OPENING LINES

APRIL 14, 2019 – On this site you will find  accounts, musings, anecdotes, diatribes, observations, and pontifications by a reasonably aware, Boomer-age, white guy whose curiosity and other mental faculties are still largely intact. That guy is me, or rather, “I.” My hope is to draw and hold attention by limiting each entry to fewer than 500 words. To maintain flexibility, however, I reserve the right to serialize.

Attention spans narrow constantly as the Information Age expands inexorably. This dichotomy places a premium on good writing. Yet hurried email and too much texting and Tweeting wreck a lot of our writing. Just when the complexity of life demands greater critical thinking and more clarity of expression than ever before, our dumb thumbs on smartphone screens gum up the works. Predictive text makes matters worse.

Good writing takes long, frequent practice—I say, daily, with pen and paper, as well as on a full-fledged keyboard. As a life-long daily writer (diarist, essayist, correspondent, novelist), I’ve accumulated reams of practice. I hope you’ll find the better measure of it in my posts. Decades of law practice have piled on more writing practice—though I divulge this sheepishly: the written word is a lawyer’s primary tool of trade, but the tool is often dull and unwieldy.

Here I will do my damndest to serve up well-ordered words telling a good story, making a thought-out point, providing a different perspective. However imperfect the result, I’ll aim, at least, to give your balloon added helium to lift your thoughts above the daily noise.

See you again soon and often–I hope.

The Writer (right or wrong)

© 2019 Eric Nilsson