Word alignment

Lately, I’ve been more aware of the process of blogging than I am usually. That’s mostly because lately I’ve sometimes been unable to write a post, or started ones that I never completed. That got me to thinking about how all these words aligned themselves.

So I was kind of surprised when fellow blogger Roger Green wrote recently about his blogging and something I’ve experienced, too, that the blog basically “writes itself”. He said, “I have a vague notion of what I want to say, where I want to go, but as often as not, something I write surprises me. ‘I didn't know I was going to write THAT; hmm, that's interesting.’” In my case, that’s at least usually a good thing.

Roger went on to say, “But lately, there have been a half dozen different topics that have just refused to write themselves.” That happens to me all the time, especially lately. Usually it’s that the words won’t arrange themselves, sometimes I lose interest in the topic and a few times it just goes on too long.

Which led me to a quick tally: In the nearly three years that I’ve been doing this blog, I’ve written 1,130 posts, not counting this one (pedants might point out that some of those posts have been YouTube or similar videos, or other things that I’ve found elsewhere; true enough, but I usually add a comment to it). Over that same period, I’ve written 213 “drafts”. Many of those drafts were just early versions of things I later posted, but most have remained “drafts”.

So, despite appearances to the contrary, I don’t just slap this blog together—not usually, anyway. This is also the main reason I’ve sometimes skipped days lately. When the words don’t align, they just don’t.