There seems to always be an excuse why it’s not a convenient time to write.  Often this hesitance comes because I’ve spent much of my day writing, or better said, preparing for the writing stage (i.e. reporting.)

What ever happened to the days of writing for the sake of writing? In college, I’d sneak off during a lull in the school week to capture a moment. It was admittedly a self conscious exercise. I pictured myself reading from the journal as a grown up, allowing the writing to bring about a nostalgic recreation of that moment’s colors, smells, the excitement. These moment weren’t always the most poignant – though sometimes they were — and they were rarely as well thought out as I’d like. For the most part, they are raw moments I’ve tried to capture in a few pages.

I bring this up because I’d like to use this website as a sort of young reporter’s journal. There’s a point in a cub reporter’s first year or so when the formula of news writing is no longer awkward. It begins to kind of pour out without all that much thought. There are certain phrases we turn to without much thought. “Expressed concern,” comes to mind. Sure, this lingo is widely accepted, and, in fact, expected, but it also seems knee-jerk, tired and lacking creativity.

Swing to the other side, the “creative” side and you come off as trying to hard. (Quite a vulnerable position for a writer to be in, actually.)

Really what we’re aiming for here is simplicity, economy and elegance. I also aspire to throw in a healthy dose of sass.

I’ve gotten a bit off topic from my intention of posting about making time to write. For whatever reason, I’ve needed to let my mind  — and finger tips —wander to the topic of style. Why? Let me try to make that connection: I find it difficult to sit down and write because I must shift among the amorphous lines of news writing, blogging, journaling and letter writing and somehow recover my voice in the process.

Like most things, I bet this is one of those muscles that just needs to be exercised.