Checking In

My writing energy has been focused on the MFA novel/thesis of late, hence the dearth of blog posts.

Sometimes there are just so many words in the fingertips, and writing with the help and attention of mentors makes for a different experience than working alone under contract or not.

I'm mainly endeavoring to weave in a significant character thread that's come up as part of the crafting of the work, while moving forward as well. I probably have another 30,000 words of new material or so to finalize the first draft. Piece of cake, right?

Just means staying focused on writing and away from anything other than 140 Tweets to expel random bits of material in my brain that don't really go anywhere else.

The benefit of the revise and move forward method at the same time should mean the manuscript should wrap up around the time that it needs to, if all goes well, knock wood.

Happy Fourth Everyone. Stay tuned to the Tweet column at right for the random expulsions of thought plus the occasional interpretations of what my cats are thinking.

Woof Winners

I ran across a blog contest via Twitter and decided to enter for the fun of it. I had a little trouble with the entry form, so I think a few people dropped by to read a January post of mine instead of the piece on Ceremony and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but it's always nice to have new friends, and the contest results offer links to some cool writing of many types.

WOOF Contest – Top Picks

Poetry

Zorlone – “The Ice King's Vow” - "The message of the poem is slowly unravelled in exquisite lines. First it deals with thoughts and desires, then flows unerringly into the climax/denouement and finally the explosive ending or rather the chilling final lines..." -- JenaIsle

Jennifer M Scott – “Icicles” - A picture poem comparing ice to love.

Roy – “I Thought I Was Tough” - Another poem borne out of frustrations of not being able to beat what life has to dish out tome.

Zorlone – “Shy Guitar” - "Melodious, a story about love and music intertwined." - Strawberry Girl.

Dragon Blogger – “Icy Passion” - Challenged to write a poem about love and comparing it ICE without using the words heart or love, I came up with this poem about "Icy" love.

Fiction

Ferox – “The She-Demon's Anatomy” - Part one of a demonic confrontation in a fantasy novel.

Webbielady – “What's the True Measure of Intelligence?” - A recent call to two of her friends made Rogue question what is the real meaning of intelligence... Why? Why? How can we tell if a person is really intelligent? Can we really measure this thing?

Brought to you by PlotDog Press with the Serial Suspense Screenplay "Intervention

Presenting the finest of the writer’s blogs by the bloggers who write them. Highlighting the top posts as chosen by the May 29, 2009 WOOF Contest participants. Want in to join the next WOOF? The next contest ends June 12. Submit a link to your best writing post of the last 3 weeks using the form on this page. Participants, repost the winning link list within a week and you’re all set.

Other WOOF Contestants for 05/29/09

Prose

Sidney Williams – “What's on the iPod? - Montego Bay” - As I drove through another rainy morning cloaked with a grey, wet blanket, Bobby Bloom's Montego Bay popped up as my iPod shuffled songs.

About Writing

Izzy Daniels – “7 Things I Learned in High School that Can be Applied to Writing/Life” - Taking lessons learned from high school and applying them to writing.

Poetry

Roy – “I'm A Bad Liar” - A satirical poem about earning money online.

Jennifer M Scott – “Garnet Teardrops” - Inspired by a art created by a fellow blogger.

Dragon Blogger – “You've Got Mail” - Poem crafted from random words about a spam email.

Dragon Blogger – “Strength of Loss” - Memorial Day poem about losing a loved one in the service.

When I Wander – “European Patent Office (EPO) Experience, Cherished” - I have so many good things to tell about my previous colleagues and how I wish I still work with them. Now that I am in another company, all I can do is to thank each of them in a form of poem.

Deeptesh Sen – “Boatman and some love songs” - The divine, a girl and a boatman.......the air of surreal tunes.

Deeptesh Sen – “Angel of dark” - Surreal love and fear....and some soft magic!

Who I Follow

I've become a bit enamored with Twitter in recent weeks. It's a mild addiction but certainly an interesting way to keep up with a variety of people and get occasional bits of news and blogerabilia. (Should I submit that word to the Urban Dictionary?.)

Since I work mostly at web connected computers, I haven't configured a cell to send tweets, though I could, I suppose. It certainly was a way to keep some kind of blogging going while I was at my busiest on schoolwork.

Travellin' Tweets

I relied on wireless coonectivity for tweets when I was in Denver recently, extolling the virtues with my co-workers while we watched election results roll in and I shared our evening with the twitterverse.

It was exciting to be tapped into some of the instant Twitter feeds, seeing comments from around the world roll in as events transpired. As I write this, it's happening again, in a much sadder way, with Mumbai.

Even as the web separates it connects. It's become probably the most frequent way Wayne and I communicate now, and I'm getting to know David Niall Wilson--longtime friend of Wayne and the Chicago Mafia--better via his frequent tweets. Sadly, I can't sell my co-worker who perennially has both thumbs pressed to her cell phone on Twitter's virtues.

Speaking of David, that's actually the point of this post. He's proposed a tweet up, my words, for today, encouraging Twitter users to post blog entries about three of they people they follow and why.

Lee Aase

Lee is the first person I followed on Twitter. I "met" him when he conducted a webinar segment on social media's use in enterprise, and he's become something of a mentor for me in blazing ground into the Web 2.0 arena for my company. If you put all of our social media strands together you get a modest string of folks interested in our spot, a step toward customer loyalty via the web. Lee's Social Media University is a great way to stay abreast of what's happening in social media, especially from a business perspective.

Don Lemmon from CNN

Don is one of several anchors taking Twitter to the airwaves, making viewers more involved in news discussion, expanding the possibilities. He periodically sends out lifestyle tweets as well.

Abe Vigoda

Wayne's had a fascination with all things Abe for a while, a milder version of his obsession with Elvis, I guess. Of course he'd discover and turn me on to the Abe Twitter feed. I'm not sure if the feed is really operated by Abe himself or even a connected publicist, but it's still a cool and fun feed. It trades on the idea that Abe Vigoda of "Barney Miller" was wrongly declared dead by a news report about a "Miller" reunion he wasn't able to attend for reasons other than death. His tweets periodically comment on life, the universe and everything, always tied in one way or another to a declaration that he's still alive. Hopefully it helps with casting directors.

Hope that gives a little perspective of the diversity of the Twitterverse. It's a fun place to play.

Is There More Information/Less Truth?

In an article called The Truth About Denial for Newsweek, Sharon Begley reports:

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.


Draw your own conclusions about the truth or falsehood of global warming. The move to "Deceive, Inveigle, Obfuscate" as Mulder once put it on the X-Files is what concerns me.

It's not limited to the global warming debate. Of late, and yeah it may make me sound paranoid, I've detected an agenda in seemingly random comments in the Web 2.0 world, on blogs and op-eds, not in the immediate blog circle but in the blogosphere at large.

Never mind the topics. You can probably figure out the issues I follow by a browse through the archives, but specifics are irrelevant.

If it's happening on one issue, it's happening on others. Commenters with a particular point of view seem to converge on blogs, espousing similar ideas, just like a politician with a couple of talking points.

I guess the consistency of a message is the best way to recognize a questionable ripple in the pond.

It all seems a little more murky than whichever bias you believe the media might hold. Media outlets recently fired a lot of reporters when disclosures revealed they had contributed to candidates of any stripe.

Pulling at the ethics thread
Journalism in general has a high code of ethics. Higher than most professions. Lawyers after all are often in the business of constructing believable fiction which becomes real to the blind eyes of justice if the fiction is sold to the party of 12 in the jury box. Junk science doesn't have to hold up to peer review if 12 laymen accept it. (Addendum: Perhaps this is an oversimplification of how the legal system and lawyers work, but my thought is that it's more about selling hypotheses to a jury than dealing with empirical data.)

The blogosphere, however, hasn't developed a similar code for citizen journalists. The perspective of many blogs is obvious, yet there's definitely no code random commenters who might be averge Joes or Jolenes or marketing shills.

We have access to more information than ever, yet the truth is more elusive than ever before.

There are liars, and I think there are more damned liars out there than ever before. What a shame they're littering the information super highway.

Resistance is Futile

Wayne has uncovered what has been suspected for a while in the Blogosphere. There is a Cult of Sternberg, and Wayne reveals all in his Frankenstein 1959 blog, while holding a Steve McQueen action figure I wish I had.

Wayne has announced that he will remain alert and on guard, but it is clear that resistance is futile. I have reached the point of Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Miles Bennell at the end of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- you know, when he ran into traffic shouting: "You're next!" (Rent it! It's great!)

There are Sternberg minions around every corner. There are perhaps even Sternberg pods waiting to convert you while you sleep. You can't stay awake forever.

It's time to give up, accept it, and use the logo that true believers will be displaying until the great galactic mother ship returns from the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

Visit the House of Sternberg blog.

Cool Quote For Bloggers and Writers

Here's a cool Star Trek quote Christine found. (And there's a sentence that, if you know Christine, sounds like science fiction.)

"It takes courage to look inside yourself, and even more courage to write it for others to see." - Capt. Benjamin Sisko

It's found in a Star Trek/Myers Briggs assessment.

The Value of the Blog

Is there value to blogging for writers?

Charles Gramlich and Stewart Sternberg have been discussing that with degrees of levity mingled with serious contemplation.

Let me weigh in with a yes. I don't know if anyone's bought a copy of my War of the Worlds, or listened to a free sample due to the link at the right, hint hint. Or if it's driven anyone to dig up some of my older stuff, but blogging's kind of an Emily Dickinson thing.

I think I'd write here even if there weren't eight or nine people reading it every day.

It's a little less disciplined, but this is pretty much what I used to do when I was a newspaper reporter.

I mean generally I talked to people all day and wrote what they told me. I had to, you know, be concerned more with facts than opinion, I guess. Though I did write a column for a while that was sort of like a blog. It was just once a week or so and a few more people scratched their heads as I mulled over things like Procol Harum lyrics. (Wayne Sallee's posting about six degrees of separation. I think Karl Edward Wagner once wrote a story called "At First Just Ghostly" taking a line from "A Whiter Shade of Pale." Maybe that's serendipity and not six-degrees, though it's one degree removed from yesterday's post, keep scrolling.)

Getting the junk out
An account rep for an ad agency we work with on my day job once said some of their creatives had to "get the junk out" of their heads before the really good stuff came. Stream of consciousness blogging certainly allows that. It's as free form as it gets, and I think serves a purpose similar to "morning pages" advocated in The Artist's Way. Before blogs, journals for writers were a must.

A sense of community
Beyond the rambling, blogging also allows a coast-to-coast sense of community and communication.

If I had to connect dots on a map to the friends old and new I'm now in regular Web 2.0- communication with, it would zig from the South to the West Coast to the Midwest with a long though occasional zag over to the British Isles. Maybe I better not draw all those lines, it might summon Cthulhu. (Speaking of elder gods and in keeping with stream of consciousness, wouldn't this make a great gift?)

"Wow, I thought he'd never shut up."
In conclusion, I think there's value in blogging, just in doing it. 'Cause someone said writing equals ass in chair. It doesn't have to be a means to an end other than that, no, uh pun intended, though I'm thinking Stewart's new "Weird Addiction" writing challenge could get me started on a pretty good short story.