Just Sayin'

I’ve been writing my blog once weekly for six years. Before that, I wrote for newspapers and magazines for 30 years. I wrote human interest stories on people, events in high schools and communities and the list goes on.

Oh, I have covered local elections a time or two and a couple of times reported election results for the Associated Press. I preferred telling people’s personal stories, though. One of my favorite mantras is ‘Everybody has a Story.’ It’s true.

I love writing my blogs, which are basically ‘informal and conversational,’ which are two aspects most agreed upon when I looked up the definition of blog on the Internet. It takes a while to develop your voice when writing those types of ways.

Backstory: I joked with people at times about how everyone wants to be a writer, but not everyone is. Oh, and trust me when I look back at several of my first stories to include college newspapers and ultimately daily, weekly and freelance work in publications, where I got paid, I wondered who wrote that. Me, it was me.

My first ‘big’ mistake was at a daily. Let’s not forget I was 35 years old straight out of college. I wrote that a government building was only going to cost an obscure amount under $250,000. Hahaha. I was off by like a couple of million.

I am thankful someone, more than likely an editor, saw something in me.

So, when an organization in the area asked for writers, I thought I’d volunteer some of my blogs. Talk about hoops to jump through – first it was this, then it was that and finally a contradiction. The organization wanted blogs in ‘third person with no personal experiences.’

There’s an oxymoron for you. I laughed loudly through my apartment.

BTW: I wrote my blogs in third person for maybe a month, boring.

Did I mention my major is in Journalism and minor is in English Writing to include creative writing in which my professor said it’s OK to break grammar rules? I learned to write in all kinds of ways. I’m a junky. It’s fun.
Backstory: I was told in a reading once that in my most recent previous life I was a writer.

It’s so disheartening when others cannot or will not celebrate other people’s gifts. This is not just about the above. I posted blurbs on my Facebook pages about a possible rant for this blog. I learned that people are really going through it right now. Everything in life seems extremely emotionally heightened.

I’ve written about this previously: We are a microcosm of what is going on globally. The chaos, either real or fabricated, trickles down to neighborhoods, communities and ultimately individuals. There’s lots going on and I try to give people a break, so that one day someone else might give me a break.

It takes time to become a writer, to find your voice, to make something interesting enough, so that people will read it.

I hope you, the reader, have read this far. Keep going. There’s more. I can be a little winded at times.

Sometimes people just don’t know what they’re talking about and cannot or will not listen to others.

Writing has been a huge part of my life.

Has your career – office manager, CEO of a multi-million-dollar company, school bus driver, family manager. . . – been a huge part of your life?

I’m sure this happens to a lot of you in your workplace, or it could happen within a family dynamic – when you know something, and no one listens.
Everyone has his or her lesson(s) to learn in this thing called life.

As I have said, I’ve made some mistakes in print. Here’s another good one. I wrote about part of high school being torn down, checked with three sources for the year it was built and still got it wrong. Thankfully, it could be changed online but sadly, not in the already printed version.

And there were more. Each time I kicked myself for those errors more than my editor. I’ve learned to give myself a break. We’re all human and not perfect beings.

Love me some quotes: ‘Everyone makes mistakes. It's what you do after the mistake that matters’ by Kristan Higgins.

And by Stephen King: ‘If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.’

Hope you made it this far. Smile

Blessings of Peace and Love

P.S. If you want to improve your writing, start doing it more, and keep at it.