The Written Word

I used to think I'd be a writer. I wrote reams of papers in college, and enjoyed my creative writing class. Writing was my fall-back position. But then, after years of writing nothing, I'm finding my sentences are little more than "It's good. I liked it."

So really, it's not that my writing is so bad, it's just that I'm not the deep thinker that I used to think I was. There are a few things that I care passionately about and I'm able to focus long enough on them to reach coherent, meaningful and perhaps interesting opinions.

One of the purposes for my blogging, is to train myself to start thinking and analyzing more. Some days I'm going to write about vegetables. Some days I'm going to write about TV Shows. Some days I'll write about the Packers. And maybe every once in awhile I'll have a coherent thought on some vast injustice in the world.

We're going to be starting school next week, and this year I've decided to place more emphasis on writing. Over the past year especially, I've realized the importance of helping train my children to become strong communicators.

We're going to be using Andrew Pudewa's Excellence in Writing program. Pudewa has a great quote on one of his DVD's that helped to crystallize in my mind why communication is so important -

"It's very important, this writing business, because we are faced with a world full of lies, basically. And the liars are very good at what they do.... History proves that a bad idea well presented is more powerful than a good idea poorly presented."

Whether it's in the realm of social, political or spiritual ideas, there are always going to be people spreading lies and evil. And they do it well. We will have a greater impact if we train ourselves to communicate clearly and confidently.