Path to Good Writing

First of all, I need to post more.  I should promise a post a week.  Therefore, if I miss a post, I shall be branded a liar and sentenced to a week in the village stocks.  Oh, the ridicule I would have to endure!  Although, the experience could be something to write about.  People like to read about failure, no?

I'm a horrible writer.  I've known since I was a wee little boy in elementary school.  My stories were one-dimensional, featuring characters that woke up, brushed their teeth, ate breakfast, and did things that any average homo sapien sapien would do on a bright, sunny summer day.  Writing was never in the scope of my plans-for-the-future radar.  I scoffed when my parents suggested that I become an author when I was little.  Writing?  Hah!  I might as well be an astrophysicist (sadly, that never worked out)!

I didn't really look like that, in case you were wondering.

My writing continued to disappoint me throughout my primary schooling.  I was never taught proper grammar.  Of course, I was taught basic grammar in elementary school.  A period here and a comma there.  Semicolons?  Colons?  You'll learn how to use those in middle school, my teacher said.  Great!  Hello Ms. Middle School Teacher, I'm ready for my grammar lesson!  Oh, how I was shot down!  Dear, you should have learned your grammar in elementary school.  But, stay tuned, you might learn some advanced grammar in high school, cute little prepubescent boy.  I wish I knew how to roll my eyes back then.

(To my english teachers.  I may be exaggerating a little bit.  Y'all were awesome.  I merely critiquing the state and city curriculum.)

For Knowledge and Wisdom!

High school.  Ooops, sorry.  Ahem.  Specialized high school.  THE Stuyvesant School.  Obviously, I learned grammar in middle school.  How else did I manage to gain entrance into this prestigious institution?  Conjunctions, predicate nominatives, prepositions, and intransitive verbs were part of my daily vocabulary, right?  Nope.  Please, teacher!  Teach me how to use a comma.

Good thing I liked to read.  I learned sentence structure from reading junk like Animorphs, the Pendragon Adventure Series, the Jedi Apprentice series, and the Harry Potter series (duh!).  In high school, I moved onto the classics.  Some of my favorites include To Kill a Mockingbird, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Razor's Edge, The Great Gatsby, The Stranger, among others.

I guess my writing progressed as I traveled along the fourth dimension.  I got through high school, writing papers at 5 am in the morning while chatting with other students to check how far along they were.  That was the life.  Somehow, I was an A student throughout high school.  Perplexing, isn't it?  Sometimes, I wish teachers would just give me a F for my work-on-it-12-hours-before-it's-due efforts.  No such luck for me.

It was in college -- in the last year, actually -- that I decided that I'd love to be a writer.  I like to create worlds.  I dream of crazy, ridiculous worlds that nerdy fanboys would obsess about.  Honestly, writing is an area that I've always dreamed of excelling at (obviously).  The only obstacle that ever kept me away from actively pursuing writing is the absurd notion that I'm not good at it.  Personally, I think that's the most absurd excuse for not doing something.  If you're not good at it, work at it!  Thus, I promised myself to work on my craft.

(In case there is any confusion, I refer to writing in all its forms.  Academic writing.  Fiction writing.  Journalistic writing.  Everything!)

My namesake.  Ask me how.

These days, most of the advice I read about from accomplished writers these days say that living life is the best way to becoming a good writer.  Conveniently, I love to live life.  I love to experience new things.  Basically, all my future fans, you'll have to stay tuned as I live my life.


P.S. Do I dare say that I shall post every Tuesday?  Yes.  Every Tuesday.  Look forward to it.