Not a natural blogger amitgawande.com
@amit I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this topic, Amit. I also want to let you know that your written English sounds very natural to me. And I do edit non-native English speakers’ marketing materials in my side gig. It’s a peeve of mine, when companies don’t take the care to have their excellent-but-not-native marketing copy edited… but I digress into a rant. Your writing is quite beautiful, really.
@amit I agree with @jean, @maique, and @frostedechoes. Also, I have taken regular breaks over the past few years (what with, you know, the world) and I can say with great certainty that such a break will help you feel better about whatever it is you decide to do with your time.
@amit I echo others sentiments here.
I, too, enjoy reading your posts. Your words are often thought provoking to me in ways I hadn't expected, which is always a treat.
The peculiarities of idiomatic usage in my speech, especially in an acquired language, generally expose me as non-native, but I never let that worry me, and I'll dare say that you should not let it trouble you at all either.
I don’t let it worry me because I often sound like I'm just making up shit in English (my native tongue), that's cuz language is ours to do with as we like. And it has to be, because meaning is even more fluid than language.
Keep going at your pace.
@amit I value your insights and gentle tone, and I have never thought of you as a non-native English writer. As such, I mess up constantly*, but I won’t let that stop me. I don’t consider myself really a blogger, although I do have two blogs. The more serious one, mostly in Norwegian, seldom gets new articles. If you take a break, I sincerely hope you will come back.
*) Lately I’ve struggled with basics like have/has and is/are. Maybe I’ll have to take some lessons again, or at least look it up.
@amit Just echoing other sentiments in this thread that I’ve always enjoyed reading your writing, in all its forms. No need to pressure yourself, just enjoy it and go at your own pace and when you feel inspired.
@amit I agree with the others ... but I would like to add that I personally enjoy reading stuff from people who are not originally from the US. Sometimes the US perspective becomes too dominant.
@amit Based on my reading of your stuff, I feel that you might want to approach your site a little differently (it certainly helped trick me into writing a lot more). Write for one person, your future self. Then read your past self wvery day. Gaps in your reading will encourage you to write more :).
@amit agreeing with other comments here, and I assumed you grew up in a bilingual household (English being one...). If you need to take a break, I will miss your writing, but fwiw I also find writing for others to be difficult. And sometimes I read my private writing later on, and can't figure out what I meant by it! It is unnatural for humans to write; writing came very late in human history.
@amit First, you are definitely far better than most of the personal bloggers I have read, native speaker or otherwise. I wouldn't blame you for not being prolific on your grasp of the language. Maybe you're trying too hard to use flowery language and forcing yourself to be "more eloquent" coz I have gone through that phase which is a common problem among English-speaking Indians. The skills of your language are not the issue here.
Second, you don't have to write well-reasoned or passionate posts or, as you said, "something meaningful" every day. A simple narration of whatever you feel or want to share is fine, even if it's a negative thought. Don't care about what others will think. Most here are near-strangers even if we (ironically) know each other well. I will +1 @kaa's point coz it has definitely helped me, and as @Miraz mentioned, reading "On this day" via your blog or DayOne inspires me to write something every day, even if it's one sentence.
@amit I have got much inspiration from your blogging and your thoughts around blogging. I value your writing and your presence both here on the Micro.blog timeline and in my RSS feeds. Your way of expression, is yor way of expression and through that I hear your voice.
Speaking personally I am far from the most voluminous of bloggers, and even within that I go for some days without writing. If you feel the wish to take a break, do so and come back when the urge strikes.
@amit In addition to what everyone else said, I'd like to add that nobody is a natural writer. Even the professional writers need one Editing round at the very least even when they write just 100 words. Writing is not like speaking, it requires mental effort every single time. And so casual blogging as one of the ways of writing is also technically not as casual as speech or conversations.
Thank you friends for the kind words and helpful suggestions. Your thoughts gave me clarity on some of the aspects I was struggling with. You also gave me the nudge that I badly needed. Appreciate the responses 🙏🏽