Diving into the New Year

I'm still looking for a new focus for this blog so I decided I'd try a more freeform, less focused effort for awhile. It will probably still be more or less about writing and at least some about my fantasy and science fiction, but maybe also about journaling, scrap-booking as a forum for writing, and non-fiction writing, which I've been neglecting lately or relegating to journal entries with no audience.

I have no end of ideas for topics for nonfiction writing and essays, and fiction other than science fiction and fantasy (though I've never liked the results of my attempts in that direction) and maybe with this as a prod (I try to blog at least twice a week on all my blogs) I'll work on my writing in those areas.

For example, I found myself self-editing a letter of all things! Letters might deserve editing, but it should be toward making them more interesting to the singular audience, not more "standard" which I was doing. (I almost decided to leave out the statement "I was still living in yesterday" as part of my comments on new technology. Then I thought, why not say it? A little bit of metaphor works in letters, too! I'm usually more matter of fact, if only to keep the letter brief: not every one I write to has lots of time to sit and read. But some of the people I write to are older, not able to get around well, and might enjoy a longer letter, and certainly won't complain about a more interesting one, even if I don't edit them fully (I hand write them).

Letter writing will probably get lots of my attention on this blog. I fear it is a lost and fading art. I've never been great at it, but I do my several a month and sometimes several in a week, still, love to receive them, and know from much experience that the handwritten letter is quite different from e-mails or any social media, both in content and experience. The next generation is already a deprived group and I'm sorry for them, for computers are a cold media and cannot convey what a handwritten letter can, any more than a handmade scarf can be replaced by a thin bit of cheap fleece. (On the other hand, a handwritten letter can only reach one person at a time, sometimes one person ever, so for the cooler substance of mass communication, computers have their place. Value...? I guess it depends on the substance. I'll try to make mine worth the bother of reading.)