One reason I challenged myself to blog every day of 2023 was to practice my writing.
I write for work—but not every day. And certainly not like I used to write for work, when I worked for Oxford Dictionaries, and was constantly developing new blog content. When I write for work, it’s usually project narratives or cover letters: documents with either a voiceless voice or a voice not my own.
The proverbial jury is still out on whether this daily practice has made any objective improvements to my writing. Certainly, I feel that my writing has improved. And it feels good to write every day! It’s become like playing guitar for me: if I don’t play guitar, my day feels incomplete.
The past few days of being sick made writing every day (and playing guitar!) hard if not impossible. Now feeling marginally better, I’m reminded of something that concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz said about practice:
If I do not practice a day, I notice the difference in my playing. If I do not practice a week, my wife notices the difference, and if I do not practice a month, the audience notices the difference.
Now, it’s not to say that my writing or guitar-playing is equivalent to Horowitz’s piano chops—but I get at least the first part of his statement. I can tell when I haven’t written or played. There’s a rustiness that takes a few extra minutes to scrape off. Does anyone else notice? Maybe not. But I do, and that’s the important thing here.
Taylor Coe 