Writing

NaNoWriMo2011 – Outlook: Cautiously Optimistic.

I didn’t say anything about joining National Novel Writing Month this year because I haven’t gotten very far with this in the past, and I’ve learned talking about stuff tends to kill projects before they get off the ground. I’m doing much better this year, though, and I’ve managed to keep my word count up four whole days in a row. And I’m realizing that I can indeed actually write 1,667 words per day, if I hit upon the right thing to say. This is not unpossible. My word count right now is 7095 out of a par of 6668 for day 4. (50,000 words in 30 days being the criteria for “winning.”) Not as great as some of the folks in the Indianapolis Facebook group, but definitely a solid effort.

What I’ve written so far is pretty terrible, but I can see where it could be good later, maybe, when I revise. Which will be after November. First drafts, first… editing later. Right now, it’s all about getting words on the page. Which I can do, it seems. So…

NaNoWriMo Participant 2011
NaNoWriMo Participant 2011

And I’ve notice an insane new trend in my writing – lots of ellipses all over the place. I like to imply things. I probably do this all the time without noticing it, but it’s really jumped out at me. Ah well; no editing under after November. Thems the rules.

Continue ReadingNaNoWriMo2011 – Outlook: Cautiously Optimistic.

Pondering feed readers

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Blogging

Do people use feed readers anymore? It seems odd to me that this never quite caught on in a big way amongst people I know. I use a feed reader and I know my wife does, but other than web geeks, I’m not sure many other folks do. Maybe it’s not simple enough? How do people keep up with blogs and other regularly updated content, though, without one?

Feed Reader Categories
My feed reader categories for various syndicated content

I know there are some sites – Boing Boing, Jezebel/Gawker/io9, and others where I don’t bother with a feed; usually because their content is updated too frequently to keep up and I know that I don’t want to see every post because their content is in the range of ‘skimmable’ and not ‘deep research’.

And then there are some sites that don’t publish their full posts to their syndication feed — I purge them from my feed reader immediately for that reason. If they’re pretty good they’ll get a bookmark, but they’re usually on probation for being traffic whores.

I should probably investigate people’s use of syndication feeds; it seems like I read that this was on the decline somewhere, but I don’t recall the link. I know that Twitter and Facebook have buried their RSS feeds. I can still usually construct a Twitter one based on the ones I had in my reader before they hid them, though. Facebook has pretty much wiped theirs out.

2022-03-12 Update: Twitter and Facebook obviously killed their RSS feeds because they needed their algorithms to filter you news for maximum effect on your psyche. And we all got hooked into social media and stopped blogging altogether. This is such an interesting post in hindsight.
Continue ReadingPondering feed readers

links for 2011-09-01

Continue Readinglinks for 2011-09-01

Nuvo Arts Blog Writer Chi Sherman

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Writing

Speaking of things I’ve been remiss in writing about this year – several months ago, our good friend Chi Sherman became a writer for Nuvo Newsweekly (our local alt weekly, for non-Indy residents.) She’s on the arts/writing/entertainment beat writing about all the cool happenings going on about town, and much of our new awareness of what’s going on in Circle City has been due to her articles and reviews. Among the many things we’ve picked up from her writing: we learned about the vibrant local poetry scene, various cool First Fridays events, the twin renaissances of cultural awareness in Irvington and Fountain Square, and what was going down at the Indy Fringe Festival and at the Spirit and Place Festival. We tried to keep up with her at the beginning going with her while she attended events, shows, openings and celebrations, but the schedule was exhausting, and now we just try to attend something with her once a week or so. The girl is busy.

I’ve mentioned Chi a number of times here commonplacebook.com, because she’s not just a good friend but also a respected and award-winning poet and writer in the local scene, with some chapbooks and recordings to her name and a bit of a fan club. It’s not unusual to be out to dinner or an event with her and to have people come up to her and gush about her work. It’s pretty cool the first several times it happens, but after a bit, you kinda wanna eat your dinner. 🙂

In addition to being a moving poet, she’s also downright hilarious — like Dorothy Parker funny — and never fails to make me LOL. Add her blog to your feed reader or regular schedule – you won’t regret it. And if you have tips about something you’re working on in the Arts scene – you want her to write about your stuff. Contact her at her blog, or just ask me. I’ve got pull. 🙂

Continue ReadingNuvo Arts Blog Writer Chi Sherman

John Cleese on creativity

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Writing

John Cleese discussing writing, creativity, and getting in the zone for creative work. One of his main points is the importance of not being interrupted while writing – once you are distracted from your task, it’s very difficult to get back on the moving train of thought. So closing yourself off to disruptions is a key to creative work.

Continue ReadingJohn Cleese on creativity

Dragon Dictation for the iPhone

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Writing

I’ve been playing with the Dragon Dictation for the iPhone to transcribe some blog ideas that occur to me when I drive to work in the morning. I have about a 20 minute drive and I usually have several ideas that I’d like to write about in that time, but in the hectic moments after I arrive for work I tend to forget them. Sometimes I remember them later, but often they go “poof!” off into the ether never to return. Hopefully this will let me remember a few more of those thoughts. Basically you talk into the app, it transcribes it into text, and you can do various things with the text including emailing to yourself. Here is the Dragon Dictation version of this post, which is amusing in and of itself.

I’m trying out dragon dictation again this is that program I love it on my iPhone. It said it would does translation type stuff and playing around with it now on my phone to see if I can write some blog posts on the way to work and a lot of ideas on the way work better at gym over and over to myself in hopes that I will actually remember them when I finally get to work and then I get to work and hectic everything goes crazy and I forget what I wanted to write about Sonja to try to do some of the dictation on the phone while I am on the way to work and then on my book was written and I’ll be able to e-mail the dictation to myself or my phone which is pretty cool because it makes little text file and then you can e-mail it to yourself. I’ll be back and I’ll see if I can then have something readable than that way I won’t forget all of my

Yeah, part of that incoherence is my own tendency to ramble and jump back and forth between ideas, part of it is the strangeness of articulating thoughts out loud that I normally write down instead, and part of it is DD just not recognizing what I was saying. And I have no idea who Sonja is.

Continue ReadingDragon Dictation for the iPhone

The Lost Finale

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Writing

Kottke does a nice round-up of sites’s comments on the Lost finale. Many of them express what I’ve heard as a common theme among fans – it’s okay that all of the questions weren’t answered, because most of them were. The major storylines were wrapped up.

io9, on the other hand, came up a with a list of 50 questions that they felt Lost really did need to answer with their series ending show, and a tally of what was actually covered and what was left open (more questions than not, unfortunately).

I’m with io9 on this one. Sure, red herrings are a mystery tradition. But they’re always exposed as red herrings in the end. That’s just good storytelling to wrap up the loose ends. Lost left way too many of them. Writing them off as unimportant is just yanking people’s chains. People who don’t think much may be okay without all the mind-benders solved. But thoughtful people want real closure in their storytelling. I wonder how many of the “it’s okay, they don’t have to explain everything” folks read novels regularly.

And I’m really dissatisfied with the ending as well. If you’re going to sell me a series of religious programming, label it as such so I can watch the sci-fi channel instead. Don’t disguise your religious blah blah blah as science fiction for 5 and a half seasons and then zing me with mysticism at the end. It’s pretty clear that the writers very much wrote themselves into a corner. They didn’t have an end in mind when they started, and they got a giant kick out people’s excitement at the layer-upon-layer of mysterious events, so they kept laying it on thick even after they had laid out so much they couldn’t explain it all. I cry deus ex machina foul. My fierce belief in free will over fate leaves me feeling this series was ultimately a giant turd.

I’m hoping that with on-demand technologies, television writing will start moving in the direction of series treated as long mini-series – with a completely plotted story line from beginning to end and more tightly written detail, rather that completely open-ended affairs that peter off after awhile. Television programs do have a predictable end point, no matter how popular they are. Using that to create a real story that holds together throughout would be much more satisfying.

Continue ReadingThe Lost Finale