The Burr in the Burgh

As I was recently working on creating a new blog, I spent a fair amount of time researching the art and science of blogging. There are oodles of websites and resources to learn from. One blog that I'd never seen before, but now can't live without is called Copyblogger by Brian Clark. He's full of insight on everything to do with marketing and promoting your blog to the principles of good style. A few of the gems I've recently discovered:

• Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques



• The Persuasive Power of Specificity



• Do You Make These Mistakes When You Write?
  

I've long fantasized about being a writer of fiction. It's been a dream of mine that I always felt too intimidated to pursue and too embarrassed to talk about. I've tried to start the great American novel on a couple of different occasions. I have folders on my hard drive with sketches, notes, outlines, character studies and assorted chapters of a couple of fairly serious attempts. I just don't have the personal discipline or the passion or the drive to keep up with it. Until recently.

In the last six months or so, a new fire has been lit in my bones, the burning need to be creative. I still don't have anything anywhere near a finished product. But I do have a few really decent short stories in the hopper. And my magnum opus, a fantasy novel with five or six chapters written and another five or six conceptualized. The resident 12 year old boy has given me mediocre reviews. It was cool when he read an unfinished chapter and looked up at me and said, "Uh, what happens next?!"