Thursday, October 19, 2006

Goal and Direction

Yesterday two unrelated things happened that made me want to come back to my neglected blog. The first of these was an idea I had. My new idea was to basically take notes about computers that come into the shop. Not every computer, that would get monotonous, but some of the more interesting ones. I hope that by writing about my own experience with unique computer problems, other will be able to learn from my experiences. Personally I find reading about others experiences with computer problems, and what they did, more useful that reading some technical paper.

The second thing that made me come back to my blog was the editors note about blogging in the latest issue of Maximum PC. Will Smith (the Maximum PC editor not the rapper) is a writer I've come to really respect. What he said in his editor's note was exactly what I felt about blogging.

Since the dawn of the blogging era, I've been of the opinion that blogs should be highly targeted affairs, honing in on specific, well-defined topics to maximize the hard benefits for readers.

- Will Smith
When I read that it was like Mr. Smith was reading my mind. The first thing I thought of was my own blog and, "what readers?" My girlfriend is probably the only solid reader I have, and she reads it to get an insight to my life. My personal life is the last thing I want to write about because not even I find it that interesting. True, those that go back through my blog will find some personal posts, but over all I try to keep it on a geek related topic.

Will Smith goes on to read my mind even furthar by talking about the reason he quits writing in his blogs. He's limited himself to write about the blogs topic, and eventually looses interest. This coming from a real writer makes me feel better about my own lack of interest to write in my blog.

I thought about wiping everything in my blog and starting from scratch with my new goals in mind, but going back through some of the older posts I'm glad I haven't deleted anything just yet. I've decided to keep my bloggin history, as embarrising as it may be, in hopes that I will be able to see my progress (whatever the direction of the progress may be).

All in all one thing is for sure, my writing skills lack. I don't understand why some people can write a paragraph and eliquently elaborate their thoughts and feelings to everyone that reads it, but I can't put a sentance together that articulates a simple idea.

For the curious, Will Smiths new "write about anything" experiment blog is cleverly named notthatwillsmith.com.

1 comment:

///Will said...

Hey James,

The thing I've found after years of writing is that the best way to improve is to practice more.

The other thing that helped me more than anything else is to read the Elements of Style. It's a tiny little book that has a series of really good style rules for folks who have a pretty good grasp of grammar, but want to write clearer, more concise text. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, glad you dug the column :)

///Will