Stormy Ride

Last night, I was pumped. I washed my bike, lubed the chain (not a metaphor), and packed my bag for a solid ride on the SCT. I have taken the last two days off because I was tired and just over it-Gulf Coast be damned. So, I was looking forward to doing some miles.

Rain. Thunder. Wind.

Super.

As I sit here writing this, the sky is exploding and my house shakes. The dog is whining and I'm thinking really seriously about going back to bed. Then-I think:

What would Reger do?

So, I'm going to put on my thinnest pair of shorts, wrap my head in aluminum foil, and go ride in this soup. Not.

Clearly, a ride is not smart this morning. Maybe this afternoon.....,

The issue of blogging and voice is making its rounds at my school. Voice is almost impossible to teach a kid but relatively easy to uncover in one's writing. For many of us, writing is something that we have to do, it's not something we enjoy. I have always enjoyed the crafting of words and the nuances of language.

Blogging, however, is something that is really intimidating to me as a writer. Reger makes a good point in that to effectively blog, you have to be willing to let people in because at heart, most people are voyeuristic. We like to peer into the lives of others and see what they have to offer this world. I'm working on that. Microblogging appeals to me in that narrative writing is perhaps the most effective writing. CNN is making millions from I-Report and news organizations are now requesting that the public essentially do their job for them by posting pics and accounts of events formerly only covered by reporters in the field.

So, voice. Stephen King has it. Grisham had it (the first book). Sebastian Junger really has it. In King's book, Memoirs on Writing, he says voice is a manifestation of the soul. It's only present when all other conventions are stripped away. Yeah.

Where the heck did that come from?