I was so disappointed in my April 14th and April 20th posts. I’m pretty sure they’re shit. I haven’t read them yet…well, I haven’t read them again yet. I haven’t read them again since I posted them because I’m afraid to.
The April 14th post I read before I posted it, and I could see that it was full of errors, but I posted it anyway, because: 1) it was either post it or post nothing, and 2) and perhaps more importantly, I wanted to have a little transparency, show you just how bad my writing can be before it gets good. The only thing is, it didn’t get good.
I think I bit off more than I could chew.
You see, I wanted to write about networking because I was going to this event, that wasn’t really a networking event, but you could network at the event, so for my intents and purposes it was a networking event. And I’m really not into networking, but it’s my understanding you have to do it. So I thought I would share my experiences in case any of you could understand, could relate, and realize that someone else feels like you. Someone else has had these not so pleasant experiences trying to make acquaintances of strangers for the purpose of advancing your career.
Then I thought it would be cool if I did it in a storytelling format rather than the usual list and advice way that I so often see. Like, I wanted to tell stories of what happened to me in my attempts at networking.
To write it, I took the approach of just free-writing really, no structure, no outline – just recalling the events as I remember them happening and retelling them here. Well, that format got away from me, and the next thing I knew I had over 3,000 barely edited words, with much more still to say.
With midnight quickly approaching, I thought I’d just toss up what I had, and take the following week to edit it. I did edit it some, as you can see from my April 20th post, but I honestly don’t think it was much better. It wasn’t what I was going for, which made me sad, and mad, until I finally had to say fuck it. The only thing I can do now is learn from it.
As a writer it taught me that you have never arrived. That you can always get better. I’ve been writing for literally decades now, but writing can take on so many different forms, and different styles of writing require different skill sets.
So I guess the lesson is, I just need to keep up the practice. Sometimes I wish I could write like a singer can sing. You know, you can tell Jennifer Hudson or Kelly Clarkson (just realized I used to American Idol examples, but anyway) to sing something, and they can just sing it. But with writing – at least for me – it’s different. No matter how much I do it, I feel like more often than not, I still have to work at it. It doesn’t just come to me.
But at the end of the day, what’s more important than seeming perfect or like I’ve mastered writing is that someone can relate, maybe to my writing struggles, maybe to my networking struggles or whatever. That always makes a fail a win.
Okay, just a short one for you this week.
Happy Reading…and Writing…and Failing and Trying Again.
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