Rule Number One.

Boom, crack, wack, “OUCH.”  I said as my chair flew back and I fell on my ARSE hitting my head.  Wow, I didn’t see that coming.  Of course all this hitting banging and thumping was only figurative not literally.  But it was still a big DUH.  

“I am a writer.”  I tell people when they ask what I do, smiling large. 

“Really what do you write?  Are you published?”  Is their response.  Not that this isn’t good its just hard to explain. To be published takes a lot.  So I give the usual trying to promote myself and my little bit of writing.  “I Blog and …” I excitedly explain my work in progress and tell them to visit my blog.  But if you look closely NO READERS.   (Why is that I ask myself. I don’t know I answer myself.) 

So how did I bump my head so hard and get my ARSE kicked so badly?

“Man that is the most boring blog post.” I thought.  I was going over some of the writing from my critiquing group.  “I founded a critiquing group to help not only with my writing but with other peoples writing.”  Then I though, “What can I say to help this person have a better blog post?”  Gears grinding in my head at a steady pace.  Nothing came to me right away.   “Okay what is the post about?”  I asked myself, what was the piece trying to do.  

(Thinking hard here.) Well let’s see, something happened and the person got to thinking about it and wanted to share.  They wrote the post as a ‘what happened’, but it wasn’t well thought out or had enough emotions that allowed the reader, in this case me, to feel what they, the writer, was feeling.  (During the class we had a long discussion about it but we couldn’t find a conclusion.)  

The grinding gears hit a snag and ground to a halt, like the fine needle of a record player flung across the record distorting the sound.  The sound being extremely loud and jarring.    

Hitting head with palm here.  “The better way to write the post would be in a short story format” 

DUH, Duh, Duh, duh, duh, Duh.  (Each ‘Duh’ is written in a different font.)  I see it. I get it.  If I want someone to understand, I need to write it in a setting where the reader can see more parts than the one. Short enough to not interfere with time, entertaining enough for the reader to want to continue reading, yet powerful enough to get the point across. 

Frankly I’ve had this light bulb moment before but with me I have to be hit more than once.   (Hence the falling on the arse thing.)   

Starting today I’m going to write rules down. Rule number one.  When writing blogs make it into a short story format.  (Gees, I saw a book about writing great short stories.  Now I have to buy it and add to my collection.) 

Until next time.