My name is Melissa Krawczyk. (Sounds like “krof-check”)
Nice to meet you. I’m not sure how you got here, but I hope you’ll stick around for a while, or pop in and out. I’ll be writing whether anyone is reading or not.
I’ve been working on and off on my book – Losing Your Life to Save It – for a little over a year now and I have found it incredibly challenging to actually sit down and write during the brief bits of uninterrupted time that I have each day. (Young kids, dogs, classes and interests galore) It’s easy to shoot thoughts out into the Twitterverse or write long comments on Facebook, but gathering those thoughts into something coherent? Yeah. That’s another story. A lot of the topics that I write about on social media are related to the topics in my book, but I haven’t found a good way to harness that work and tie it into my larger project. (If you know me in person, you’ll know that I rarely stop moving and I have many irons in the fire at all times.)
So. Here we are. I am starting a blog! I’ve been kicking this idea around for a while, but it just seemed like SO MUCH WOOORRK. But who am I kidding? I can easily spend an hour or more on Twitter conversing with a random person (or a good friend). Why not mine those tweets and turn them into something far more useful? Something without a character limit.
The plan is to become more disciplined and use what I write on social media and in conversations with friends and colleagues to flesh out the chapters of my book-in-progress. Much of the book will be stories of other people, but there are still many areas where I have to weave my own thoughts and experiences into those stories. I NEVER imagined that I would become a writer. I spent high school fending off those suggestions from teachers, and pursuing science instead. I even used the lack of a writing requirement as a criterion for selecting a college! Back in 1994 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) didn’t make you take a single English class if you passed the expository writing exam. I passed with flying colors and spent the next years doing the kind of writing I enjoyed – technical writing! But times have changed and I no longer look at writing with dread, because I have realized in the many years since then, that it is a wonderful way to express ideas and share them – and compare them – with the ideas of others. And now that Richard Dawkins is advising me on my book, you’d better believe I want to do more than a half-assed job. I’ll tell you more about the book soon, I promise.
I want this blog to reflect my thoughts and capture my ideas. I imagine I’ll share my opinions on whatever catches my attention – current events, news, social media. But I’ll also write sections of the book and ask for input from anyone who finds themself reading what I write.
Feel free to stop in and read a bit, leave a comment, suggest a topic. Even if no other eyes see my work, it will still help me write & that is the point.
See you soon!
Melissa
P.S. See how far away that tiny little glowing sun orb looks in the picture below? That’s how far I feel I need to go before I reach my goal. I hope this blog that is starting out like a life raft eventually turns into a strong sailing ship. Fingers crossed! (Nah – I don’t believe in luck anymore.)
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