Hello world!

My first blog was thrown together without much thought. I was pretty much just wandering around in there and making a mess. I realize now that I did everything all wrong.  But don’t worry, thanks to WordPress, I have a clean slate. I am standing at a crossroads, an opportunity, the chance to start over and do things properly. Plus, I have this great picture of snow. Today is this first day of my new successful, grownup blog. As you can see below, the first thing WordPress suggests is to read the DailyPost to get ideas for writing a blog.

Advice, to me, from WordPress:

Here are some suggestions for your first post.

1. You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
2. Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting  page you read on the web.
3. Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.

This is exactly what I will do.

Today’s Inspiration

Ways to Develop Your Unique Writing Voice | Kristen Lamb’s Blog

Kristen, who I am assuming is a professional writer-lady, starts off her writing advice with the statement, “Ah, November. National Novel Writing Month.” I guess we are going there again. I tried to write a NaNo novel. All my characters kept getting mad at me because they wanted to be in a real novel, like Harry Potter or something. They had absolutely no faith in me. Of course, I guess it didn’t help that I kept getting ideas from Twitter and making them do things like commit crimes with spatulas. I admit those stunts did not lend me much credibility, but still, it was really hard to work with such insolent characters.

Let’s see what else professional Writer-Lady has to say: “structure has the obvious benefit of having a coherent plot/story.” Actually that is something else my NaNo characters were complaining about. They said even if they were in some novel with a bunch of whining vegan vampires that at least they would have something else to do besides wander around with spatulas. I am going to start a new NaNo novel next November with much better characters who are more appreciative.  This November was really disappointing.

The inspirational article isn’t helping as much as I thought, but I am determined to write something worthy of the snow picture. Going back to the DailyPost again, Writer-Lady says, “Voice is one of those aspects of writing that is tough to define and quantify. Yet, it is at the heart of who we are as writers.” See I can get behind that. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound like a lot of work. That business about having a coherent plot sounded painful. I can commit to the voice concept.

Whatever this person says next, I am going to take it to heart. I vow to you right now that I will make this blog more like a real blog, and less like one that markets imaginary t-shirts. Okay, ready everyone? Ready for a real blog? This is it! And Writer-lady saaays…..

“The more we write, the more mature our writing voice becomes. Leave an immature, unformed voice to wander off on its own, and it will be wandering around getting into everything and making a mess.”

Fuck. Me.

Guess we are going back to the t-shirts.