You have a point. However, not everyone is a natural writer. You may find that as a writer you may have to work at it. However, what’s annoying is investing time to read something that is just plain old obvious.

If you are going to be enlightening, be enlightening.

I spent some years trying to peel the onion, but I’ve now realized that blogging is shaping my voice through regular practice and also through allowing more of my life and my passion to flow into my writing.

‘Voice’ can be elusive if we chase it, but arrives little by little if we surrender to the practice of writing.

She mentioned noting that most bloggers are writing books and wondered whether or not this was a coincidence.

I too have wondered the same thing.

http://revenuereservoir.com

I started my blog as a way to force myself to write on a regular basis, and the friends I have made and writing opportunities that have resulted have been truly remarkable.

Looking back over the 3+ years, I can see changes where I’ve experimented with voice, but I believe that knowing that someone out there is paying attention is a strong motivator for continuing what is otherwise a lonely job that requires plenty of self-discipline.

The biggest difference is blogging’s tendency to shortening words when ever possible. I am not just talking about acronyms either though that is a big one. Most house styles for fiction have you write out full words like okay, where bloggers normally write ok. Punctuated words are another difference, which also stems from house styles. For example my agent had me change t-shirt to tee shirt for one publisher more than 400 times once for one editor and then back again for another. When you are blogging you will almost always choose the shortest word you can get by with. another big difference is punctuation. Bloggers love the semicolon even when most of them don’t use it correctly. Fiction editors hate the semicolon, even when it used correctly.

I have to agree that blogging will help you find your writers voice, it did for me. It was a great help on my latest novel project. Blogging also helps me clear my head of extraneous issues and let me focus on the story when I sat down to write it. One of the biggest ways blogging has help me write is character development. When I am trying to focus on a character that I don’t know know a lot about I often times go comment on blogs as that character. A couple of characters actually keep blogs. If I can sell the novels I plan to take those blogs public as promotional items.

So thank you for the post.

Should I still thank Darren? I dunno. He sure doesn’t do much around here ;)

It also is a great learning experience. When you make a deal with yourself to write every day or two, you contemplate things you never would have given a second thought!

Take the point about jealousy (c’mon you budding George Orwells – who hasn’t felt that over someone like, shall we say, JK Rowling?! And I mean her literary sucess, not necessarily her earnings). However, I just keep reminding myself that there’s enough room out there for a lot more successful writers. And that may not mean replicating the billionaire status of the Harry Potter author, but as long as I can make my own excellent living from writing, that’s OK. ‘Excellent living’ is, of course, my own personal definition of success…

I find is really hard. Copy and paste doesnt work.

I started my blog 3 days ago http://www.adtechz.com

It’s also true that many publishing houses these days have lesser budgets for such ‘handler-style’ editors and many new authors are expected to have ‘finished’ their works as much as possible.

Which kind of takes me back to my point that if you develop your voice, and writing skills, this can only be a good thing for bloggers – and any other kind of writer, I’d wager.

On the topic of writing, I think good grammar is also just as important as acquiring a ‘voice’. I am a journalist student and here is a grammar emergency test that our teacher recommended:

http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/~russial/grammar/grambo.html#q5

I know it helped me..(and made me realise I’m not as clever as I thought I was)

As for finding a ‘voice’ I think a big part of it has to be …to just be honest and talk about something you are passionate about. If you are going to stay committed to your blog…you have to just be yourself…and not try and be someone your not.
Not that I know what I’m talking about cause I was only just a blog virgin two months ago. But anyway….I just wanted to try and say something profound for once.

jess

htp://www.vitrospective.com/blog