For a couple years now, I’ve participated in a site called The Weekend Wordsmith. Someone (usually me) posts a word, and people write something that it inspires – poetry, prose, a picture … pretty much anything.

Over the years, participation has waned until for the last month or so, there hasn’t been anything at all.

I keep it going because I find that it gets me thinking and writing, although even I haven’t written anything for it for several weeks. In part, I think, this is because I also am inspired by the other people who write something, and the fewer others there are, the less I have to react to.

For pretty much everyone, but in particular for those of us in the technical field, the ability to write a coherent English sentence is pretty important. Why especially for us? Well, because we spend our days talking to computers, who either understand, or don’t, and make it very clear when they don’t. People are much more complicated. Sometimes they understand and pretend they don’t. Sometimes they don’t and pretend they do. Sometimes they understand something completely different from what we meant.

Weird.

Anyways, I encourage you techies to take a look at the site, find one of the postings that catches your fancy, and write something. Anything. A sentence, even, that is inspired by the word or picture.

There will be a new word tomorrow morning.