Trying too hard

Maybe I've been trying too hard to keep my blog posts down to two or three a week. It seems odd to me when I see that I mentioned "Rainy Sunday" on my last post and now it's already Wednesday. But before I get started on today's post, I'd like to point you to an absolutely wonderful blog, if you haven't already discovered it.

Taken from The Land of Linda by Murr Brewster

Murr Brewster has a post today that simply blew my socks off. (The link under that amazing sand castle will take you there.) Sometimes I have to remember, when I read a post like this one, that if I decide to write in a voice that is not my own, it just doesn't work. I wrote to Murr and asked for permission to copy this picture from the post, and whether or not she or her friends made this incredible pyramid. She replied,

Isn't that something? I have a bunch of pictures of it--and no, we didn't make it. We happened on it, just before the ocean claimed it again. It's the sort of thing that just happens in Linda Land. 

 I've been reading a lot and went to see a movie with my friend Judy yesterday. We waffled between seeing "Get Low" and "Cairo Time" and finally went to see the latter. I don't know how I feel about it; it was a quiet movie with good acting, and it dovetails right into the book I'm reading right now: Shantaram, a book set in India. Someone suggested that I read it, and when I saw it in the bookstore I almost didn't buy it, since it's as big and thick a book as War and Peace (well, 936 pages anyway). Once I started it, though, I'm having a hard time putting it down. I wonder how much of this "novel" is simply autobiographical and how much is fiction, since the liner notes about him echo the story I'm reading. I'll write a review of it once I'm done.

Plus I also have two other books waiting for my attention, "Halfway to Heaven" about a guy who climbed all the Colorado Fourteeners with his son, and a brand-new E.L. Doctorow book, "Homer & Langley." At this rate I'll have my nose buried in books for quite a while.

Back to the title of this post, though: "Trying too hard." I follow sixty-something blogs. I don't know how it happened, it just did. Several of my favorite bloggers have a blogroll or mention special blogs or posts they find intriguing, and before I know it, I'm off to read yet another new one and I've become a follower. These days I actually hesitate before heading off to a new blog, because I am already stuck in this time sink that keeps me glued to the computer for way too many hours a day.

How do YOU keep writing in your own voice? I am constantly blown away by some of the brilliance I run across in the blogosphere. Great writing that moves me, makes me think, challenges my assumptions -- these are all given to me every day. I hope I can learn some new tricks of the trade... by amplifying my own writing, not inflating it. Or worse yet, trying to write like someone else and failing miserably.
:-}