I'm not a very good writer

You'll remember that I talked a bit about this in my previous post.  It's been a few weeks, a few false starts and no new posts.  Some blog eh?  This is no way for a blog to function.  And building up a pile of unpublished, half baked stabs at greatness isn't strengthening my craft.

I think the issue is one of trying too hard.  We each have a natural flow of language, a natural vocabulary, etc.  This is our cleanest and truest form of communication.  But like our noses or our feet we're not always proud of what we naturally have to offer.  In my writing, I try to be someone else.  I push the wit, the long sentences and the big words.  It doesn't work; who am I kidding.  Thumbing back through pieces I wrote at an age when I should know better, I'm not always proud of what I read.

So I'm practicing, I'm sharing thoughts in my own language, on my own terms.  I'm trying to find a comfortable voice.  I have a lot to say, much of which I feel is well reasoned.  I just need to find a comfortable way to say it.

That is the nature of practice.  Perfectionists (I place myself in their ranks) hate practice because it necessitates trial and error.  It's the error part we don't like; we're risk adverse.  We, like Charlie Brown, prefer to shoot the arrow and draw the target around it.  Sure things, can't misses, safe bets.

So we play at the level of comfortable success or we hide our talents.  That's no way to live.

Be warned, you will read some very mediocre material on this blog.  It can be better.  Someday I hope it will be better.  But for now please accept my works in progress because I am one myself.

JSW