Saturday, August 06, 2005

Writing

There's no one doing lifestyle blogging on the web today who I'd rather read than Wil Wheaton.

He has the true writer's gift of making the everyday fascinating. Everyone's had the experience of looking at the commonplace and perceiving something special; the frustration comes when you try to share that experience with a reader or listener. The professional writer can do it; the truly gifted writer can do it in a way that seems effortless.

Wil Wheaton got me so excited about poker (he plays competitively, and recently wiped out spectacularly at a high stakes game in Vegas) that I'm activly looking for a weekly poker game in Ballard.

In this blog entry, Wheaton writes about writing in as down-to-earth a way as I've seen in a long time. He shares with the late Northwest writer Stephanie Feeney the even rarer gift of writing well with a positive tone. So much "postive" writing comes across gushy, superficial and Pollyannish. It's much easier for an aspiring writer to sound clever and incisive while carping and whining than to get it together to praise something -- just compare the shrillings of The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger with balanced understatement of The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:59 AM

    That was a short hiatus, I must say.

    ReplyDelete