The Sky is Falling

I've heard troubling rumblings about the publishing industry.  It seems the publishers are trying to cater to an increasingly narrowing audience.  The sales of E-Books has really taken off yet publishers haven't utilized this market.  The scary thing about E-Books is that ANYONE can publish them.  Publishers are probably scared because E-Books "appear" to threaten their existence.  This doesnt' have to be true.  If publishers ignore E-Books it has a better chance of coming true, but it doesn't have to be that way.

What scares me is that if publishers go away we loose the "gate keepers" of the writing industry.

But most of all it is the general turmoil that scares me.  Gone, it seems, are the days when all I had to worry about was getting a publisher to print my book.  Now I may have the run the show myself.

...Although maybe I should finish something before I worry about publishing.

A quick update

My apologies.

I really need to get back into posting and such.  And writing and all that.  I've got plenty of excuses, some of them are even good ones, but I need to make writing a priority.  So here's to redoubling my efforts

As if you were reading

There is a song I heard somewhere that has a line, "he prays like someone hears him."  I feel a correlation between that line and with this blog.  I write like someone reads it.  Now I know I have a few followers.  And that's grand, really it is.  I love you.  All three of you.  I'm mean I write like there are dozens, hundreds even.  Who knows maybe there are.  People who read but don't follow or comment.  They call them lurkers.  I hear there's some sort of a "come out of the closet day" for lurkers.  I'm not sure when that is or whether it is conscionable to call people out of the closet like that.

I lurk.

I'm happy lurking.

That's how God made me.

And wow, I'm getting off topic here.  Alright lets straighten out this sub text. (I know I'm getting kind of bad with all the gay wordplay but I just couldn't help myself.)

Ahem.

Anyway.  So any of you out there.  Not that I'm calling you out.  I feel awkward calling out lurkers.  I once saw this really weird teddy bear stop motion animation thing on TV when I was a kid.  But it was like a stop motion animation thing made for adults, not naughty adult, just mature humor adult.  I could tell it was meant for grown ups because the show was making jokes but I wasn't laughing.  It was like watching MASH.  So... anyway this teddy bear was lonely and before he went to sleep he lit a candle and looking under his bed he called out "Any ladies under there."

I had to ask my Mom what the heck he was talking about.  Why on earth would he be looking for women under his bed.  She could only guess that is was a play on an old notion that women sometimes checked under their beds at night for men.  Where this crazy and creepy social tradition sprang from I have no idea.  In the times before I was alive was it common for women to be assaulted by men who were hiding under their beds?  Well I suppose it serves them right for not checking.

 Latter I saw a cartoon (The still drawn kind) of a young girl with a candle looking under her bed only to find a sign that read "Back in five minuets"  Now that was funny.  Creepy, but funny.  The bear, not so much.  With him it was just pathetic really.  This was a really crummy show I was watching.  It was like a grown up melancholy situational comedy without the humor and marketed for kids.  They were really missing every mark you could miss.  Both the lame attempt at the joke and how pathetic the bear himself was.  All in all it was really sad and pathetic.  The bear was so lonely for females he grasped at the false hope that there might be some hiding under his bed.

And so asking if there's anyone out there lurking feels just as bad.  By doing so it's like asking for more readers.  Now why do I think that asking for more readers on a blog with only three followers will help get more?  Beats me.  Might as will holler under the bed for attention.  I have tried to refrain from doing so mostly because I don't want to whine nor do I want to be pathetic like the bear.  Yet by writing all this I sort of am the bear now... nuts.  Well at least I'm self aware unlike the bear.  Well as long as I don't make a habit out of it.  (Although maybe whining works.  I watched Julie & Julia, the Julie chick whined on her blog and they made it into a movie with Merl Streep and Amy Adams.  So maybe if I whine they'll turn my blog into a movie with Harrison Ford and Shia Lebuff.)

Instead of whining I have written as though someone reads this.  (Again the dozens or hundreds of someones, I don't want to belittle the wonderful three I have now.  Your like my Trinity, (nothing but love)).  I explain this in case there are lurkers out there wondering why this guy writes as though he had a vast audience.  Near as I can tell it's just me, a lurker myself, and three others (three brave others with the guts to follow).  So to lurkers I explain.  I explain as though you cared, just as some pray as though someone listens, or write as though someone read.

In the movie Matilda there is a powerful line about what authors do.  "So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships onto the sea.  These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message "You Are Not Alone.""  That is how I feel about what I write.  Its like a ship.  I know not where it goes or if it ever arrives at it's destination.  I only know it carries a message, my message.  A message that I think will hearten those who hear it.

Ted from "How I Met Your Mother" says that Karaoke is Japanese for empty orchestra.  He thinks that is hauntingly beautiful.  I feel like that sometimes, like a performer lit up on a stage.   I peer out into the darkness, to the audience, but I can't see if anyone is watching.  I preform not knowing if there will be applause of silence when the curtain falls.

Time Vampires

There are lots of little things that eat the day away. On their own they don't seem like that much, but put them all together and a picture forms of a ravenous creature intent on sapping every second of every day. They are Time Vampires and here are some of mine:


Work: Now yes work is necessary to pay the bills, and as far as jobs go I don't have the worst. But a full time job is nice chunk of time out of one's day. I just think about all that time I'm being productive for someone else when I could be writing. It's frustrating.



TV: Because I just can't miss... well actually there is no good reason or excuse for this vampire. Most of the so called "must watch TV" I consider "must avoid TV." There are scant few shows I actually go out of my way to watch, and even those I normally watch on Hulu. Ah, blessed Hulu. The great thing about it is the liberation to watch just about any show at any time with with a grand total of four or six commercials. That's commercials total, not six commercial breaks with thirty commercials each. Do the math. Ah cursed math.

(And this is how math makes me feel.(Warning animated cartoon stick man violence, very graphic. I am not kidding. Click at your own risk.))

Friends: They'll be there for me. Even when I might be better off without them, working on my story. I know this sounds ungrateful, rude, and a bit anti-social, but friends do distract me from what I should be doing. I can't count the number of times my friends have pulled me into a fountain and forced me to dance the night away (like I'm was always stuck in second gear.)


Laziness: I was gonna write something here, but....



I so tired.



Gaming: I start up a game and I'm having a good time when suddenly... I look up at the clock and it's midnight. The game just Rip Van Winkled me. I hate to say anything bad about gaming on account of it giving so much good to me. But it does take time and money, and time is money, so it takes money squared. And dang it I've started talking math again. You can never be too careful with math.







You can never be too careful with math.

Getting back on track

The Holidays have gotten me a little off track. But fear not I am slowing making my way back to where I want to be.

This means writing, and a lot of it. Hopefully some of that so called writing will splash over onto this blog. Boy it sure is easier to break habits than make them. But this year is gonna be my year. I can feel it.

...Although I have felt that way before. In particular I felt really good about 2007. That turned out to be a train wreck. But onward and upward.

And whew. I was really running out of things to say. you see I had to keep writing because I included this neat picture of a train. As I did I thought to myself: "Self, you ought put that picture in the left hand corner instead of front and center." So I did but if I didn't have words to wrap around the bottom it would just look silly. So here we are.

An Unfulfilled Promise

I am way behind schedule. Back when I was a kid I thought that by the time I was as old as I am now I'd be a published author. Oh how I've let the little guy down.

This trip down memory lane makes me ponder the reason of why I actually write.

The year was 1993 and I was in elementary school. To say that I did not enjoy school would be an understatement. I wanted out, and I was desperate to find some way, any way, to quit school. Little me hatched what he thought was an ingenious scheme. For whenever he balked about going to school and asked the grown ups why they almost inevitably responded that I would need school to get a job.
"Why do I need a job?" I would ask.
"To make money."
Money, I found out at an early age, was the be all and end all of life. If I had it I could do anything, without it I had to play by the world's rules.

My dad had told me about this kid who collected stamps. He got so good at buying and selling them that left school. He was rich and got driven around by a chauffeur all day, he never even got his licence.

So my brilliant plan was to find something that I could do that would make me money. Just like the stamp kid. Little did I know (oh how ominous those words are) the path that this plan would set me upon.

How was I a mere grade school kid supposed to make money. I wasn't even old enough for a paper route. The answer came to me rather quickly. I would write. It was something that I already liked to do so I figured I could use it to get out of school. It all seemed so simple. But I had to make sure that my parents would let me quit school once I made my millions. Parents can be obnoxious about things like this. "Sorry son we don't care if you can afford to buy yourself a small island your still going to attend school."

And so I made them sign this:

They signed it. A sort of promissory note. Oh I had them now.

Or so I thought.

It was my promise that never got fulfilled. A promise I made to myself to get out of school.

Sometimes I wonder if I write because I really want to or if I have just hardwired it into myself because of my desperate need to escape school. Even now that I'm out of school that need to write is still there. I can't help but wonder if it's genuine.

But then I remember that I did indeed write a book. Way back before the promissory note. Back before I knew how to write. It was an illustrated story about a presidential election between Fire and Water. I still have it somewhere, I'll have to dig it up one day. Remembering it makes me think that maybe I really am a born storyteller. I mean if I was telling stories before I knew words that should count for something right?

At any rate both these events get to the heart of the question of why I write. They aren't the whole answer. I don't know if I can put the whole answer into words. It is something that is felt and thought and spoken. But this is part of it.

Writing is hard

A while back Lynners had a post on her blog which had some advice for bloggers (blogers?) It was very good advice. One point was about posting on schedule. This is a feat I've never been able to accomplish.
Oh I dream and wish, and I even told myself, "Self, when you write this blog make sure you post at least once a week."
Well once a week turns into once a month, if I'm lucky.

Writing is just so darn hard. People who don't do it think it's easy. I have from time to time shared my desire to write a book with people and they have flippantly responded,
"Oh I think I'll write a book too someday."
Now if they really mean to write a book I got nothing against that. It's just the vibe I get from them is that they seem to be saying that once they have some free time, like a weekend or something, they'll just sit down and write whatever they've got in their heads. Bam, instant book.

IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!

Or at least not for me, and near as I can tell not for anyone else. Writing, if done well, is not something done on a whim. It takes skill and work.

It's so hard it scares me. Scares me to the point of avoidance. Yeah that's right. This writing thing that I am supposed to be so passionate about terrifies me. And the mountain of work set ahead of me is so daunting I find excuses not to attempt the climb.

So I need to do better. I'm telling myself to forget about the worry and the weight of the work. Just enjoy it and make an effort. It will still be hard but nothing worth doing is ever easy. (I hate it when platitudes are right. They just sit there and are so smug about it too. Grumble grumble grumble.)

The Woes of Paper and Pen.

I'm a pen and paper guy. I think everyone who writes has their own favorite medium to work with. Some prefer the old school typewriters, others like these newfangled computers. Some are like me and choose the pen/pencil and paper combination. It’s important to be comfortable with your tools and for me I never feel better than with paper and pen. It’s like a first love. Sure computers may be faster and easier, but there is something that just feels right about my preferred method.

This of course causes me untold grief. Because I like paper and pen it means anything I write must be rewritten on the computer. I have to get it onto the computer because lets face it that’s the way the world is. Word processing programs make it so much easier to edit. The Internet makes transferring documents fast. And when I print something out from my computer I know it’s legible. Many people would be hard pressed to read my hand writing. Shoot I can’t even read some of what I’ve written if it’s been a while since I originally wrote it. I can’t tell you how many great ideas I’ve lost due to this. At least I think they were great ideas. There’s no way to know for sure now. But they must have been great, why else would I have written them down?

I wish that there was some technology that could help me get my hand written material into the computer. Now maybe it already exists and I’ve just not heard about it. If it does and if anyone reading this knows about it please let me know. What I’d like is to be able to scan my hand written text into a word program. Now hopefully the software could read and identify most of what I’ve written. But even if I have to go through it once its on the screen and correct things here and there it would be worth it. It’d be a ton better than what I do now.

I don’t have a scanner yet but if this technology exists Id’ gladly pay for both. It would save me an enormous amount of time and energy.