writing

The Internet isn't written in pencil, it's written in Inquiry

Just flipped though the bloggo of Inquiry, as I do every so often when I think a “page” of posts have been filled, as it is sort of “responsive poetry”, or, a collection of correspondence that are short/fast/good reads. Anyway, hello Inq, hope you're well :)

Some folks on W.a, and other places can write like 3K+ words in a single blog post, and I offer them a tip of my hat for that ;) I wrote for like...five hours and managed 1K words an hour, and then stopped because my fingers hurt. LOL! I forget the name of that blog post but it was called like “24K in 24” or something like that. (Ah yes, here it is (amazing what can be found when searching the #writing tag on my bloggo)).

All this makes me wanna try #24in24 again, but it is like an acid trip: you need time to do it, time to recover, and yea – just time.

I'm not sure where I am going with this blog post, just wanted to say “hi” to Inq and write about writing, in a way.

More later

Quantitative Writing IS Qualitative Writing

Filed under #writing #blogging #amwriting

Public writing is what I do most of, so it must be what I do best (even though I have my doubts as my abilities as a writer, in general).

So how I would put it is: the majority of my writing it published publicly on the Web, therefore it must be better than the offline writing I do less often in handwritten journals and offline/digital diaries.

What makes GOOD writing GOOD, anyway?

For me it is the barrier to entry, overcoming writer's block, and then overcoming mental barriers, in general, to correspond what really needs to be said in the written form.

Barrier To Entry: Anyone can have a blog/run a blog/write ON a blog. And it is basically free on the Internet and has been since well before 2006 when I started out. So, no special skills needed. Just a willingness to write.

Overcoming Writer's Block: Just do “Intentional Writing” – fire up the text editor, put your fingers on the keyboard, and just write anything/everything that comes to mind. Something worth keeping will manifest itself, and you can keep/publish that and delete the rest, if you want to.

Overcoming Mental Barriers: This is the best one, in my opinion. To be able to truly correspond, with shifting tones of voice (writer's voice) what it is you (or I) want to say and make them clear and relevant. I probably have a more monotone or “dry” tonality to some of my blog posts because they are just sort of day-by-day “filler” in terms of what I am wanting to say. Some things are more relevant, I am more enthusiastic about, are more interesting, so they come across as so in the writing. But I never want to “settle” for just writing something in an interesting fashion, but rather write something transformative in HOW it is written. A hard thing to describe. Nevertheless, ALL barriers would have to come down in order to achieve this. And as soon as a barrier is down, it regrows and has to be KEPT down through practice, trial, and error.

So, nothing is perfect. Just slog away and hammer out words until great things come about – but – great things DO come about every so often. So it is always worth it. :)

100 Days To Keep Going

#blogging #writing

I love the #100DaysToOffload series that I have seen so many bloggers participating in. A lot more consistent posts and relevant posts come from writing every single day, or at least almost every single day.

I hope the posts do not die off after the 100 Days are up, or after any participant is finished with their 100 blog posts.

But anyway, I am not “officially” participating in 100DTO because I would be “cheating” because I would have already been writing for 100 days up to that point and would just write through them and keep on going, so why hashtag? lol!

Keep itup though, everyone. Love it!

a thing I can do

Filed under: #writing #amwriting #blogging #latenight

I tried #24Kin24 (writing 24K words in 24 hours). Didn't work out so well. I got 7K words in, had to take a break, and then didn't return to the keyboard because life happened (both times).

So, maybe if I livestreamed (with proper equipment (eventually)) 5K words for X reason, covering X subject matter, for X cause(?). Maybe I can be very meta and just document what it entails/what matters most (to me) when writing a substantial document, like 5K words, as I write 5K words. A livestream of 5K words being written about the “art” of writing 5K words (or more!).

Sounds legit

I'll give myself five(5) hours to do so. That should work. I can easily hammer out 1K words and hour (do it all the time). And I have WiFI now so streaming should really be no problem (when I have a machine capable of it, the phone won't do it).

On that note; I've toyed with the idea of the Linux Mint Box Mini 2 for over a month now, only to realize through numerous reviews that the machine is a total slug/can't handle basically anything (like the Raspberry Pi). So, I am considering a refurb iMac (2011/12) from Mac Of All Trades. This is no way an ad, but I have heard great thing about that store, and want to get one (an iMac) because it would be the same cost as a Mac Mini, only more “efficient” because it would be an all-in-one. No need for my (oversized and ugly) 26 inch monitor and the cable management nightmare that accompanies it. Easy choice.

An iMac can handle that picture-in-picture stream (not that I would do P-i-P), but more importantly, I can simply handle the stream of the text document itself being written. In real time. Fun.

Dunno why this is relevant to me, other than I want other avenues of getting what I like to do, and am good at, out there to the world to “show off”, a little bit, I suppose. (even though well over 50%+ of my writing totally sucks, usually).

I will come back to this...

by the way

Filed under #writing #amwriting

ALL book reviews I write will be shared on both Medium.com AND Write.as (obviously), so feel free to read, re-read, and perhaps share them if you like. I am also going to make an effort to save all book reviews in a plain text documents and put them in “the cloud” (Google Drive and pCloud) as well as local storage via SanDisk flash drive. Some of my more “permanent” writing that I save forever and ever.

Fun!

writing a book is hard

#amwriting #writing

I am just sitting here and thinking about what goes into writing a book, and the time, energy, effort, mindfulness, and conscious deliberation it takes to actually create a readable (and publishable!) work of literature – and yea, it's daunting as fuck. Sometimes I wanna have another go at it, but after the collosal waste if time writing the Job Corps book (that I ended up deleting wholesale) and the red tape surrounding getting published – it just doesn't seem worth it to me. Time and time again people have told me: “you have to really want it”, and that's true. But alas, I do not think I want it enough at this period of my life.

I can always reverse-engineer/add to/improve upon something I have already written that I take pride in, but aside from that, no “new” fiction or non-fiction will come from me anytime soon.

There is Metro that I ahev imported to StandardNotes, and I see where I can make some improvements and am quite happy with that work. But, that is for another time. Inspiration to actually create a good piece of creative writing is the key, I think.

More later

a million words for Write.as

Filed under #blogging #writing #amwriting

the last time I checked, I had 2K blog posts on W.a and that was close to a year ago (I don't know where to find that number anymore – I just “happened” across it somewhere in Settings, I think). And I average 300-700 words per blog post. So the actual avergage is 500 words per blog post. 500x2000=1,000,000, so, 1M words written for Write.as on this blog. At least.

I did a blog post titled “3 Million Words (and counting!)” on here about my blogging history, and I came to the conclusion that I wrote 3-7M words, in all actuality, between 2006-2018. Not many people know this, but on Tumblr you get “achievements” for every 1,000 blog posts you do and a small digital “Achievement Unlocked” plaque e-mailed to you. There is also one for 5K blog posts, and one for 10K blog posts, and I received all of those. All of them occurring between 2011-2016. (btw, you get an achievement for 5 blog posts and 10 blog posts, too (everything counts)). They do count reblogs in that number, as well – but I reblogged very rarely, and most of the blog posts were 500ish words written from scratch. So, neat!

Suffice it to say, I write too damn much. But that's how it goes.

More later

On Habits

Filed under #latenight #coffeetime #writing

I was looking at old writing ephemera (pens, fountain pens, notebooks, etc.) and I thought that it had been a long while since I wrote in my handwritten/offline (obvs) journal – so I picked up the UniBall Micro pen and started to writing. While doing so, I came across the subject of habits. How humans are creatures of habit. And I have been all too keen to pick up habits/routines/impulses along this trip called life myself, from time to time. I have but two “vices”:

smoking
writing

Only one is healthy, the other toxic as hell. I'll let you decide which is which ;)

But aside from vices (or impulsory addictions (or COMpulsory)) are my habits. My routines. Things I always do but could go without doing them, but I do them anyway, because I derive joy from them. Drinking coffee, listening to music, watching a good mini-documentary every so often, cleaning my apartment, keeping myself and my surroudnings immaculate. These things I picked up over time, and I suppose make me who I am. That is to say that I am a creature of habit.

One thing that I have gotten into over the past several years is habit CHANGE. Altering the way I look at/view things inthe world and my own life in order to make effective change. I am not sure if I do this out of immense boredom or as a survival mechanism so I do not put wasted time/energy/resources into the habits I have picked up (cleaning my apartment non-stop would be unhealthy, for example). But part of my personality (or a personal characteristic of mine) is to look at the most extreme approach to dealing with an everyday thing that I, or others, may take for granted and see how I can alter my view/relationship with that thing. It is probably how I am able to declutter my possessions so much, quit social media, and live quite frugally. But this is also why I adopted minimalism (as a result of this personality trait) – by dropping all the excess stuff in my life (clutter, habits, services, and sometimes people); I am able to really focus in on the things I derive the most joy out of. I am able to not only “make the most” out of the things I have, but genuinely THRIVE with those things. And also, make time to make things (create) on the Internet or what have you.

So, in a way, habits are just one more “item” to subtract from a focused life. KEEP the good ones (I would keep writing, journaling, blogging, music, coffee, cleanliness, etc.) but subtract the unnecessary/superfluous ones (such as social media, toxic social interactions (online and IRL), and smoking (YTBA)).

Be back in a bit!

vegetarian Southwest soup for supper (and intentional writing)

Filed under #writing #amwriting #blogging

Yeehaw! lmao! I tried an Amy's Organic Southwest Chunky Vegetable soup for supper tonight and it was delish. So good! :)

9:38PM now, and I have no plans for sleep. Just me and the ol' bloggo. As you can probably tell, I am short on words at the moment which is why I am simply “intentionally writing”, which is the best writing trick I have ever learned. I taught it to myself before being formally “taught” it at Jefferson College in 2009. It was 2006 when I started Notorious News (RIP) where I would have writer's block for a blog post, so I would just hammer out words until a sentence came about and then do it again for the next sentence, then again, then again. Eventually I had something to work with. And eventually I wouldhve a story. Fun times.

I don't remeber many blog posts from those early days – other than I had one titled “Mini Me Went To Mini Rehab”, and “After Having a Seventh Kid, Flavor Flav Runs Out Of Flavors” – lmao! It was all about the C/D-list celebrities in 2006, let me tell ya. And I was aware that MySpace existed, but I never touched it because I was like “My space? Owned by someone else? Like a Web presence the “easy” way? Fuck that!“. I wanted the difficult task of building a blog, and audience, designing it, moderating comments, etc, etc. I didn't want some dumb service that everyone was on. Fast forward 14 years later and I am still the same way.

Things have changed a lot since then (technologically), but things have remained the same, too (humanly). The “post-PC/consumption-only” world never really happened and people are creating more now these days than any time before it, I am sure.

Good for us! :)

wanting to livestream writing

Filed under #writing #amwriting #streaming

i am not sure if I want to livestream on Twitch.tv or YouTube (probably Twitch.tv), but I wanna do a livestream of me writing some sigificant document for a few hours.

I would need a good computer (Mac) to do this, I think.

It's just an idea I have been thinking about for a while. Or streaming each blog post? Or something? idk. Like, no camera on me just a recording of what is being written on the screen?

Worth thinking about