I heard a "blogger" on NPR this morning, totally unprepared and ineffective, trying to make arguments by doing this trick where she would just repeat her beliefs or start down one path and then simply stop, ask the moderator and the other people to FORGET WHAT SHE HAD JUST SAID and then stated her beliefs again, ignoring the question entirely. It was a lot of fun listening to her make a fool of herself and edit her little blog entry in real-time....
My number one son recently saw Garrison Keillor do his live radio show, "A Prarie Home Companion," in Chicago. "He doesn't even use notes for his monologue," the awestruck kid reported. Actually, I knew that, because my husband and I have seen Keillor a couple of times, but I marveled anew that he can actually tell a story right in front of people, without constantly moving lines around and then deleting them and then sighing and putting them right back where they had been to begin with.
If you're scratching your head right now, you are not a writer. Unless, of course, you're one of those annoyingly talented individuals who writes in longhand on legal pads and never crosses anything out. The rest of us tend to pound out some bit of drivel and then polish it until it begins to glow with a modicum of sense. In fact, there are those among us (and I am one) whose work requires so much revising and refining that we simply would not be writers but for the grace of Bill Gates and MS Word.
I am not nearly as much fun at parties as some of you appear to assume I must be. I am highly distractable, so I frequently lose track of what I'm saying. And I stumble over my own words. And repeat myself. All of which means I would not be good on the radio. So if I ever accidentally become famous and somebody wants to interview me on NPR, I'll have to think up a good excuse to decline the invitation. Because although I did not hear the interview with the blogger mentioned in the post I quoted above, and I have no idea who she was or what she was supposed to be discussing, I know exactly what she sounded like.
She sounded exactly like me. Poor thing.
5 comments:
Well, that's what's good about Blogging. You can revise it until you sound smart....uh...I mean cute! :-) How's the orchid? Is it still alive? Its cousin wants to know!
Writing and speaking (especially in public) are so completely different, and yet somehow people assume that if you can write, then you can speak.
I'm proof that not all writers can speak, but now I'm wondering if all (good) public speakers can write.
Bonnie, I haven't killed the orchid yet, but I think that speaks more of its will to live than my careful nurturing.
I figured you would demand proof that the plant is still hale and hearty, but just now when I just reached for my digital camera, I found it gone.
Someone has absconded with my trusty Nikon!
Heads will roll.
Sureeeee they have! You are running out the door right now looking for another orchid. Don't do like my friend did when she killed her son's girlfriend's Beta fish.....She forgot what color the girl had and replaced it with another color. It was blue and she replaced it with green!
I sure can relate. On paper I make sense. Verbally, I can varely string words together, especially if I'm nervous.
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