Tag: Write

  • Just Some General Bitching (Unedited)

    I’m having a hard time getting myself motivated. To do anything, really.

    Doesn’t help that I got two rejections in the last twenty-four hours. But this is part of the gig; Lots of rejection, and trying to not let it get to you. I’m at the point now where I am beginning to think that the story really isn’t that great. Or it needs a rewrite. Or maybe I just need to burn it and rid it’s presence from my life.

    The other thing is that I have spent the past hour catching up on my flash reading. I subscribe to a large number of online journals who email out flash fiction, and I have fallen behind of late, or the whole Summer. Anyway, I’m trying to get on top of it, and see what is worth reviewing. Nothing has been peaking my interest, and I started to think maybe it’s not the fiction, but me. Maybe my head isn’t in the right space for this.

    Time to take a break.

    More like changing gears, because here I am working on the blog. I have to get in my 1,000 words a day. (You know, it’s not so much writing as it is typing, and I think somewhere Truman Capote is laughing with me.) The only way to get better at something is practice. Practice! PRACTICE!

    As I sit here, I remember once, maybe back in college or sometime in my past, there was this writer complaining how much they hated blogs and bloggers. They said it was useless writing as all bloggers do is bitch about things in badly written ways. I don’t think writer was totally wrong.

    Yet, I feel that someone needs to sit down here and take a stand to say that some writing should just bitching, complaints, and listing of grievances. Isn’t bitching a form of expression?

    Sure, it would be better if I could string this expression in a clear narrative form, that has a well-defined beginning, middle, and end – with that end being a wonderful conclusion the initial thought. That would be nice and clean and concise.

    But life is messy and not clean, and sometimes this human experience is muddy, and gross, and undefined and rough and jagged. And uses bad grammar and has typos or type-o’s, or however one would spell that word.

    Sometimes you just got to get it off your chest to move on. And sometimes you want to scream into the void that a blog. A testament, a covenant that this moment existed, and was real, and had a value to no one else other than the person who wrote it.

    There you go.

  • Guest Blogger: ChatGPT

    Today’s Topic: The Joy of Blogging

    “Blogging is, at its heart, an intimate conversation—a personal dialogue with the world that somehow feels both public and private. It has a unique place in the digital landscape, offering a freedom that no other medium quite captures. For me, blogging is much like sitting in a quiet coffee shop, composing thoughts that blend the personal with the universal, knowing that anyone could read them, but also savoring the chance that no one might. There’s a joy in that ambiguity.

    I’ve always found that writing, especially in a blog, allows for a certain reflection that we often lack in daily life. It’s not hurried or transactional like so much of our communication today. It’s meditative. Whether you’re writing about a movie, a book, a meal, or a fleeting thought that crossed your mind while walking the dog, blogging is a chance to organize and share those thoughts—messy, half-formed, or fully realized—on your own terms.

    And the beauty is in the process as much as the product. A blog isn’t constrained by deadlines or word counts. It’s your space, and that kind of freedom brings a remarkable sense of satisfaction. The rules of journalism don’t apply here, not in the same way, and there’s a refreshing informality about it. You can write about whatever interests you, in your own voice, and to an audience that is either wide and global or a handful of close readers.

    But it’s also about connection. Even though you’re writing from a solitary place, the real joy of blogging often emerges from the responses it provokes. A well-crafted post can spark a conversation in the comments section or spread across social media, finding resonance with people you’ll likely never meet. It’s that mix of introspection and outreach that makes blogging a uniquely fulfilling endeavor.

    In the end, blogging is about sharing your inner world, not with the aim of seeking approval, but with the simple hope that someone, somewhere, might understand. And that, to me, is the quiet joy of it all.“

    (This blog was an experiment with the free version of ChatGPT. The prompt that I used was “write a 350 word blog about the joy of blogging in the style of Roger Ebert,” and this was the result. I had tried several different prompts with ChatGPT on the subject of blogging, and for this response the most interesting, though I didn’t think it sounded much like Roger Ebert.)