Useless Blog?

Someone said this would be a useless blog. They judged that all readers would also be writers and already know everything I might post. This, in my judgment, posed an inaccurate assessment, in that I doubt that all of you are writers. Also, I suspect that some of you have only recently started writing; you just might get some use out of some posts. And who knows, no one may read it at all. If so, that is okay with me.

I will write it, and that will be good for me. I have spent almost fifty years speaking before the public, as a Christian minister and as a college teacher. In the beginning, I wanted to sound like Carlyle Marney or Curtis Vaughn. Later other models came that I attempted to follow. I hoped to pattern my speaking after them. I have no idea how long it was nor how soon that I found, in the course of regular–almost daily–public speaking, I was not following any of them. I didn’t even think of them. I was following my passion, and it shaped my style of speaking–a very distinctive style, one that was clearly mine. I had found my voice.

Although I have been writing for a few years, I didn’t have that same feel about my writing. Numerous books, articles, and writers workshops have emphasized the need to find your own writing "voice." One page of Annie Proulx’s writing is enough to recognize the author, once you are familiar with her interesting output. It takes less than a page to know you are reading Hemingway, or Patrick Voss or Anne Lamott. I have not written enough on a daily basis for my voice to show up. I suspect readers reading different things I have written would say, "This doesn’t sound like the same author as that."

One thing I intend, one purpose of writing these blogs is to develop my own, unconscious, un-self-conscious, consistent "voice." Another value of writing on writing is that it will serve as a continuing process of reviewing the things that I’ve read, heard, and learned about writing.

So this is not a pointless blog. As Lucindy Packer posted a note on her desk, saying, "Never feel useless. You can always serve as a bad example." I expect that I have learned as much, in all parts of my life, by observing bad examples as I have from good and inspiring examples.