Monday, February 6, 2012

501

:the number of published blog posts on WordGirl

Nearly three years ago, I wrote a post commemorating blog post 100.  I guess that means I'm averaging a little over 100 posts annually.  When I first started blogging, I set specific goals for myself regarding how many posts I would write weekly.  That was largely motivated by self-discipline.  I worried that without setting goals, I would get discouraged and just stop writing.

I haven't always been a writer.  Or maybe I've always been a writer, I just didn't know it.  I enjoyed writing back in high school, especially angst-y adolescent poems, letters to far away friends and notes to nearby ones.  I learned how to write well in college.  I had one professor who circled every passive verb in every paper I ever wrote.  To say that she wanted us to learn to write in a more active voice is an understatement.  I once wrote an entire paper where I only used "is" one time.  Try it.  It's not easy.

After college, I mainly saw writing as a tool.  I found I could write in a way the business world liked.  I learned to simplify my style and get right to the point.  This came fairly easily after the training I'd had in college.  I combined my business writing skills with presenting.  I have never (and will never) consider myself a salesperson, but I certainly have the ability to explain a service to you in a way you can understand.  The years rolled by.  I had one, then two, then three daughters.  I worked full-time.  I stayed at home full-time.  I worked part-time.  I started homeschooling. 

I wrote the occasional item when asked - for a newsletter, as an introduction to a church cookbook, things like that.  A friend encouraged me to write more.  I can remember her telling me that she always liked anything I wrote.  She knew I was a writer before I did.

I still don't know whether I'd consider myself a Writer.  I don't get paid to put words down.  The words I write aren't read by a lot of people.  I don't write every day.  I don't write fiction - or poetry - or consistently.  But I'm a writer anyway.  It helps me think.  It helps me remember.  Writing for me is a little like when Jacob set up the stones at Bethel after wrestling with God.  When I write it down, I am saying, "I was here.  God was here.  This is what happened."  That way, I can look back at those stones with my writing on them and remember where I have been.  And see how far I have come.


3 comments:

Kim said...

Happy 501 Word Girl!

Aimee Guest said...

We can't begin to define an artist or a writer as someone who gets paid for it! Of course you're a writer. Here's how you know-could you quit even if you wanted to? Nope, that writer brain would keep composing, even if only in your head. 501, wow!

The Mom said...

I challenge you to continue to open yourself up to see all that God has fashioned in you and for you from the beginning. Without a doubt, you are Word Girl in every sense of the logos and Logos. Blessings!