For the last two minutes I’ve been moving my fingers across the keyboard like eight dancing legs to David Bowie’s “Fame”. It was fun, actually, and it inspired me to do a little music video. It did. But then the song was over and on came Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots”. And now my fingers have a mind of their own…. When I’m not writing this ridiculous, pointless essay they’re dancing again across the keyboard to the rhythm.
My music video idea is just getting better and better and better.
I can’t wait to whip out my little amateur Flip and try to do professional things with it just to entertain myself. Now Avril Lavigne is playing, “I’m With You”. Good song.
Not dancing-finger music video material though.
Let’s see what’s next… Hmm. Glee’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Potential. Nope. Fingers aren’t liking it. Oooo, this isn’t bad: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by the Hawaiian guy.
Did you just tell me to get a life?
You wait. Oscars are in my future. This finger-dancing movie video with my awesome Flip is going to rake in the millions. I’ll be swimming in dollar bills up to my eyeballs. I’ll have to go on medication for my allergic reactions to money dust. My eyebrows will be dyed with real gold, and my toenails will be studded with diamonds. I’ll be so rich that chocolate covered, fudge-dipped, double-fudge rocky road brownies will envy me.
“Evenin’”. That’s the song that’s playing now. “Red Stick Ramblers”. My fingers like it so much! This is so going into the video…
Wait. Did you just tell me to go see a doctor? Oh. “Get help”, is what you said. Same thing.
Already did. There’s nothing they can do for this condition. But thanks for caring! Aaw. You’re so sweet. But no. No cure for this.
YES! Rogue Wave’s “Harmonium”! This is SO going into the video. Wait! No. Oh ho… Folks? I just found my grand finale. Oh yessiree! Alright. I have to go. I have some practicing to do. But first I have to draw little faces on each of my knuckle tips…
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Empires of the Inkwell
The Empires of the Inkwell
I was talking to an old friend not to long ago, and she and I came to a bit of a disagreement over the quality of a certain author’s writing. You may have heard of this author... JK Rowling? (note sarcasm) My friend, a brilliant intellect and avid (to say the least) book reader, remarked that JK Rowling wasn’t really that good of a writer. She’s “a really good storyteller, but her writing is simplistic…her first couple of books aren’t really written that well”. I respect my friend’s opinions in the utmost manner, but there was something about this particular statement that bristled my back hairs and curled my lip. I took it a little personal. I believe that JK Rowling’s writing style has raised the bar in literature so high that writers nowa days are scrambling to get their talents together in a panic fit of, “Damn. How do I compete with her?” I know I was one of those writers immediately after I read “The Boy Who Lived”. Now don’t get me wrong, she’s not the only author that’s made me shake in my boots. Tolkien, Barrie, Alcott, Austin, Dickens and so on and so on. But that’s just it: only good writing, excellent writing, can make a fellow writer question their own skills and talent. And Rowling did that for me. A good story teller is a good writer.
I decided that taking someone else’s opinion personally was just stupid, and that to settle my own emotions about it I should do what I normally do: write about it. So, here’s my own personal opinion on the art of good writing:
Storytelling, in whatever medium one uses to tell a story, is about entertaining an audience. Writing, in a personal sense, is for the author and the author alone. I’ve devoted years of my life to projects that I know deep in my heart will never see the light of publication, but satisfy my own esteem in the mere completion of them. But when I think about sharing with the public? I consider the market, I do. I consider the elements of what has made past blockbusters a hit, and the magic behind a great story. It all comes down to entertainment. This doesn’t negate an author’s soulful endeavor, and it doesn’t mean that an author’s personal story can’t be entertaining, but a good writer has to have more than just a good background in English. Anybody can have good grammar. Anybody can string together sentences in an orderly, sensible way. But not just anybody can sell their well written story by the millions. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.
“I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.” Poul Anderson
“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators.”
Albert Camus
“The virtue of books is to be readable.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.”
Samuel Johnson
The empires of the inkwell have been built with nothing more and nothing less than a creative use of words, and a good, meaningful, entertaining story, and an author’s ability to move people’s emotions with the simplicity of writing what they know.
I was talking to an old friend not to long ago, and she and I came to a bit of a disagreement over the quality of a certain author’s writing. You may have heard of this author... JK Rowling? (note sarcasm) My friend, a brilliant intellect and avid (to say the least) book reader, remarked that JK Rowling wasn’t really that good of a writer. She’s “a really good storyteller, but her writing is simplistic…her first couple of books aren’t really written that well”. I respect my friend’s opinions in the utmost manner, but there was something about this particular statement that bristled my back hairs and curled my lip. I took it a little personal. I believe that JK Rowling’s writing style has raised the bar in literature so high that writers nowa days are scrambling to get their talents together in a panic fit of, “Damn. How do I compete with her?” I know I was one of those writers immediately after I read “The Boy Who Lived”. Now don’t get me wrong, she’s not the only author that’s made me shake in my boots. Tolkien, Barrie, Alcott, Austin, Dickens and so on and so on. But that’s just it: only good writing, excellent writing, can make a fellow writer question their own skills and talent. And Rowling did that for me. A good story teller is a good writer.
I decided that taking someone else’s opinion personally was just stupid, and that to settle my own emotions about it I should do what I normally do: write about it. So, here’s my own personal opinion on the art of good writing:
Storytelling, in whatever medium one uses to tell a story, is about entertaining an audience. Writing, in a personal sense, is for the author and the author alone. I’ve devoted years of my life to projects that I know deep in my heart will never see the light of publication, but satisfy my own esteem in the mere completion of them. But when I think about sharing with the public? I consider the market, I do. I consider the elements of what has made past blockbusters a hit, and the magic behind a great story. It all comes down to entertainment. This doesn’t negate an author’s soulful endeavor, and it doesn’t mean that an author’s personal story can’t be entertaining, but a good writer has to have more than just a good background in English. Anybody can have good grammar. Anybody can string together sentences in an orderly, sensible way. But not just anybody can sell their well written story by the millions. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.
“I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.” Poul Anderson
“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators.”
Albert Camus
“The virtue of books is to be readable.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.”
Samuel Johnson
The empires of the inkwell have been built with nothing more and nothing less than a creative use of words, and a good, meaningful, entertaining story, and an author’s ability to move people’s emotions with the simplicity of writing what they know.
Monday, December 21, 2009
I Do Not Believe in Miracles
When Time Stood Still
December 18, 2009
Friday, 11:44pm
I confess, Reader, that I’m always rather emotional this time of year. But, if it be possible, I believe this year has tugged harder and more viciously on the strings of my heart more than any other year. My emotions have been a mixture of things, all deriving from separate channels. I’ve cried for good things as well as bad. Some things have moved me, and some things have shattered me. I’m trying desperately to hold onto hope and faith, consoling myself that some day everything and everyone will eventually be saved. I want so desperately to believe in salvation, but it is still just a fairy tale to me.
And yet… and yet I still search the skies for answers. Every year I remember the stars I saw that night, twelve years ago. Twelve. Twelve shooting stars twelve days before Christmas. It was supposed to mean something. Now, dear Fates, it is twelve again… will the miracle finally happen? I’m not even sure what sort of miracle I’m expecting… I don’t want to be foolish enough to believe in these sorts of things, but I feel like now that I’m at the end of all that is left in me, I have nothing to loose.
It happened by accident, Reader. I use the word “accident” because I’m cautious of the word “miracle”, or the phrase “divine intervention”. This accident, as I call it, however was a strange, profound, emotional happening. I’m not sure it’s the “miracle” I’ve been waiting for or not, but regardless of what one wishes to label it, it has begun a new spiritual journey for me.
I was wanting to post something “Christmassy” on my blog. I had written about my twelve stars in a writing class in high school, and hadn’t read it in many, many years. I wondered if it was really as good as my then audience had declared it to be. I was seventeen years old. I wasn’t expecting anything. I wasn’t even sure if it was on this particular computer or not. So I did a file search: I typed “twelvestars”. Two folders popped up that had nothing to do with these words. One said “journals”, so I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s one of my really old folders…” So I clicked on it.
It wasn’t my journal, but I couldn’t resist reading it when I realized instantly what it was. It was my mother’s journal, a quick type up of things she wrote about us four siblings when we were children. I couldn’t close it up. I was rapidly addicted.
Goodness. Love. A family that was whole. I was three years old, becoming “more active” and “enjoys singing and Sunday school”, and apparently enjoyed wrapping my little brother’s head in a blanket and then hugging it. I had also apparently “painted his face twice now, once with her paints and once with Jason’s paints.”
I was eight years old, and my kitten had just died, and my two older brothers held me and comforted me in my grief. Kyle gave me a book mark he won at camp to cheer me up.
1988, my mother was having a stressful morning trying to get all of her children up and ready for school, and my little brother rose from his bed, bright eyed and full of smiles asking my mom, "Mom? Did you notice what a beautiful day it is outside?" And it saved her.
On and on it went, little snippets of each of us, all giving praise to our goodness, our worthiness, and our love as a family. It was the story of our lives that I had long forgotten. And to hear the voice of my mother behind these memories was a new feeling, a new emotion that I have yet to find a vocabulary for.
I then read a passage of prayer she prayed, a personal giving of thanks for each of her children, and something very old, and very forgotten moved within me. Two of her prayers had come to be, and for a fleeting moment I believed in the magic of what people with faith call “miracles”. I cried. I sobbed. I read it over and over and over again, feeling both grief and rejoicing. Grief for the part of the prayer that was yet to be or no longer is, and feeling an overwhelming joy for the part that had come to pass.
It changed me. I still doubt my senses like any other Scrooge would, but I’ve been shaken. I can surely say that I just might be looking toward the night sky more often again, awaiting a sign from the heavens that I’ve long forsaken to believe in. I don’t know if this qualifies or not as a Christmas miracle, but it was something my soul has been without far too long, and even though the grief weighed heavy in some ways, the joy brought a new hope back to life again. The remembrance and evidence of love when love is said to never die, makes me believe again that maybe, just maybe, everyone and everything will eventually be saved in the end. That would make a good ending, and all endings should be good lest the story be untold.
December 18, 2009
Friday, 11:44pm
I confess, Reader, that I’m always rather emotional this time of year. But, if it be possible, I believe this year has tugged harder and more viciously on the strings of my heart more than any other year. My emotions have been a mixture of things, all deriving from separate channels. I’ve cried for good things as well as bad. Some things have moved me, and some things have shattered me. I’m trying desperately to hold onto hope and faith, consoling myself that some day everything and everyone will eventually be saved. I want so desperately to believe in salvation, but it is still just a fairy tale to me.
And yet… and yet I still search the skies for answers. Every year I remember the stars I saw that night, twelve years ago. Twelve. Twelve shooting stars twelve days before Christmas. It was supposed to mean something. Now, dear Fates, it is twelve again… will the miracle finally happen? I’m not even sure what sort of miracle I’m expecting… I don’t want to be foolish enough to believe in these sorts of things, but I feel like now that I’m at the end of all that is left in me, I have nothing to loose.
It happened by accident, Reader. I use the word “accident” because I’m cautious of the word “miracle”, or the phrase “divine intervention”. This accident, as I call it, however was a strange, profound, emotional happening. I’m not sure it’s the “miracle” I’ve been waiting for or not, but regardless of what one wishes to label it, it has begun a new spiritual journey for me.
I was wanting to post something “Christmassy” on my blog. I had written about my twelve stars in a writing class in high school, and hadn’t read it in many, many years. I wondered if it was really as good as my then audience had declared it to be. I was seventeen years old. I wasn’t expecting anything. I wasn’t even sure if it was on this particular computer or not. So I did a file search: I typed “twelvestars”. Two folders popped up that had nothing to do with these words. One said “journals”, so I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s one of my really old folders…” So I clicked on it.
It wasn’t my journal, but I couldn’t resist reading it when I realized instantly what it was. It was my mother’s journal, a quick type up of things she wrote about us four siblings when we were children. I couldn’t close it up. I was rapidly addicted.
Goodness. Love. A family that was whole. I was three years old, becoming “more active” and “enjoys singing and Sunday school”, and apparently enjoyed wrapping my little brother’s head in a blanket and then hugging it. I had also apparently “painted his face twice now, once with her paints and once with Jason’s paints.”
I was eight years old, and my kitten had just died, and my two older brothers held me and comforted me in my grief. Kyle gave me a book mark he won at camp to cheer me up.
1988, my mother was having a stressful morning trying to get all of her children up and ready for school, and my little brother rose from his bed, bright eyed and full of smiles asking my mom, "Mom? Did you notice what a beautiful day it is outside?" And it saved her.
On and on it went, little snippets of each of us, all giving praise to our goodness, our worthiness, and our love as a family. It was the story of our lives that I had long forgotten. And to hear the voice of my mother behind these memories was a new feeling, a new emotion that I have yet to find a vocabulary for.
I then read a passage of prayer she prayed, a personal giving of thanks for each of her children, and something very old, and very forgotten moved within me. Two of her prayers had come to be, and for a fleeting moment I believed in the magic of what people with faith call “miracles”. I cried. I sobbed. I read it over and over and over again, feeling both grief and rejoicing. Grief for the part of the prayer that was yet to be or no longer is, and feeling an overwhelming joy for the part that had come to pass.
It changed me. I still doubt my senses like any other Scrooge would, but I’ve been shaken. I can surely say that I just might be looking toward the night sky more often again, awaiting a sign from the heavens that I’ve long forsaken to believe in. I don’t know if this qualifies or not as a Christmas miracle, but it was something my soul has been without far too long, and even though the grief weighed heavy in some ways, the joy brought a new hope back to life again. The remembrance and evidence of love when love is said to never die, makes me believe again that maybe, just maybe, everyone and everything will eventually be saved in the end. That would make a good ending, and all endings should be good lest the story be untold.
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