It's you... Not Me

I was talking to Ebi (my former German professor at Hillsdale College) during my visit last week and mentioned to him that I like to write and was hoping that maybe, just maybe, it would grow into something where I'd write and others would read. Perhaps some of them would even pay for it. It's a dream of all dreams because with what little writing I do, I know how difficult it is to not only hold someone's attention, but write a coherent story. It is easy to do the typical blog meandering that most writing exhibits these days, but it is difficult to come up with a story that flows and yet dips and bobs enough to keep the reader's interest. He made a statement that fell upon me with all the weight of a gigantic boulder, “you can't just write about your life, you have to be able to actually write a story... There's a difference.”
Think about that. I sometimes treat good writing as if it were a diary. Take WWdN: In Exile and dooce. I look forward to reading the latest postings because they almost always make me laugh. Both Wil and Heather talk about benign, some might say, boring, things. But, I hang on their words. Wil's description of his son mocking the death of a bottle of soda and Heather's writing about her daughter's blunt and inappropriate statements make me laugh. I can see the motions, I can hear the sounds, and I can fully imagine what is taking place when they describe a given event. I doubt everyone walks away from their writing with the same feeling, but I do, and that's the way I want to write. I want to write stories about life and the catch is this: I want to write them in such a way that others might be interested to continue reading...
Ebi's right. That's quite difficult.