On the Move

I have finally decided to commit to maintaining this blog... and update it as regularly as I can. By regular updates, I mean to post at least 2 blogs a week. Or 8 a month.

My intent in setting up this blog is to practice my already rusty writing skills (people tell me I do write well... well, heard most of that before, though). After graduating college, I have mostly been exposed to business writing.

Funny. When I started working in 1993, I would compose business correspondences (email wasn't that ubiquitous then) in the fashion of a school requirement. There'll be times when it would come out as essays. Occasionally, it was like a book report. Most of the time, it was like a novel. Very wordy and full of adjectives and adverbs. And probably, if blogs were in vogue then, an award winning one at that.

Until my boss pointed out that they don't have time to read english compositions...

So, on my own, I honed my "business writing skills". Threw away most adjectives and adverbs, and, in the process, simplified my vocabulary to suit the no-frills-go-straight-to-the-point writing style that was demanded of me.

From time to time, mostly when I felt depressed, I would do some creative writing. And, most of these, were documented on paper. We all know what happens to literary works or diaries or journals when such are written down on ordinary paper. They disappear. Most got burned when our house was half-razed by a fire.

Anyway, through the years, I got better in writing memos, business proposals, marketing plans, email correspondences, white papers, etc. I could say I was the best in the companies I worked for. I always sent out easy-to-read emails and proposals to clients. My bosses liked the stuff I put in.

But, I paid a price. I lost my ability to write and express myself in ways creative. And soulful. The words I used to employ years ago have, now, escaped me. Elusive like the nocturnal creatures. Rare as the white Bengal Tigers. My command of the vocabulary has left me, clinging to the words I know best.... lacking for words to find as synonyms to "thing", "place", and "time". Common and inconspicuous, I feel I have become.

With this commitment comes no particular thought or focus on how I would like my site to establish its identity. However, I most definitely plan this blogsite to have a "theme", if you will, or a reputation or a thread that leads to a creation of a short story or novel or screenplay... perhaps.

I haven't consciously established the rules for myself. I choose to go by a pen name, a nom de plume that I have wanted to use since college. Those who know me well will find out my real name. However again, all over my postings, I have consciously dropped snippets of clues. All of what I place here are non-fiction (except, of course, when I qualify a post or a series of posts as fictional). So far, these are the only two guidelines I have set for myself.

As for the other guidelines ---- I don't know yet. I guess it will just evolve.