Trick Notes

I have to do a lot more business writing at work than I used to, and a consequence of that is I end up applying the same writing style to the stuff I post online. With business writing, you drain all the emotion out of the words and statements. It’s just fact, fact, fact, and analytical opinions. Nothing sentimental, no comedy. You can quickly see that doesn’t fit well with blogging. News reporting, yes, but not blogging.

I do manage to spew out on a regular basis some agitated opinion and irreverent witticisms on DataLounge.com, but under my own pseudonym, it’s been almost all fact reporting, telling of Ryan Conklin’s adventures since the beginning of the year. I did have a few posts using the Vancouver Olympics as as a subject to critique, but I didn’t write as much as I did with the Beijing games. I just let all that figure skating go by without any comments at all. I wanted to point out the physical assets of Brian Joubert and Stephane Lambiel and add my two cents on Lysacek vs Weir, but I couldn’t find the right mindset to write the words. I knew what I wanted to say to rip on Skate Canada (and Patrick Chan in particular), and I had my nails out for Elvis Stojko and his sour grapes complaints about the need to butch up the sport, but churning out an appropriate narrative just didn’t feel right at the time.

It’s been easier just to present the facts of the travels and actions of Ryan Conklin. Doing so fits with the writing style I have to use in real life. However, there have been several items that needed more than bullet points. The first was the book review of An Angel From Hell. You can read about the experience of writing the review at the link. The other item was posts about Ryan Conklin as my personal h**o. It would be hard to write about admiration without being sentimental. I needed some help to get in the mood and found it with listening to some appropriate music.

Usually I write online with the television on, which is actually distracting, but I do it anyway. For the Ryan Conklin admiration post, I picked something sad and put it on continuous repeat. I’m sentimental enough to find a lot of songs as sad, but some are definitely more so than others. For me the worst is Sarah McLachlan’s When She Loved Me. I couldn’t use that because I would be incapacitated. I used a song from Wicked instead (see below). With that I could still write through the misty eyes.

It seemed to work for me. I was able to capture what I felt. Curiously, the pathos is a good source for writing humor as well. It all comes from the same place. The sentimental mood is a reflection of your personal tragedy; the comedy is a reaction against it.