Writing about writing

Boy, a couple of last week's posts put me in a funk. Or they would have, if I had been in the head space to be really funked out and work through it. Instead, I concentrated on being busy, which I was, with three days at the Food Bank and one at the Pacific Center, and so did not, if I wasn't really unable (and I submit I was unable), take the time to think about stuff. So it was the kind of funk that feels like crossing the catwalk above the gurgling pool of icky stuff. You know the ick is there, but you're not in it.


A friend of mine was expressing concern about a blogger both of us read. She was saying that she worries that people have an idea of what the blogger is like in real life, and that their idea of the blogger could cause problems for the blogger when she gets recognized by strangers. I don't have that concern; I'm fairly certain that this blog doesn't have many (any?) readers who don't know me in real life. However, that is a problem too. After I posted the CSH and forgiveness posts, I thought maybe I don't want my real-life friends to know this or that about me. Should I reconsider what I write about? Which is why one day I wrote close to the heart and another day a little further away.


I've noticed a few things about how I write since starting this blog. One is that I love to use dashes instead of commas and I find myself writing parenthetical statements all over the place. I change most of the dashes to commas in the first edit, just on GP. The parentheses are good for my story-telling, because I've come to realize that if a sentence is not strong enough to stand on its own, it's not important enough to tell. As a former English major, I avoid the dangling participle and use the even-very-formal-to-my-ears constructions of "with which" and "for whom" rather than end a sentence with "with" or "for." I did it once, and you'll get a gold star if you find it (the previous sentence excepted).


I've noticed that my other writing has been reduced. My "regular" journal writing is more spaced out, though the entries are longer, and I've even cut back on my letter-length emails to friends. Keeping this blog seems to take the words out of me. Certainly time is an issue; I don't know how I had time for Life when I was commuting/working from 8am to 6pm, even though I know I could stop spending so much time keeping up with other people's blogs.


Some posts practically write themselves and some days I write light because I can't think of anything with meat to it. The ones that "write themselves" need my editor to go through and take out the dashes, parentheses, and incomplete or run-on sentences, and that takes time. I have been conscientious about writing every day... I thought about writing, for example, tomorrow's post today, because of my schedule tomorrow, knowing that no one would know the difference. I realized that to do that would run counter to the point of the resolution and therefore this blog.

See you tomorrow.