I talk to high school students every year who are preparing to take the AP exams or write college entrance essays. I tell them "Make every word count. Read back over what you've written and if there's an adverb, yank it out and use a better verb. If you see "is", yank it out and use a better verb." When word count matters, I point out the advantages of semicolons over 'and' and 'but'. Other good tips: vary sentence length and formation; avoid repetition of specific words (these jump out at you if you read your work out loud.)
Now after spouting all of that, I admit my blog doesn't always reflect what I preach. I've written essays and newspaper articles; my blog is neither. It's the dumping ground for my thoughts. A practice arena before the Big Game, the book I'm writing. Sometimes my post just pours out of me, similar to the stream-of-consciousness morning pages Julia Cameron recommends in An Artist's Way.
More often, it's a conversation with friends. A sharing of something I learned or read, or a memory. Sometimes a confession. It replaces the journal I kept for decades, the letters and photographs I used to send to friends and family, and even the hours I used to spend on the phone with loved ones. It's where I clear the jumping beans from my brain so I can get down to the business of my book, much like sorting the junk mail from the bills that need to be paid on my desk.
It's not that I don't care about what I write here. I do, or I wouldn't bother. I pour my heart into my blog. It's a therapeutic obsession.
But my blog is a daily journey, a river constantly flowing, never a destination. I don't have time to dwell in one spot - it's always pulling me farther downstream, with yesterday's post fading into memory.
But that's just me. And that's the beauty of blogs - there's not a one-size-fits-all voice or style.
(I should mention this post began as a comment to a post on BlogHer on writing with authority. As usual, I got carried away ...)
