Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, August 28, 2003
My literary background
A poster onthe FFF writes, "So I know you are an author...what is your literary background?"
Blackout
We had a blackout yesterday. I got home and none of the electric clocks were working, and the VCR had to be reprogrammed. Please Lord, don't let Shearon Harris blow up, I prayed. My cable service has gone out, and I don't know when it will be restored.
Headhunters in business suits
Had another call from a different headhunter yesterday, for a job with Glaxo. But the contract house seems like a body shop. So I'm not sure how to proceed with them. They are, however, on-site at Glaxo.
Four categories of blogs
Spent some time surfing blogs, but most blogs are really awful. I'm breaking them down into the following categories: (worst) poetry blogs. Some poor soul writes, all in lower case:
blond hair cold eyes remote soul
oh gonna lose me in dark vistas
what we had died young
Aaack! Then she (or he) has a link that says, "Click here to read more of my poetry." Thanks, I think I'll stick my tongue down a garbage disposal instead. There was also a page where the blogger insists that writing haiku is easy, and he/she writes one every day. I was tempted to respond that writing lousy haiku is easy, but writing good haiku that hits the reader with an impact is difficult. However, I refrained.
Third are the blogs that are more like journals or info sources. They just track articles onthe web. Some are really just tracking services with links, and others offer commentaries as well as links to articles.
Finally, there are the readable blogs, which are written by a wide variety of people. Some have horrible grammar and worse spelling, but the good ones always hit the joy of life or keen observation notes, even if they lack in other qualities. It's amazing that if a person has something to say, the reader can forgive a lot of hindrances in the style, mechanics, etc. But I do notice that when a person has something to say, the Gen-X (or whatever it is) habit of writing in all lower case with almost no punctuation is dropped. A person who has something to say seems to do his or her best to say it as clearly as possible, so that others will comprehend.
A poster onthe FFF writes, "So I know you are an author...what is your literary background?"
 | Hmmm, I come from the Acme School of Ray Guns and Spaceship Design. Well, that wouldn't be an appropriate answer. In truth, I come from the Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Doctor Who, CS Lewis College of "Always include a Fight Scene". Except Lewis didn't always include a fight scene. I suppose the most accurate truth is that I write adventure stories. But I got so fed up with how stupid, insipid, and downright untrue most published Christian Fiction is that I made my life's work a story about what it's really like to be a Christian (and okay, there are fight scenes in it). So in this string of spaceship adventure stories I have one memorable contemporary story, VALKYRIES. Moody Press saw it on the web and bought it from me.
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Blackout
We had a blackout yesterday. I got home and none of the electric clocks were working, and the VCR had to be reprogrammed. Please Lord, don't let Shearon Harris blow up, I prayed. My cable service has gone out, and I don't know when it will be restored.
Headhunters in business suits
Had another call from a different headhunter yesterday, for a job with Glaxo. But the contract house seems like a body shop. So I'm not sure how to proceed with them. They are, however, on-site at Glaxo.
Four categories of blogs
Spent some time surfing blogs, but most blogs are really awful. I'm breaking them down into the following categories: (worst) poetry blogs. Some poor soul writes, all in lower case:
blond hair cold eyes remote soul
oh gonna lose me in dark vistas
what we had died young
Aaack! Then she (or he) has a link that says, "Click here to read more of my poetry." Thanks, I think I'll stick my tongue down a garbage disposal instead. There was also a page where the blogger insists that writing haiku is easy, and he/she writes one every day. I was tempted to respond that writing lousy haiku is easy, but writing good haiku that hits the reader with an impact is difficult. However, I refrained.
 | The next most common type of blog I have found is teen angst (or twenty-something angst), and these are nearly as bad as the poetry blogs. I did read one account, which as far as I can determine was meant to be taken seriously, by a young man who writes that a girl at work told him she would date him but she cannot get past his weird name. Then another girl who he had dated splits for Chicago with a guy friend of his but assures him it's just because she needed a ride to Chicago, and they aren't doing anything. ("I think I can trust her," he writes.) Then while she's gone, he gets his mother's insurance agent to fix him up with a girl who tells him right off the bat that she's seeing somebody. So his latest post laments that in his short life he will probably never get a woman. I did wonder if this was actually an artfully done blog designed to be really, really funny. But overall, my conclusion is that no, it's just the blog of a hapless guy who keeps striking out.
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Third are the blogs that are more like journals or info sources. They just track articles onthe web. Some are really just tracking services with links, and others offer commentaries as well as links to articles.
Finally, there are the readable blogs, which are written by a wide variety of people. Some have horrible grammar and worse spelling, but the good ones always hit the joy of life or keen observation notes, even if they lack in other qualities. It's amazing that if a person has something to say, the reader can forgive a lot of hindrances in the style, mechanics, etc. But I do notice that when a person has something to say, the Gen-X (or whatever it is) habit of writing in all lower case with almost no punctuation is dropped. A person who has something to say seems to do his or her best to say it as clearly as possible, so that others will comprehend.
