What is word fancies? What is my purpose for this blog? As I outline in the “About word fancies” section of the site and the blurb to the left (edit: right; directions are not so much my strong suit), I want to use this blog as an outlet for my writing and as a place for me to share my thoughts, ideas, and what I’m learning about being a grown-up, a wife, a friend, a reader, an editor, a homeowner, and whatever other adjectives I can come up with to describe myself.
When I was first introduced to blogs, they seemed to be a little too much like journals that everyone could read. This is coming from the not-even-teenage girl who asked her sister to burn her journals if she died, a kind of morbid thought for someone so young. (Note: I still have some of these journals, and I don’t know what my young self was thinking: They are mostly just chronicles of my elementary school life and which friend I was mad at. Nothing too scandalous, but I suppose it's all about perspective.) This type of blog works for some people, but I found I never kept up on the ones I created at the urging of friends.
Then I started working 8-5 and just needed a break from work sometimes, and reading other people’s blogs provided that. I learned that there were blogs that were targeted to specific interests—my interests—and blogs that provided tutorials and inspiration and ideas that I could relate to. And then I got engaged and discovered wedding blogs and the amazing ideas and inspiration you can find on them.
One blog led me to another blog and then another blog. Friends recommended their favorites, and those blog authors recommended other blogs. Pretty soon, I was reading the same blogs every day and making these people’s sites part of my daily life. And I learned that blogs can become communities, businesses, or really, whatever you want them to be. So now, it’s just a matter of defining what I want mine to be, and I want that definition to change and evolve as I keep writing it.
I never took any creative writing classes in college, because I was too scared to branch out of the organized loveliness my journalism classes and literature-based English classes provided me with. But now I find myself wishing I had, as my writing feels so structured and I can’t seem to break out of that shell.
For example, I kept a journal of our recent trip to Europe, where I detailed what we did every day on our excursions, our experiences at the ship’s bar, and even what we ate for dinner. It wasn’t until I had my husband (still weird to write that!) write about our day in Rome that I realized I was doing that. Rather than talk about our itinerary and what we had seen, he described his impressions of the city and what it meant to him being there. I don’t think that either of us has a correct writing style; instead, as my friend Leah points out, he’s in “writer” mode and I’m in “reporter” mode. I hope that this blog can force me to write creatively while still reporting, because after years of journalism, it’s unlikely it will ever leave me.
Because I want this post to tell you what you can expect to read here, I want to point out that I will try to incorporate pictures as I get going, but as this is a writing blog, it’s likely that my posts will instead feature lots of words. Or a moderate amount of words, depending on how I’m doing that day. As an avid blog reader, I know that pictures can add interest to your posts and provide illustrations to complement what you’re talking about. But for my blog, I’d rather focus on my writing and intersperse pictures if I find it to be necessary. I have nothing against pictures (really—you should see how many we have hanging up in our house) but I want to do what works for me here. And because it’s my blog, I can do that. So I will, and I hope you will enjoy the words I come up with.
When I was first introduced to blogs, they seemed to be a little too much like journals that everyone could read. This is coming from the not-even-teenage girl who asked her sister to burn her journals if she died, a kind of morbid thought for someone so young. (Note: I still have some of these journals, and I don’t know what my young self was thinking: They are mostly just chronicles of my elementary school life and which friend I was mad at. Nothing too scandalous, but I suppose it's all about perspective.) This type of blog works for some people, but I found I never kept up on the ones I created at the urging of friends.
Then I started working 8-5 and just needed a break from work sometimes, and reading other people’s blogs provided that. I learned that there were blogs that were targeted to specific interests—my interests—and blogs that provided tutorials and inspiration and ideas that I could relate to. And then I got engaged and discovered wedding blogs and the amazing ideas and inspiration you can find on them.
One blog led me to another blog and then another blog. Friends recommended their favorites, and those blog authors recommended other blogs. Pretty soon, I was reading the same blogs every day and making these people’s sites part of my daily life. And I learned that blogs can become communities, businesses, or really, whatever you want them to be. So now, it’s just a matter of defining what I want mine to be, and I want that definition to change and evolve as I keep writing it.
I never took any creative writing classes in college, because I was too scared to branch out of the organized loveliness my journalism classes and literature-based English classes provided me with. But now I find myself wishing I had, as my writing feels so structured and I can’t seem to break out of that shell.
For example, I kept a journal of our recent trip to Europe, where I detailed what we did every day on our excursions, our experiences at the ship’s bar, and even what we ate for dinner. It wasn’t until I had my husband (still weird to write that!) write about our day in Rome that I realized I was doing that. Rather than talk about our itinerary and what we had seen, he described his impressions of the city and what it meant to him being there. I don’t think that either of us has a correct writing style; instead, as my friend Leah points out, he’s in “writer” mode and I’m in “reporter” mode. I hope that this blog can force me to write creatively while still reporting, because after years of journalism, it’s unlikely it will ever leave me.
Because I want this post to tell you what you can expect to read here, I want to point out that I will try to incorporate pictures as I get going, but as this is a writing blog, it’s likely that my posts will instead feature lots of words. Or a moderate amount of words, depending on how I’m doing that day. As an avid blog reader, I know that pictures can add interest to your posts and provide illustrations to complement what you’re talking about. But for my blog, I’d rather focus on my writing and intersperse pictures if I find it to be necessary. I have nothing against pictures (really—you should see how many we have hanging up in our house) but I want to do what works for me here. And because it’s my blog, I can do that. So I will, and I hope you will enjoy the words I come up with.
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