Your writing habits

[+WRITE SHOP ROBERT]

How has GeoCaching changed your writing habits or your writing style?

 

I used to keep a journal years ago, but then I stopped for some reason. Lately I asked myself why, and if I should start again. Then I realized that the logs I post, and leave in the logbooks, as well as the posts I leave in these forums are serving as my "Journal". If I were to gather them all up in order, they would add up to a substantial picture of "Me" for the time I have been playimg the game.

 

My questions are these...When you look back at all your GeoCache writings, how do they compare to what you used to write before you played the game? Have your other writings changed as a result of styles you've developod in relation to the game? Do you write more or less than you did before playing? Are you happy with your new writing self?

 

For me, I find myself writing much more than immediatly before starting to play(although not as much as at my peak of journal writing...up to a book a week). My writing now is more creative and more positive than before. I can't be sure if that is because GeoCaching has a positive impact on my well being, or if it's because most of my writing now is directed towards "you all" rather than just my own personal reflections for only myself to read.

 

What about "You all"?

Edited May 22, 2007 by WRITE SHOP ROBERT

[+Chuy!]

I used to write in the log book what I would eventually write on the cache's webpage, but as caches and their logbooks disappeared to muggles and what not, I leave little if any statements in logbooks. Instead I reserve my comments and rantings on the webpage. The exceptions include caches placed along long hikes that tend to survive the test of time.

[+Renegade Knight]

Before: The peak of my writing career was a letter to the editor that garnered a death threat, first place in a fair where there were two entries and bonehead English in High school.

[+WRITE SHOP ROBERT]

Bump

[Shiraz-mataz]

Writing cache logs provides an outlet for me. Back in high school I used to write a LOT. Short stories, poetry, angst-filled teenage pap... But then life happened: college, career, family. Not much time left for creative pursuits. Now that some of my hectic schedule has abated, I find myself filling the writing void by using cache logs as more-or-less a journal of my adventures. I usually tell who was with me, where we were going, that kind of stuff. Now when I go back and read logs from three years ago I can remember the adventure clearly.

[miles_vagar]

Directly as a result of geocaching and posting on geocaching.com logs and Groundspeak, I suddenly find that my writing is less vulgar and more eloquent. Brilliant metaphors and similes spring easily to mind. I find I can say what I want to say in a few words, or even just a few emoticons. I use "they" as a gender-free, singular third person pronoun.

 

In fact, the MLA has decided to rename themselves the Miles Language Association, an honor I expect to humbly accept in June of this year. But that's just the beginning of the change this game has wrought in me:

 

My hair has become blonder, my skin darker, my teeth whiter. The ladies find me irresistible, likening me to a cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and a bronze god, but more handsome.

 

I have grown four inches, and for every one of them I give geocaching the credit. My hygiene has improved, as has my skin condition. Whenever I come across an acquaintance from before the purchase of my GPSr, they marvel about how you can hardly tell I was ever in that fire.

 

I no longer awaken to find myself locked in strange triangular rooms, with people in white coats pointing at me through the windows and laughing. Oh, how they used to taunt me before I found my new hobby.

 

Yes, the tables have turned. I park outside the homes of FBI agents in a van disguised as a BellSouth maintenance vehicle, while they frantically peer through the blinds to see if I'm still there. The President can't get his hands on my personal email address, and an army of secretaries wards off his calls. I used to be an atheist, back in the old days, and now God doesn't believe in me.

 

For now I have geocaching to thank, but if this trend continues, before long geocaching will be thanking me.

[+Okiebryan]

Let's just say that on INATN, I am the "wordiest" cacher in my state.

[miles_vagar]

Shameless bump. I want to see how geocaching has affected others.

[nonaeroterraqueous]

I've always spent a great deal of time writing. Most of it has hardly been read by anyone else. The advantage to cache logs is that I know someone will read it. I could say the same thing about forums. I probably say more through the written language than I do through speaking, and that's saying a lot, because I'm not very blabby here, either.

 

Cache logs have not changed my writing style, but they've given me a way to write something that someone else might actually read.