Wow! I am here.

Hey there, things have been hairy for a while... I got a new job, then worked really hard... and then had to leave to see my daughter born.

Well I am back to writing and feeling great!

I have a few ideas that I'd like to write about in the near future:

Time management isn't working for me and what I plan to do about it.

Breaking through the noise and getting noticed

Some interesting observations about China

Wasting time, cuz I often feel like I am wasting time.

multi-tasking and whether there are too many things on my plate at once.

Setting goals, goals are related to time management, but maybe if I haven't exhausted all I have to say then I can talk about goals in more detail.

So you see, that's some stuff I can write about as I go.

Also, shout-out to that guy who posted a comment a while back about me not writing every day! Hey, what's up? thanks for the encouragement, I wasn't ignoring your comment I just didn't know what to say! :D

Did I mention that editing is boring?

Hey hey, it's me I'm back again talking about editing! Seriously I'd rather be visiting the dentist than hitting the editing. Oh man.

anyhow, it also make me regret not capitalizing things that I wrote several years ago...

Editing

So I've been working on cleaning up a number of my older works so they are presentable. Well, editing is really boring. I know this is no surprise to anyone, but damn. I've been through more than half of the stuff that I need to get through and I've done it in two sessions. Only thing is that I think that each of these sessions ended when I was falling asleep and could no longer keep my eyes open.

Honestly I could finish this stuff much faster if I could just stay awake for the editing. Granted the "editing" I'm doing consists of hitting the Word spell-check and clicking on the ignore or change button, and occasionally making a correction the computer can't figure out. That has to be the least interesting kind of editing possible. next time I need help falling asleep I think I'll be sure and use that to help me fall asleep faster.

Justin Bieber shoes

Check out the first half or so of this awesome short story about some obsessed Justin Bieber fans.

This is raw and unedited, but I appreciate any feedback.

Do enjoy!

Susie liked Justin bieber. Some people said she liked him to much. Susie didn't agree. she had many posters on her wall and even a Justin Bieber calendar. She had seen him in concert multiple times and watched every piece of video she could get her hands on. She had even bought some scraps of his hair off EBay. When people called her obsession sick and pointed out that she was an adult much older than Justin and therefore her obsession with a boy younger than eighteen was bizarre and in all likelihood quite unhealthy she just ignored them. Men had been obsessed with the Olsen twins before they turned eighteen and there wasn't anything wrong with that, was there?

Anyway Susie found that her life was largely meaningless without Justin. She privately called him Justin as though he was her friend. Once she had touched his hand after a concert where she got a chance to have her picture taken with him. She told her friends she wouldn't wash her hand ever again. Her secret was that she was telling the truth, though try as she might she eventually did need to wash her hand. After this she purchased the hair from an online auction and then felt that by touching the hair every day it was almost the same thing.

Today she was looking at an auction for shoes. These shoes were custom Justin Bieber branded shoes that were allegedly worn by Justin. The picture showing Justin wearing the shoes looked authentic. the price was high, but any chance was worth it and she already had a place on her wall chosen to display the shoes.

She maintained that she and Justin had made a special connection that day when she had gotten the chance to take a picture with him. Perhaps he was waiting til the day when he turned eighteen and they could be together without the world thinking ill of her. Yes, that was what Justin was thinking, he was noble and honorable. he wouldn't want people saying nasty things about the woman he loved. There was no way in which this could be wrong.

She stayed up late into the night watching the auction. It would end the next day when she was supposed to be at work. The next day was supposed to be important, someone from the corporate office was coming down to evaluate their performance. It was a hard decision but she had finally chosen to call in sick. Perhaps after the auction was over she would roll into work. She was already looking bad at 4am. If she kept this up everyone would believe that she had been sick.

Time counted down, as the seconds ticked by the price rose. People were bidding at a frantic pace, but she knew that it was hers to win. It was her destiny to be Mrs. Bieber and the shoes were a sign of her devotion. The shoes were now breath-takingly expensive, she was going to cut out her daily coffee if she was to afford them, but how could you consider the price on something this important. With seconds left she submitted her bid. she was so sure of winning she didn't even bother watching the last few seconds count down. Soon enough the future Mrs. Bieber would have her very own pair of real Justin Bieber shoes. There was no doubt in her mind that this was a great moment, a formative moment in her life. She knew everything would be different from now on.

Oddly enough for the purposes of this story she did actually win the auction. You would think with the way I was building it up that she would lose, but she didn't. We should remember though that there were others just like Susie who didn't win, obsessed super-fans who wanted, really wanted autographed shoes worn by Justin. One such person sat in a darkened room with their head in their hands. "No, damn! How could I have lost? what is wrong with you EBay? My bid wasn't good enough for you?". This person would not have been any trouble but for the fact that she too had a shrine to Justin, with a special place set aside just for those shoes. "I take it back, give me just one more chance! I'll bid twice as much! Come on EBay." It was fortunate there was no one else in the room, it made the pain and humiliation easier to bear. "Take it easy, it's OK. There will be other shoes. Yeah, I can just go to a concert and ask him to give me some shoes and sign them. He won't mind, he knows we belong together."

Susie was unaware of the acute suffering going on mere miles from where she lived. The coincidence of their closeness was just that. Though they were both Bieber super-fans and avid collectors of his memorabilia they had never met. Susie was basking in the glow of her win, and didn't even think about the price she would have to pay.

The girl sitting alone in the dark had had time to contemplate and something was becoming clear to her, nothing would stop her. The shrine had grown from a simple picture of Justin from back when he was just a kid on YouTube. It had been four years now, and the shrine had grown an so had Martha's obsession. She didn't really know how she did it or what drove her to do it but before she knew it she was calling the seller of the shoes.

"Hello this is Martha Brown from the Star-ledger. I just wanted to talk to you about the Justin bieber shoes you just sold on EBay. I think this will be a big news story."

"Oh why certainly" the man from the other end of the phone said. "What can I tell you?"

"I understand that the shoes were being sold on EBay and the proceeds from the sale would be going to charity."

"That's right, at least fifty percent goes to charity. I've got to make a living too you know."

"So what can you tell me about how you acquired the shoes?"

"Well I've been in the autographing business for quite some time and I know Justin's manager. So it was fairly simple to get in touch with him and set up a quick signing session. As you may know Justin is very charitable and so we will be donating the proceeds to his favorite Christian charity."

"Yes I see. Do you think that you could put me in touch with his manager? I would love to get a quote from Justin on this story."

"Certainly I think you'll find his manager is a really swell guy."

She suddenly had an inspiration, if she couldn't get shoes from Justin there might still be a way.

"Could you also get me in touch with the buyer? I'd love to cover this story from all angles."

"Well Mrs. Brown I am hesitant to give out such information as I'm sure you'll understand."

"I understand your apprehension, but you must realize if I don't get the story written today it will be old news. You don't want to miss your chance at a little fame do you?"

"no, no you're right. I'm just a little paranoid."

She got all the information she needed from the man, including a phone-number for the buyer.

"oh, by the way Mrs. Brown how did you get my phone number?"

*Click*

She didn't have time to keep making up excuses, it was now time for action.

Susie went in to work after calling and telling everyone that she was feeling better. Even after her boss dressed her down for missing the meeting with the man from corporate she was still elated. Nothing could touch her today, and she still looked sick enough that her boss later apologized for getting angry and thanked her for even coming in at all when she was feeling unwell. He even told her that she should go back home and get some rest, but Susie was feeling good and she refused.

She had arranged to have the shoes delivered to the office the next day. She couldn't wait and even contemplated sleeping at work just to be ready for the next day. Why couldn't that UPS guy show up today? There really was nothing to live for between now and when he came with the shoes. Maybe Justin himself would come deliver the shoes. Wasn't the money going to his favorite charity or something? Maybe Justin would be there in all his glory to hand deliver the shoes. That was probably the sleep deprivation talking. Why would Justin want to come to her work and deliver a pair of his old shoes to someone? She had a Bieber shirt underneath her work shirt just in case, and a few more fresh t-shirts out in her car. Perhaps she would sleep the whole night here, it couldn't hurt anything could it?

The woman had contacted Justin's manager and things hadn't gone well. First she had requested a photo shoot where he could pose with some shoes. The manager said he was to busy and anyway the shoes were already sold. Then she asked if she could get a quote from Justin but Justin, he said, was very busy today. She was also rebuffed when asking about where Justin was and if there was any possibility of getting a quick couple words. The manager didn't give her any information. The woman wondered why her luck was so bad. Couldn't Justin feel the cosmic waves from the woman he loved trying to get in touch with him? Perhaps it was destiny then that she lived only miles from the person who had "won" the auction. She didn't know when the idea came into her head, she just knew that when she arrived at the address given to her by the man on the phone there was just one thing to do.

Susie slept at work that night. It was easy since she had the keys and was in charge of locking up at the end of the day. As she lay down to sleep she spoke gently to a picture of Justin. "Justin my love, they can't keep us apart forever." She was soon sleeping soundly to dreams of Justin singing lullabies for only her.

At Susie's house the woman seeing no signs of occupation felt free to snoop around. one of the first things she found was the shrine to Justin. She was appalled to realize that it too had a place reserved for the shoes. She looked at the computer and saw the winning auction information. So the shoes won't arrive here tomorrow. She had hoped that maybe she would be able to snatch the shoes while Susie was at work, or merely pose as Susie and take delivery from the UPS guy. Now her plans had to change, what would she do? Would she confront the woman at work? No that was much to dangerous. She wondered if the woman would be home tonight, and thought about what she might do if it were her. "no she'll be sleeping at work, that's what I would do." Maybe she could kill the woman while she slept at work, but no that wouldn't work the shoes would give her away. What to do then? what to do?

Susie awoke to the sound of Justin gently cooing from her cell phone. She went to the restroom to fix herself up. She seriously hadn't thought this thing through, Justin would certainly be here and there would be cameramen and she looked like this? Why hadn't she thought about that last night? She furiously worked a comb through her matted hair. Was it worth it to try and shampoo her hair with hand soap from the restroom? No that would be worse than not washing at all. She washed her face and continued combing her hair. The overnight delivery is supposed to arrive by 10:30am, but what if they come at 8:00am? That means I need to be ready. What time is it now? 6:30, OK I have some time. When her boss arrived at 7:30 she was ready and looked as fresh as a spring daisy.

goofing off

I would say that goofing off is something I am very good at. When you are trying to write the goofing off can feel very frustrating because you know you aren't "working". I've read about studies saying that the ratio of goofing off (or some other more scientific term) to working in creative jobs is very high. Does that mean that you have to be goofing off?

I think the stories about scientists who find solutions to hard problems when they are out taking a walk is fairly instructive. Nobody playing video-games in their mother's basement has ever found the answer to a tough scientific quandry, with the possible exception of someone who has worked hard for years on a problem and just happens to be playing xbox in their mother's basement.

These are not original sentiments, but I repeat them because they bear repeating. If you want to be productive then you need to do the work, but you also must be able to let up and let your subconcious mind work on problems while you are not conciously thinking about them.

It's hard to be clever when your nerves are frazzled and your mind is tired. That's how this applies to writing. Sometimes you just need to goof off.

Now if you'll pardon me I need to go do something useless.

Inadequacy

Recently I started listening to Stephen King's book "on writing".

It had me feeling most inadequate I mean this guy was spending thousands of hours writing, and I hadn't been spending nearly that much time writing when I was that age, or since then.

So then I was on a spiral of self-doubt and my mind kept going back to Malcolm Gladwell's ten thousand hour rule from "Outliers". In which he talks about achieving true mastery of something requires 10,000 hours. I was sure I was no where near ten thousand hours, I mean I've been wasting so much of my time... So I have been laboring under the idea that I am nowhere near that many hours and so my writing must be terrible and inane and god-awful, ETC.

Well this evening I was going through a stack of notebooks and papers from high-school and university, and interspersed amongst the math science and history notes and poorly written essays are just scads and scads of bits of creative writing. There are short scenes between two people, there are poems, and short stories and little parody sketches.

Every single notebook, no matter what subject, what year, they all have some bit of writing that I was doing just because I love writing. It absolutely blows me away because I was thinking that I didn't have the experience writing and that my dream of being a writer was hopelessly lost because ten thousand hours is just such a large amount of time.

I hope we can all take a more realistic look at how much we have accomplished and not just look down on ourselves and think of of ourselves as underachievers. I know I have. I've looked at things I've written and thought they were genuinely good and funny, but the thought keeps coming up that I must be mistaken and they can't be because I don't have that 10,000 hours. Or I think I am biased because it's my writing... Well I'll be damned if it isn't just a possibility that I am a good writer?

I know I haven't written as many words as Stephen King had when he was my age, but King is not the measure of all writers. The fact is he writes good stories, but you know what Douglas Adams probably wrote fewer words in his entire life than King had written by the time he was 25, but that doesn't matter because Adams changed my life with the words he wrote and I think he is one of the best most imaginative inventive writers to ever put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. In fact for the first five years after reading Adams my writing was a pale imitation of his. I could never say any of that about Stephen King.

Kindle Publishing

great article I found about publishing on the Kindle from a guy that had seven novels he had been giving away for free from his website that he decided to publish on the Kindle for $1.99 and started pulling in almost $1,000 a month.

That's not bad for something you're still giving away for free!

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/05/ebooks-and-free-books-and-amazon-kindle.html

It is well worth noting that that post was from 2009, and as of today he writes "In March, I earned over $68,000."

That is why you should publish on Kindle... he started publishing two years ago (I don't want anyone to think he started writing 2 years ago...) and now he could spend his time worrying about whether he wants to drive his Porsche or Ferrari down to the lake house!

new of my... something

So, what's happenin fellow travelers?

right now I am working on developing an iPhone app about making excuses and at other times I'm also entertaining all sorts of other ideas about what I could be doing. I have a bunch of podcast episodes that I have not uploaded and would like to. also I need to deal with getting my stuff more easily findable. I was thinking about some stuff I could post on youtube. I think what I will post up there is some animation Which I will work on very shortly.

Yeah so that's what's going on here, I hope you're having fun!

The biggest trick to writing without a block.

You ready for it? The one trick that will destroy writers block forever?

What could it possibly be????

Relax.

Sorry I wanted to play the shtick up.... anyhow that is my answer to writers block, but I think I need to explain.

In my life I have written two plays that I think are really special. I have written a lot of other things, but nothing that I feel measures up to these works. I have also spent a large amount of time chasing after the phantom of these plays and trying to recapture the magic that happened when I wrote them. I think I have hit on an answer that may finally make some headway on this problem.

I realize that having recently asked my mom what her opinion is on how I can write more and better, the question of anxiety couldn't have possibly come up in that discussion because it would have been an admission on her part that she could now observe something that she had a hand in creating and had done nothing to help me with in the entire time I was growing up.

So I will tell you the story of the two plays "The count of Venice", and "Malaria: The Musical".

The Count of Venice was written about ten years ago. I was at the time taking a pen and a pad of paper around with me just in case I had an idea come to me. So one evening I was out taking a walk, it was late July or the beginning of August. I wasn't in school there wasn't a whole lot that needed to be done, I am not sure what year it was but perhaps it was the summer before I started University.

I was out taking a walk and this idea came to me about a count, a very pompous fellow and he would go into a panic over something insignificant. Then it came to me that it should be a hangnail and he should have a lot of advisors that would react as though it were in fact very serious. I then got out my notepad and very quickly started writing down the outline, one thing after another came to me and it all made sense and so I wrote down the outline on this long thin notepad that you might use for a shopping list, and I think it took two pages front and back.

I was quite happy with that outline and was determined to write the play. At the time we had an older computer around the house that wasn't good for much other than word processing. It certainly was not much good at browsing the internet, well I used that computer to write on because I didn't want the distraction of the internet. I would sometimes just roll out of bed and start writing, or I would not even get out of bed and start writing. At the time I think I carried a floppy disk back and forth between the older computer downstairs and the newer one in my bedroom. Most of tthe writing was done on the old computer downstairs while I was sitting on a high bar-chair, which was kind of like a barstool, but had a back to it. I started writing at the beginning of August and finished at the end of August. "the Count Of Venice" was my magnum opus, I believe it clocked in at 87 pages and it was the longest thing I'd ever written. It was fantastic, but I don't know if anyone has ever read it. Certainly it has never been performed.

Needless to say for someone who struggles to write and rarely put together anything longer than two pages it was quite something. At the time I thought that it would change everything and I would never struggle to write again... boy was I wrong. I now believe that the way I framed it then and have up until this very night thought of it as "inspiration" was in fact relaxation.

So why do I think that it is relaxation, because that's what I've come to realize that both plays have in common. I was relaxed about writing them. It's not just about being relaxed and leaned back in your chair because that's fairly easy. It's more about being at peace with the act of writing. I have tried everything to reproduce the process of writing either play. I've tried taking long walks with a pencil and paper in my pocket. I've tried making outlines. I've tried coming up with silly stories with silly main characters that need to be taken down a peg. I've tried writing on computers not connected to the internet. None of them produced results, but I never tried simply relaxing and not worrying. Actually this comes down to a distinction I was realizing in language learning. In language learning you have to be paying attention to learn, and that's the kind of learning that is confusingly called "unconscious learning" to differentiate it from the grammar and vocab practice that is the hallmark of traditional language learning. Well that learning does take place mostly in your unconscious , but there is nothing unconscious about it. You in fact have to be paying attention and actively interested in order to learn anything. So I think it would be more properly called "attentive learning", however back to my point, the writing process is not divided between two false alternatives of worried or active writing on the one hand and relaxed or passive writing on the other. The relaxed end of the spectrum always seems like it is supposed to be some kind of passive state where you are just letting the muse work through you. In reality the relaxed state is a very active and attentive state, you are paying full attention to what you are writing. In fact you are so absorbed you don't even have any attention to spare for worrying or anxiety.

So writing "the Count Of Venice" I was in a relaxed state I was not nervous or tense, I was not pushing myself to write. I was relaxed and just enjoyed the writing. Now how do I know that it was relaxation and not something else? Well this evening I decided that I would write a part of a story. So I sat down at the computer feeling worried about how the writing would go. I could see in my mind's eye how the evening would go, I'd get a few halting sentences out and end up feeling like they were terrible and perhaps I should just give it up for lost, and then I'd either push myself to keep writing something I had no interest in or I'd find myself browsing websites for news about the latest videogames. In that moment I decided that I would not worry, I'd just relax and enjoy writing. That there was nothing bad going to happen, I might write something bad I might write something good. I just needed to relax about it. So I did. I took a deep breath, relaxed back in my chair and decided to not be nervous about writing. This is not an absolute fix, I still need to work on being able to relax about my writing.

I think I should also talk about 'Malaria' because it reinforces the idea here about relaxing. Now 'Malaria' was written in such a Zen state of relaxation that I can hardly remember the process. I remember I started writing it one day in a thoroughly boring class about South America and perhaps south american politics. It was the worst and the professor was an out and out admitted communist. But it was easy, so I didn't have to spare any attention and could devote it entirely to writing a silly play with overt references to the Bush administration attacking Iraq and whatever else I found amusing at the time. In fact I believe I may have modeled one of the characters on my droning professor. Point is though, I was super-relaxed. The classroom was quiet apart from the droning prof, I knew I didn't have to pay attention because the class was super easy, and I had no special reason to be worried about what I was writing because I was just writing it for my own amusement. Now later after it got picked to be produced in the theater department I was a complete nervous wreck about it and couldn't make decent revisions to save my life. In fact I wrote an entire 26 page play the Sunday night before our revisions were supposed to be done using the exact same characters and setting since the play had already been cast. I mention that play to point out that you don't need to be relaxed to write, but if you want to write well it helps to be relaxed. I think that play I wrote in one evening is probably quite cringe inducing, and I'm glad it never saw the light of day. I still felt very nervous about the revisions and so enlisted the help of my best friend in revising it, we did a terrible job of revising it and I blame myself and the director for turning the play into crap by the time we actually put it on stage.

Well anyhow, that's the tale. I have tried very hard to reproduce the process that made either play, but I don't think I'd grasped the essential similarities until now.

So my answer is relaxing and it works, at least thus far it seems to work. I got into a relaxed mood and wrote 500 words in real short order. and this little essay is somewhere around 1700 words, I haven't felt the least bit nervous about it, just focused and attentive on the points I want to make. Now relaxing is something that most people who know me think I don't have any problem with. They think I'm always laid back and don't worry about anything, but that's not true. I do have a facade of not worrying and of bored indifference... However that's a bit off the main topic and I have gone on more than long enough. Thank you for sticking with me if you did. Please leave comments if you don't agree or have something to add that perhaps I missed.

Elephants, On The Eating Of.

You would think that a blog about writing every day might get updated every day. Well too bad!

I have been writing most every day, just not in the blog. I've just started on a new project related to language learning. I can't really go into it because it's too early to say much about it. But it is a pretty exciting application of the ideas of Stephen Krashen in a multimedia environment. Which is a bad way of saying that if you were to take Rosetta Stone and make it useful then you'd have what I'm talking about.

I may post the proof of concept video, I'll edit it and see.

Sorry I'm being so tight on the details.

Anyhow, this idea that I'm working on is going to be a lot of work and from where I'm sitting it looks like a huge mountain. In fact it is not something I can possibly do alone, but for the time being I will need to go it alone.

What does this have to do with writing? Well I figure that any story of a reasonable length and complexity is a huge task. Even if you are the worlds fastest writer and you never have writer's block it will still take you a good long time. One thing I was never given the respect necessary to develop competency in seeing projects all the way through to completion. The end result is that I really struggle to do task that are long complex or have many parts.

anyhow, as they say the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

That's all for this post, later I want to talk about breaking a project down into manageable parts and goal setting and whatever else that comes along with taking on a large project.