A New World of Writing

Hello fellow bloggers and readers!

Until recently, if anyone had come up to me and asked me to explain to them what a blog is (not to mention Instagram, Snap Chat, Twitter, and whatever else may be out there), I would have told them that I have no idea and that they should probably “Google it!” Starting a blog even now is a bit outside of my usual comfort zone, but writing and I go way back.

I began writing when I could barely spell my own name. I used to grab a notebook from the huge stack of unused notebooks in the corner of my bedroom and write for hours in a small effort to write my own book. I even had a pretty good start a couple of times. I have also enjoyed keeping journals, writing poems, and writing extensive letters to my closest friends and family. I have always been shy with my writing, though, and I have never been eager to allow anyone to read my essays or poems. As I get older, it gets easier for me to feel comfortable with other people reading my writing, but it has taken years of shyly hiding it away under my bed before I could even admit that I liked writing.

Scholastically, my writing was very slim until my junior year in high school. In 11th grade I really started to develop my writing skills. Now, as a senior in high school, I have more experience but not nearly the experience I want to have. Always room for improvement!

I have always been inspired by a book’s content rather than the actual writing style of the author. Having said that, I have never liked Mark Twain, regardless of the humor and oddness of the situations he describes in his works. I do, however, like Robert Frost, John Milton, and Leo Tolstoy.

I enjoy an older style in many things and think old is often better and more authentic than the new. In the last two years, however, I have tried to become more 21st century savvy. Maybe my interest in older things is probably why I do not think a movie is worth watching unless it was made before the year 2000.

Regardless of how little I may know about “new” things, particularly with anything using the Internet, I hope to learn a lot on my blogging journey as it opens up a new world of writing to me. I also hope to discover how better to analyze the world around me.

– Melodi Johnson