To write or not to write...
A friend told me recently, after reading a couple things I had written, that he thought I was a good writer (at least in the particular niche that was the subject of the articles). He said I should send some things I had written to publishers and make some money out of my hobby. I was, and remain, unconvinced. Initially I thought it was a bit of a joke but he later reinforced his opinion by telling me he thought I was wasted as a "cube rat" and pointed me to some courses the Sydney Writing Centre conducts. I often think he is wasted as a salesman and should try his hand at comedy where I think he would be quite successful.
I know most of the rules of grammar and when you can break them; however, I choose not to follow them most of the time. If I did not have other things to do, like work, house maintenance, yelling at the World Cup referees on TV, etc., then I would most likely read myself into a mild stupor. I used to buy and read the classics, like Frankenstein, Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. just because of their reputation and to say that I had read them. However, after a while I decided that I actually enjoyed reading them and started reading them for enjoyment (I originally started on the action genre, reading authors such as Tom Clancy, Patrick Robinson, and Geoffrey Archer, and quickly expanded my repertoire to fantasy as well - Tolkien, Salvatore, Jordan, etc.). What I mean to say is that I am fairly well read and not just modern day, "cheap" authors but top calibre authors as well such as Dostoyevsky, Hemmingway, Shelley, Melville, Dickens and Shakespeare.
My first reaction to subjects I am not intimately familiar with is to get more (written) information on them, which normally takes the form of books, as is evidenced by the bookshelves at home all struggling under the weight of tomes stacked 2 deep and piled on top of others. I should have bought shares in Dymocks and Borders 15 years ago before I started pumping cash into them (are they publicly listed companies? I will have to check that out...); a few floor to ceiling bookshelves would not go astray either. I think that all the books I have read are probably the reason I seem to implicitly know (yes, I know that I just split the infinitive; it was intentional) what is grammatically correct and what is not. The couple small books I have read about good writing style mostly confirmed what I already felt to be good writing style, but they were both excellent brain food nonetheless (How Not To Write, Bill Safire and Writing Good English, a Fairfax publication).
Of course, I do not expect to be able to just start writing and be good at it. I am currently far too impatient to be a good writer and most things I write, which seem to be newsgroup postings, work emails and blog entries, are rushed and full of grammatical abuse. If I were to revise and correct the things I write before sending or publishing them, then they would probably do me much more credit, and I have the perfect literary critic at home since my wife is a University-trained English/History teacher. I cannot deny that the extra cash would be welcomed but, to be honest, I do not know if I could be bothered. Areas that I consider to be my field of expertise, such as database management, I take due time & care on since I pride myself on my technical ability in those areas but writing is at best an outlet for expressing my miscellaneous thoughts and at worst a mistake.
To add to this, I rarely have a plan in mind when I start to write something and do most of the actual writing, or rather typing, either on the train between work & home or late at night in front of the TV; two environments not highly conducive to quality thought. It would appear that the cons in this internal debate, not the least of which is my own laziness, far outweigh the pros. Therefore, for the time being, I think I shall not write, at least not in any kind of professional capacity (I still have my own biased opinions to express on such vitally important subject matter as the sorry state of refereeing at the 2006 FIFA World Cup).
I know most of the rules of grammar and when you can break them; however, I choose not to follow them most of the time. If I did not have other things to do, like work, house maintenance, yelling at the World Cup referees on TV, etc., then I would most likely read myself into a mild stupor. I used to buy and read the classics, like Frankenstein, Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. just because of their reputation and to say that I had read them. However, after a while I decided that I actually enjoyed reading them and started reading them for enjoyment (I originally started on the action genre, reading authors such as Tom Clancy, Patrick Robinson, and Geoffrey Archer, and quickly expanded my repertoire to fantasy as well - Tolkien, Salvatore, Jordan, etc.). What I mean to say is that I am fairly well read and not just modern day, "cheap" authors but top calibre authors as well such as Dostoyevsky, Hemmingway, Shelley, Melville, Dickens and Shakespeare.
My first reaction to subjects I am not intimately familiar with is to get more (written) information on them, which normally takes the form of books, as is evidenced by the bookshelves at home all struggling under the weight of tomes stacked 2 deep and piled on top of others. I should have bought shares in Dymocks and Borders 15 years ago before I started pumping cash into them (are they publicly listed companies? I will have to check that out...); a few floor to ceiling bookshelves would not go astray either. I think that all the books I have read are probably the reason I seem to implicitly know (yes, I know that I just split the infinitive; it was intentional) what is grammatically correct and what is not. The couple small books I have read about good writing style mostly confirmed what I already felt to be good writing style, but they were both excellent brain food nonetheless (How Not To Write, Bill Safire and Writing Good English, a Fairfax publication).
Of course, I do not expect to be able to just start writing and be good at it. I am currently far too impatient to be a good writer and most things I write, which seem to be newsgroup postings, work emails and blog entries, are rushed and full of grammatical abuse. If I were to revise and correct the things I write before sending or publishing them, then they would probably do me much more credit, and I have the perfect literary critic at home since my wife is a University-trained English/History teacher. I cannot deny that the extra cash would be welcomed but, to be honest, I do not know if I could be bothered. Areas that I consider to be my field of expertise, such as database management, I take due time & care on since I pride myself on my technical ability in those areas but writing is at best an outlet for expressing my miscellaneous thoughts and at worst a mistake.
To add to this, I rarely have a plan in mind when I start to write something and do most of the actual writing, or rather typing, either on the train between work & home or late at night in front of the TV; two environments not highly conducive to quality thought. It would appear that the cons in this internal debate, not the least of which is my own laziness, far outweigh the pros. Therefore, for the time being, I think I shall not write, at least not in any kind of professional capacity (I still have my own biased opinions to express on such vitally important subject matter as the sorry state of refereeing at the 2006 FIFA World Cup).
posted by Mike Hodgson | 22:10
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