A Choice To Make

July 22, 2011

When I was a teenager I was pretty sure that I would be a writer when I was an adult.  I am, it seems but I haven’t really published much, so sometimes I wonder if it counts.  It does, I know, it is my choice if I want to know how to publish a book or not.  Sometimes I don’t really want to, which is probably the main reason that I have not.

Why don’t I want to? I ask myself this question. The basic answer is that I am not the most organized person in the world.  So I have written many pages of poems and lyrics and short stories and I have sat down several times with the idea of publishing in mind. Those times I made what I called a publishing file and I sorted through my writing with publishing in mind.  When it comes down to it, though I guess to publish a book is not really my priority though I know it would make me more respectable in the eyes of people who know I am a writer but wonder why I have not published much of anything.

I used to think that I would publish a book of fiction such as a novel but when I sat down to try and do it, I wasn’t able to get the writing to flow. Short pieces such as short, true stories flow out of me much more easily.  So the closest I have come to writing a book is to write five hundred pages of short true stories.  I have published some of these in a sense because they were used at my college for a student publication and for a student concert.  I read a bunch of them outloud to some music a friend composed.  They played a few of the stories read to music in between each song they were playing as part of the student concert.  I couldn’t be there as I lived in a different town at that point but I had a song included too.  I felt good about it because only about a third of the people in the program had anything in the concert and I was one of that third plus they used my writing for the intermissions.  That was kind of a long time ago, but still it is my choice if I am going to publish anything, or if I’m happy to just store up writing.

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This is an unusual age different than any other in human history, mostly because of computers, the internet and the ability to communicate long distances in a flash.  In past times it was a big deal for people to travel thirty miles down the road to visit relatives for Christmas.  And before telephones no one could even call each other to say when they were coming to visit.  People nowadays are completely used to the easy information we have access to and our ability to communicate across the world via computers.  Almost anyone can be a writer these days because of the internet.  You can make a personal website in a flash and start book publish online.

I know a guy who has been publishing online for years by maintaining a simple website which he programs in HTML.  It’s a form of daily journal.  He makes dated entries that contain both pictures and text about specific experiences in his life.  He is a photographer and has been using a digital camera for about ten years now.  It’s a pretty amazing thing the way individuals can become internet artists and writers so easily these days.

The guy I mentioned just celebrated his eleventh anniversary of publishing online.  He started the visual journal on a whim but then found out it was a really good medium for his feelings so he continued on.  When I was studying performing arts I started thinking about how if every individual had to give a performance how the performances would vary.  It’s kind of interesting to think about web journals in the same way.  Everyone’s day is filled with unique experiences and sequences of images.  If each person had a journal of one moment from their day with text and images it would be pretty interesting to see how each individual would do it differently.  In some ways I would prefer to live in the past where people were sequestered away in their individual lives.  But then that was also very limiting.  I know that I am fortunate to exist now when the world feels much smaller because of computers and the internet.

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A Writer Who Got Discovered

July 15, 2011

One of my favorite children’s book authors fell into his writing career in an unusual way.  He was in the military and took part in a conflict that needed to be told about afterwards.  A popular magazine hired a well known writer of books to write about soldiers’ accounts of the experience.  This man got [...]

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Weird Subjects To Read About

July 12, 2011

Have you ever been in a warehouse where you’ve seen boxes and boxes of a book publish?  I have worked in a warehouse that shipped out books to booksellers large and small.  It was interesting to see the way books arrived.  If it was a popular book then many boxes of it would arrive. If [...]

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How to Publish a Book at Kinkos

July 8, 2011

Before taking your manuscript to Kinkos (or any copy shop) you must understand that printing and publishing are two different things.  To “publish” a book, you need to buy an ISBN number and bar code.  Once you have that, you can take your book to any printer and have it bound, with the ISBN number [...]

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It Would Be Nice To Be Able To Read More

July 1, 2011

It is enjoyable to further one’s knowledge about a topic if it is an interest that you engage in.  I like skiing so at one point I read a book about how to get in touch with my inner skiier.  It helped me be more in my moment of experience when I got the chance [...]

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