Practice really does make Perfect. Or at least, it makes you Better.

So, the first time I sent my manuscript out for friends and family to review, it was a really rough draft. Rough in the sense that I hadn't even read through the thing in its entirety myself. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I had been working on the cursed thing for SO LONG! I was anxious to get some feedback on the basic integrity of the story, and I needed a break. Having it out for review was a good reason to relax a little bit and start going to bed at a reasonable hour. So out it went. I knew it would have a few mistakes in it. It's hard not to make a mistake in three hundred pages, right?

Oh dear me. How I wish I could take back having ever sent out that first draft. Would you like to know why? Because this... I used these all the time... I apparently forgot... in my writing... what punctuation mark is actually used to end a sentence... I became incapable of ending a thought without implying... that it needed... to continue on... into the next sentence. I've mentioned this before. I am a walking elliptical nightmare.

Except, I'm not anymore. After combing through my story and realizing how horrendous it was to see so many dot, dot, dots, I've definitely weeded them out, almost completely. I think I left maybe four or five instances in all three hundred pages where it actually made sense as a legitimate form of punctuation.

(My other majorly huge annoying mistake made over and over? In to. It's one word Jenny!! In almost every case, unless you say, "I'm going in, to get the kids", into is one word. I know this. I have known this since my high school sophomore English class taught ever so dutifully by the lovely Ms. Anderson. But somehow, some way, this knowledge was not transferred to my writing. I'm still finding instances, three edits later, of in to used incorrectly. It's hugely annoying, and I think warrants a very serious conversation with the author of this incorrigible story. Do you know her? You should give her a talking to.)

So, my reason for bringing this up is not that I simply enjoy a hearty discussion of my literary weaknesses. I much prefer thinking my writing is perfect all the time, in every instance.

(Excuse me while I pull myself back from Neverland.)

Here's why I bring it up. Yesterday I read somewhere, on some blog that a great way to introduce your new readers to your writing is to list on your sidebar a selection of your most popular posts. So, using my google analytics and a simple comment count, I pulled out the posts that have garnered the most attention and listed them over there on my sidebar. Many of them are recent, but a few I pulled from deep in the dark archives of Mommysnarkdom.

And they were horrible.

I spent over an hour editing out those nasty ellipses and making "in to" one word. (At least my grammatical nightmares are consistent) I fixed countless errors from the tiny and probably inconsequential, to the hugely annoying, in your face mistakes that literally jumped off the screen and crawled directly under my skin where they whipped and wriggled around until I corrected them out of existence.

I am never one to publish quickly. Every blog I write is read, and re-read and edited until I see no visible mistakes. (Cough cough. Except for two weeks ago, when I misspelled my title THREE posts in a row. Yeah. Don't know what was up with me THAT week.) Even those older posts that gave me such literary indigestion last night were, at one point, esteemed publishable, or I never would have hit "Publish Post." How did I not see the errors before?

The difference is that almost every day, for nearly two years, I've been writing. It isn't always good writing. Sometimes it's trivial and flighty and completely inconsequential. But it's writing. It's sentence structure and punctuation and word choice. It's practice. And practice has (hopefully) made me a better writer. At the very least, it's made me more aware.

The little bit of bloggy housecleaning I did last night reminded me that just like practicing the piano, or running every day to get in shape for a 10K, writing is something you can practice too. The more you do something, the easier it will become. Writing is no exception to this rule.

It's tempting to settle down with the laptop and think "Today I will write a masterpiece." I'm either a good writer, or I'm not, right? Wrong. Time and practice and careful cultivation can turn good writers into great writers, and great writers into, well, into published writers.

As much as I would love it to be, it isn't an overnight process. So I will keep practicing. And I will keep coming back to this here blog, filling the files of cyberspace with my very own words. So thanks to all of you, my dear readers. My blogging journey thus far has taught me a great deal, and not just about writing. From all of you,  I have learned of motherhood and sisterhood and true friendship. My testimony has been touched and strengthened. I have laughed until I cried, and other times, just cried. But for my own personal sake, it's lovely and oh so very helpful to know that you all are out there; that even on a teeny tiny scale, my words are being read.

Makes me want to keep writing them, ya know?