I love to write. Decades after I learned to read, it still amazes me that the written word can cross miles and millenia to transmit a writer’s thoughts to his or her readers. In high school, a series of excellent teachers taught me that writing is an expression of thinking, so that if you’re having trouble writing something, chances are you haven’t thought it through thoroughly enough.

I started this blog in 2013 in part to research and think through topics that I would later include in my first book. It was a helpful exercise and kept me motivated. It was also interesting to me at a meta level. To my surprise, when I eventually converted blog posts to book sections I often inverted them. My blog posts, which were discursive in nature, often ended with a twist. My book sections, which were expository, often turned that twist into an introductory hook.

Now that I’m working on a third book I’m again finding it useful to post as I carry out my research. It’s highly motivating to be thinking, as I read and take notes, “Is there anything here interesting enough to blog about?” As with my first book, I expect that many of these posts will make it into my book in some form. And the craft of writing has continued to surprise me.

My most recent post, “Coriander, Cilantro, Culantro“, which I published two weeks ago, is a case in point. I wasn’t thrilled with it at the time but was anxious to post something. It had been almost two weeks since my previous post, which wasn’t even related to my book research. However, afterwards I found that I couldn’t move on in my research, but instead kept coming back to the “Cilantro” post. It was like compulsively probing a sore tooth. The more I reread it, the more I was convinced that it was boring. I had presented the three herbs through the prism of my own life experience (who cares?), and only in the second half of the post had I explained why the three words were of linguistic interest. And the post didn’t explain why, seemingly out of the blue, I was writing about herbs.

So a week later I completely revised the post. This second version added the necessary context, and explicitly addressed the linguistic interest of this triplet of words, but did so clunkily, as a series of bullet points.

As a result I found myself stuck again, and finally, today, posted a revision that satisfies me. It’s the one you’ll see on this blog now. It puts the linguistic information up front, but with, I think, a good structure and flow. It adds my personal perspective, but does so lightly. And I worked in a twist at the end.

I’ve memorialized the first two versions of my “cilantro” post here and here. Have a look if you like, and let me know if you agree that the current one is really superior. Now I can finally move on. Unfortunately, the next word in Histories and Mysteries is…COCKROACH!!!