Here's A Good One
'The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.' -
Spring 1958 Paris Review
I think there's a writer in each of us who blog. Anyone who's intrigued enough to set up a blog and post that very first entry would have had that imagination, and that tiniest bit of aspiration... 'Here goes nothing.'
You type what you will. It's go from that very first click of the 'enter' key. After that, there's no looking back. Whither or not you continue blogging, that's another matter altogether. I know of friends who profess to want to write one day but have not the discipline--yes as much as the inappropriacy of this word here, its necessary here-- to go beyond the first week.
But for those who continue, for those who go through the various stages of a blogger's life, you've had it before. You've felt the excitement of seeing your own creation bounce to life on the word's biggest free publication ever, you've gone through those stages of learning up basic html and maybe css to customise your presentation space, and then you've surfed the net for inspiration, read dozens of other blogs and found friends along the way. You've join communities, perhaps, sometimes, attended blog-dos. And you've had comments trolls leaving footprints in your little 'home', some stalkers perhaps, you've even ticked off some other people, sometimes. You hang out all your dirty linen to dry in public, and usually you get 'sympathy', yet you know shit's going to be remain shit all the same.
It's good shit, by the way, all these, these things that come with this practice. When I was in AIESEC a senior used to tell us that shit actually means 'Special High Intensity Training'. Okay, so this is going to sound so cheesy but, you know? Blogging is S.H.I.T., in that sense. Before you know it your language skills improve (it doesn't matter what medium your blog is in), and then you start to gain stylistic methods as well, and of course, you become more sensitive to the things around you.
Suddenly the Internet isn't so much about chatting or checking e-mail anymore.
