Writing About Your Life

I had my first ever employee review on Wednesday.

It was really good, actually. Lots of complimentary things, including a prediction that I will "go very far in the field of journalism."

But this stuck out: "You're a much better reporter than writer," my editor said to me, peering over his coffee cup while preparing to take a sip. "You've got very few holes in your stories, and you always have fabulous details to include. You can really get people to talk to you. But your writing ... Sometimes I feel like it doesn't really flow together. I think you need to work on having each paragraph support the weight of the one above it and lead into the one below it."

Now, I'm not 100 percent sure what that means. But I am a driven, type-A, prep-school educated oldest child, and that means that I need to do something it.

This blog is what I am doing.

I'm undertaking a challenge to myself to improve my writing. I am going to spend a year writing about my life. Eight-hundred words a day.

The inspiration for this daunting and perhaps misguided project is a book called "Writing About Your Life" by William Zinsser. Those who have taken a journalism class or two will know him as the author of "On Writing Well," one of the premier books on writing well (heh).

It was sitting on my bookshelf looking at me this afternoon as I contemplated how to improve my writing. I thought, "Well, I'll just go through that chapter by chapter, and write about what he tells me to."

That's what I'll do. There are only 13 chapters, though, so after that I'll have to find some new inspiration for topics about my life. Any suggestions are welcome. I hope the blog will be more in the style of David Sedaris than James Frey (and by that I mean not made up).

I'm not promising an entry every single day, but ALMOST every day. Harass me if I am not getting the job done.

I have a very wise friend who believes that blogs are dumb and droning if they do not have a point to them, as well as a set end date. I agree. So I will keep this blog until Dec. 1, 2007, and then it will disappear into the Internet abyss.

(End note: Is it ironic that the blog's spell checker doesn't recognize the word blog?)