Writing on writing … really?

Some people tire quickly of reading writers write about writing. Fortunately, I’m not one of those people. I’m hoping that people who pick up on this category of my blog agree.

The first thing I ever wrote was before I entered grade school. It was called “Bugs Bunny and the Magic Carrot”. It was a story about how that wily ol’ Yosemite Sam tried to trick Bugs into thinking he had found a magic carrot.

You see, every time Bugs chased the carrot, it moved a little further away. Bugs soon caught on that the carrot was attached to a string, so he cut the string and took the carrot. I even illustrated it.

OK. So the plot was thin and the illustrations were bad even for a 5-year-old. But I still wrote it, drew it and stapled it together as a book for my mother.

That interest — the writing, not the drawing and stapling — led me to a career in journalism. I’ve since left that career, but I’ve not left writing. I’ve done a bit of freelancing and have returned to working on my short stories. I’ve added to my cache blogging.

What I’ve found is that in each vein — journalism, creative, freelancing and blogging — the writing process changes very little. Styles may differ greatly, and inspiration may sprout from different places, but the approach, execution and substance is very much alike across all plains.

Along the way, I’ve chosen various software for my writing — TextMate for blogging and Scrivener for creative and freelance work — and can’t be without certain tricks on my laptop — full screen writing or using a black desktop void of files to mimic full screen in TextMate.

These tips along with various projects on which I’m working I will share here. So again, as in a few other sections of this blog, this serves as little more than an intro. But it serves its purpose, and that’s all we can ask of our words.