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Including a quotation is nice, but you could settle for a comment on the side if you can't think of a suitable quote. |
Tuesday, June 22, 1999 Instructions Start with a sentence of greeting, like "Hi, readers!" Now write a paragraph about whatever subject you're tackling today. If you don't have a particular subject in mind (as tends to be the case much of the time), that's fine, too. Just keep rolling along, in a series of long, complex sentences (with or without parenthetical asides), that set out whatever it is that happens to be on your mind. And then pull up short.
A horizontal rule can be inserted right after that. It maximizes the punchy effect of that last little sentence -- or sentence fragment -- in the preceding section. Plus, breaking your text up into smaller sections makes it easier for your readers, who might feel daunted by reading a really long piece without having any place to rest. This is also a good place for a shift in mood, or perspective, or anything else. Hey; it's your journal. You can even throw in a couple of really self-indulgent sentences at this point. Whatever works for you. But perhaps not. Perhaps you need to consider the needs and desires of the readers, putting them before yours. So even if you do follow the instructions in the previous paragraph, you may want to double back and question yourself. You may even want to look at the whole thing from a completely different angle in the next section of the entry. But that's just a thought. Your mileage may vary.
It should be noted, perhaps, that this is only one way of writing an entry, and that there are many other ways of accomplishing that task. Even putting aside the countless approaches taken by the 1,000+ online journalists out there, it has been observed that no journalist always sticks to the same approach in every entry. Indeed, it has been rumored that many, including Shmuel, don't actually use an outline to construct their entries, but, rather, they just type whatever they feel like typing that day, and let the words come out as they may. I hasten to reiterate that this is only a rumor. Why, one can only imagine the chaos that would ensue if this were true, and journals were cobbled together at random. No, a successful journal needs order, structure, and stability. There's no doubt about it.
Anyway, we're in the home stretch. By this point, you've already finished most of your entry, so whether you think it works or not, it doesn't matter. You're already committed to it. Even if it's a rather silly meta-entry which purports to tell you how to write entries of your own, while adhering to Shmuel's writing style; it doesn't matter. It's almost there. Just finish the thing. It can be helpful to sum up your points right around now, unless your entry lacks a point altogether, like this one, in which case it may be best to simply say so, and save the reader the trouble of figuring that out. And then it's on to the final punchline. And that's it.
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