The First Post

I had many reservations to doing a blog. I am a writer except for the fact that I rarely write anything. But, a blog? Who wants to listen to a nobody complain about what bothers them, what interests them or what they have to say? I know I don't.

So, here's the thing, I am 34 years-old. I'd say I'm a pretty creative individual. I was a musician before I started writing, but I always enjoyed reading. The first adult books I read where the source material of my favorite movies. At 12 years-old I read Jurassic park along with its sequel, before moving on to Crichton's other works including The Andromeda Strain (which I often confuse with The Acacia strain, a metal band)and two other stories collected within a single volume. I read A Clockwork Orange and Requiem for a dream, which led me to other works of those authors. Then I read all the Stephen King's in my house that belonged to my mother.

And here we go... You, the reader, could care less.It's just a bunch of names and you may hate all the authors I mentioned. On the other hand, you may identify with something I just said. I mean hopefully, you do, but I don't want this to be a personal diary. I am just learning about them, but it seems that its all to easy for a blog to be any jerk's personal therapy. I want this writing to resonate with someone. I don't want to create self-indulgent work with myself as the audience in mind. Where's the fun in that?

If you are still reading by this point, thank you. No, I mean it. Thank you.

So, I was a musician--well,  I am one. Explaining art that is too overly self-indulgent seems clearer within the context of music.


I would jam with other musicians and record it. Sometimes, the music that was interesting for us to play through our instruments was not as interesting to us as listeners. Often, it seemed to go on for too long and became boring. If we wanted to create art for people, then we needed to connect with them. And here, through this blog, I want to connect to you. You heard me right, I want a deep connection with you. If you catch my drift.

So, we are going to work through this together. I will try and experiment with this platform in order to provoke something from you. If you are still reading by this point give me a response. Start a dialogue. I will post again soon.

Revision

It seems as though whenever I go back and look at something I've written I can find at least a little something to change. Our moods shift day to day, or maybe even hour to hour, and we will have a different view of our work based on these moods. It's always helpful when writing to go out and do something and then come back and take a look at what you've written. You may feel that something doesn't sound right or maybe you'll even have a good idea of something to ad. Your audience's perception on your work will not be consistent so it is helpful to revise with a different mindset, to see it on a new angle. I will leave you with some quotes from writers on revising.

Blogging on the Bloggy Blog Blog

I enjoyed doing this. I have never blogged before, but I will from now on. It is a good place to post your work for others to read. You have the freedom to write whatever you like, and it was a good chance to learn a different style of writing. It is god practice to write something small in a way that captures the idea of what you want to say. I didn't know that a small blog post is better than a long one because people tend to not read long things online. I'm going to definitely blog more in the future, and use this to find other blogs I like.

POV

There is an awesome book by Kurt Vonnegut called Slaughterhouse-Five. I know I have mentioned this book before, but I mention it again not just because it's one of the best books ever written, but also because I recently read it. The First chapter is a bit about the author's life and how he came to write the book. However, it is most certainly not the introduction. He purposely put it as the first chapter because it is part of the book. And then throughout the novel he places himself in it as a character. He references chapter one often while he himself is interacting with the main character. It is a pretty sweet to do this. It's a story about Vonnegut writing a story about a character he created who he talks to. It's a pretty funky point of view. This belongs in the "other" category. Apparently this is "post-modernism" which is a hard thing to define. So anyway, READ IT!!!!!

The Pink Institution

The           Pink           Institution           by           Selah           Saterstrom          is           a           strange

book                      it                      combines                             poetry                                            and    

regular                    fiction                                   a                                     weird                             way    
to                                                                         do                                                                    things.

fyi: before this posted it looked a lot more like the structure does in the book. It would have made me look a lot more clever had it worked the way I wanted.



     I honestly didn't like those parts of the "novel", but then again, I might not have gotten it. So, I found a brief review/analysis that helped me out a bit. But, I won't even get into that. I will, however, speak about what I liked about the book.
     I am a huge fan of messed-up, disturbing things and weird sexual things as well. This book is jam-packed full of this. It's a ghost story/southern tale mixed with child molestation and drunkards. I will cite one of my favorite passages from the book which is from "Childhood Objects" which also happens to be my favorite section of the book:

Children's Room

Willie lay in bed. Through darkness he made out a figure
standing in the doorway. Willie realized it was Death.
Death entered the room in long, swooping strides. He
walked past Willie's bed and entered the adjoining
children's room. Willie followed. Death picked up a child
at which point Willie began to assault Death. The two
entered a wrestling match. Willie won with child in arms
and Death defeated, got up to leave, but he brought his
mouth close and said, "You'll see me again." Death looked
like the popular renderings.

The last line is what does it for me: Death looked like the popular renderings. lol.

5 Authors that you NEED to read ASAP!!!!!

So I figured I would just give a short list of 5 of my favorite writers in no particular order, a brief description and suggested readings. READ THEM ASAP!!!!!

Neil Gaiman - Not only did this British bloke write Sandman, one of the few graphic novels to make The New York Times Best Seller List, but he also released an excellent collection of short stories titled: Smoke and Mirrors. He is, at times, listed under the label: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but don't let this deter you. Labels sometimes place an unfair...well, label on things.

Chuck Palahniuk (Paula-nick) - This dude was in another blog of mine, and yes he is the author of Fight Club, but, in my opinion, this is not his best. He has gotten some criticism over his first few books, due to the fact that the narrators are simular, cynical anti-hero types, but they're all good so it doesn't bother me. Some of his later books are great, like Rant (one of the greatest novels of all time) and Pygmy are pretty sweet. He has a kind of sick sense of humor, and a whole variety of strange characters, and they all culminate into amazingness.

Hubert Selby Jr. - Another dude in my blog who was the guy behind the book behind the movie, Requiem for a Dream, which stays pretty faithful. But the real whopper of a novel is Last Exit to Brooklyn. Hardcore crazy!!!!

Kurt Vonnegut - This man should need no introduction. Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions. Some pretty sweet postmodernism going on here, crazy, outside of the box stuff.

Hermann Hesse - Some pretty good, philosophical stuff going on here. We got the mind-blower Demian, and the story of a real jerk called: Narcissus and Goldmund. Great stuff, you possibly read in high school.

Literary Website

     So, I have been searching the Internet for hours trying to find the perfect literary blog/website to write about and came across a vast ocean of results. A few of the ones I found were pay sites. They seemed to look the most "official" and boasted about the number of writers published in The New Yorker, or famous writers, editors and agents featured on their site, but I don't think that many of us want to (or can) pay the $40+ to subscribe. So then, I decided to find the next best thing, and in my searching I found that many of these blogs/sites were centered around women writers. Of course there's nothing wrong with this, it's just that I am not a woman and therefore wanted to find a site that was centered around someone who's not a woman either.
     Alright, so now I was looking for something simpler, something that could just help out new writers with some basic tips. I was sure to find a good man site somewhere, right? But alas, I was forced to resign my quest for a masculine, testosterone driven blog when I found the estrogen fueled Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl is featured on quickanddirtytips.com, which, as the title suggests, has brief and uncleanly tips for not only writing, but many other topics. However, for our purposes, we will only focus on the writing aspects and this girl of grammar.
     There are a bunch of cool things here on this site. I found a link to The World's Best Grammar Checker where you can copy and paste something you've written to find any errors, along with articles on common mistakes such as: who versus whom and I.e. versus E.g.. There are also plenty of articles to help you with word choices and spellings, such as Preventive versus Preventative.
      Quick and Dirty also offers writing tips, such as How to Beat Writer's Block and Other Creative Hurdles and Should You Use Words or Numbers for Dates? I also found an interesting article titled: How Literature Changes Your Brain for the Better. So yes, I would say that this is a pretty good website and would be a nice way to dip your feet in the pool before jumping right in. Alright, until the next Bloggy Blog, PEACE!