Words for Dad

When it started to become clear that Dad was not going to be making it out of the hospital, I left for a little while to go to work.  On the drive in, I started thinking about his funeral.  I’m a very emotional guy, and when I go to funerals tears flow freely and I get choked up.  Often at funerals there’s a time where people can stand up and say a few words about the dearly departed.  Many times there were words I wanted to say, thoughts I wanted to express, but then my throat would catch and the tears would flow and I’d remain rooted to the seat and the thoughts would remain in my mind.  I just knew that if I stood up to try and say something I’d just start sobbing and be unable to string together a coherent thought.

I knew that no one would expect me to get up and speak at my father’s funeral… and yet, at my core I’m a writer, and words are what I do– they’re as much a part of me as my arms and legs.  I felt that I had to put together words to eulogize Dad and I wanted to try and share them with family and his friends.  I know that I could have simply printed it out and handed it to people to read, but that seemed like the easy way out.  You only get one chance to say your final goodbye to your father, and speaking the words I wrote was the best way I could think to do it.

I printed it out in large font, front and back, stocked up on quite a few tissues, and went on up.  I know reading from a sheet of paper doesn’t make for the best public speaking, but I figured it would help keep me focused and keep me from choking up.  I did try and look up some during the eulogy, and I somehow managed to make it through, in large part I think because I did my best to inject some humor into the words to battle back the tears.  Everyone seemed to love what I had to say, and that made me even more happy with the decision to speak.

I’ve got the entirety of the eulogy behind the cut.

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Technology

Hi all!  Sorry I haven’t updated in a while… I have to admit, I’ve been distracted by a new toy.  No, not THAT kind of toy, sheesh– where your mind leaps to when I let it!!   No, my ancient and decrepit cell phone was really starting to become a problem with a lot of quirks and issues that I finally gave in to Verizon’s incessant reminder that I’ve eligible for an upgrade for months now.  As I perused the options available to me — and reading the feedback comments for each device — the only newish phone that didn’t cost a mint that had nearly universal praise was the iPhone 4 (the original iPhone 4 from about a year ago, not the newest iPhone 4S).  Everyone seemed to love it, and since I’m already 1/3 of the way into the iPool with my iPod/iTunes, I figured– why not?  The deal was good, the phone looked sweet, and I felt ready to see what the hub-bub over smart phones was all about.

I got the phone Monday afternoon.

a screenshot of my actual phone

Those of you with smart phones are probably smiling and totally grok what’s happened to me all week.  Yeah, I’ve been sucked in by all the super-sweet stuff this phone does, downloading apps, browsing the net, staying in touch with all my social networks whenever I feel like it.  Trying out the camera and the video recorder, making ringtones.  It’s nuts!  It’s awesome!  How/why had I resisted so long?!?!

Of course, one of the first things I downloaded was the Word Press app, and I’m pretty stoked about that.  See, some of you write some rather risque stuff (some with pics!), and honestly most of the time I have for checking the computer comes when I’m at either my full or part-time jobs.  Neither place I feel totally comfortable rolling the dice and checking my blog reader at… plus, at my part-time job at night the computer and browser are so ancient and out-of-date that I can’t even bring up the reader there.  It kinda blows my mind that I can bring up the Word Press reader on my phone there but not on the computer…  Anyway now, with this app, I can pull up the reader anytime and see what you guys are writing about without worrying about curse words or details about sex or raunchy pictures.  I’m stoked!  I feel like I’ve been a bad blog follower of late because the only time I’m able to really keep up is late at night once I get home after my two jobs.

Now, finding time to compose some blogs… that’s a different story.  Trying to type stuff on the phone is maddening to someone who’s fingers fly typing on a keyboard as fast as mine do.

So, my questions are:   how’ve y’all been?  Anything big going on I might have missed?

And, most importantly… what are the MUST HAVE apps for a smart phone?!?

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Link Love – Sear To Perfection (a Silly G production)

My friend Silly G has created a new blog, partly inspired by a flurry of fun Tweets regarding cocktails, BBQ, hot tubbing and flash parties.  If you love grilling and love cocktails (and seriously, who doesn’t?) then be sure to check out her blog and give her lots of encouragement to share more of her tasty creations!!!  She’s a talented writer and quite fun to read.

Link Love ====> Sear To Perfection

Her About Page is very amusing, here’s part of her story there:

One day missgrill decided to start looking for love.  She had heard over and over again that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.   In the attempt to hook a man, she started barbequing like never before.

Without a single visible burn scar , she boasts the following major dating accomplishments since May 2011:

• burned 1000 kg of lump charcoal
• grilled 1 million rib-steaks
• mixed 442.7 cups of rub
• too many dates that watched her light charcoal cause they’d never seen it before.
• barbequed 350 racks of ribs
• sucked back 682 cases of beer

All this and she has yet to hook the man the man of her dreams.

One day missgrill decided she was sick of spending too much money on prime cuts of meat to feed dates that never became her man.  “Enough is enough.  No man gets the privilege of tasting my barbeque until he has proven his worth.”

From that point on she barbequed just for herself and her friends.

(Oh, and her original blog about love, life, and relationships is great fun too—->  Three Months to Forty)

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Creatively Recharged (Getting Social, Part 3)

I’ve talked a couple times before about the Virginia Screenwriters Forum and my hopes for rejoining the group (Musings on Sex Scenes, Climbing Out of the Social Void?).  I was an active member for about six years before having to drop out nine years ago due to the time pressures of two small children and picking up a part-time job to go along with my full-time job.  Well, last night I was finally able to attend their monthly meeting!

The bad news is that it’s a much less comfortable venue than it used to be.  Before, we got to meet in this really plush conference room in the basement of one of the downtown banks, with a huge hardwood table surrounded by these super-comfortable leather seats.  Man, it was nice!

Nowadays the group meets in a multi-purpose room in old renovated warehouse that has been converted into a public Arts building called Art Works.  They push together two much smaller tables, and there are flimsy folding chairs to sit in.

Still, comfort aside, there was something electrifying sitting around the table with 15 other writers, talking about storycraft and the nuts and bolts of screenwriting.  In my very first post here on my blog (…She’d Be Creative) I talked about how much I missed being surrounded by that sort of creative energy, so even as I worried about the chair collapsing beneath me, I felt like I was home and surrounded by “my people.”

After news and VSF business is gotten out of the way, we get into critiquing the first 30 pages of the two scripts for the meeting.  After the screenwriter talks a little bit about his script, each member is given the floor for 3 minutes to offer a constructive critique.  Then things are opened up for an open discussion with back-and-forth between the writer and the group, with suggestions and brainstorming.

I was a bit nervous about whether or not to say anything during my 3 minutes.  As a “guest” I was told I could just listen in without having to say anything.  But I’d read the scripts and the old screenwriting muscles had kicked in, and I had a few ideas I wanted to share.  My heart pounding in my chest, worried I might say something stupid due to being extremely rusty, I went ahead and spoke.

The writer was attentive and took notes.  The others around the table smiled at me, nodded, even jotted down some notes too.  By the end of the 3 minutes I felt much more at ease, and my confidence grew that maybe I still had “it,” or at least a rusty remnant.

To make things even better, there were some women around the table wearing no wedding bands, ranging in age from 20 years younger to about 10 years older, all of them radiating that creative writer’s spark.  I wanted them to read my writing!

To make things even more better (heh), the group has received some grant monies to expand its services beyond the monthly meetings.  Starting next year, every quarter they’re going to have local actors read our 30 page scripts in front of family, friends, and anyone from the general public who wants to come, held at a really cool local theater downtown.  This will allow our writers regular opportunities to mingle with actors, stage managers from the theater, and any casting agents or other people in the business of making movies who might show up.  As a new member, my script will go to the bottom of the list of seniority, but I can still get a charge from listening to the others and meeting all these creative people.  And eventually, someone on that stage will be reading something I wrote…

The VSF is now on summer hiatus, and will resume meetings in September, so I’ve got the rest of the summer to write 30 pages, polish it, and submit to the reading committee.  I’ve had a movie idea that’s been percolating in my mind for about 5 years now, but as I drove home details started bubbling up to my mind.  I thought about it last night as I drifted off to sleep.  Today at lunch I could barely read my book because scenes and characters kept popping in my brain.  Finally I just had to cut lunch off early and pound out about 800 words, worried that I might forget some of the cool stuff that has suddenly started jumping inside me.

(this is NOT an actual screenshot of my script…)

I’m two and a half pages on my way…  of course, maybe I need to also re-read some of my old screenwriting books too

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Link Love – Toughbunny

I see my muse Rachel has ported her blog over to WordPress (yay, WordPress!!), and that she also uploaded stuff from her Livejournal days.  Some of you may remember I posted about her in my post “My Ideal Woman – One Year and Counting!” as one of the women who inspired me to start up this blog.  I think her smarts and personality really shine through in her writing, so go check her out… if you like her, follow her, comment and maybe she’ll update more frequently

Link Love ====> Toughbunny

Here’s what she says on her About page:

I am in the middle of starting over.    I spent  14 years in Washington DC working on the Hill and in Government Affairs.   After several things just went kaplooey, the way life sometimes does, I decided it was time for something new.

I am now a young-middle-aged student in NYC.   I feel 18 and 60 all at the same time (and I am neither that naive or that wise).  I have honestly never felt so young or so old.   I am making many of the same mistakes, but hopefully learning from them much faster.

I want to make this blog something funny and silly.  Hopefully I will find some kindred souls out there!

 

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My Ideal Woman — One Year and Counting!

Wow, today kinda snuck up on me—My Ideal Woman is one year old!  I’m actually glad I didn’t totally miss it—some of you may have noticed I haven’t really updated in a while.  These past few weeks have been a brutal combination of being insanely busy and insanely stressful, and the combination of mental drain and preoccupation on various worries has left little room for musings on life, love and happiness.  Thankfully, things have finally started falling into place, lists are being checked off, and while I’m still holding my breath a little bit, I think everything’s going to be okay.  One thing I do know—I’m really, REALLY looking forward to the housewarming/birthday throw-down I’ve planned in June.  I really need some epic fun…

So… May 26^th, 2011 I put up my very first blog post.  I was inspired to give blogging a try by two women I’ve never met face-to-face, but had gotten to know over the internet.  The first was Rachel M., who I followed on Livejournal for a while.  A superb writer, I found her posts engaging—sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking.  In her I saw a bit of a kindred-spirit, and I always found myself cheering her on, hoping for things to go her way, and hitting the comment button to offer condolences when they didn’t.  Eventually she left Livejournal and started a blog, Toughbunny.

The second was MJ, a woman I met online through our mutual love of a collectible card game.  I write a weekly column about the game, and one day out of the blue she emailed me a sketch of something I’d written about in my column, something I’d imagined and wish I’d had a picture of.  We sent some emails back and forth, followed each other on Twitter, friended each other on Facebook.  Again, I saw in her a bit of a kindred-spirit in things we’d both experienced in life, and then one day she started up a blog as well, Moxy MTG.  Her writing was whip-smart and funny, and I enjoyed reading everything she put up.  She’s also an incredibly artist, and she was sweet enough to draw up the banner art that tops this blog.

It occurred to me after Rachel and then MJ started their blogs that blogging offered a much better way to reach out to a larger audience than Livejournal did.  I’d been doing a ton of writing for a long time about that collectible card game, and while I love writing about it, the audience for that writing is pretty niche.  When friends or family wanted to know if I’d written anything lately, I could show them that stuff, but they wouldn’t understand whether it was funny or interesting unless they were into that game (and most are not).  I make some money on that writing, but if I were ever to get to my goal of writing for a living, I’d very likely need to show that I can write other things as well.

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Ask me…

I thought I might try something fun… ask me a question in the comments, and I’ll answer it.  Anything you’ve wondered about me from reading my blog, or anything you’re curious about?  Want my opinion on something?  Ask away!  I’m curious to see what you all come up with

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Milestone: 100 Posts!

Some of you may have wondered why I haven’t posted for a little bit.  I’ve tried to keep up a fairly regular clip of posts because, when it comes to blogging, there’s definitely a “publish or perish” vibe.  When I write a bunch I notice that I get more traffic to a lot of different pages, not just the new posts I put up, and when my writing dries up a bit I notice the overall hits diminish.

But I’m not really in a dry spot writing now.  I’m working on my guest-blog for Simply Solo, and I’ve been reading and leaving comments to many of your blogs.

No, what’s got me tripped up is revealed here:

When I published the last post, WordPress reminded me that it was my 99^th post.  99 already?  It was a little bit shocking, and actually quite exciting, because the very next post was going to be 100.  A hundred posts!  That seems like a pretty awesome milestone, doesn’t it?  If you do something 100 times you’re pretty committed to it, and it gives me a real feeling of accomplishment.  That’s about 9-10 posts every month, not too shabby.

So, to mark my 100^th post I needed to do something special.  Hmmm… what should that be?  A retrospective?  Well, I did a 2011 year review of my blog just a few months back in January, so doing another one seemed a bit redundant.  Not to mention, I’m actually coming up on my year anniversary blogging May 26^th, which seems like a better time for a retrospective or review of one year of blogging.

Then I thought—well, maybe I could take this time to thank everyone for reading me!  But then I realized… there’s 45 of you now (wow!!), and I could go on and on about how much I appreciate the kind words and comments each of you put in my posts, and some of you have fantastic blogs of your own that I love reading.  There’s the drop-dead sexiness in the writing of creativenoodling, lifeinthedashlane, and threemonthstoforty; or the powerful introspection of clduncan75, subtlekate and beautifulmess7.  I could go on and on…

But ultimately I suppose it’s most important to just get number 100 out of the way and get to writing and sharing the next thing that’s on my mind.  Life feels like such an adventure right now, I’ve finally found my roommate, I can see a little daylight now in terms of financial stability and “me-time,” diet and exercise has started to pay off, I’m feeling great physically, mentally, spiritually.  I can’t wait to chronicle this journey here, and to take you with me on this adventure, to hear your thoughts and read what you have to say, as well as read about your own journey.  Thank you so much for being here, for being a part of this adventure, and I hope you’ll stick around for the next 100 posts!

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Climbing Out of the Social Void?

So the meeting with Chuck last night went really well.  He came over around 7pm and left around 10pm.  We talked about all sorts of things and really hit it off well.  I know Chuck from way back, he was a gamer and we hung around together for a stretch of years, but eventually he got more into poker and hung around with different folks.  He’s about 10 years older than I am and has a wicked fun sense of humor and is very easy going.  He’s recently divorced as well and is looking for a place to stay for at least a year and maybe more.  He seemed to like my house and likes the living space I’ve set aside for a roommate (converted the den into a large efficiency-style bedroom/living area with attached half-bath).  He’s pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

He’s not sure exactly when he can move in, says it might be two weeks might be four, so I’m mentally penciling him in by the end of April.  I just had to submit my work hours for my part-time job for May and trimmed about 12 hours from the month.  Which is a little risky but I can always pick up more hours later if I need to.  One Saturday I signed up for 8 hours instead of 12 so I could do some housework before going into work.  I also cleared my schedule for two social outings.

One is a monthly gathering called Drinking Liberally, which is a national organization that encourages liberals to get together over drinks and talk about politics, an American tradition that stretches back to Colonial times.  I’ve written a little bit about politics a few times here before, it’s something I’m passionate about but have rarely had any time to participate in.  There’s a Richmond chapter that meets the first Sunday of each month, so I’m going to go check it out in May and hope to meet some cool people and expand my woefully tiny social circle.

The last Wednesday of each month is when the Virginia Screenwriters Forum meets and I’ve cleared my evening to attend the meeting in May as a guest.  I am super-stoked about this—getting together with a bunch of creative types always gives me a creative buzz and I can’t wait to tap back into that!  Again, I’m hoping to meet some cool people and expand my social circle in this way as well, though it’s much more of a “workshop” environment and when I was with the group a decade ago not many were interested in socializing outside of the monthly meeting.  Then again, I was married at the time, and who knows what this bunch will be like?  Maybe some of them might be interested in going to a movie then hanging out afterwards and talk about it over drinks?

I know I’m getting a little ahead of myself… but I’m so damn excited!  It’s been nearly impossible for me to concentrate and get anything constructive done today…

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Just Write

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
– Thomas Edison

I went through a brief phase where I thought I was going to be an artist when I grew up.  I loved to draw, and one thing I really loved drawing the most was cartoons.  For a while I wrote a comic strip called Cheese that was basically The Odd Couple but with mice.  Then I started writing illustrated stories, and finally pivoted to comic books, which I was obsessed with for a long while.  I just knew my future was in drawing comic books.  I cooked up all kinds of cool stories around my own batch of super-heroes, and had fun laying out the frames and drawing the scenes.

The only problem… my artistic skills just didn’t cut it.  I’d write these great story plots and characters, and try to draw it out… and it just looked lame to me.  I mean, it wasn’t bad, just wasn’t nearly as good as I wanted it to be.

I tried to improve my skills.  I got a book called How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way and practiced.  But it felt after a while that I’d reached the limits of my drawing ability, and it just wasn’t good enough.

I was crushed… but I found that my mind was still churning out characters and stories, even after I stopped trying to draw them.  Maybe I didn’t need pictures to tell my tales…

From eighth grade through my early 20s, I spent a lot of time writing stories and outlining ideas.  I dabbled in screenwriting for a while, which was fascinating as totally different craft from free-form fiction writing.  Eventually though, life got in the way and I stopped writing.

Only, I actually didn’t stop.  I got caught up in a collectible card game called Magic, and got involved in the Magic community and soon became a regular writer about Magic for various venues.  I wrote about Magic for websites and magazines.  I’ve been writing at least 2,000-3,000 words about Magic every single week for 12 years.  That’s… *quick calculation*… 1,560,000 words, and that’s probably lowballing it.  That’s quite a lot of writing.  Granted, it’s writing about something that I love, which I consider relatively “easy” to do, but I’ve recently realized that I’ve gotten really, really good at it.  Sure, some weeks I don’t do my best work, but in general I know I do a great job of it.

And I realize that it’s made me a better writer in general.  The skills I’ve honed writing about Magic can be applied to all my writing.

I decided last year I wanted to branch out into other forms of writing, to take those skills and put them to work in other ways.  To connect to people outside of my hobby through my writing.  Inspired by a few friends who were dabbling in blogging, I created My Ideal Woman and have had a great time writing here.  Recently I went ahead and expanded my blogging to two other blogs, Talking TV and Ben_Scared in order to keep MIW more focused while also expanding the sort of writing I was doing.  I’m almost up to 100 blog posts.  And I’m still writing 2,000-3,000 words about Magic.

What I’ve noticed is that all this writing has really gotten my mind charged up.  I’m always thinking about something to write about:  something about Magic, something for one of my blogs.  And recently—story concepts, movie scenes.  My brain is always chewing over ideas, in the back of my mind while I’m working, in the shower, while I’m driving, while I’m sleeping.  The brain is an amazing thing when you really exercise it, and I think doing all this writing has really amped it up.

That old adage of “just write” is so true.  Just push through, write, even if it’s not popping, you can always go back and polish up later.  If you get stuck, write something else and let your subconscious work through it.

Knowing how many words I already write each week led me to wonder—how many words are in a novel?  I heard that an average 400 page book is 120,000 words.  That breaks down to 2,300 words a week for a year.  Which is something I already do writing about Magic!  If I translated all the words I’ve written about Magic into pages in a book, that’s 5,200 pages!

Granted, writing fiction is a lot more involved than writing about your favorite hobby, or blogging about life, love and television, but it was exciting to realize—I’m already operating at that level of word production.  If I can carve out a little extra time, I can certainly start working on fiction.  I started Ben_Scared as a way to prep my mind back into fiction writing, by typing up my old horror stories and polishing them with the skills I’ve learned in the 20 years since I wrote most of them.  I hope to reconnect with my old screenwriting group as well, to surround myself with creative people and get my brain back into fictional storytelling.

These are exciting times to be a writer.  As the wonderful subtlekate recently discussed on her blog, “facts are easy” – back when I started writing, you had to log a lot of time in the library to research for stories, pouring through books and magazines.  Now just about everything you need to know is just a Google search away, which lets you spend more time and energy on crafting the stories you want to tell.  Accessibility to facts and source material is no real obstacle anymore.

There are also so many avenues available for self-publication and promotion now with blogging and social media and all sorts of things through the internet.  Granted, there are a lot writers out there who have access to all the same tools and channels as I do, but I have faith that if someone has talent and a compelling story to tell, they will find an audience if they make the effort.

Here’s to making that effort!  Just write.

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