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A good story, Artists, Blogging, Dealing with writer's block, Goodreads, honing your craft, Inspiration, Ira Glass, Quotes, Writer, Writing, Writing better
…but I sometimes find myself unable to churn out one.
I make a mean juicy chicken breast, though.
In conversation, friends find me engaging and, not infrequently, find themselves in stitches. “You tell a good story,” they’ll say.
In high school, English language teachers always scored my language composition exam high, and pinned up my stories on the classroom notice boards so other students would borrow a leaf, figuratively speaking of course. The teachers felt my compositions were a good guide on how to write a good story, and hence pass your exam. I felt really good about that, no doubt.
When I first started blogging, I got some compliments, mostly about my very first posts. “I hope to start seeing some articles from you in one of these newspapers,” said a long time Facebook acquaintance. “You write well.”
And I hoped so, too. That had been the plan to start with: to start writing for one of the dailies. That someone I hadn’t shared it with should think as I did felt like validation.
This would do well on the back of a paperback, right? Uum, if I said I write best by the bedside.
Before my very first blog post I had had an inactive blog for some very long time, then I read some published articles that made me feel, ‘really, even I can do better. A lot better.’ Newspaper articles in the lifestyle section, especially, read under cooked. And that was the final jolt. I would stop playing around, I told myself. I know I can write. I would write. With some practice, I’d get better and better.
So I started blogging. At first with focus, regularity and discipline, then later with not as much focus, and more for leisure and with less purpose. That must have been how I lost it, or started to lose it, whatever creative art I may have had. What I wrote did not sound as good as I wanted. I used to be able to produce a good fictional story out of thin air, under the pressure and time span of an exam room. If high-school me could do that, and impress her examiners, surely now-me should be able do to much much better.
Maybe I got performance anxiety. I mean there are some really good writers here at WordPress. Reading them might make an under-developed writer feel her inadequacies.
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