I Don't Like the Way I Write

Reason Not to Blog: I Have a Crappy Writing Style

I don’t really like pictures of me. I know that unless they are taken from very specific angles that one of my eyes is higher than the other one. Shannon Daugherty can get away with it, but I am not Shannon Daugherty. And I am really not sure of the point of that sentence, because this is not a post about my profile picture being grainy on purpose. It is a post about being a naturally nervous person and getting things done in public.

I don’t like videos of me. I had two chances to be in commercials when I lived in Phoenix because I just happened to work in the corporate “show” store of an auto parts retailer. It freaked me out and I turned them down. No, I lie. I did not turn them down. I walked out of one while they were filming and went to lunch. I have maybe five videos currently on YouTube. I do plan on making more, but I really haven’t tackled this issue yet. But this is not a post about videos. This is a post about, “Yeah, internet people are real people and crap I wish I could think they were imaginary again.”

A blog was about the only way I was going to get this started but I am getting tired of my own writing. It seems the more I do it, the more I hate it. See that “the more” thing in the last sentence. I probably use that in every other post, along with “basically”, a first person voice and purposely running a sentence too long to simulate the effect of a person who thinks faster than he can talk. And watch, I will probably use repetition to drive a point home somewhere in this post. I can add to this list but then I would really stop writing because the reality is probably worse than I have imagined.

I even pulled up old articles from years ago and came to the conclusion I wrote better then. I had actually gone backwards in skill. And I still feel that way at times.

I have written since my teens. I bought every year’s Writer’s Market. Not really, I wrote that for effect though I did buy quite a few. I never had the nerve to send my writing anywhere until I finally sent a short short to a literary magazine in Canada a couple of years ago which promptly went out of business before it could publish my story. But this is not a post about my corollary to Murphy’s Law. It’s a post about stage fright.

I have even had compliments on the way I write. I loved them, but it didn’t change things much. I still saw the errors and when I read the posts outloud, they all sound a little bit less intelligent than I think I am. It’s the gap between ideas and words and you can never close it, only get better at coaxing them closer to each other.

So this reason, I am not really sure of the solution. Maybe, just do it. Your writing will get better if you write often enough, care enough about it to edit and learn from your mistakes. Forget your readers and write, but then remember your readers and edit. But this is not a reason to stop blogging. It’s a reason to blog and get better at it as you go.