“I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear” ― David Foster Wallace

I am resurrecting this blog after a hibernation of three years. An upheaval in my Force has put me on my own resources, so there is no longer any pressure not to write exactly what I feel like writing. At least that's the excuse that I gave myself over the last decade or so.

I've always written long, descriptive letters that the receivers always told me they enjoyed. So, given an opportunity, I said I'd like to be a writer. Visions of successful essayists would dance in my head as I saw myself becoming a literati member—sort of the toast of the intellectual prose posse.

Unfortunately for my readers, instead of hanging on every word or turn of phrase, what they got was indecipherable gibberish at best and lazy efforts at worst. It seems that writing is not unlike any exercise; you have to do it religiously to get results. 

In the past, by sheer luck, I was able to get involved with some small success in the golf and travel line of work. I published, along with Peter Corden, a photographer friend, a coffee table book about golf courses in Sweden. That led to a small output of work for golf magazines in Sweden. It was all fun for the time. I traveled to many nice places to play golf. I met many wonderful people, famous and not so, and attended many important golf events. Too bad I was unable to relate my adventures to the blank page. I was so busy enjoying the ride that I never found the snapshot, the essence, of the experience I was having. I couldn't capture the excitement that the reader could relate to. I was there, but my readers were not.

The #1 ability that any writer needs is getting the reader to take a personal interest in reading the story. Without that ability, you're just wasting the reader's time.

So, now I am on my own, without any pressure to write anything but what interests me. Of course, I understand that my little blog will remain unseen and unread by 99.9% of any bloc of readers. And I think I think that 0.1% is too high. But that's okay as I can be a writer, if only in my own mind.

Until next time,

Gene