Tag: Writer

  • Reforming the Writing Habit

    July was a busy month with vacations, and the kid did some traveling with friends, and I had a huge home improvement project to finish. And I started watching Vikings, which I am finding really entertaining.

    Something had to give, and that was writing. After two years of writing nearly every day, I decided I should take a break. There was a nagging thought in the back of my head that if I took a break then in a roundabout way, I was admitting that writing isn’t that important to me.

    Maybe…

    The other thought I had was that everyone needs time away, a respite, time off. I have been working at all of this, blogging every weekday, working on stories and submitting them to magazines, and I especially have been journaling constantly. I have put down close to 500,000 words from July 2020 to July 2022.

    But, I got out of the habit of writing every day. Just the mechanical act of sitting down, either with the computer or a journal, and putting down thoughts and ideas. If I felt like doing it or not, I did it. Out of everything I had tried over these past two years, I think that was the achievement I was most proud of; I had a good habit of writing each day.

    With the time off, I have to restart this habit all over again. Maybe I’ll fall right back into it. Maybe I have to work at it again. Maybe none of this really is a big deal.

    Maybe.

    Now, I just got to start going to the gym again.

  • English Language Rules

    You know what I am very bad at? Knowing when to use “maybe” and “may be.”

    I suck at grammar. This blog is filled with type-o’s from here till dawn, and until I get an editor, it will continue to function in this improper manner. God bless the people out there who can remember all the rules and know how to follow them. And in the same breath, you can fuck right off all of you people who use grammar as some sort of cudgel to make people feel ignorant and uncultured.

    Sadly, everyone, even really smart grammar-nazi people, has an innate desire to kick someone around to make themselves feel better. I wish people weren’t like that, but we are.

    If grammar people were honest, they would admit that the rules to the English language are arbitrary at best, and change often. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first English dictionary, wanted to have a manual of the authoritative rules of the English language. Where did he find these rules? He made them up. The rules were based on his preferences, and for almost 300 years we have been following or breaking them ever since.

    As I am sure you can tell, I don’t like people who use the language as some sort of litmus test of a person’s intelligence. Whenever I hear “proper way to speak” or “proper way to write” it is like finger nails on the chalk board. The word “proper” when used in the context of language, is never meant as a signal that one is have difficulty discerning the meaning from the use of the language. No, when “proper” shows up in the contextual discussion of language, it is meant to signify that one use the of the language is “good” and another is “bad.”

    For that reason, I wish the English language, spoken and written, were treated more like a musical instrument that conveys emotion and understanding, regardless of how it is “played.” The sole question that should be ask is only, “Did you understand the intent and render a meaning?” If the answer is yes, then the language was used correctly.

    Maybe if we accepted more understanding, we would have a better understanding.

    (Say! If you like what you have read, please like, share, and leave a comment. It would help justify my existence.)

  • My Social Media and Blog Footprint

    I suck at social media. Part of it is that I keep thinking no one cares what I do or like, let alone what I am currently eating. Yet, I feel the need to get better at it. As if it were an art form which needs to be mastered. Though, I feel one cannot master it, but can only be innovative with it.

    I know that everything on social media is some form of a lie, but the same could be said for marketing, and I do believe that is what social media really is. People who are good at social media are very good at marketing themselves.

    I am not good at marketing myself. I want you to pay attention to me, but I don’t want to do anything to make you pay attention to me.

    I am a conundrum to myself.

    I feel self-conscious when I ask people to pay attention to me. This might be why I enjoy acting, and puppetry so much when it comes to theatre. I could either hide myself in a character, or literally, hide behind a puppet and never be seen. I could be the center of attention, and no one would get to know me.

    But I have a public blog. A blog that has increased its views by 50% in the past two months. So, that means there are more of you coming by to look at me. (Well, the stats are saying you are here to read the short story reviews, but a few of you venture to the other posts. In that sense, greetings!) Still, I feel very uncomfortable about mentioning this blog to the people in my daily life.

    I have been thinking about that lately; why aren’t I more aggressive in sharing this?

    Part of it is that I am still not sure if I believe that I am a professional, a hobbyist, or if I am a hobbyist advancing towards professionalism? And if I don’t believe that what I am creating has value, then how can I ask anyone else to believe it is of value?

    Maybe it’s not self-consciousness, but a mere lack of self-confidence?

    But I do like it. I like writing a blog every day. I thought about cutting back to just three days a week, but it felt weird not to post daily.

    Hence, why I am here today.

    Please, feel free to subscribe and share with your friends.

  • Rejection

    Tuesday morning is when I go grocery shopping for my family. This chore takes me out of Harlem and to the 93rd Street Trader Joe’s, which means if I do this right, it will take me an hour to do. I listen to music, and read on the subway. It’s personal time for me, so I try to keep it to enjoying things that make me feel better.

    I read on the subway trip down, and had a nice stroll through the UWS to get to the store. Shopping was fine, not too many people. When I got to checking out, I was going to use my phone to tap and pay, when I saw on my screen that I had got an email from a magazine I had submitted a story to.

    Curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the email, knowing that I already knew what the response was going to be, but I still wanted to see it. They were rejecting my story. Like I said, I had a feeling a knew what the response would be. But, clearly I must have looked disappointed, as the woman ringing me up asked, “You okay?”

    I guess I did get my hopes up.

    Even though I told myself not to. Funny how even though I prepare myself for this, I still set myself up. Oh well. I have to come to love every step of the process, even the ugly soul crushing parts.

    I was a theatre major in college, and I had a professor who would say that to us, that you had to enjoy all the steps in the process of becoming a professional, which, according to him, is the only way you will be able to survive the ups and downs of a career in the arts.

    I always thought that advice was bullshit. Who the hell likes being rejected?

    No one likes being rejected.

    But I can see his point. To get accepted, you got to put yourself out there. The more you can enjoy getting out there, the less the rejection stings.

    Well, four down, one more to go, and that will complete my first round of submissions. Then I have to go find another set of magazines to submit to.

    Process keeps on going.

  • Where I’m At

    I got rejected from another lit magazine yesterday. I submitted to five at the end of January/beginning of February. That would be three rejections in the past two weeks. I am expecting to be rejected by the final two magazines, and then we will start this whole process over again.

    I am reminding myself that everyone I know who has a successful career in the arts had to put in about ten years of ground work first. The other thing that comes to mind is what my dad told me about achieving a goal; you get 100 no’s before the first yes, so get the no’s out of the way. So, 97 more no’s to go.

    Now that I have the self-affirmation shit out of the way, I think I’m going to subscribe to “The Drift” today. It’s a quarterly lit mag, written by people who are younger than me. I mean, not that much younger, but still, I have a few years on them. Anyway, I feel the need to discover some new ideas.

    I have been able to get back to reading regularly, and I am making headway through “The Stories of John Cheever.” I still have “60 Stories” by Donald Barthelme that I seem to have been working on for five years, but I am feeling like 2022 is the year it will be finished. Furthermore, I feel like I will be making a trip down to The Strand soon, and see what I can find.

    Yeah. That’s where I’m at.