You know I never really liked writing when I was younger. Heck in school I would do practically anything to get out of writing an essay, book report, or a term paper. Nowadays I write more than ever did through blogs, forum, and other web endeavors some days I write more code then words. Other days I write things that sound logical but when I go back and read them a few days later they sound like incoherent ramblings. 
Most of you probably wouldn’t be surprised and have heard me say that I’m not a good writer. Yet I’ve had many people tell me that I’m a great writer. I think I’ve based my ‘bad writer’ self image in the fact that I’m not good with grammar; I just throw semi-colons and commas around for in my writings for laughs. Often times I do think that specific punctuation mark should be where I put it but I’m probably wrong. I probably should of paid more attention in elementary school language arts classes. Language Arts was the PC word for in English when I went to elementary school. When I got to high school they just called it English. I wonder why.
Anyhow I often will write something be it a blog or forum post real quick hit submit, read it over again, and then forget about it. A couple of days later I go back to it for what ever reason and realize I’ve made several mistakes yet no one pointed them out to me. I think most people’s brains auto-correct. I wrote a post on my DJ forum last night an typed ‘got’ instead of ‘go’ and ‘passed’ instead of ‘based’. It’s something that I catch myself doing all the time even though I proof read, sometimes several times but I never catch it right away only when I come back to it a day or so later.
I blame muscle memory; I type so much and often so fast that my fingers must be so used to me typing got instead of go that they type it and my brain accepts it as go without thinking twice and on proof read my brain is remembering what it thinks I just typed. Muscle memory is no joke, the military uses it to train the troops, I used to think it was a farce but after watching how the secret service are trained I see it works.
Coming back to my writing, I’m generally coming to think that now-a-days I’m a good but could be better writer and the only way to get better at is by writing more and more.
Something that I’d like to improve on:
Using place cards such as anywho, anyhow they’re filler words.
I statements. I notice I use lots of I statements. Back in middle school we had a teacher that would automatically fail a paper with more then 3 I statements. I thought she was a total jerk but there’s a good reason for it I statements don’t engage readers to get involved in the story, paper, or article. Expanding on that we and us statements. If I’m only talking about myself why in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks am I saying ‘we’ and ‘us’
Lastly conciseness. I tend to ramble on, especially about stuff which I’m passionate about. I could stand to loose some of the ‘gory details’
What about your writing habits? Are you a great writer?
