Look at me go...

Who would have thunk it - I am going to be a guest blogger. Faye Holt, good friend and fellow writer, has asked me to write a piece for her blog - something about writing, distance education, life-long learning.

How hard can this be? I know about this stuff. I'm a writer, I've taken advantage of distance education courses, learned from them and helped administer them, and I'm old and still learning so that must constitute life-long learning, right?

So, how do I turn my usual navel-gazing into writing that is coherent, informative and intelligent enough to be posted on a blog intended to be educational? I've been working on it and it's rough. The more I write about what I think I know, the more I realize how little I really know. My writing is going in circles, ever increasingly boring circles.

So I ask myself, how do I spice this up a little? My writer's sense is to use shorter, choppier sentences - builds tension, you know. Discover motivation - why am I doing this, what am I afraid of, what do I want more than anything? What is keeping me from reaching my goal? Sigh... It works for fiction.

Or maybe, as some writers do, I could throw in some obscenity, drop the f-bomb, make disparaging remarks about local politicians, confess some long-buried secret. That would, for sure, get the readers' attention, but where would I go from there? I should be imparting crone wisdom with profound, encouraging and inspiring words. I need to connect with the readers be it about writing, life-long learning or distance education.

Do I think I have something that is important/intelligent/inspiring to say? Maybe not. What I know for sure is that nobody can teach someone how to write - you learn by doing it, over and over and over - it's a life-long learning experience. And the only way to get better is to put AIS and stare at a blank page or flickering computer screen until words pour out of your fingers and onto the page/keys. And I know that most of what I write won't be worth reading, but buried in the pile is the pony - the little gems of wisdom that lead to an idea, which in turn leads to a story and for that I'm forever grateful.

Please visit Faye's blog at http://fayereinebergholt.wordpress.com/ to read her wise words about writing, history, life-long learning and photos. My guest piece will appear at the end of March.