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Showing posts from August, 2019

Voice

There is a popular internet meme I see passed along authors on Facebook. It is a cute little cartoon of a kind English teacher handing back a story to a young child with the caption: “This is really good. You should think about becoming a writer.” The punchline of the meme is underneath the cartoon, which goes thusly: “And therefore little Anne’s life was ruined.” Certainly, anyone who has wanted to make writing into a life’s passion sees the dark humor embedded within this simple meme. However, what does make writing so hard that we can make jokes about its destructive tendencies in a writer’s life? Perhaps it is the lack of monetary security. Even the most famous authors cannot rest on their laurels. Very few can afford to retire on their New York Times bestsellers. Nonetheless, many occupations require equal amounts of intensive labor with little monetary reward. Watching my parents operate a farm thought me this, that one should not fall into the hubris that writing is the hardes

(Con)text

Two years. For two years I have let this blog reside in ambiguous tension. Will I return? Will I start a new blog? How does time pass in the domain of the internet? Perhaps the last question is more for my own curiosity than germane to the particular wrong I have done to this offspring of my intellect. I reread the introduction and I find it somewhat charming how I attempt to sound witty and hip. What was the context of the creation of this blog? Why did I even make it if I would abandon it after just one post? I suppose I did warn my future self that I am lackadaisical to such endeavors. Maybe even life itself. I did want to be an author. I still think I do, though my heart seems to stumble in the dark about the concept. What exactly is my ambition about this whole blog, which, I could expand to encompass what ambitions do I have for life itself. What is my motivation for writing? For Montaigne, it was to capture the babbling brook of the self, a fisher of words if you will, atte