You may already know what a blow to the ego it can be to have to read over anything you wrote 20 years ago, even cancelled checks. My first reaction, rereading these stories [this blog], was oh my God, accompanied by physical symptoms we shouldn't dwell upon. My second thought was some sort of wall to wall rewrite. These two impulses have given way to one of those episodes of middle-aged tranquility, in which I now pretend to have reached a level of clarity about the young writer I was back then. I mean I can't very well just 86 this guy from my life. ... It is only fair to warn even the most kindly disposed of readers that there are some mighty tiresome passages here, juvenile and delinquent too.
Or on how to write:
My specific piece of wrong procedure back then was, incredibly, to browse through the thesaurus and note words that sounded cool, hip, or likely to produce an effect, usually that of making me look good, without then taking the trouble to go and find out in the dictionary what they meant. If this sounds stupid, it is. ...
Everyone gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything--or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.
Anyway, this is why I slowly delete stuff on my blog after I write it, because it's embarrassing. Eventually, blogging will consist of leaving up a post for 5 minutes before I delete it and leave a blank shell.
but don't those posts stay up if you have them on google reader?
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