On Writing

My boyfriend sent me a link today to an interview with an infamous blogger he enjoys. In it, Dusty Scott gives this advice to fellow bloggers: write what you want. Trying to write for a specific market will just make your content boring.

As a professional copywriter, I make it a matter of personal pride to write for specific markets and keep it interesting. Nevertheless, I believe that Scott has a point. Your writing should have integrity and reflect who you are. Your blog should reflect and express you, your voice.

After all, good writing starts with a strong voice, and great writing starts with a truly authentic voice. Why should it be any different for a blog?

Writing is communication preserved. When we write, we do so to communicate things that are essential to us. We want our ideas, needs, feelings, vision, abilities, and opinions to be heard. We write about them, in part, to cast our thoughts, like a fishing line, out to others.

Because we use written communications to express things that are so important to us, I take writing very seriously. I am passionate about my professional copywriting because not everyone has the ability to put his ideas into words, but every person deserves to see the greatest representation of himself expressed well on paper (or in cyberspace, as the case may be). I believe that we feel our inherent dignity resonate inside us when we read our thoughts in written form.

That's just one of the many reasons I write. But these thoughts about why I do what I do were sparked by one line in the aforementioned Dusty Scott interview. When asked by the interviewer if his blog was meant to convey a "message" or just to tell a good story, Scott replied:

I don’t think there is a message other than “Hey, you’re not the only one thinking it. Now let us bind ourselves together with twine made of logic and rule the universe.”

Ruling the universe is just one reason I write. Here are a few others:

"I'm not the most connected individual, Denny. Sometimes words are all that allow me to feel like I'm a part of the world, a part of life. If I don't have words, then I'm alone."

~ Alan Shore (James Spader) to Denny Crane (William Shatner) in

Boston Legal, Season 2: Episode 21

Verba volant

Scripta manent

Spoken words fly away,

but writing remains.

~ Naomi Wolf, The Treehouse

I hear in my mind/All of these voices

I hear in my mind/All these words

I hear in my mind/All of this music

And it breaks my heart

Breaks my heart

It breaks my heart

~ Regina Spektor, "Fidelity"