
My original purpose for this blog, which I started in August of 2019, was to see if I could maintain consistency, to discover what I want to write about, and to find my writing voice. In January, I started a "niche-less" blog at Wordpress.com where I've published weekly. -- Kit’s Kontemplations  . -- I'm preparing to start a Catholic blog on Wordpress.com where I'll post weekly, and another site to put the rest of my writing. I also want to spend more time reading other blogs and offering thoughtful comments, both here on WDC and elsewhere. At most, I will publish once a month at no set time in this blog starting in September of 2020. Thank you to those who have read and rated any posts on this blog. I really appreciate it. I did NOT want to write “about” me on this blog. I wanted to share my interests, discoveries and maybe a few useful insights. If anything I've written helps even one person, whether or not they respond to the post, then this blog has been successful. |
| Have you ever started out with a question on Google looking for information on how to gain or improve on a skill? In a response to a question on the Newbie Linux Mint forum, one member started his response with this phrase that’s stayed with me for days: “Ask ten people something and you’ll get twelve opinions.” What I’ve discovered is that these opinions (not in the Linux world) are often both dogmatically stated and contradictory. Since I started blogging five months ago, I’ve researched a few things and have come across this phenomenon. Both sides had very good reasons for their argument. To be honest, I was sometimes strongly inclined to one view over the other but that’s not really what I’m getting at here. My question is how do you decide which advice to take when you’re in this situation? What is difficult is that you’re delving into an area you know little about so it’s hard to practice discernment and critical thinking. The article authors on one side give very specific directions that you *must* follow in order to get the result you want. The authors on the other side give excellent reasons why you *don’t* need to follow the directions in order to succeed. Here are a few examples of topics or questions where I’ve read as many articles as I could find online and found contradictory advice. Morning Pages Do you have to write them first thing in the morning, *every* morning? Do you have to write 3 pages longhand? Blogging Does your blog need to have a niche? Do you have to allow comments? Writing daily Will doing this improve my writing skill, if I only end up writing garbage because I’m just writing for the sake of achieving a target word count? The morning pages was the first one I dealt with when I first started getting back to writing this past summer (2019) after more than a decade away from it. I felt drawn to write but had no idea what to write about and felt like my creativity was more like a swamp than a river. I remembered reading about Morning Pages so I googled it. After reading all the articles, I decided to go for longhand using unruled pads that were slightly smaller than standard and writing large. I did it for a month or two each day then gave it up again. I sort of learned a very useful and valuable lesson. Consider the rules — Forget them — Do what works! I say that I “sort of” learned this because I seemed to need to re-learn it with the niche issue and with the blog comments issue. Just yesterday and today, I find myself re-learning it again with the question of writing daily. I have some mixed feelings about the advice in various articles about writing daily. In one way, it’s kind of like morning pages in that you are forcing yourself to write a certain amount with no concern for content or quality. It seems like a huge waste of time and energy. Maybe I lack faith but I honestly don’t see how this exercise would either improve my writing or increase my creativity. I get the usefulness of brain dumps but I don’t feel the need to do those more than once every couple of months. They usually turn out to be lists of what I should and would like to do. Nothing deep there. If I’ve got something to work out and feel a need to write, I use my journal but this writing has a purpose and a focus. It’s not a disjointed scribbling of random useless words. I could definitely use the discipline to write more regularly and I need to figure out how to make it useful. I don’t know if I want to devote time for random writing for no identified purpose. I am not aspiring to be a professional writer. I like doing it and would like to share it with others who might find value in it without getting into the whole marketing thing. Not all the time I schedule for writing would be with pen to paper or hands on the keyboard. What about research, mind-mapping or outlining, editing and revising your drafts? Even learning about writing through reading or courses should count. What contradictory advice have you gotten about something you knew little about? How did you decide what to do? Did you feel reluctant to disregard the “rules” to succeed? If so, how did you deal with that? |
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Yes, I know some people do that but I'm a creative writer not a journalist. Poetry sells ... but it's a money-maker for only a few. I write A LOT. Almost 180 pieces since Spring equinox. My goal is 300-400 per year. One year I went over 1,000. I need to do more editing, polishing, sharing, submitting. Writer's block? Who has time for that? I don't.