"Quick To Respond," they said of him.

Sorry Amy, all I could find was this.

But French is nice, I guess.

And welcome, Jaden and Methinks! Eh, I only had one clean glass so I just poured Mr. Pibb in with the hot fudge.

I am calling my concoction "Hey Mr!."

Let me know how it is.

So I guess I've broken my loose guideline of not linking to people I don't know personally.

"Should I start a blog/Live Journal?" she wondered.

I have been discussing blogging/Live Journal'ing lately, most notably with Dana.

It would seem that even the blog/LJ is still susceptible to that most-intriguing of questions:

Why?

But it's answered easily enough, I think.

To write.

There may be other reasons as well, but at it's core it is the desire to communicate, to make a thought into something more tangible, that can be expressed.

I like to write. Now more than ever.

When I started this blog, I would have to drag myself over to my laptop. I was averaging roughly a post a week.

I felt the way I have been hearing a lot of people say they feel about writing: "It's not good enough."

But I got better at it by writing more. It was the only way I knew to improve.

Because I had already tried getting better by not writing and met the same result as when I had tried to get stronger by not working out.

So write.

How do I write?

I write what I want to read. I write when I think of a joke and no one is around for me to tell it to. Do I write for an "audience"? Well, you should already know the answer to that...but it's not exactly a "Yes." I am aware that I have an "audience." I even know some of that audience. But I only wish I knew them well enough to write something they'd all enjoy. But I don't. So by default, I must entertain myself.
And I am easy to please.

Maybe that's why you aren't writing, eh? A writer has to spend time with themselves. Sometimes a lot of time. Sometimes too much time.

Why don't you want to spend time with yourself?

You're very interesting. And no offense, you might not even know it. (But trust me, that's the best kind. Like the hot girl that doesn't know she's hot.) I mean, I can never say for sure what you're going to do next.

So surprise me. Don't waste your mental energy worrying about what people like. Because no matter what you write, I assure you someone isn't going to like it. But then, that's really their problem, isn't it? And you'll never know exactly what your readers might like, so don't go too nuts over that, either.

So what have you been up to?

I'd love to hear about it.

And if you want much better advice, this Neil Gaiman cat seems to know what he's doing enough to write okay. He even said something today that I agree with:

You know, for most authors, that's the fun bit, the whole head filled with otherwise-useless facts bit.

When you write, everything in your head is useful. Everything you know, everything you've felt, is all in there waiting to be utilized for something. And what you don't know, you go and find out. Like when I was writing earlier about "To Kill A Mockingbird," I had to go to the Kansas State website to find out what people from Kansas might be called. I knew "Okies" from Oklahoma thanks to Steinbeck, but I found myself at a complete loss for Kansas natives. Now I know they can be called a lot of things, but I'll refer to them forever as "Jayhawks."

I've also learned that everyone can teach you something. So teach me. I'm listening.

And there are the fairly common times, like tonight, where you thought you were going to write something short about a completely different subject and then some kind of dam breaks and I don't know what exactly it was holding back but now everything's sticky and smells like chocolatey root-beer.

Now who wants to go out for strawberry milk-shakes?