Blogging The Light Fantastic: Writing In Stages

Jay Leonard Schwartz Writing ,
I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.
– James Michener

 

This post is not so much about blogging, as it is about writing. Of course, if you are a blogger, then you obviously write, so this post is for you. My aim here is to provide some insight into what we call the ‘writing process’. I’m sure you will agree it’s a creative process that sometimes turns chaotic, but there are ways of going about taming it, if you will. Mind you, although I tend to be a chaotic person, I’m also a teacher of English (when I’m not wearing a cape that is), so I can at least pass along what I ‘preach’ to my students.

Now to be honest, I wish there were an exact science as to how I write and develop content. Ideas come to me in chunks. Sentences form at random. Coherence and cohesion come hard. Therefore, one of the reasons I love blogging is that ‘writing’ on the computer has always come naturally for me. You see I’m not a very linear thinker, and as such it’s amazingly helpful for me to type up some ideas up, move them around, tryout different permutations of words and sentences, and then sort of fill-in the blanks between said sentences and ideas. Pencils and pens have become as useful to me as an extra pair of thumbs might be … on my feet. Yes, writing the old manual way is very frustrating for me, unless I’m writing song lyrics, ‘scat poetry’, a to-do list, or a shopping list.

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All Thumbs Going Forward

Jay Leonard Schwartz Defying Expectations, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
“Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.”
– David Foster Wallace

Last Thursday, in one of those ‘stupid clumsy me’ moments, I bashed my hand against a wall and screwed up my right thumb. As I’ve had my fair share of broken bones over the years, I didn’t think it was fractured and even managed to play guitar with it for a couple of hours with my buddy. Nevertheless, I had it x-rayed the next morning just to be safe; it was swollen and stiff, and the thumb, too! 

While waiting for the x-ray report to come in, I sat thinking back to when I had broken both elbows in a bike accident a couple of years ago, on April Fool’s Day no less. I thought about how crappy it would be to start the New Year incapacitated, trying to get by with my left hand, especially as I’m right-handed. I thought about toasting the New Year holding a champagne glass in my shaky left hand, as well as typing this post one letter at a time in true ‘hunt and peck’ fashion. I considered how 2011 might be giving me one last kick in the crotch before it winks out of existence. And then, a sobering thought struck me, “aww was 2011 really so bad to me?”

About 6 hours before my accident, I had been reading the last post of Joe Bodolai, a comedy writer with many notable television stints to his credit, including Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eulogizing himself, he listed his life’s achievements in length, as well as noted his regrets, personal peeves and even his sardonic predictions for the coming year. He then closed his extensive suicide note expressing thanks to the many who had been a part of his life, as well as suggesting “I need to feel the good that I did and whatever good I have ever done for you is enough for me.” … Well, apparently whatever good he did in his life wasn’t ‘good enough’ for him to rest his laurels on and so he offed himself by drinking a mixture of Gatorade and antifreeze.

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Reason’s Greetings And The Poop On Festive Poop

Jay Leonard Schwartz Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,
Come To Holiday Inn
If you’re burdened down with trouble
If your nerves are wearing thin
Park your load down the road
And come to Holiday Inn
– Irving Berlin
Twas The Day After Christmas …
It’s the day after Christmas and I’m sitting here reflecting on the holidays as John Lee Hooker sings “Blues For Christmas”. In England, today is ‘Goodwill Day’, formerly, ‘Boxing Day’, a day set aside for  ‘boxing up’ money or unwanted gifts to donate them to the less fortunate. Nevertheless, it’s more than likely that for many people, especially back in the ‘States, boxing up unwanted gifts is merely a harbinger of prancing down to the mall to act on the ‘many happy returns’ sentiment, laughing all the way.
Truthfully, it’s all too easy get up on a soap box and rant about the holidays and commercialism. The often heard lament of Christmas and consumerism is echoing like Carol of the Bells, “Alas, the spirit of the holiday has been lost in the the glitter and tinsel laced marketing salvos designed to trigger both economic growth for the country and increased personal debt.” You’ve heard that one, right? Puritans and Christmas zealots admonish us annually that the holiday season should evoke feelings of ‘Peace on Earth’ and ‘Good Will to Men”. Even stories like ‘How The Grinch Stole Christmas‘ remind us that “maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store” and that perhaps the holidays mean something more. Yet in reality, the one thing that most people indeed seem to share this time of year, at least the ones still standing following the Black Friday crush, are over-bloated credit cards and indigestion. In light of this, members of the Westboro Baptist Church would like to remind us that Santa Claus will take you to hell.

The Silence Of The Pews

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dialogues , ,

Prologue:

Inebriated with thoughts of past indiscretions, a pedestrian, his given name ‘Durwood’, bumbles into a place of worship … on the eve of the winter solstice. Upon entering, he is met by a tall gent wearing a frock holding a just lit candle. The wax drips. The scents of bourbon, musk and Cornish hen float in the air.

—————————————————-

Durwood: My but it’s awfully quiet in here.

Scratch: ‘Tis true. So, did you come here to get blessed or what?

Durwood: (hands in pocket) Well, uh, I was thinking more along the lines of absolution.

Scratch: I see. Seeking salvation, eh? (jokingly) Do they even do that here any more?

Durwood: (laughs) Yeah, I, uh, don’t know. You see, it’s been awhile and um…

Scratch: Say no more. I understand perfectly. You know, they say it’s better to give than receive.

Durwood: Pardon?

Scratch: Well, you’re here for the “go forth and sin no more” part, right?

Durwood: (sheepishly) Look, um, this is a bit awkward …

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Overcoming Writer’s Block: Because It Happens To Everyone

Jay Leonard Schwartz Uncategorized, Writing , , , , ,
What a blockhead!

The truly great writer does not want to write.

He wants the world to be a place
in which he can live the life of the imagination.
– Henry Miller
One of my resolutions for next year is to write a bit more about writing, especially in terms of developing one’s creative spirit. Getting ideas and nurturing them into written form is always our main objective as writers. However, there are times when those usual soul lifting notions seem to flop about, inspiring nothing but stress, depression and lowered levels of self-esteem.
For a writer, there’s nothing worse than not getting ideas … except for maybe not getting paid! For a blogger, it’s pretty much the same thing. Face it: writer’s block happens to the best of us. Therefore, in the spirit of this season I thought I would share with you some of my own ideas stemming from my experience as a writer of various forms of ‘this, that and whatnot’.

Drones, Probes And Creative Sorts

Jay Leonard Schwartz Defying Expectations , , , , ,
Jump in the pigpen,
next time I’ll take my shoes off
Hit the dirt doing two-and-a-half,
next time I’ll leave my hat on…
– Brian Wilson / Van Dyke Parks (Barnyard)

 

Years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that if you traveled too far in one direction, you would eventually fall off the planet. Many years later, the ‘flat top’ hairstyle was all the rage. I’ll leave it to you to connect the dots.

Sometime over the next few months the Voyager 1 spacecraft, first launched in 1977, will cross the line separating our solar system and interstellar space. Of course, there is much conjecture over what exactly will happen once the space probe leaves the warmth of our Sun’s heliosphere and the solar winds that have egged it on along its path.

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Eat The Rich: Socioeconomics 101

Jay Leonard Schwartz Dialogues, Occupy Karma , , , , ,
Los_horrores_de_la_guerra
Just Another Black Friday

Them that’s got, shall get
them that’s not, shall lose
so the Bible said, and it still is news
mama may have, and papa may have
God bless’ the child,
that’s got his own, that’s got his own
– Billie Holiday, (God Bless The Child)

It’s funny how we build thoughts into ideas, concepts into crusades, mole hills into mountains, and pet peeves into perversions. We preach, we scorn, we rave and we rant. We stand on our soap boxes and express our outrage, spitting bile and brimstone in indignation at the very core ideas we embraced long ago, even those that have become part and parcel of what we call ‘humanity’.

For example, this past week we once again had the displeasure of experiencing another Black Friday, an appalling and dehumanizing ritual of consumerism promoted by ‘Big Business’ in the name of the almighty dollar. I’m not sure when this much-anticipated annual display of commercial beastliness became popularized, but it’s certainly become just another symbol of the decline of American ‘values‘ … and I don’t mean the Republican kind. It’s a perverse version of the ‘running of the bulls’ in which the ‘tall and the small’ get to displace their sanity and civility in the name of lethal consumerism. This year’s theme, by the way, was pepper spray.

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Poetic License And The Beads of Sweat

Jay Leonard Schwartz Defying Expectations, Writing , , , , , , , , ,
These words ~
Where I leave the loose ends
Of my day with lazy boots
They yawn at me
Two round circles
Eager to let go of where I have been –
Looking back across my week
Words are all I have had
They answer my most uncomfortable questions
They dream with me
They sing with me –
– Nicole Rushin
(excerpt from: Before There Were Words)
Here at the Wooly Yarn, I am rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of this blog, having started it on December 31st, the last day of the year and the eve of the next. While balancing in that precarious moment of temporal limbo, I made a New Year’s resolution to try writing the equivalent of one post a week … with some possible time off for good behavior. As my next post represents my 50th, a milestone in its own right, I am safely well on my way to achieving this goal and then some.
Since we are also well into the Holiday Season, and since last week was Thanksgiving, I want to take a moment to reflect on and reply to a comment left by a fellow blogger, Nicole Rushin, who also happens to be a phenomenal poet. As such, I’d like to dedicate this post to her and the artful inspiration she provides at her blog, ‘Writing As Loud As I Can’. If there were ever a great name for a blog, that has to be it.

Gobble Gobble Toil And Trouble: A Wooly Thanksgiving

Jay Leonard Schwartz Uncategorized , , , ,

wild-turkey
“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare.  They are consumed in
twelve minutes.  Half-times take twelve minutes.  This is not coincidence.”
-Erma Bombeck

Thanksgiving: A time to give thanks for all good things in your life. To be honest, I do have many good things to reflect on in my life and to say thanks for. I’m glad that as an adult I can appreciate the sentiment of Thanksgiving in its proper context; a moment to be grateful for what you have. Over the years, however, the holiday has stood for different things, some of which I can only say ‘thank you very little’ for.

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The OK Factor

Jay Leonard Schwartz Defying Expectations , , , , , ,
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
– Steve Jobs
Back in 1967, the year SMiLE was supposed to have been released, Thomas Harris (MD!) published his eventual best-selling ‘self-help’ book, I’m Ok, You’re Ok. This post is not about this book.
However, because the book’s title has passed into pop culture and the public’s obsession with ‘self-help’ ideology, I thought I’d reference it. Just as with Sigmund Freud’s works, Harris’ book, at the very least, does lay out some interesting ideas and terminology for others to build on. On the other hand, ‘Dr.’ Harris also endorsed electro-shock therapy as a treatment for some conditions, so I would approach his writings with a long ‘grounded’ pole.