20190409.0430

Between when I wrote the comments that posted yesterday and this piece, I did betake myself to address an earlier LinkedIN article I wrote. I returned to the ideas in "A View on Technical Writing" with "Another View on Technical Writing," noting another model of instruction and citing my own experience as a writer working outside academe. As I write this, the new article has yet to attract much attention, and that is not necessarily to my liking--but I cannot control what other see. I can, however, put myself and my work out where they can be seen and hope that people will look my way; I can make sure that, if and when they do, they have good things at which to look.
It is self-flattery, of course, to make the last remark. I am not entirely sure that I do any writing well; I have to wonder if the opposite is true, given the kinds of things that I have posted to this webspace. Not for nothing do I call it "ravings" first. I do decently enough, I think, in the other webspaces that I regularly address, the Tales after Tolkien Society blog and Elliott RWI, but I still wonder if "decently" is good enough to attract the kinds of attention I would like to receive for my work. Since I have not yet gotten that kind of attention, it occurs to me that it is not, although I do wonder if it's simply a matter of getting enough material together to arrive at what might be called a critical mass. Then again, some folks hit it off to begin with, and that does not seem to have been the case for me, and I wonder, too, if it is too late for me now...
Following such thoughts is not like to lead me to good places, though, and I already struggle enough to keep myself in something resembling a decent place, mentally. Again, it's not for nothing I call this webspace "ravings" first. I ought to keep in mind that I spent many years as a student; I spent long working to improve, long learning that none of us know it all, much as we might want to. If what I have done so far has not earned me the acclaim I would hope to have, it has been practice for that work that will, in time. If I do not continue along the way, then there is no chance that I will stumble into the thing that would bring others to me.
I am not in the position I once was, that institutional structures would bring people to me and give me the change to prevail upon them in some way that would fix me in their memories and allow me the time to make some small contribution to human knowledge that others might remember long. If I am to have such now, it will be because I have made it to be so. And that will not happen unless I continue to work to that end, writing here and elsewhere until I finally get where I feel like I need to be.