The Purpose of this Blog
Writing is a strange craft. In some ways, it can be the most expressive. Very little can match an in-depth description of psychology, a detailed breakdown of the thought process and emotions felt from start to finish. On the other hand, it’s also limited. Describe too much and you lose your reader. Use big and fancy words at your risk, possibly alienating people without as copious a lexicon your brobdingnagian intellect accomodates. You’ll never be able to completely and accurately describe your vision, unless you have considerable skill.
Writing, however, is similar to art in how you can easily spot the most glaring mistakes. Paint someone’s leg on backwards? Whoops. Completely forget all form of sentence structure? Whoops. Put someone’s nose where their eye should be? Whoops. Throw down a gigantic infodump without pacing? Whoops. As you get more and more skilled, however, it’s somewhat difficult to improve unless you develop. Great artists can see a little tiny smudge that ruins the flow, how an area is too layered, how a color fades out when it should get stronger. Great writers can see an awkward word of choice, a pace that jumps back and forth, forced character development. The steps from becoming a good writer to an excellent writer are incredibly difficult to see, though the results of each step are obvious.
That’s why I made this blog. Is this some sort of advertisment, declaring my “skillz” and showing off how awesome I am? Not in the least.
I’m not a good writer. I’m a decent writer, but I can hardly compare with the greats. What this blog is, is practice. Just like an artist scribbles for the fun of it, I jot down any world in my mind. Commentary on modern events aren’t rare, but I’m not aiming for those. What I’m aiming for is WRITING. Fantasy, sci-fi, fiction, non-fiction, surreal, allegorical, alternative, journalism, poems, descriptions, biographies, alternate history, anything. I’ve no doubt that what I put on here is shit. In fact, I expect it. I’ll look back several years after this, glance at this blog, shake my head and wonder “Wow, how could I have even considered that good enough to put on the internet?”.
This is simply practice. I’m hoping for an update once a week. Not all of the works I’ve written will be post up here, but it’s posting nonetheless. Will I get any fans? I highly doubt it. Most of the people probably reading this will likely just be friends and family and friends of family. Will I get people pointing and crying about how awful this is? I wouldn’t be surprised.
But, regardless, this is a place for me to sit down, practice, and publish my practice. I’ve noticed that there’s a gigantic difference in emotion between works that just sit on the harddrive and works actually displayed for all to see. With the latter I feel I’ve accomplished something, even if it’s simply what not to do, and I feel driven to my next project. The former, I feel nothing.
And nothing is worse than nothing itself.
