Friday, July 20, 2007

Do I think I have the authority to instruct anyone about writing? Apparently, yes.

I feel the urge to write an article, but can't decide on the topic. I do have some topics, but none of them interests me enough at the moment. These include:
1) A review of the album The Good, The Bad & The Queen (which is my favourite piece of music at the moment, in fact I'm listening to it currently).
2) Something about computers, so I can brag about my shiny, new, very cool laptop.
3) Running (my favourite brand of sport).
4) Cycling (my other favourite brand of sport).
5) Housekeeping (to stay true to my chosen topic). Yawn.
6) A rant about the immense stupidity of coworkers is always nice.
7) Sex keeps on selling, but I hesitate to write about that, because I'm afraid friends and aqcuiantances will find this blog someday. And that might be awkward.

I will tackle all of these topics in time (with the exception of sex, unless explicitly requested by a huge mass of readers) but maybe I'll just muse on aimlessly tonight. Yeah, that should keep the reader(s) uninterested.

I remember a Finnish lesson from preliminary school. We were supposed to write essays, and I think that somebody complained that he/she can't think of anything to write about. So the teacher told us to write about small things. She told us not to embrace too large topics at once. Instead of trying to summarize the history, present and the future of mankind in your essay, take one moment in time, one city, one house and one brick in the facade of the house. Start writing about the brick. I think I wrote about my pencil. The essay became lengthy, and might I say, great. I wish I had it somewhere. Anyway, the lesson stuck in my mind. I think it was a great idea, and still is, and it might have been the most significant thing I learned in preliminary school. Well, besides the obvious stuff, like reading, writing, mathematics and manners. Oh wait, manners I didn't learn. F**k.

Scott Adams recently told us how to write funny in his blog. I think his writing is funny, but a bit too impertinent at times. But anyway, I couldn't agree more about one thing he said: write simple sentences. That works.

I have an ambition: I want to include as many different words as possible in the posts of this blog. I consciously try to use a broad vocabulary. I just wonder how many words there are in English, and how many of them I have used so far. Well, a bit of Googling suggests that English has about two hundred thousands words. Rats. I have a lot to write about left. How egregious.

So, it seems that this post is about writing. I've listed some (ok, all) of the principles I have about writing. There you have it: about small things, simply put, but with lots of fancy words. And apparently (ha! got to use that word), I seem to be able to write about nearly anything for a length. At least I'd like to think I can. If that's a requirement to be a professional writer, I'm nearly there. But probably they will require it to be interesting too. Damn!

Oh, and one more thing. When writing blog posts, I like to write the main text first, then add a witty opening paragraph and then think of the title. Must make up the title now.

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