{"id":100,"date":"2004-02-22T18:48:12","date_gmt":"2004-02-22T16:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.tjerngren.net\/wp\/?p=100"},"modified":"2004-02-22T18:48:12","modified_gmt":"2004-02-22T16:48:12","slug":"words-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"Words’ worth"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past year-and-a-half or so I’ve been blaming my sporadic, embarrassingly short blog entries on the fact that I have a baby, which means that it’s simply impossible for me to write lengthy, interesting posts on a regular basis. Lately, though, I’ve been reading blogs by a few brand-new moms who are not only keeping up with their blogs admirably, but also writing long, entertaining entries. Dooce<\/a>, in particular, writes some of the laugh-out-loudest things I’ve read on the web. I think my blog envy could develop into an all-out inferiority complex.<\/p>\n

I know, actually, what the problem with my writing is (besides laziness, I mean). It’s that I don’t like to take risks. I like to have control, or at least the illusion of it, at all times. I have never been able just to let go.<\/i> This same inability, or unwillingness, is the reason that I was never able to dive or to turn a cartwheel. I can’t face that split second when your feet leave the ground and you’re just … out there.<\/p>\n

Like so many bloggers, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve started and abandoned countless projects–novels, short stories, poems, journals. I usually start out with a solid idea and the first little bit comes to me fairly easily. Then I reach the point where I know I should turn myself over to it and just let the words flow, but I can’t. I worry too much about word choice and grammar and paragraph length and not nearly enough about plotlines and character development. I over-analyze my writing, the actual writing<\/i>, until my story dies a slow, painful death.<\/p>\n

I came to the conclusion several years ago that I’m much better suited to editing than to writing, which is why when jobs were being doled out at Mosaic Minds<\/a> I volunteered to do editing and lots of it. I have almost no writing responsibilities (I do have a regular column, but it’s a recipe column, which limits my actual writing to just a paragraph here and there). For the most part, I’m satisfied with that, but I do have to admit that I’d like to see my name a little more often in article headers. As important, and satisfying, even, as editing is, it doesn’t come with a lot of glory.<\/p>\n

I did take a bit of a plunge for the upcoming issue and wrote a short fiction piece. It was agonizing. I don’t know how I’d ever be able to survive writing a whole novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past year-and-a-half or so I’ve been blaming my sporadic, embarrassingly short blog entries on the fact that I have a baby, which means that it’s simply impossible for me to write lengthy, interesting posts on a regular basis. Lately, though, I’ve been reading blogs by a few brand-new moms who are not only… Read More Words’ worth<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}