Day 30: On Writing

I love writing; writing's a bitch. The cliche about the terror/tyranny/loneliness of the blank page and all that. Thirty posts in thirty days is hard, but don't break out your tiny violins for me. I choose it. This year when deciding whether to do NaBloPoMo it all came down to this: Anything that puts me in the chair in front of the blank page is a good thing. 

My hope was to create a habit, and then in December sit down every day and write something. I've got unfinished short story manuscripts, and a book project that needs a solid reworking. And I have in the back of my head a novel brewing. But life things are still unsettled and instead of being a distraction from life, life is a distraction from writing.

Make no mistake, writing a blog is an exercise in egoism. Most of us know our readership is small. Ansel Adams used to say that he photographed to please himself and if other people liked it, that was a bonus. That's true about all of art, I suppose. All I know is if I go too long without writing something I get really antsy. I also know that when I get really involved in a project I obsess on it. 

I don't know if I'll do Blog-a-palooza next year. The first time I did NaBloPoMo was 2011 and I wrote 13 posts. I didn't try in 2012, but made 30 in 2013. Last year I didn't participate either. For some reason it felt like I did more than that but really, folks, it looks like I've only completed NaBloPoMo once before this year. 

What I don't like about it is that some days the posts are not up to my standards. Some days I just dash off something to make deadline. I don't like doing work I can't be proud of. Thank you for reading the good and the bad.

As a thank you, I leave you with the opening for my current short story. It doesn't have a title yet.

On his twenty-second birthday, Julius Worthington III boarded a bus bound for a small, northwest Pennsylvania town, where he hoped the locals had short memories for newspaper headlines. At the Erie county courthouse an indifferent judge did a double-take at the name, peered at him for a short minute, then whisked through the rest of the hearing, after which Julius returned to Philadelphia as Julius Applebite. He had already settled upon Gordon, his mother's maiden name, until he passed a series of Burma Shave signs on U.S 6 and thought Applebite just sounded better. He would tell people it was Dutch.

On the trip home, Julius studied the map of Philadelphia's outlying areas. He didn't know where he wanted to go, exactly, so he started by calculating bike-able distance. But then he figured everything was a bike-able distance if you got an early start. Lots of little nowhere towns in New Jersey, he thought. Tomorrow he would ride.

Day 23: One of the things I am doing

One of the things I'm doing to earn a little cash is blogging for realtors. For a fee I build them a blog, then provide weekly content. I just started, at the request of an agent in my market center, and after working out the kinks am ready to start branching out.

Here is the blog of Michaleen  and Bob Paul

Did one for mysel too

If any realtors out there want a blog let me know.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

First, this post has been cooking for about a week but I have waited to go live until after NaBloPoMo. I didn't do NaBloPoMo this year because of stuff you will read about in a minute, and because I was busy re-doing the blog, but I was with the bloggers in spirit. I hope to join my brothers and sisters next year for all the blogapalooza fun.

Second, let me say Changes is for me only a medium-favorite Bowie song (though I really like the lines--And these children that you spit on / As they try to change their worlds / Are immune to you consultations / They're quite aware what they're going through), but I can't title this post Young Americans, after all. Or Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

It's been a period of changes for me. As many of you know I tore my quadriceps tendon back in March. I had surgery, then spent most of the summer in various casts and splints and wheelchairs and walkers. And just when I was released to go back to work, my relationship with the Aurora Kennel ended. So now I'm working on strengthening my leg and searching for a job.

So what I've done is re-brand this blog. It is now called Time and Change, which are some of the words to the Ohio State Alma Mater, Carmen, Ohio. I kept most of the posts but deleted a few, and tidied up the junk. .

In the new blog I'm going to feature my writing a little more prominently, to which end I've also freshened up my web site.

And I'm going to try to use the blog to promote my real estate business, though not in an annoying way, I promise. For those who didn't know, I've been in real estate for several years, but I've kept it on the down-low to avoid any conflicts with my other job. But now I'm pulling off the cloak of invisibility; I'm ramping up my intensity.

[Quick Annoying Promotional Segment] If you know of anyone who is thinking about buying or selling a home, or is interested in investing in real estate, or is interested in a career in real estate, leave me a note in the comments and I'll contact you.

But this isn't going to be just a real estate and writing blog. It's going to be a music blog and an arts blog and a world blog and a blog that makes silly lists and shows you the picture of the elephant with his head stuck in a peanut butter jar as long as I can relate it back to something personal. In short I'm going to post the same wide range of things I've always done, trying to entertain and maybe make you think a little. If you have forgotten what those posts were like please take a few minutes to browse the blog archives, Personal favorites include How to Play the Cymbals, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and Sometimes a Parade is Not Just a Parade.

And if you know of a job, let me know.


Thanks for reading---FJS

Blogapalooza 2011

Today I discovered, via the Facebook post of a denizen of Toronto and probable future family member (this is shaping up to be a grammatically torturous sentence but I'm going to keep going), that November is National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo. It's a sister to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). During November, bloggers are encouraged to produce a post a day, every day.

This leaves several areas writing still without their own month.We are yet to see:
NaTechWriMo--(National Technical Writers Month). Daily task: translate from Taiwanese to English one manual on assembling a swingset.

NaRaSpoWriMo--(National Radio Spot Writing Month). Daily task: write one 30 second commercial for a local car dealer that does NOT include the words big, giant, deal, low, money down, lease, APR or the name of any make of car.

NaInfWriMo--(National Infomercial Writing Month). Daily task: Try to sell us something using words that sound great when shouted repeatedly.

NaTOSWriMO--(National Terms of Service Writing Month). Daily task:  Write 40 pages of legalese in 2 point font size, followed by a click box that says 'I Agree.'

NaChaSignLiYoSeAtMufShoWriMo--(National Changeable Sign Like You See at Muffler Shops Writing Month). Daily task: One message that is short enough to make us want to read it, but long enough to make reading it dangerous. 

NaMenBorSpecWriMo--(National Menu Board Specials Writing Month). Daily task: Try to make a new way to say 'Yesterday's stuff chopped up and put into a nice sauce.'


So I'm on board for this whole blog-a-day thing. I expect some posts to be brilliant, and some to be drivel (isn't that the usual ratio anyway?), but they'll be here, even on Thanksgiving (which my Canadian friend doesn't have to worry about).

See you tomorrow.

A dog story to warm your heart.

There's a little blog where some writers post things they've written that aren't really literature, but more like conversations between themselves. Here is one such post about a really stupid Labrador and the people he loved.

I probably shouldn't share this

I just did a one hour webinar about online marketing from a terrific guy named Adam Lapsevich from Digital Design Video, in nearby Chagrin Falls, Ohio.  I learned some really cool stuff, like YouTube is the number 2 search engine in the world. And what WIIFT means. And that there are only two Adam Lapseviches in the whole world. 

One thing I learned is that I may need to move my blog to another host (shh, don't tell Blogspot). Another thing is that by doing this blog I'm off to a good start, but I need to do more networking. So all of you get out there and link to me. Link, link, link. Actually at no point in the webinar did Adam instruct us to beg you to link us, I made that one up myself. I'll pass it along to Adam and see if he wants to add it. 

Check out Adam on his website and see if maybe he can help you in your marketing.

And now that I've shared this with you I've given away my competitive advantage. Alas.

Opening Day

This is a blog about dogs and cats, and maybe some other stuff. Though I have access to veterinary advice, this will not be a veterinary advice blog. It will be more about people who love dogs and cats hanging out and talking about things that are mostly about dogs and cats, but sometimes not. I hope that's clear.

One thing I know about blogs is that virtually no one will read this first post today, or tomorrow, or maybe for a while. I know when I discover blogs, they've already been going for a while, which has a lot to do with me never being asked to be in the group with the cool kids. I always have to mill about on the periphery and wait for one of them to say the name of a great blog a little too loudly, at which point I scribble it on my hand with a pen and run home to check it out. Sometimes I'm so late to the party that the blog has run its course, like FireJoeMorgan.com, which was a great, if a little mean spirited, blog about baseball journalism. I discovered it about a month before they folded up shop. Oh well, there's always the archives.

You will notice that I will make baseball references. I like baseball, and seeing as how spring training has started I've got the fever. But don't worry, this won't be a baseball blog. It will be a blog about pets, mainly dogs and cats, and how we love them and care for them and what kind of trouble they get into when we're not looking. It'll be about what they expect from us and what we expect from them. And it'll be about what it means to be human as our pets would define it. Like, did you ever have your cat stare at you while you tied your shoes? He's thinking, "How can he lick his toes with THOSE things on?"

Anyway, welcome to this tiny corner of the blogosphere.