There’s a lot of bad advice on blogs. Some of it even seems like it’s good: “Use your blog to become a better writer. Write regularly, and you can’t help but get better.” Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror is the most-recent I’ve found promoting this idea.

The problem for me: it doesn’t work.

Over the years, I have learned to hate the way I write on my blogs. I used to write with rhythm and a nice smooth flow. I enjoyed reading what I wrote. I enjoyed the sound of my sentences and the way they felt in my mouth.

Maybe this is happening because I don’t write fiction anymore. Maybe it’s because I write thousands of words every day, but they’re mostly in email and most of them are jargon that even the participants in the thread won’t be able — or want — to decipher in a few months.

Whatever the reasons, I need to find my way back to enjoying my writing.

He points to a couple of good resources: Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don’t Want to Work at Writing and Hints for revising. He also points to Elmore Leonard’s writing tips: Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle.

The advice he gives is good. For most people, writing more — especially in public — is a great way to improve your writing. I just need to figure out why it hasn’t worked for me.