Category: Uncategorized

Writing Tip: It’s Great to Suck at Writing

by J.J. Probasco, posted in Uncategorized

A good perspective on writing, this time from Karen Rinaldi on Writer’s Digest.  It resonates with me, like it should for every writer, because every writer sucks at writing sometimes.  You could set that to a Dean Martin tune to help keep it in your head to remind you that, as I like to stress to myself, you’re not in this alone.  Everybody’s gone through what everybody goes through.  So here’s Karen Rinaldi and a good discussion on sucking:

It’s Great to Suck at Writing

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Author Karen Rinaldi sucks at surfing, but she continues to dedicate hours to it anyway, and she explains why we should also be okay with failure in many forms—even our writing.

I’ve spent the last two decades devoting myself to an activity that I will never master. Worse, I will never even reach mediocrity. I surf. And I will always suck at surfing. Even though the calculus of hours spent as a factor of my skill level doesn’t seem to justify continued effort, the joy I get from trying (and often failing) makes it worth it because it’s great to suck at something.

And nothing gets us acquainted more quickly with sucking at something than being a writer.

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Surfing and writing are not dissimilar. One embodies physical chaos and the effort it takes to perform within it; the other involves internal chaos and the effort it takes to make sense of it in the form of words. The satisfactions of a well-ridden wave and a well-written sentence bring hits of pleasure that compel me to keep trying to do it again and again. But as any surfer or writer knows, catching a wave and writing well are harder than they seem. Practice makes us better, absolutely, but sucking is part of the process, so it’s best to make it our friend and not our enemy.

So many things are harder than they seem when performed by people who know how. “How hard can it be?” is both the arrogance of the clueless and the fuel of delusion. We learn the hard way because it’s the only way. All of the nonsense about short-cutting your way to success is all a big fat lie. Only by doing and failing, writing and revising, paddling and wiping out will we experience or create anything worthwhile. It’s always harder than it seems. If we embrace sucking at something, we’ll develop the temerity to not quit and to push through the discomfort of knowing we aren’t the master of anything and then continue to do it anyway.

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The Meaning Of Memorial Day

by J.J. Probasco, posted in Uncategorized

Trip To GA 1307-08 - Andersonville 14

It’s Memorial Day!  Spring is here, summer is swiftly approaching, schools are letting out, swimming pools are opening, families and friends are getting together for fun and food and fellowship.  Enjoy it!

But please take a few moments to remember what today is all about.  The freedom we’re enjoying didn’t come easily, and it most certainly didn’t come free.  Please think about the 1.4 million men and women who gave their lives for our freedom.

One of those I think of is my great-great-great uncle, William Leach.  He was mustered into Company B of the 115th Illinois Infantry on September 13, 1862 in Okaw, Illinois, at the age of 22.  We found out after we moved to Middle Tennessee that his unit was involved in the Tullahoma Campaign, and it’s entirely possible that he actually walked or camped where our front yard is now, at sometime during that campaign.  We don’t really know how or where or when, but he was captured and became a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison.  He died there on September 10, 1864, of scurvy and starvation.  Private William Leach is buried at Site 8464 at Andersonville National Cemetery.

Wars are made by politicians, but the military men and women who answer the call are the ones who lay down their lives to protect and defend friends, families, and freedom.  1.4 million American men and women have done that.

This is their day.

Remember them.