Blogs fascinate me, even now, over a year after discovering blogs and now writing one. The fact that literally anyone can sit down and claim their space in the blogosphere and write whatever they want to write fascinates me. I think what is even more fascinating is that I can do this. I’m not a writer, I’ve never aspired to be a writer, I’ve really never thought that maybe someday it would be fun to write. I just do it. That’s probably obvious by the way that I write sometimes. I am very aware of how my writing sounds. I usually re-read what I have written several times before posting it, and even then, I might read it again after I post it and realize something doesn’t sound quite right. This morning I just read Bruce D. Johnson’s latest post on his greatest writing lesson ever. Bruce had the opportunity to meet with Carl F.H. Henry, the founder of Christianity Today and asked him a very pointed question:
As someone who aspires to write sometime in the future, what advice would you give a young writer?
Upon showing Bruce the third draft of a manuscript he was working on, which was obviously butchered by the red ink of revisions, Professor Henry said:
You see, the difference between an amateur writer and a professional is that an amateur writes something and says, ‘Oh, that’s good!’. But a professional always thinks, ‘That could be better,’ because the essence of good writing is rewriting.
He goes on to say:
Bruce, the only thing that stops a professional from continually rewriting a piece he’s written is a deadline.
I’m not doing Bruce’s post justice, go read it for yourself to get the full impact of these statements. This is a blog worth adding to your daily reads if it’s not already there. As I mentioned above, I am certainly not a professional writer and I don’t know the first thing about some of the mechanics of writing, but those two statements clarify for me the importance of rewriting and editing even the simplest of posts. I am enough of a perfectionist that I am all over this.