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LITERACY RE-DISCOVERED
Are we becoming a new generation of writers? Since the days when the main form of communication between people was hand written letters, there has probably never been a time when so many of us communicated with each other through the written word. No matter how short form the medium.
When you have somewhere to write, even something as unassuming as a blog or as constrained as a tweet, you start to notice more about your life. What is it in this situation that is interesting enough to write about? What do I think about it? What do I want to say? What do I want people’s reactions to be? Socrates thought that “The unexamined life is not worth living” and this has probably never been so true as we rush headlong through life at ever increasing speed.
So why are so many of us sharing our thoughts and ideas online? All of this heightened awareness adds value even if no one reads what you have written. I was never a great diary writer and bought a fresh hardback diary each New Year only to barely make it through January updating it. And yet here I am still blogging after ten years, having written enough words to fill dozens of books, and having been read by hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Why do I do it? I do it because without writing my blog I wouldn’t be me. It has become a part of me. I think about writing for it all of the time. I think about my blog without thinking – if that makes sense. I am constantly observing the world around me with ...
