the question for the day

What can I do to become a better writer?

Do you mean you're worried about your grade?

No . . . I just feel like my writing is . . . marginal. I want to know how to do better.

Well...

• There's no accounting for talent. Some people, regardless of their "intelligence," have the knack for putting stuff into words.
• Experience helps. Actually, it's irreplaceable.
• Writing is situation specific, isn't it? I mean, different disciplines, different career paths, require different ways of thinking and different ways of communicating ideas. I can therefore only show one so much about "doing better."
• Get used to the feeling. Most of us, I think, feel like our writing should be better than it is.

I want to get better at it too. Which means actually sitting down and working at the craft of serious prose. I've not done it in a long while, as my mind has been on its months-long perambulation. One of my intellectual mentors, Ben Jonson, would say: bring it to the forge and file again, turn it anew. In other words, keep trying.

the picture above is a portrait of Ben Jonson. Between you & me, he looks like a more portly Geoffrey Rush.