Rants about Writing

I am consistent only in my inconsistency. I am a fickle obsessive. I am a slacker perfectionist.  I am a deeply focused woman with no attention span.  And  yet, somehow, I've managed to keep blogging for almost five months.  And not as in "Oh, yeah, I write a blog post once every few weeks or so." No, I'm actually writing almost every day.  Not that there is anything wrong with writing every few weeks. If that's what you want to do, cool.

The thing is, if I tried to write "just every few weeks, " would write once, maybe twice, then stop.  I'd make excuses or get bored or just think I had nothing to say and quit. So really, instead of thinking people who just write a few blog posts have less dedication, I actually think they have more dedication than I do.  After all, they don't flake out after having so much time off.  That's amazing to me.

No, for me to do this, I actually have to make the commitment every day to write.  And, while I don't always publish a post every day (though, I do most days), I still write on those days. Just not anything that is a complete post. Sometimes this is because I'm just kind of biding my time and forcing myself to write down ideas to see where they go.

Other times, it's because I have blog posts that take a lot out of me emotionally.  I can only stand to be near them for so long before I have to pull myself away and go heal for a while. Eventually, like the one last night, they do get posted. It just takes a while for me to face and/or understand what it is that I want and perhaps even need to say.

There are also posts that require more than just one writing session. Sometimes I will just free write about a topic, letting my mind go where ever it needs to. Often this leads to things that expand into their own blog posts.  Free writing is something people often dismiss as hokey, but I've always found it helpful.  In fact, when I was writing papers back in college, I would often keep a working set of statements about the subject. I would write on them without structure for a while until I found how to narrow my topic and frame my thesis.  Often the other concepts from the free write would become essays at a later date.

And if you never take anything else from my blog, take this advice.  Narrowing your subject to a very focused, central idea will always make it stronger.

You run into this problem a lot when people try and make political arguments. People will try to make a political statement that possibly sounded sane and/or valid at one point, but because they lack the skill to narrow their topic (and the skills to spell and form ideas into sentences), it just becomes a sticky mess. Oh yes, and I know I don't always spell things properly or use proper grammar, but my blogging style is conversational. When I talk, I tend to speak in fragments and often make up words as I go along.

Anyway, to demonstrate how these rants usually work, I will avoid the usual sound and fury and go for something funner . . . the Smurfs!

HOW NOT TO MAKE A POLITICAL ARGUMENT IN WRITTEN FORM:

do u think them smurfs are of devil and against god becaz they are nazis and socialist and anti-jews because garamel is a jew and so is his cat and maybe the cat is the devil because it has a demon name and maybe the show is trying to say that jews r in leg with the devil and also smurfs are commonists as well papa smurf he has a red pants and hat becuaze all communis naizis where red and its the color of commonism and also smurfs dont get to have a free market papa smurf controls all just like obama and pellowsee and them guys who are running our government illegally and against god and also no smrfs ever go to church y dont they show chruch on cartoons becauze god is everywhere nd if u denny hiim then you will go to hell and be with hitler and so the smrfs shud be taken off the air! go amercia #1!!!11!!!

I know we would all love to think I'm making this level of bad writing up. Sadly, we know I'm not.  By this point, I think everyone has seen something like this from every political faction out there.  And I only stopped because my brain was threatening to pull out my eggs from their sockets. Usually this kind of thing goes on for a far larger block than this.

All of this could have been avoided with a concise, focused thesis. "Smurfs culture runs counter to the ideals and values of American culture." You can expound on it later.

Be sure to talk a lot about the "naiizies."