Day 193: Thoughts on Writing

Words “sound” different on a computer screen than they do on paper. Sometimes I write a sentence on the computer, read and reread it, and think it’s great every time. When I print it out, though, I often find that I hate the way it reads on paper. Mistakes are also easier to find on paper. Weird, but that’s the way it is.
The more I write, the more I want to write, but there is a limit to how much writing I can or should do in one day. Today I wrote a bunch of diatribes (good, but useless) on Facebook, then wrote a bunch of diatribes at work (useful ones, of course), and now I’m writing this post for my blog. That’s too much writing for one day. Writing revs up my brain. Too much writing causes my mind to race uncontrollably. I’ll be lucky to get any sleep tonight. And the writing I did on Facebook was not appreciated, so it was mostly wasted energy (I say “mostly” because of a strange moral dilemma I’m experiencing, which I’ve discussed in another post).
I can write all day, trying to write clearly, logically, persuasively, sometimes even cleverly, and succeeding (as far as I’m told) in most of those goals, but it’s always the careless throwaway lines that people really like. If I’ve given it zero thought, people love it. I hope this is because the other writing primes my mind for generating zingers, and not because the other writing sucks.

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