Paper.

I'm getting increasingly worried about the state of my writing. It's not so much of a problem on this thing, since it's basically just a braindump, and there's no problem with my technical/report writing skills. But the fact remains that over the last few years I've fallen into some bad habits (like starting sentances with "but", for instance). Or maybe I was just never that good?

Reading over those articles, as well as working on the dreaded Book, has really brought home to me how slack I've got. This is supposed to be my craft, you know? A thing which is honed and polised through out the years to become a big... uh... honed, polishy thing. It's not just style I'm concerned with, the ability to find the best turn of phrase, to avoid cliche, etc etc. It's basic stuff like grammar, spelling, proofreading. It's like I got as far as GCSE Eng. and then stalled; or, to be more accurate, degenerated. Can't seem to collect my thoughts anymore.

Don't really know what to do, but if I really intened to drag on with this thing then something's got to change. I've signed up for a writing excercise mailing list (my brain promtly went fzzzt in the face of the first couple of assignments, but hey), and I'm going to try and find some online lessons-- some in creative writing, some in English Language round about the A-Level mark.

Funny to think that the only actual writing-related qualification I possess-- the only one I ever tried for-- is the GCSE in English that I got when I was 15. (I got a B.)