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When I emerged from my self-imposed exile several weeks ago, I made some noises about writing more. By which I meant "real" writing. Blogging for five years has been a blessing and a curse for me as a writer. On one hand it really gave me the chance to write something five days a week, and as a result sometimes I actually did write something more than the snarky little blurbs that we've all come to recognize as the archetypal blog post. On the other hand, I got really good at snarky little blurbs; much better that I was at writing substantively. I also developed a lot of writing "tics" that absolutely do not fly if you want to consider yourself a "real" writer.
I have not been entirely able to get away from snarks and tics. Even though I have not been writing in this space five times a week for the last four or five months, I have still been writing in my cooking blog, and a lot of those bad habits have carried over. That's the problem with "style", if I dare use such a term to refer to the way bloggers write; it overwhelms the actual writing. Ultimately, this is why so many blogs are indistinguishable from one another. Everyone is writing to the same style, and it's not an especially flattering one. Some people truly excel at the snarky, the arch, the inwardly referential, and the rest of us, all umpteen million of us, suck.
But, however over-mannered my blogging style has become, I do not believe that I suck as a writer. I simply allowed myself to develop poor practices because they worked for the given format. Don't kid yourself -- professional writers do this, too. They become expert at the baroque stylings of their own particular bread-winning format and lose touch with anything else. The difference is that someone pays them to be a hack and you and I are just in it for fun.
So I'm going to try something different for the entire month of February. Instead of the usual tripe, I am going to engage in writing some different tripe. No linky posts, no newsy posts, no gizmo posts. Just me working on writing again. I presume you'll all go find something else to do for the month as a result. I understand the Winter Olympics will be on TV morning, noon, and night so you'll have that to keep you occupied, but if you get bored with the unending stream of "Up Close And Personal" featurettes about struggling young Americans overcoming adversity to kick international butt in the dogsled event, you can always stop by here. Luckily for all, February is a short month.
Between now and next Wednesday, I'll do my level best to load up on the standard formula posts.
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