Revival

Things have slowed down considerably for me professionally over the past couple of weeks and I find myself in want of an outlet. So, I may post here a little more regularly (until such time as my agents are able to close a deal).

It seems like what I just said is the most commonly used phrase in the annals of blogging. "I may post here more regularly." Most of these sites are ultimately the result of a new year's resolution, people make a commitment to themselves to honor their creativity, or to finally start building their audience. But a blog is nothing unless a lot of work goes into it, so most of them end up having a disclaimer at the top about how often posts will come in. This sort of behavior isn't limited to blogs. Anywhere that people are putting themselves in the public eye in a way they aren't used to is subject to these sorts of apologies. This is one of my greatest pet peeves.

I find this is a common problem in speeches at weddings (and probably speeches in general, but I'm most often privy to wedding speeches). Almost always the best man and/or maid of honor will begin their speech with a paragraph pre-amble about the interesting things they thought about while trying to write, or even worse what they originally wrote before scrapping that and going with the speech they're about to deliver (side note: this is bad strategy, it suggests to the listener that your about to deliver a speech that you really believe in, considering you scrapped an entire other speech for it). I understand why this happens. Writing about writing is a great way to jar the creative process. You begin your process by writing the words "what am I going to write about" or "I need to write this speech" and you go from there. But no one tells you that once you've done that and launched into the meat of what you have to say that you should lop off that first paragraph.

If your wedding speech begins with the words "when I sat down to figure out what I was going to say" or "I don't usually give talks like this" look at what you say after that. Does that speech have a thesis statement in the first paragraph? If so, clip it. How did this post turn into a speech etiquette advice column? I'm not actually sure, but I guess, it's my way of telling myself to just start saying something the next time I post here.