All my life I have imagined being a writer, but I just never could make it happen. Over the years, I have filled several notebooks with unfinished bits and pieces of what would surely have been great masterpieces had I not lost interest and moved on to something else after the initial burst of creative energy wore off. I never could settle into the laborious part of writing, the work of editing and re-writing and just plain finishing the story. An old literature teacher of mine frequently told me that a writer writes, every day. It was not so much an observation as a polite way of calling me lazy.
I started this blog mostly as a way to force myself to sit down and write something on a more frequent basis. This format allows me to spend a relatively small amount of time on a post and still have the satisfaction of actually completing it. It's still work, but I'm settling into it a little and enjoying it a lot. I especially enjoy the anonymity of it. I just write it and fling it out onto the intertoobz like a booger and see if it sticks to anything. It's really the first time I have made my efforts available for others to read. As I am writing it, I can imagine my audience to be as large as the entire web or as small as a single person.
I have, however, noticed that blogging seriously cuts into the available time for my first love, reading. Books have always been a huge part of my life, and are probably the reason I wanted to write myself. They are certainly the reason I am my own worst critic. I've read so much great stuff that when I go back and re-read some of my unfinished work, it seems like such total rubbish that I end up just throwing it away.
And now I've found an article in the December issue of Discover magazine listing the 25 all-time greatest books about science. I've only read 3 and a partial of them. That's completely unacceptable for a science geek like myself. It's going to be to be a long winter. My wife has already taken notice of the amount of time I've been spending down here in the bunker.