Writing

I love writing. More accurately, I love the idea of it.

I love the idea of finishing a completed piece, and sharing it with the world to critical acclaim and admiration. I love the idea of seeing my name at the foot of a column in a popular tome, or seeing it in bright colours on the shelves of a book store.

But in reality, I’m not very good at writing. I have ideas aplenty. I have a decent understanding of the Queen’s English. I even know a thing or two about the things I try to write about; but I lack direction, the ability to draw the reader in. The things I write, after a while, bore myself.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

As such, I’m always writing, but I’m never finished. My drafts folder is full of unfinished case studies, articles with no direction, tutorials with no insight, and twelve chapters from two separate novel attempts. Even this article, the one you are reading now, sat in my folder for three months containing just the first line, until I finally thought of a second one.

Two months ago I redesigned this website, and in doing so, reformatted and re-read a lot of the content. I was reminded of my youthful naivety, my pretentious sense of entitlement, and the forced nature of the articles I had written.

I vowed to do things differently. I promised myself I would write meanigful articles, and give useful advice, rather than force my thinking down people’s throats.

I devoted myself to making my blog as readable as possible. I toiled for hours over choosing the correct typeface. I designed graphical elements, and other inventive ways to display content. I thought it would give me focus; make me a more interesting person; make me write things that people wanted to read. I haven’t published a damn thing.

So this is me, publishing something. Hopefully the next one is more interesting.