Tag: writing

Good days, good posts

General

If I sit and wait for inspiration, chances are it is not going to show up. Inspiration is great but it is not reliable. Not for me, at least. I don’t have a muse. The gods did not gift me. I don’t even believe in gods and even if I did, it would be the height of ego to assume they would grant me anything.

No, I do what I do, which parenthetically, right now is writing, because I am stubborn as the mule-iest mule what ever did mule. I don’t give up. I might take breaks sometimes, but if I intend to do something I will always come back to it and I will always complete that task. To call me bull-headed is to say you might be surprised I don’t have long pointy horns. Oh maybe that metaphor got away from me.

No, I have a duty to show up, except that duty is for the silliest things, like having exactly the same breakfast for years in a row, or trying to reach 500 days survived on one save in The Long Dark. Or driving my car into the ground because it’s easier than shopping for a new one.

Or for writing at least 500 words a day and posting it on my blog, like I’m doing now.

Many times I don’t have an idea about what to write. I joke about it with Tracy. I’ll send her a message “I don’t know what to write about tonight” and then 20 minutes later I’ll send her a link to the post I wrote.

And it’s true that lately I have been going very meta, writing about how I don’t know what to write about, or musing about motivation vs. habit. I didn’t promise that every post would be award-winning. No, my promise is to just keep going, to get into the habit, so that if and when I am inspired by something, I can channel it and put that inspiration to words, hopefully capturing some of the essence of random ideas with good foundations.

Every author I’ve ever admired could be described as prolific, because they just don’t stop writing. I shouldn’t compare my output to their drafted and re-drafted, vetted, edited, and published works, though. I don’t get the privilege of seeing any of the earlier versions of those stories. So I won’t.

Me, I’m the obstinate fucker who puts it all out here for anyone to see, the good, the bad, and the boring. You can trace the tensions and joys of the past 4 months by my daily output. Sometimes I do have a good idea and the right frame of mind to share that idea in the best sentences I can muster. Those are the good days. Good ideas, good days. Bad ideas, still an okay day as long as I post something. No ideas, still have to write and post something. It’s all about the posting something.

Ain’t no destination. It’s entirely the journey, y’all.

Feelin’ that way

General

Tonight’s post is brought to you by the letters F and U, and is about the inability to write something specific.

I have another domain that I intend to use to post my many, many, many stories about working in customer service, help desk, and tech support. It’s basically set up, it’s just waiting for me to start posting things so that when it does go live, there’s more than one post on it. I probably want to start with 3-5 longer posts before it actually launches.

I have a long document that’s got all my notes collected over the years; weird things customers have said to me, observations about tech and customer behavior, quirky problems I found the solution for. I just have to, y’know, pick a few, flesh them out into a post, and post them to the tech blog. I just… don’t.

I don’t know why I don’t. My brain, my motivation, my habits, are an undiscovered country to me. Although I believe, on an intellectual level, that were I to pursue a diagnosis of ADHD, that I could succeed in getting one, I don’t actually have that diagnosis. What I do have is a feeling that my brain would probably fit many, if not all, the criteria for that diagnosis, which has been garnered from reading posts by other people that do have that diagnosis talking about the way they think and react. Those posts remind me of me and how I act. Which means, at some level, that I believe I can’t be motivated the same way a lot of other people are. I need more stimulation, more urgency, or more interesting things to focus on.

Is that why I’m not writing these posts, though? They are stories I’ve lived, stories that, at the time they happened, were interesting to me. And I do need some income, which, in theory, this blog could generate for me, through ads, affiliate links, or eventually becoming the source for a book collecting these stories. And my financial situation is dire, more dire than it’s been for a long time. I need income and the normal “apply to jobs, get interviewed, get a job offer” process is not working as well as it has in the past.

For whatever reason, though, the interest and urgency and personal nature of these stories is not getting me to sit down and even start writing one. Maybe… maybe that’s the trick I need to do. I just need to set a timer for 20 minutes, open a blank document, and start writing. See how I feel once I get something down into words. “Just write” is advice I’ve gotten from amazing, talented, and successful writers. I just need to start.

As just one example, I’ve managed to turn this whole complaint about not being able to write into a 500-word post. And I think I’ve said something real, something true, something… vulnerable, ugh. How did I do that? I opened a blank page, put my fingers on the home row, and started typing out what I feel. If I can do that for this topic, I can do this for any topic. Starting is the best motivator.

My style and goals (as a writer)

Freelancing

Today I’m taking steps to trying to find paying outlets for my writing. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start charging money here. This place will always be free and open, and I will never put up ads or use affiliate links here (I have tried that in the past, so you might find old posts talking about that.)

No, I found a video that listed platforms that pay writers, especially beginners. I’m not exactly a beginner writer but getting paid for that writing has largely eluded me. So I’m on a quest! My goal this week is, on top of my normal job-hunting, to apply to all the platforms I can find, try them out, and see which, if any, work for me and my style.

The first one listed by Zulie Rane (that YouTube creator) is Medium. Um, let me set that one aside for now. I need to research who their current partners are. On to the next one! The next one is a site called Simily, which I have never heard of before.

I signed up for a reader account there, read through the FAQ, and was immediately impressed that their focus is not on how-tos, listicles, and SEO-packed explainers, but is on creative writing, particularly fiction and genre (fantasy, sci-fi, romance.) That’s refreshing! They’re asking me for writing samples, which I can pull from my blog, that’s not a problem. I started filling out the application.

And stopped in my tracks. They were asking deep introspective questions. I couldn’t half-ass this. I needed to think through my answers and be a bit more personal. Reader, as you might be able to tell, this is my butter zone. I live for personal, introspective, and empathetic writing.

What follows are the main application questions, and my answers. Tell me if you think this describes what you read here or not. I’m genuinely curious what y’all think.

What is your goal as a writer?

Through introspective and personal writing, I want to draw on my observations, desires, and anxieties to connect with readers and bring them into a specific scene or setting. I want to create understandable and flawed characters who have to balance their fears with their goals, who know the right thing to do but doubt their strength to carry it off, in worlds where it feels like there are no easy answers. I want to continue to examine themes like friendship, loneliness, the sacred and the secular, hone my voice, and share it with anyone who also wants connection.

How would you describe your writing style?

I have honed my writing style over the years to be concise and focused; I try to use exactly the words necessary to create understanding in the reader’s mind. I aim to illuminate personal, empathetic feelings and describe familiar, ordinary events as well as the unusual chaos of a simple life. I draw on observations and include just enough to bring the reader into the scene. I’m great at creating a setting, and relating natural and authentic dialogue from the people in the story.

If you could wave a magic wand, what would you hope to achieve with your writing?

I want to reach people and touch their hearts and minds, especially the people who wouldn’t ordinarily find my work. I would love to reach an expanded audience. I love when I hear back from anyone that they have read my words, even if they don’t agree with the point I think I’m making because I don’t always know what audiences want, but I can learn from every story I tell and the responses to that story.

Why do you want to join Simily as an author?

I’ve been a writer since I had a typewriter as a toy when I was a child. But finding an audience for my writing has always taken a backseat to getting and keeping a job. I’m now on a journey to try to make more of my writing and get it out in front of new readers, to help me hone my skill at writing things people want to read. I’ve got stories to tell; just need folks that want to read them.

Tell us more about how you hope to use the platform.

I’m very excited by the focus on creative writing. There are plenty of platforms out there for how-tos, technical articles, paraphrasing news items, that kind of thing. It’s rare to see a platform like Simily that is just for fiction, essays, personal stories and flights of fantasy. If you visit my blog, the archives go back 20 years and in total, my writing has always had a creative, authentic style. I would happily participate in Simily’s community of writers and readers if it meant sharing what I have and learning more from others.

Provide three writing samples

The three writing samples I gave them were:

The Princess and The Brewer – a short piece of fiction that drew from my 2013 D&D campaign setting.

That was a 4.7 bar – a recounting of an actual happy hour with my best friend recently. Oh and a bar fight broke out.

The internal struggle to maintain – Musings about loneliness, hope, and atheism vs. spirituality. Wishing won’t make it so, but it’s hard not to wish, y’know?

Stay tuned and I’ll update if I hear back! They say they select new writers at the end of the month, which means I need to keep applying elsewhere while I wait.

Strategy process exercise task job

General, meta

I was complaining to my bestie Tracy that I had no idea what I should write about tonight. I’m writing this early because I have a D&D game later, in about an hour and a half. So to make sure I post something, I opened up my text editor and stared at the screen and realized that a) my mind was blank, and b) if I want to write topical posts for a wide variety of audiences, I need to be able to come up with good post ideas, lots of them, quickly.

The downside to having a blog that is just “whatever in the Hell I want to post about” is that I have so many options that it’s like having no options at all. If this were a sports blog, I could just write something about any of the many many many sports games that happened today, or the general news, or follow-up on previous topics. If this was a gaming blog, I could piggy-back off the narrow focus to come up with something to write about. While I am working on a more specific blog (coming soon) this place does not have that restriction. So, sometimes, I sit down and flounder.

Which led me to the idea: write about how to come up with blog post ideas. Easy-peasy! If nothing else I can rant about not feeling creative lately, but if I do a little research, I might come up with a strategy, a process, one that works for me.

Because I’ve been on this new blogging kick, the Algorithm has taken notice and has started to feed me Content about blogging, writing, and freelancing. Earlier today it surfaced a video from a creator about making money using Google News, which got me to click and watch. Turns out, the idea was “find today’s top story on a topic you know about, paste the contents into a Large Language Model (LLM) “paraphraser” (and those should be double-heavy-extra scare quotes, because, really) and then sell that paraphrased article to some other content mill. That’s not something I would do.

I mean, maybe, if my blog were about summarizing news for people, I might take a look at the top headlines and rewrite it myself, but I would absolutely not use an LLM for that. The video creator (whom I will not link because don’t want to encourage that behavior) did say to re-read what you get back from the summarizer, because that’s why they advised finding a topic you know about… still.

But the basic idea of scanning today’s headlines is a good one for finding out what everyone is talking about, I suppose. That would be great if this were a “recent news” kind of blog, instead of a “spontaneous unedited opinions of Some Random Guy on the Internet” kind of blog.

I have been using Google Analytics and Google Search Console on my recent blog-push, and it’s hilarious to me what kinds of search terms lead people here. A big one is “chicken butt shirt” for example, because way way way back in the day I posted about a cool and funny button I bought off the internet. “Guess what?” “Chicken butt” is a phrase I and my bestie use frequently. But, like, can I turn that in to a blog post? Could I get 1000-1500 words out of that? No, I don’t think I could.

What else does Google say people like about the blog? Well, another top search term is “Bettie Bondage” which, in this site’s case, leads to a movie review I posted a long time about about a biopic of Bettie Page. Again, I’m grateful for the traffic but if I used that as a basis for future content this might become an NSFW blog.

Not that there’s anything wrong with those. Just not really what I’m aiming for here. I’d start a new blog for that kind of content (note to self: look into starting a new blog for that kind of content. I hear it’s a sure money-maker.)

Not sure where that leaves me. Let’s stick a pin in this. Maybe I’ll do some actual research and write up a “how to keep your blog swimming in content” article.

I’ll add that to the Ideas File.

Computer Origin Story, Part 1

Daily Story Project, Gaming, Tech

I was listening to a member special from the Accidental Tech Podcast folks, and they were sharing their Computer Origin Stories; remembering their first time using a computer, and their journey from there to their later computer programming jobby-jobs (as Casey always calls their regular jobs) before they all eventually quit to do the podcast full-time, some faster than others.

It’s fun to reminisce! It was all so very long ago, because I am old.

I should probably make this a much longer post, with links and images, but I wanted to kind of sketch out the outline of my own personal Computer Origin Story first. Try to get it down in words. It’s hard and I may be leaving out things and it might not all be in the right order, but here’s my first notes on the topic.

I am unsure if arcade games count for the purposes of “computers” but they were absolutely computers, so I’ll begin the chain of events by my encounter with a Lunar Lander arcade game in what must have been early summer 1979. It was the end of my 8th grade year in Junior High and our class got to celebrate by taking a day trip to the Kah-nee-ta Resort in central Oregon. While the rest of my schoolmates were riding on horseback, or relaxing in the hot springs, or sunbathing, I was in the dark resort lobby feeding quarters into this game trying to land a vector-graphics spaceship on a 2D planet surface, guiding it in by using a knob to control the rotation and a button to feather the rocket to speed up or slow down.

The first personal computer I remember using was a Tandy TRS-80, at a computer store in a suburban shopping mall. I must have been a teenager in my middle years. There was a grocery store in that mall, and when mom would go get groceries, I’d wait for her at the bookstore in that mall, and then, eventually, I’d wait for her in the computer store. This must have been in the early 1980s. I was in high school but I don’t remember what grade. I suppose I can try to find the name of that store, but for the life of me I can’t.

At some point the store ran a contest where the prize was a TRS-80, which would have been prohibitively expensive for my family to buy. To win the contest I had to play a Star Trek game and have the highest score. I got one chance to do it, and I don’t think I lasted longer than a minute or two. My parents, particularly my mom, thought I was going to beat it. I did not, but I had a lot of fun.

That store sold other computers. I would regularly buy issues of Byte Magazine and read up about computers. That’s where my interest began. But it didn’t stop there. More to come soon; there are a few more stops along the way.

Tired and whatnot

Daily Story Project

I’ve made a note of some ideas about things I can write about but for some reason, that reason probably being my dumb brain that hates doing boring things that aren’t novel or urgent, I can’t bring myself to write about them. So this entry will become another stream-of-consciousness flow of random stuff until I reach around five hundred words, as have they all been for the most part. Sure, some of the past entries have been coherent but that is not what I’m feeling today.

I’m tired, is what I’m feeling. Like sleepy tired, but also mentally tired of the dumb job hunting and the endless capitalism and the grind of having Things that Need Doing. Life hasn’t had a lot of joy lately for me. Brief moments of happiness or enjoyment but actual full-on joy? Not present, man.

Physically tired because yesterday I ramped up my exercise routine. Been walking at least once a day every day for several weeks now, thanks to inspiration and a challenge from my friend Christi through our Apple Watches. Walking is great but I miss running, so because I’ve been nailin’ it in the walking thing I pushed myself to try adding little jogging segements. Nothing crazy, just a block or two, and then I let my heart rate ramp back down before going again. It felt good to do it; I’ve always said that running makes me feel human, by which I mean feeling myself in my body, and not living in my head. And even though I returned home sweaty and tired I wasn’t injured or hurt; no pain just discomfort from having worked my muscles harder than normal. I went out and did another, slower walk later in the day, after dinner, to keep my body in motion, and maybe that helped prevent soreness and pain.

And today, my legs and back feel a bit stiff but mostly what I feel is sleepy. I don’t want to move much. I just want to sit, or lay down ideally. I want to be still, close my eyes, and drift into a nap.

Can I do that? After this post. I promise, Me. You can rest soon. Just another 132 words after that last sentence. Keep going.

The mental tired is also a problem. Is this brain fog? Am I a victim of Long Covid? How could I tell? That’s not a diagnosis that doctors are handing out these days. I’m sure I’m just worried about All of This. It’s nice having my dad here, though. It gives me a bit of comfort knowing someone else is around. Dad and I didn’t always have the best relationship but it’s pretty solid now.

How did I get to my dad from exercise? Oh, probably because he can’t exercise. Well, walking around, slowly, is the most exercise he gets these days, being in his late 80s, and having had surgery to repair his broken spine and ribs less than a year ago. That puts exercise into perspective. Right?

Red Barn Kids are not in a barn

Daily Story Project

One of my earliest memories is using a typewriter to write “stories”. I wish I still had some of those. I remember being inspired by a Scholastic book called “The Boxcar Children” about some orphaned kids who lived in an abandoned train boxcar. I wonder if that book actually exists or if I confabulated it somewhere along the line? Memory is a strange country, folks.

The kids in my apartment building and general neighborhood broke in to a locked up standalone garage down the street once, where an old car was parked. It might have been my dad’s Triumph race car? I can’t tell if these are real memories or if I’m inventing them out of whole cloth. The events would be, if real, over 50 years old at this point. I can see some of the other kids’ faces, but others are just generic fuzzy images. I know my sister was there, if it’s something I actually know or not. We did not get caught but then I went and tried to type it up as a story using the family typewriter, a mechanical and not at all easy to use device that often locked up, all the type arms jamming together and requiring delicate untangling before it could be used again.

Maybe the typewriter jammed because I did not know what I was doing? Surely not. OK, yes, that is almost certainly the issue.

I loved the sound that thing made, sharp crisp metallic spring-loaded typefaces smacking into the paper. The little “ding” of the bell when it reached the end of a line, the ratchet sound of hitting the arm, rotating the cylinder to move the paper down, and slamming the whole thing back to start another line.

The title “Red Barn Kids” emerges from the memory pool. The garage was red, but I do not believe it was a barn. But “Red Garage Kids” doesn’t sound as good, does it?

I can see myself sitting in our living room, the tiny TV in one corner, me on the couch with a laminated TV tray unfolded in front of me, the heavy mechanism of the typewriter holding down the shaky metal legs of the tray, and me pounding those keys with my fingers, one finger on each hand since I was, what, 7 or 8 years old and had not learned nor even knew about ten-finger typing yet? That wouldn’t be for another 10 years at least when I took typewriting class in high school, a skill I use daily thanks to computers being, y’know, a thing now.

Kids breaking in to a barn to look at an old car isn’t much of a story. That’s my thought now. More of a scene, or a vignette. It needs conflict, tension, resolution. Why are they breaking in? Just bored? To retrieve something? Does anyone get hurt, or scared, or refuse to enter? Clearly this story is not ready yet to be published.

Would be nice, though, to see what 7 year old me committed to paper. Actual paper, I mean. That kid had goals and the tools with which to achieve them.

The reason

Daily Story Project, General, meta

I forgot to write a 500 word post yesterday. I guess 10 is the number to beat going forward. Like many of my similarly-brained cohort, I’m a perfectionist and stickler for detail, so missing a day when I was aiming for a long unbroken streak is like a pebble in my shoe, a ringing in my ear, a mote in my eye. Irritating, nagging, infernal. I felt a flood of emotion when I realized a day had passed without me meeting the goal I had set for myself.

The streak is broken. I failed. It’s over. Might as well stop trying. I’m no good. I can’t do this. Why bother?

Why bother? Why am I doing this in the first place? What was my reason, and does missing a day invalidate that reason?

OK, then. The reasons I started this new daily streak. Let’s dig in.

I’ve done this before. There’s a tag on this post that I’ve used before, “Daily Story Project“. It’s been a thing on this blog going back a long way. I keep trying to do this. I read about streaks, I live for streaks. Keeping a streak going is sometimes all the motivation I need to keep doing a thing. There are folks out there like Jonathan Mann who has written a song every day for (as I type this) for 16 years and 103 days; 5,581 days in a row. That’s impressive! On one level it’s a challenge to see if I could create something new using my preferred method of creating (writing) for even a tenth as long, even 1% as long.

The only thing I’ve done daily is… I was going to say “wake up and get out of bed” but then I remember days, bad brain days, where I did not get out of bed. I couldn’t tell you my longest streak, though; that’s not something I keep track of. For the better, of course.

If I weren’t just trying to hit 500 words right now I’d go look up the longest once-a-day streak I’ve ever maintained on this blog. But I don’t really care. A reason I’m doing this is to add to this blog, to see who will come if I build it, to turn the Field of Dreams tagline around a bit. But that’s writing for others. I write for myself. If having an audience was important to my creativity this would be a very different place. Here, I write whatever I want. I write for me.

The primary reason I’m doing this is to build up a habit. Just keep going. Give myself permission to do it without friction. No obstacle, only flow. So failing to hit that daily goal is the only obstacle that matters to me. I hate it. It means I took my mind off the target. It means I got distracted. It means that whatever was happening in my brain that day did not get recorded, and you can’t change or grow unless you pay attention. At least, you can’t notice change or growth without keeping track, monitoring, observing, measuring.

I write in order to measure. That’s why. If I miss a day, I missed a measure. But I can keep going.

Day 10 – 502 words about frustration

Daily Story Project

What on Earth can I type 500 words about tonight? I’m feeling discouraged and frustrated about job hunting. Found out I didn’t get a job I wanted after three rounds of interviews, but considering how they reacted to my tough questions, maybe I dodged a bullet. But unemployment checks don’t come forever, so I have to get something going. I do have the advantage of a dad who’s got a little money who can help for a bit, that’s always nice. I just don’t want to lean on him too much, y’know? I’d like to pull my own weight. I know I can be a great employee for the right organization. I can fix things. People tend to like me. I can jump in and be useful almost immediately and have a short learning curve.

Where is the boss that wants someone like that? You’re out there, I can feel it. I’m right here. Come find me.

I had a dream last night about being gaslit by the organization I mentioned above, the one that went a different direction after three interview rounds. I’m a practical person, don’t believe in metaphysics, so I won’t say it was a psychic revelation. I just knew that since I hadn’t heard back from them when they said they’d know either way by earlier this week that no news was bad news, and it permeated my subconscious.

Still working on this website and working on another one I will focus my technical skills and stories about working the Help Desk, and getting the rest of my digital infrastructure in place. Was messing around with OBS Studio last night and maybe I’ll start streaming on a regular basis again. Had fun doing that for Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, and now that the Fallout TV show is out it’s making me yearn for the wasteland once again. Would streaming older Fallout games be interesting to people? I’m willing to try.

Have to re-write my Hire Me page; it’s a mess right now, not very good from a marketing perspective and I’ve been trying to learn more about marketing and sales since that’s a huge weakness for my liberal arts ass. My sister is great at that, and so is my friend Christi, so I’m trying to apply the lessons they have to teach me. I can learn. Is our Brian learning? Time will tell.

Just a hundred more words and tonight’s diary entry is done. I don’t know what else to write. I’m doing daily walks; that’s a good thing. Gotta stay active. Dad is still here and will be for another couple of weeks while they rebuild his apartment space. Was supposed to play D&D last night but it got postponed another two weeks from now, which is frustrating but that’s the status quo of D&D games. Finding time for that is hard for adults with busy lives. It’s not like back in the day when we could play all weekend every weekend.

Two more words. Done.

Day 8 – Here I am

Daily Story Project, fear

This whole 500 words a day writing exercise is supposed to be about just giving myself the chance every day to sit down and write something. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be about something. I just need to put 500 words down on the screen and post them to the blog.

That being so, why did I just complain to my bestie, Tracy, that I didn’t know what today’s post was going to be about? I know it doesn’t have to be about anything. I’m the one who set the rules up. I know this in the cockles of the soul I don’t have.

Tracy, being helpful, suggested a few things, asked me some questions about what I’ve been doing all day, even suggested I could ask ChatGPT for a prompt. Not gonna do that last one. I don’t really trust ChatGPT or the other LLMs for anything creative because every time I’ve used them they’ve lied, made things up, or gotten factual things wrong and been very certain about them when questioned. They’re not ready for general purpose use yet. But that’s not on Tracy. She was trying to help.

I’m flailing. I know I should just do this, ramble and harrumph and blather until I hit the word goal. Because last night’s post was good. It was real good. It was tight, it had an emotional basis, it took a natural event and made it personal and even profound. I loved it. Today, I wanted to try to top it.

That’s not how this works, though. I have to just do it, the writing bit, and see what happens. Inspiration is incredibly fickle; if I have to wait for inspiration I might be waiting a long long time. This project is about building a habit. About making space. About giving myself permission to be bad, or even clumsy and un-word-y-like. I don’t have to DO anything but put down at least 500 words today. Tomorrow is another chance to write, and the day after that, and the day after that. Maybe some of them will be beautiful. Maybe some of them will be hilarious. Maybe some of them will be sad. But, realistically, as Theodore Sturgeon once said, 90% of them will be crap. That’s how it works.

I need to be OK with that and I guess, today, I’m not, so it’s a snag and I’m having trouble getting past it. You can’t see this but I’m looking at the word count on screen and I’m just barely over 400 words. I have to go on, and on. I should stop using contractions just to eke out a few extra words here and there. You, dear reader, have probably stopped reading because you can tell I’m padding all this out. It is true, I very much am. I do not blame you for moving on at this point.

But you should at least know this: tomorrow I will be back, doing this again. I’m showing up. Imperfectly. Honestly. Just me.