Random ..something: Crappy Writing

You may be wondering: Why does your writing stink like fresh fertilizer sometimes and other times it a little better than a kitchen garbage can?

Okay, perhaps you aren’t wondering about in quite the same way. Actually, you probably don’t care one way or another, but I am going to be rude and tell you anyway.

I write while I am working. Sometimes it is a busy day and I have to write sentence by sentence, other times, I have a little more time or my ideas will actually shut up long enough for me to write them down all together during a break or between tasks. When I can actually take the time to write, it looks a little better on paper (screen?) and I usually also have the time to make minor edits.

I know from experience, once I start writing something, if I don’t finish it immediate and post it, it will sit and age in my drafts folder and eventually become irrelevant. For example, I have several ‘Gymnastics’ posts, a movie review of a movie that has been out on DVD now for some time, and a Part 2 of my NYAF post all sitting waiting to be finished or deleted.

When I have the time, I will return to my posts and polish them, but until then, every reader is stuck with my crappy posts… until I finally start writing in advance. I’ll get there–someday–and it will all look pretty before it gets to your feedreader or the main blog page.

Want me to start writing better now? Comment. Serious, comic, random. Anything will do. It will let me know people are actually reading what I am writing and make me feel self-conscious, resulting in a push to write better and more in advance.

Spam is deleted.

Thank you for reading my meager posts. I certainly appreciate it

Tags: Writing

Random Essay: Firemen

A conversation at work brought up Firemen, Fire Fighters, whatever you want to call them these days. It made me wonder: Was everyone raise around firefighters? or did they only become ‘cool’ when they became known as national heroes?

Fire Fighters are heroes. They were heroes before 9/11. They were the everyday heroes that everyone could rely on. My grandfather was a Fire Fighter and was proud to proclaim that he was one of the Brotherhood of the Barrel. I asked about it a few times whenever I saw the sticker decal in his vehicle windows. It was always added to all the cars. He never let up on replacing it. All I remember from those answers were: it was a strike of some kind (I didn’t know what a strike was, it was a hard concept), it involved firemen, and it involved very cold weather and burning barrels to keep them warm.

I had no trouble imagining burning barrels in those days. We had those drums as our trashcans for years and years before the City of Chicago standardized the trash bins. Whenever our barrels rusted along would come Grandpa with a new one, and we occasionally burned trash in those barrels at the curbside. Grandpa was a fireman, we learned fire saftey the right way, through guided experience.

Because I was reminded of all this, I decided to look up the Brotherhood of the Barrel and found it was a Chicago thing. A politician wanted to become mayor, she promised a contract to the firemen and police if she was elected. After she won the position, she refused to honor her word. After several negotiations fell through, a number of firemen walked off the job and began a strike. Through a very cold winter, warmed by burning barrels, not once did the strike falter. I remember tales from my mother about how he was one of the guys who stayed there. This is also where we learned that the Salvation Army is better than the Red Cross in my Grandfather’s opinion, and that is a heavy opinion to possess.

Eventually, the strike caused the mayor to give in and a contract between the city and the services was struck. As far as I know, it is still holding today. My grandfather was one of those men who wouldn’t back down and demanded what was promised and paid for in good faith. I can understand why he would take pride in what he’d done.

I’ve been surrounded by firemen, policemen and various other service men for my entire life. It seemed our suburbish area of the city was a hotspot for these brave men and women. We had a fireman, policeman and mailman all on our block. This was a common occurance. There is even an area nearby where you can purchase house only if you are in civil service. At this time of year and all through and beyond Christmas, it is a festive place to visit. The whole neighborhood seemed to always celebrate harder than anywhere else. We would park our car a bit away and walk around looking at all the fancy displays. And if one or two houses weren’t decorated, it was all good, they were helping us they didn’t have to dress up their place.

I knew not everyone knew or loved a fireman. I didn’t know that not everyone respected them. That came as a sort of shock. We grew up learning how the fireman helps, how you should call him when you weren’t sure of how to get rid of flammable material, how he would come to your aid if you were trapped in a burning building. They would come to parades and block parties. We would even occasionally get a ride on the trucks. Why would ANY one disrespect a fireman? It totally escapes me.

Since we grew up the way we did, you have to know mom was very well informed. Once, we smelled electical scent coming from somewhere. Mom and her nose tracked down the origin to be my baby brother’s fan in his bedroom. In a total bit of controlled panic, mom shut off the fan, hit the electrical switch, then called the firemen to make certain there wasn’t a fire in the ceiling.

The firemen showed up sirens blazing and knocked on our door, my mother was waiting. It just happened to be our neighbor too. Quite exciting. He and his buddies explored the areas above and below, the floor above the fan was warm. Seems mom was very efficient in her caution. After they disconnected the fan and were walking out, they commented about how they wish everyone was like this. They would rather have a call as a prevention than have an emergency call.

That made me very proud of my mother, the fireman’s daughter.

Moral of this story: An ounce of prevention with a little bit of well informed panic, is (potentially) worth a house and many lives… and firemen save lives even when they don’t rush into a burning house.

Writing Tools: An interesting post by J.C. Hutchins (Yes, him again! What can I say, I like his style)

This time I am NOT using ‘PressThis!’ so the whole article should post properly. If it doesn’t I am going to go balistic. Anyhow, there are many, many good posts out there about writing, so why am I always only reposting J. C. Hutchins? I have to admit, I had to think about it and the answer is simple. He makes me want to write. Not just write as in novels, but as soon as I start reading his posts, I want to just point to them all and say something about them. The posts make me want to write something NOW.

“What If? and What Happens Next? Two secret weapons for aspiring writers” a guest post by J. C. Hutchins on Tor.com’s Weblog

What is this post telling me to write? I don’t know, but his constant references to scifi pop and cult cultures amuse and inspire. This particular topic is talking about sitting down and actually writing that one great story that is inside you. He chooses two classic writing tools and illustrates them in a way that makes one laugh and think all at once. I have found this combination makes for a good kickstart to being creative.

I, as Ambassador For All Writers Who Claim Ridiculous Ambassadorships For These Occasions, proclaim it’s high time you stopped listening to that fretful voice in your noggin (It won’t be any good . . . You don’t have time to write . . . It’s all been said before), plant your bootie in a chair, and get typing.

This article is good for beginners as well as those of us who are amateur idiots who need a good kick in the pants to start writing, or continue writing as the case may be. I use NaNoWriMo as my kick to start a story. Over the last few years, I have not been able to answer the classic questions. This year was different, I wonder how much of that is due to keeping up with J. C. Hutchins and how much is just due to everything else coming together finally.

Have you ever started writing a story, got about a quarter of the way in and then . . . uh oh . . . gave up because you had no clue where it was going?

I won’t win at NaNoWriMo this year–not because I can’t write, or because I got sick, or because I don’t know what will happen next, or anything difficult, only because I haven’t had time to keep up–but I haven’t given up and already I am beyond my previous record. I suspect I will not easily give up this story. I have posted an excerpt and I have gotten rave reviews back and that inspires me to continue.

It is allies, friends and family who make up a lot of support. Don’t have any support? Google a search for writing groups. Even if you think you aren’t a writer, go find a group anyway. Tell them what you want to do and you may be surprised at the amazing support you end up finding. I was the opposite, I have friends who write and they are good at telling stories. I’ve been inspired by them over the years. They are the ones who finally got me asking these questions that J. C. Hutchins is asking.

I owe everything to supportive friends. Finding friends and support for your writing may not be important to every writer for every genre, but you know what? It can’t hurt either. Do what you can to be inspired into writing!

Tags: articles, jchutchins, nanowrimo, Writing

Music: Listening to Students

I attend a Japanese Language School run at Tenri Cultural Center in New York City. The center hosts a few different kinds of events, the most typical are art galleries and concerts. Even these simple statements cover a diverse amount of topics. In the art exhibit I have seen intricately cut paper making elusive designs, objects glued and sealed into sculpture and photography that blows the mind away or simple states something. The concerts have covered traditional, classical and indescribable. These aren’t all only Asian artist covering Asian topics, they are diverse and prolific.

While I have attended shakuhachi and shamisen concerts, last night I attended a chamber concert performed by some NYU students. While the concert was delightful and something I don’t regret attending at all, I am reminded how wonderful it is to attend student concerts. It provides a reference for just how much better professional musicians are in contrast. For many of the artists, I couldn’t fault their form or their playing.

However, it seemed that several groups never performed or practiced together much before the concert. There was a total of four piano/stringed instruments duet and a trio performance which lasted the longest. Of these, it seemed like three of the four duets didn’t practice together much and one seemed to never have performed together at all. The performance wasn’t bad. In fact it was the opposite. It just seemed as if each was playing their own instruments at the same time as the other person and both were using a slightly different tempo. It was merely distracting and didn’t effect the overall. One of the more distracting had the duet occasionally syncing up for segments while playing off-beat from each other at other times.

Perhaps I was tired while listening. Perhaps it was some kind of trick of the acoustics and I am willing to concede this point. However, the trio was fantastic. Violin, Cello and Piano played off each other as if they had practiced often and well. It was a joy listening to them play and I would not have minded hearing more from them. They didn’t sound professional by any stretch of the imagination, but I did get the feeling they were on the right track. I hope they continue performing and quash all those small telltales. I would love to find them performing sometime in the near future in a paid professional venue.

Despite the issues, it seemed like I could tell the ones who were doing music not for the love and intense need to study, but for credits. They weren’t as polished in their skills and seemed to not really care that they weren’t. It wasn’t something said or talked about, it was only their stage presence that felt that way. Some seemed to be almost frustrated to have to share the stage with the other and while their playing showed through, it had a bit of an uncomfortable annoyed air about it. Perhaps their normal duet partner couldn’t make it? Then there were the ones who are on the intense track to become well-known professionals. Simply wonderful and I will have to watch for those names to appear at Carnegie in a few years.

Get out there and listen to students. Go appreciate how far those professionals we hear in symphonies and soundtracks have come.

Do you play an instrument? Do you know what I am talking about? What concerts have you heard recently that my post reminds you of?

Tags: concerts, music, stringed instruments

Miscellaneous Thoughts: Reflected Glory

When I arrived at work on Monday morning this week, I did my usual routine. Made my coffee, sat down and logged into my computer and instant messenger. When I arrived online, I was bombarded by a giant message that read: “check your stats! I got famous overnight!!”.

Bewildered, I clicked over to my adminstrator page to check the statistics, which up to the point never peaked past a few hits in the few weeks since I installed the plugin. To my utter shock, I noticed I also had quite a few more hits than usual. I am under no impression that I drove the traffic here myself. The most shocking was to see more than 200 new subscriptions! When I returned to the instant messenger conversation, I was informed Enna Stein’s “Letters to Ira Glass” Tumblog had gained an audience due to the Facebook Fan Page for This American Life.

Normally, Enna Stein writes for KosherPorkChops.com and typically she has a fairly small audience as internet blogs go. Since we are friends and since she was feeling generous once, my tiny little blog made it onto her blogroll, fairly near the top. It seems several of her new viewers decided to come visit my stuttering and struggling little universe. Reflected glory, it seems, is almost as awesome–and as stressful–as getting it full in the face! Feel free to use my fan created banner here. If you hotlink you can get the monthly updated image that reflects her website header, let me know in comments if you do please!

Thank you for taking some sort of interest in my little blog. I invite you to take the time to comment and let me know what interests you found here that made you think it was worth sticking around. I am ever trying to find topics that interest me to post, however, sometimes something I may take for typical might be actually interesting to a reader.

Here is a parting question: Which blogs, websites, social media, etc do you frequent mostly?

Comment your answers. This isn’t a poll, but mebbe, just mebbe I will find a reason to feature your comment in a future blog post.

Books and Marketing: FastCompany interviews J.C. Hutchins

EDIT: OMG, I wrote a nice post and it got cut off! I am NEVER using PressThis again!! … Mebbe I will try to recreate it. In the meantime…. read the article and the book. They are BOTH good.

Thriller Novelist J.C. Hutchins on Why Resonant Narrative and Community Experiences Equals Book Sales | Profiles in Passion | Fast Company. ~ A FastCompany blog post by CC Chapman.

At the beginning of the post C.C. Chapman clearly states:

The world around us is in a state of flux and one market that must evolve or become extinct is the publishing industry. With the rise of Kindles, iPhones and the smorgasbord of content that we can get from every corner of the Web, the age-old written word binded together in a book is in danger of fading away.

I firmly believe that people will always crave literature. We all need great stories to entertain us and non-fiction to expand our brains. But, the age-old publishing industry is bleeding faster then the music industry and if it doesn

Tags: 7th Son: Descent, J.C. Hutchins, LinkedIn, marketing, publishing

Writing: NaNoWriMo

If you are a writer of any sort, then you probably know about NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to yourself to write 50,000 words in just one single month. Essentially a whole novel. I say a challenge to yourself, but the folks at NaNoWriMo.org have made it especially fun to do this personal challenge all together with thousands of other participants in one particular month, the month of November. From November 1 through 11:59:59 PM November 30 thousands of writers will be writing like mad to made the deadline and submit their novel for official recognition of completing the challenge. In addition to this wonderful self-imposted deadline and task, NaNoWriMo also has the added benefit of being a charity drive. You can see more details about the challenge and the charity at http://www.nanowrimo.org.

This year will the be the fourth year I am attempting the challenge. In the previous years some problem or another has kept me below a single week’s worth of writing, but this year should be different. In addition to having a character with a full personality and a very long lifespan, I have writing buddies to fall back on for inspiration, commiseration, laughter and encouragement and I have a mind that keeps sketching my characters onto paper whenever I can’t be around my computer.

Despite this, one week in and I have already fallen behind. I can only fault myself, but unlike previous years, I have not given up. The story is floating in my head and it will be told… and since it morphing between my head and the page, I can’t wait to see where it leads.

Just the other night, I felt impatience. It was a particular impatience I get when I am in the middle of reading a book. I was confused as I had just finished reading a book the night before and had nothing else really on the table. Sure a few manga in Japanese, a storybook that I wanted to get too, but that’s been sitting for a while and it was most definitely something I had to read NOW like this urge was telling me, and a book I had left at work and had been slowly reading over the last three years. Obviously it had to be something else. Irritated, I sat down and thought it through and found myself laughing and annoyed. I wanted to know the next part of the story I was writing myself.

It amazes me that I am writing a book I want to read. I know academically I will be disappointed because this is only a first draft and not a final draft by any means, but this impatience also has the side effect of distracting me so much I can’t get a coherent sentence written.

Liar. I know that’s what you are thinking right now. After all I am writing a journal entry instead of using the time to write the next chapter in my novel. However, consider this. I am not coming up with a fiction spurred on my imagination here. Here I am writing a non-fiction recounting and merely adding words to make it coherent. If you could read my head at the time I am writing this, you would see the images I plan to put into the story nearly overriding my thinking, but they are images and trying to describe what I see has my brain completely distracted. Therefore, writing this explanation and attempting to sort my thoughts makes this easier to do.

Besides, its getting a little boring reading this farce of a blog when most of the updates are LifeStream updates.

Do you have any questions for me? I would love to have something lead me to an answer. Are you doing NaNoWriMo? If you are, would you mind sharing?

You can see my account on NaNoWriMo if you’d like. Username? Oh come on, do I really need to tell you? Alright, I’ll tell you. Username: NiaSkywalk. Now don’t you feel a little embarrassed that you had to ask? I guess I’ll add a widget somewhere on this blog too….

Tags: charity, nanowrimo, Writing