This is another of my posts that is a response to a search phrase recorded in my logs. Blogging, in case you never thought about it, is writing. It’s an odd thing that only 7 or 8 years ago, before blogging started to catch on, most people I knew were uncomfortable ever considering the possibility of any sort of writing career, even part-time. I did my fair share, however, of encouraging those people who had a passion for writing, even if they had a ways to go to develop their writing.

Now, everyone is blogging, lured by stories of great riches, forgetting or not even knowing that it took a great deal of effort, hard work, and polished writing for various professional bloggers to get where they are now. While there are hundreds and thousands of bloggers who are also great writers, there are some writers with poor grammar who still manage to write interesting stories and articles. Unfortunately, there are even more people who simply cannot write.

Before you blast me for being elitist, understand what I am saying. I’m not like the high school English teacher telling you that you will never be a writer. I despise that kind of behaviour, especially from someone who only teaches and no longer frees their soul to be what they really wanted to be: a writer.

I’m quite the opposite: I want you to succeed. I want you to be a professional blogger and a great writer. But I want you to realize, also, that to be a successful blogger whose words have meaning and long-term, positive impact, you have to strive to be a great writer, to communicate, to always at least want to improve your writing.

I’m not talking about occasional typos. Everyone does that, including me. I’m talking about the inability for many people - even those for whom English is their mother tongue - to form proper sentences, and to even understand the simple difference between the use of a colon, “:”, and a semi-colon, “;”. Humans already have problems communicating verbally. Now it’s happening on the Internet, beyond its old borders of forums and newsgroups.

When all is said and done, though, there will still be bloggers that do well in the short-term without truly being able to communicate. Me, I go for long-term results. To those I offend, good. I want you to be offended, because that means I’ve touched a nerve. If you know how to write, or are already striving to improve your writing, I doubt you’ll be offended by what I’ve said. I hope it’ll make you realize that if your writing and grammar are poor, that you need to do something about it, if you want long-term value for your writing.

That said, one of the best ways to improve your writing is to write hundreds and hundreds of short (150-300 word) reviews of anything: books, music, film, TV, restaurants, etc. Do this even if you never publish them. It’s been said that the first million words that you write in your life are meaningless. But after that, you’ll have the ability to hone your writing to actually say what you want. (I pulled that piece of wisdom out of a writer’s inspirational book by William Zinsser, but it’s attributed to someone else, whose name escapes me.)

(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/

Technorati Tags: , , , ,