As mentioned earlier, this year, I'd like to get better at writing.
How come?
Since Twitter, SMS and the like have surged in popularity over the last few years, a lot has been written about a shortened attention span, the curious habit of an entire generation to communicate exclusively in abbreviations (cya, lol!) and so on. I am not going to bore you with another version of that. (Ironically, the most ardent critics of 140-character communications seem to publish their pages-long articles in places like the the New York Times, which the average addressee of said criticism is unlikely to have on their reading list, except for, perhaps, the headlines they might be following on Twitter… But I digress.)
So "blogging more" is not my personal crusade against Twitter, but more about improving my writing in what's not my mother tongue and generally becoming more fluent at putting my thoughts into words.
Challenge: Accepted
Therefore, I've challenged myself to write a blog post at least once a week.
I went for once a week (rather than every day) because I don't think I have enough time to make quality posts every day. And I don't think I am doing my readers a favor by turning my blog into a quasi-twitter.
As far as topics go, I should have plenty of tech projects to blog about, like my screenshot app or the Firefox Add-ons I wrote.
Additionally, I might experiment some with writing fiction. I haven't done that a lot before (in English, anyway) and I might well suck at it, but I won't know until I try ;)
So that I won't have to come up with the topics all by myself, there are a number of writing challenges out there I can borrow from. Wordpress.com has The Daily Post, for example. It's targeted at wordpress.com users, but who cares. Some of their challenges are a tad cheesy, but since theirs are daily and mine is weekly, I'll have plenty of topics to choose from.
Another interesting writing challenge seems to be the Trifecta Challenge, that's all about the number 3. Their "weekday challenge", for example, uses a word from Merriam Webster and requires you to write about the third definition of it. Intriguing.
Let's do it!
Luckily for you, gentle reader, there's not much you need to do, except maintain your attention span beyond 140 characters. Luckily by the time you read this, you've proven yourself well!
I hope you like my little experiment and will enjoy my writing. Off we go!