Kinda weird to be on at 11am and 5pm. Who knows how long it will last? I think I'm up to around 53 segments. Anyway, here I am talking about the latest Nick 2.0 blog, "National Novel Writing Month Goal Fulfilled, What's Yours?" which plugs an article I'm working on about novel writing (NaNoWriMo) and www.thenervousbreakdown.com:
Other than taking time off work this week (only actual took off two days) to spend with family, I am also busting out a novel since it's national novel writing month. It's the first year for me to join nanowrimo.org for their cool user profiles that you can generate with up-to-date word counts that are addicting.
So I joined 17 days into the process. That's a little late since the NanoWrimo goal is to bust out 50,000 words through November. You're supposed to spread out the writing, not necessarily write in huge clumps. But since working for ABC23 I'm pretty busy not just managing the www.turnto23.com website, but writing articles, a lot of them in my off-hours, though I do write and edit boat loads of hard news during the day.
I've put in writing on and off for a few days now and I'm up to 20,485 words. I'm working on a comedy titled, "Man Liberty" that I hope when I'm done will give some folks a chuckle.
I encourage writers and novelists-to-be to tackle writing novels in any way that you can be motivated and committed to follow through. I found the NanoWrimo site to be a great motivator. But maybe some of you might rather join a class or local writing group. Here's my NanoWrimo Noveltown profile if you want to check up on my progress through the week to see if I meet my goal.
Are people going overboard with comic book superhero worship? Read my article, "Book Claims Superheroes New Gods" about the new book, "Our Gods Wear Spandex."
Now, the article is different than the video I shot and edited which you can see here on YouTube. The article is commentary and an interview with author Chris Knowles. The video is an interview with three local comic book afficionados. I think you will be amazed at what they have to say.
OK, I may not do my holiday shopping at occult bookstores, but I do check out my share of spiritual books. In fact, I'm about to launch a big article on www.turnto23.com on a comic book history book that ties the industry to the occult.
Anyway, it's just crap to think people resort to hangman's nooses and symbolic hate threats against people not part of the conservative cultural mainstream.
When Product Manager Matt Munoz of Bakotopia.com asked me to write a piece on blogging that he could publish online and in the magazine version, I instantly thought of the portion of my college lecture that was meant to motivate writers rather than instruct. Sure, there's instruction in the piece you're about to read. But most students, and people in general, are stuck as writers. They're stuck in their identity and stuck in being motivated.
So get inspired, read the following piece and thank Matt Munoz for getting me to share these thoughts with you:
Blogging Is Writing, So Understand Who You Are Who are you? What is your identity? If you identify yourself as solely a student, housewife, teacher, police officer, etc., then stop reading immediately and go meditate. That’s right, run along and think. Because the words you’re about to read aren’t meant for you. They won’t make a difference in your life unless you identify yourself as a writer. Don’t even think of coming back unless you’ve accepted a very crazy notion whole-heartedly, even fanatically, as if you’ve converted to the wildest, most far-reaching religious faith of all time: writing.
Once you’ve accepted your fate as a writer, you may continue. If I’ve lost anyone at this point, and I often do, then it just wasn’t meant to be. Go back to being an office worker, or whatever it is that you do, because it’s not disheveled enough, not crazy enough, not risky enough as we writers who accept our fate understand. Those who are half-writers, pseudo writers, or wannabes just won’t be able to partake in the full range of staring that we, who identify as writers, get from the gawking world around us.
When it comes to being a writer, or in this case, a blogger, often there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of writing. Yet when it comes to the why I have my own set of rules: you either are a writer, or you aren’t. You either want to learn and grow as a writer, or you’re too pompous to believe your writing can get any better. If you think you can’t get any better, or that your writing is perfect already, let me tell you, you’re stuck.
Maybe you think your words are perfect the first time a paragraph spills out of your head—often a good sign of someone who fears change. Or maybe you’re one of those writers whose belief is in purity, that your words are strangely tainted if you edit them—often a good sign of a pompous writer. Such writers just want reassurance that what they’ve written is some kind of divine godsend. Believe me, these are the kind of people who approach me and say, “Will you look at something I wrote?” I tend to ignore such pompous and fear-of-change types. I give no holy blessing to such snootiness.
I often let out a sigh at this point because I know that most often that person won’t like that I often interpret their meanings as “help.” My red pen marks are cuts to their psyche. Blue pen marks? Deep gouges to their already icy egos. Rather, many such writers are passively suggesting that I help them get published, which I don’t mind doing when the writing is good enough.
So this is the first step to being a blogger: blogging is writing, so understand who you are.
That means although you blog, what you really are is a writer, which means you need to learn and grow as writers do. And maybe that’s wrong of me to suggest. But I figure if I’m still learning and growing as a writer, so should every other writer out there.
Good Bloggers Are Writers Who Adapt And Mature I accepted early on in my writing career that writing is a life-long learning process. Writing, as you grow older, will change, progress, adapt and mature. Look, we all need editors because not only are we often blind to much of our own writing, but often we writers have growing pains that we’re not even aware of. Sentence structure, voice, clarity and vision in writing evolves through stages of learning, which I believe, are little epiphanies as we come to understand new techniques and develop deeper vocabulary. Look, I could submit this essay to a magazine and entire paragraphs might be chopped, reorganized, clarified. I have to be mature enough to accept editing from others as I do my own editing and artistic growth. Yes, writing is art.
An essay or short story I write today at age 39 is completely different in tone and perspective from my writing twenty years ago. Maybe that’s what makes someone like Tolkien, Orwell or Naipaul so special: they could capture maturity and youth, and achieve an incredible sense of clarity by having allowed the writing processes in them to change and adapt through the construct of time. As they got older I bet they even enjoyed committed editors who worked to help them grow further.
So as you blog, understand that you have at the very least, to self-edit your work. Even though blogging is an immediate form of writing, some degree of editing is necessary. Write a passage, sit back, and edit. New thoughts might flood into your head; stronger arguments could unfold. Believe me, readers aren’t dumb and can sense maturity in writing as if they’re sniffing out the best plate at a five-star Vegas buffet.
