Archive for the ‘The Writing Life’ Category
And Now a Moment of Silence . . .
Written by John Erianne on January 3, 2009 – 12:01 pm -. . . for writers who died in 2008:
George MacDonald Fraser
Stephen Marlowe
Janwillem van de Wetering
Robin Moore
Arthur C. Clarke
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Marmoud Darwish
William F. Buckley Jr.
Gregory McDonald
Andrew Britton
Chingiz Aitmatov
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Robert Aspirin
Thomas M. Disch
Tony Hillerman
Algis Budrys
Phyllis Whitney
Oakely Hall
James Crumley
David Foster Wallace
William Wharton
Michael Crichton
Studs Terkel
Barrington J. Bayley
Robert Jordan
Harold Pinter
Donald Westlake
Hillary Waugh
This is by no means a complete list — just the ones I could think of.
I Resolve to Resolve These Resolutions
Written by John Erianne on January 3, 2009 – 10:36 am -Okay . . . New Year’s Day is over — back to the subject of New Year’s Resolutions. My own resolutions for 2009 consist mainly of resolutions I didn’t keep in 2008, plus one new one that wasn’t an issue for me in January 2008, but is in January of 2009.
Of the stuff that I didn’t achieve in 2008, the most pressing has to be updating/redesigning all my websites including this blog. In theory, I can build my own websites from scratch, but haven’t actually done so in almost 3 years. During that time, I’ve been either relying on pre-made templates or making do with an old design. In 2006, things started to get away from me. My health situtation dominated most of my time and concern throughout 2006 and 2007 so I just didn’t maintain any of my websites. And, in 2008, despite my best intentions, I was too broke, too lazy and too distracted to do much upkeep so, again, nothing got done. In 2009, I really want to change that. The problem with using pre-made templates designed by someone else is that they don’t really meet a publisher’s needs 100% because they aren’t specifically designed for you. I’m not saying that I’ll stop using templates altogether because I have a bunch of websites and I don’t have the time to redesign all of them from scratch, but a few of them need some tender loving care that only a complete and personal overhaul can solve. I can’t say I’m not intimidated by this. I don’t consider myself to be a great web designer. I’m completely self-taught. I’ve learned things through trial and error (mostly error) over the last decade and the thought of spending hours and hours working with source code when I’d rather be writing other things bugs the shit out of me. On the other hand, being as it would likely cost me between $1500-$2000 to hire someone to design just one website/blog (and with me being broke and in debt with an army of empty suits demanding their pound of flesh) my only option besides using templates is to do it myself. And really, it’s true, the only way to get things done the exact way you want them is to do it yourself.
The second big resolution is to submit more of my own writing to publishers. I submitted very little of my writing in 2008. This blog has taken up a lot of my time lately. It’s not that I haven’t written other things. I have. I just haven’t gone to much effort, once I’ve written them, to see that someone publishes them. There’s only so many hours in a day to write, write this blog, promote this blog, read stuff submitted to me by others, partake in the endless cycle of sleep/eat/shit/etc. — who has time to research markets and target submissions hither and yon? It’d be great if I could make submissions telepathically. That’d be a real time saver (although, I suspect, those same bastards who don’t accept email submissions probably wouldn’t be too keen on telepathy, ya think?).
The third big thing to address is my weight (no pun intended). A year ago, gaining weight was one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2008. After cancer, treatments for cancer and going for so long without being able to eat solid food, I looked like a concentration camp survivor. Last year, I was, therefore, on a 3500 calorie a day, high protein diet. Unfortunately, once I got back to my normal wight in June 2008, I just couldn’t stop eating (and I don’t even want to tell you about all the crap I was eating during the holidays!). So, my resolution for 2009 is to lose weight. One of my Christmas gifts was a gym membership (a hint and a half for my fat ass, I guess) and I resolve to use it.
There you have it: my resolutions for 2008: 1) redesign websites 2) make more effort to get writing published 3) lost weight
Pretty simple and straight forward. No impossible superhuman multi-page list signed in blood this year. Just something plausible. My lazy, dumb ass’s fault if I don’t even manage one of these items.
Writing Prompt #2: Getting Descripty With It
Written by John Erianne on December 28, 2008 – 5:28 pm -I’m getting ready to kick back and watch the Eagles/Dallas game but, before I sign-off, I thought I’d throw up one more writing prompt to close-out the final weekend before the new year. This one should get your mental faucets flowing:
You’re sitting in a room (real or imaginary — for the purpose of this exercise it doesn’t really matter which one) and you are looking around this room. What do you see? Pick out ten objects at random that you see in this room.
Got them picked out? Okay,what you’re going to do is write the names of these objects on a piece of paper. Memorize the list.
Can you remember the objects you have listed? Set this list aside somewhere out of sight but within reach. Now, what your going to do is go to your computer or grab a notebook and a pen if you’d prefer.
Without referring to your list or mentioning any of the objects on the list, I want you to describe the objects in detail, using as few words as possible (again, without mentioning the actual names of the objects from the list).
Show your descriptions to another person and have them read what you have written. Ask them to list the objects you have described (without seeing your list). Do the objects on their list match your own? If so, you get a gold star.
