Improving What's Here

One of the delights of life is that improvement is possible.   The fact of improvement is elusive, I know, but you have to admit it's possible.  So where do you look for help?  Looking at criticisms?  There's constructive criticism, isn't there?  In my experience, most criticism isn't devoted to improving the product or object toward which it is directed.  I suppose some might be--if it's actually constructive.  But most times criticism isn't constructive.  So, you are left with self-improvement, of which the self-appointed gurus will say "it is all up to you."  Who, me?

In any case, I have been considering what I can do to improve the product here at WO2 (that's fuzzy-speak for "What's on 2nd," which is where you are for just this moment anyway).  The result is a work-in-process, of course.  The bad news is that I haven't found the magic bullet.  Immediate drastic improvement is not on the horizon--most likely because yours truly will continue to be the source of what you see here.  

The good news is this effort has me reading E. B. White and Russell Baker again.  E. B. White's granddaughter, Martha, has written (or is it edited?--I think there is far too much narrative from Martha about her grandpa to say she merely edited) a collection of quotations from E. B. White and I am wandering through it.  I have run down some Russell Baker on the Internet, and he is part of the process as well.  I'm happily distracted.        

How did I get here, reading my favorite essayists?  I started with a book about how to be a columnist, and it was chock-full of good examples and ideas about writing.  It made me think more about this little space as an occasional essay, and not just a blog.  So I began looking at essayists and the people who have written about them.  Along the way, I found about 900 sites offering to write essays for harried college students who lack the time to actually craft their own essays when professors assign them.  There was also a link to an article about how today's students can't seem to write essays.  The good news is that there are YouTube videos available to show today's students how to do this.  I skipped them.

Time Out--I am writing this as I wait for the Super Bowl to start, and I had to wipe my eyes after watching the Sandy Hook Elementary School chorus sing "America."  Whew. 

I went to Wikipedia and found Aldous Huxley indicating that essays can best be looked at through a frame of reference with three poles--personal and autobiographical, objective and factual, and the abstract-universal.   A lot deeper than I get within these posts.  I stay around that first pole--the personal and autobiographical.  Will all this discussion from Huxley produce improvement?  I just like to write, for heaven's sake.  

I was ready to leave Huxley behind, but an example there led me back to E.B. White, and a quote from Russell Baker did the same for him.  So, now what?  I think I will just read some more.  My theory is that it will all rub off.  Well, anything's possible, even improvement.  

Funny, though, next thing you know, I ran across this quote from Huxley.  "There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." And I thought he wasn't helping....