Scribbly scraggly

Of late, as I've become an addict of the lifestyle, self-improvement and human-interest oriented articles on Huffington Post, I've started to wonder what makes them so true to life, so suitable to my current situation and state of mind. Weren't blog posts supposed to be undirected musings, boring soliloquies, inscrutable liturgies on subjects that only generate apathy but never interest? Well, if I had thought that, I've apparently been reading the wrong kinds of blogs, and looking in the wrong places for interesting stuff to read. The truth is, human nature is interestingly divergent, yet strikingly similar. Scores of people have been in the same situations as I am in now, they've had similar experiences, chuckled at the same social gaffes, shaken their heads over the same misgivings, regretted similar blunders and bypassed the same obligations. For it is inherent to human nature to second-guess, share fears, look for justification, and gang up where possible...

As a writing and reading addict, I subscribe to the newsfeed of several news websites, and enjoy being fed trivia, facts, conjecture and opinions from around the world. While all these sites win over the other in being awkward at some point or other with regard to language quality, presentation and sensitivity, they are indisputably neck to neck in vying with each other on who gets the headline in first. To make such a comment, one hardly need follow the newsfeed for a week or two. The stories reported are the same, the content presented is hardly variant, but the spot is open for the news channel which brings in the story first, and it is pretty much anybody's game right up to the point the browser refreshes itself and brings in a whole new bunch of posts. As a result, browsers are on the tick-tock more than ever before, and the parade is sometimes so much livelier than the noteworthy NYSE trading ticker tape. Hey, this keeps the others on the toes, and I am sure it contribu...

The flow of writing does not come easy. In the last few weeks, I have picked up certain writing tips from here and there, and they seem to make sense to my own writing practices and personality. The very first one is no great tip, rather it's an observation which a journalist who also does freelance writing made. Writers have to love reading too. And they have to have real love for reading -- the kind that inspires and forces them to empty their eon thoughts on paper or electronic orbits. That makes sense to me. Only when we read different authors, critique their writing styles and imagine how we would have dealt with similar (or different) plot lines, do we feel the urge to write surge within. We gather language, vocabulary, usage, phrases, expressions, descriptions and scenery. When this happens, writing shall come easy to me. By reading, I would take it to mean all kinds of reading. Right from reading the newspaper to articles on the internet, other blogs t...