Active voice. Write in the active voice. “Make every word tell,” so says William Strunk in The Elements of Style.
Two books into teaching myself to be a better writer, I find that I doubt my ability. Dangling participles, comma splices and overuse of prepositional phrases nibble at the edges of my brain as my perfectionist persona starts to take over. I stare at the blank “add new post” page here in WordPress letting my eyes drift to the keyboard and then gaze back up at the screen with a feeling of defeat.
I tend toward perfectionism. The funny thing about that is that I rarely expect that of other people. I only expect it of me and am incredibly hard on myself when I fail to reach this lofty goal that I haven’t even spelled out.
I realize that I’m not a horrible writer, if I were I wouldn’t be asked to write for other publications, online or in print. Writing is a bit like working out, I have to keep doing it to increase my fitness, physically or with getting what I want to say into words. I’ll keep working on it, improving my writing (and my fitness) as well as my personal writing style.
However, I don’t know if I have achieved a personal style yet other than “your writing sounds like you’re having a chat with a friend over tea” (thank you to a dear friend for that). And maybe that’s just it – the whole reason people read what I write, because they feel as if they are sitting with me having a chat over a cup of tea or coffee or a cocktail. Please, by all means, insert your beverage of choice in that sentence.
Do you have favorite writers (post their links!)?
What do you like best about their writing?
Have you told them why you go back time and again to read their work?
Musings of the Amusing Muse 
I think you have a wonderful style of writing ! I love the way you dive into your own thoughts on vast amounts of topics ! You are very insightful and have an absolutely intriguing character in what i have seen in your writing ! Truth is not everyone goes about the writing process the same way ! Your inspiring to me cause you pour your thoughts out on the page and show to those more timid that a person can have thoughts and opinions in writing and feel comfortable sharing them ! Then again i am a Douglas Adams fan and could read almost any book he has written several times !
Well thank you, Alan!
I don’t believe in coddling the world that every thought a person has, including me, is fluffy kittens and puppies. I have thoughts from happy to dark to prurient in nature and I suss them all out as they happen. People, it appears, have this connotation that everything in life should be rainbows, magic and moonbeams and we all walk around in a Candy Land of sorts – but it just isn’t so! I read a fair number of blogs and I find that I respect more those writers who can admit that sometimes life sucks – but their attitude and how they handle those sucky moments make them great people and writers.
Thank you for the words of encouragement!