I’m still alive

In that excellent 1980s film Throw Momma from the Train, the two main characters (one, a creative writing instructor; the other, his student) keep chanting the mantra of the instructor’s class: “a writer writes… always.”

Stephen King in On Writing gives the same advice, as does Cerebus creator Dave Sim, who says something like (I’m paraphrasing here) every comic book artist has 1000 bad pages to get out. If you do a page a day, after a few years, your pages will start being good.

The nice thing about being a creative writer or a comic book artist is that you don’t have to (or get to, depending on how you look at it) publish everything you create. So if you do have 1000 bad pages, you can tuck those away in your closet or throw them in the trash can (Stephen King’s hit novel Carrie was going to go into the trash bin before his wife rescued it, seeing the potential).

Blog posts aren’t quite the same way. Sure, you can have hidden blog posts or passworded ones, but the idea behind a blog is that it’s your thoughts. Blog posts aren’t supposed to be masterpieces you rehearse for and then finally publish for the public. They’re supposed to at least have the appearance of spontaneity.

Well, for you few readers I have, I just wanted to reassure you I’m still alive. I’m actually quite relaxed (on vacation from work). I just don’t really have a lot to say right now. In fact, when I’ve thought I have had new things to say, I’ve gone back into my old blog posts (over 400 right now) and seen “Oh, I’ve already written about that.”

I’m not promising everything I write from this point forward will be insightful. I don’t think I’ll be blogging for blogging’s sake, though. If I have something to say, I’ll say it. Thanks for reading!

3 comments

  1. I’ve not been here a while, almost forgot the URL, but luckily your comment on Dominic’s blog helped me rediscover your blog.

    Coming to the topic, in my own blog I follow the principle that what I write must be of sufficient quality to be generally readable and reasonably informative or entertaining (or possibly both). If that criteria is not satisfied, I don’t write.

    I don’t often feel like expressing my mere opinion on any topic unless I have something of informational value to add to that topic or my opinion is unique, different or even entertaining.

    In short, I try to avoid “cookie-cutter” opinion pieces which really don’t add value to the subject.

  2. Glad to see you’re still around! I very much enjoy your blog posts, even if they are a little erratic.

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