Within Spinning I have followed both my personal writing progress as well as that of others and have posted many times on what I feel are the benefits of utilizing a weblog as discipline to hone writing skills. I have been pleased to see that while I now have graduated to often writing directly into Typepad, copying and pasting into Word (okay, anal, perhaps obsessive/compulsive, but you all know that already) reveals few grammatical or spelling errors. But there are drawbacks, perhaps…
One of the most tedious but necessary elements of writing is editing and revision. These are often lost in blogging and entries are in truth first drafts. While I may upon occasion go back and edit (driving those who are “pinged” by Trackback absolutely nuts), it is usually only in one of the more poetic or eloquent (?) postings when the artist kicks in.
When I first started weblogging, all of almost seven months and 746 entries ago, I was embarrassed to find that the majority of hits to the site were from me. At least the Googlers and Yahooers do outnumber me ten to one now, but I have come to disregard numbers and overcome embarrassment because frankly, I want to feel that what I am producing is good stuff. Very often the different format of a weblog site will present and display in a manner that points out more clearly the errors that have survived both Word and Typepad entry formats. I would like to aspire to giving you my best and make that as high a priority as offering you honesty.
Maybe that is why I do not post at five a.m. as I once did. Rethinking, editing, rewriting; key to entertainment as well as proper form.
(NOTE: Yes, I have purposely chosen to use artistic license in the post title.)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology