I am uneasy. I did not think that the Hurricane damage to New Orleans was so wide-spread and complete with such utter destruction. I understand that the news media interviews people who are in the midst of crisis to help their ratings, but there’s something harrowing about hearing the anguish of a man who lost his wife and is in shock.
The human tragedy that is unfolding is overwhelming. I just did not believe that the damage was that bad. Again, I ask you to do something to help. If throwing money at a problem isn’t to your liking, then find a way to volunteer your time at a local chapter of the Red Cross. Or see if organizations are shipping food/medical supplies to the survivors. Now is the time to step up and help. Don’t waste time. Please act. Yesterday I donated funds to the American Red Cross for the 2005 Hurricane Fund. I urge you to do the same. Every bit helps. Please act now.
In other news: I have some tentative story ideas that have been bouncing around in my mind. I jotted a few of the ideas down, but I haven’t had much time. I’ve been working on the house and last night I was rebuilding one of my PCs. I’m nearly finished, but I need to install a few more programs on the system and need to take an image of the completed PC. All of this work is in preparation for building my new PC when the replacement motherboard arrives in the mail (should come within a week). For anyone who has rebuilt a PC, you know my pain of going through and getting the latest updates from Windows, installing all the programs, configuring the system, etc. Even if everything goes well, the process of rebuilding a PC takes time. And then after it’s all finished, I then need to copy all my data over. That in itself takes hours.
But enough of computer stuff. Such work is taking a huge amount of my time these days, but it’s not very exciting.
On Monday a friend of mine introduced me to the "I Should Be Writing" podcast by Mur Lafferty. She also puts together the Geek Fu Action Grip podcast. I haven’t listened to the Geek Fu podcast, but I did listen to the “I Should Be Writing” one. Very interesting. Yet again, here’s another writer struggling to make time to write and expressing her thoughts/frustrations about the joy of writing. I found the podcast to be honest, interesting, and not too preachy. I didn’t agree with all the comments she made and thought that some of her advice was a bit off (suggesting that her listeners pay for an online writing critique group. Other groups have the save features but are free). But this is just a minor point. What I found most interesting is her reaching out to the writer community. I had made a decision a little while back not to do my own podcast even though I’d love to try one. I came to the realization that if I were to create my own podcast I just wouldn’t have time to do any writing! With my work schedule, I don’t have much free time and I couldn’t imagine getting up any earlier than 5:00 – 5:30 a.m. Even as it is now, I’m pushing myself to do my blog writing each day. I can’t imagine when I would have time to talk for 30 minutes about writing and then spend the time to produce the show.
On a personal level, I think it would be great fun to experiment with, but as a weekly show—I just can’t commit to spending that amount of time. I had hoped that I could find someone to help share the work load with, but I haven’t been able to pull that off yet. Still I have a few ideas in the back of my mind. I haven’t written off doing a podcast (even a one shot show for a special event) in the future. I have the technology, some of the ability, and would just need some recording software (I think Cast Blaster would work fine for me) to help me pull the idea all together.
But what I’m not sure about is: What the heck would I talk about for 20-30 minutes? I sure can write to my heart’s content about whatever the hell I want, but talking for that amount of time would require that I generate content ideas. Again, not a problem, but when would I make time to do this? There’s a lot that I would like to do, but then I need to ask myself the important questions like: When am I going to make time to write? Last week I wrote up a short (1,100) article for a travel site. I’ve been keeping up with my blog and I do have a story idea that I’m playing around with in my head. But there’s questions of:
Do I keep working on short stories and articles?
When do I make time to go back and rewrite the novel?
There’s some personal time issues on the home front that are causing me to hold off on the novel. I’m making a short term decision to keep working on short projects while the time issues are worked out. However, I might need to revisit this in a month. At some point, I’m going to have to say: “There’s never going to be more time so I need to just sit down and start rewriting the first draft of my 2nd novel.” That day will come. It’s not today though. And not tomorrow. So in the meantime, I’ll start working on that story idea I have. I have a general plot but it’s filled with holes. I have a character in my head, have a situation that will result, but I’m not sure who the main character is. I’m not sure what she will be doing. Well, I know some of what she’ll be doing and what she believes, but not how I can make the story short and interesting. I’d like to keep the story under 6,000 words. I’ll let the idea brew in my head and keep jotting down ideas as they come along so I don’t lose the thread of the story. Have a good one and keep the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in your prayers.
The human tragedy that is unfolding is overwhelming. I just did not believe that the damage was that bad. Again, I ask you to do something to help. If throwing money at a problem isn’t to your liking, then find a way to volunteer your time at a local chapter of the Red Cross. Or see if organizations are shipping food/medical supplies to the survivors. Now is the time to step up and help. Don’t waste time. Please act. Yesterday I donated funds to the American Red Cross for the 2005 Hurricane Fund. I urge you to do the same. Every bit helps. Please act now.
In other news: I have some tentative story ideas that have been bouncing around in my mind. I jotted a few of the ideas down, but I haven’t had much time. I’ve been working on the house and last night I was rebuilding one of my PCs. I’m nearly finished, but I need to install a few more programs on the system and need to take an image of the completed PC. All of this work is in preparation for building my new PC when the replacement motherboard arrives in the mail (should come within a week). For anyone who has rebuilt a PC, you know my pain of going through and getting the latest updates from Windows, installing all the programs, configuring the system, etc. Even if everything goes well, the process of rebuilding a PC takes time. And then after it’s all finished, I then need to copy all my data over. That in itself takes hours.
But enough of computer stuff. Such work is taking a huge amount of my time these days, but it’s not very exciting.
On Monday a friend of mine introduced me to the "I Should Be Writing" podcast by Mur Lafferty. She also puts together the Geek Fu Action Grip podcast. I haven’t listened to the Geek Fu podcast, but I did listen to the “I Should Be Writing” one. Very interesting. Yet again, here’s another writer struggling to make time to write and expressing her thoughts/frustrations about the joy of writing. I found the podcast to be honest, interesting, and not too preachy. I didn’t agree with all the comments she made and thought that some of her advice was a bit off (suggesting that her listeners pay for an online writing critique group. Other groups have the save features but are free). But this is just a minor point. What I found most interesting is her reaching out to the writer community. I had made a decision a little while back not to do my own podcast even though I’d love to try one. I came to the realization that if I were to create my own podcast I just wouldn’t have time to do any writing! With my work schedule, I don’t have much free time and I couldn’t imagine getting up any earlier than 5:00 – 5:30 a.m. Even as it is now, I’m pushing myself to do my blog writing each day. I can’t imagine when I would have time to talk for 30 minutes about writing and then spend the time to produce the show.
On a personal level, I think it would be great fun to experiment with, but as a weekly show—I just can’t commit to spending that amount of time. I had hoped that I could find someone to help share the work load with, but I haven’t been able to pull that off yet. Still I have a few ideas in the back of my mind. I haven’t written off doing a podcast (even a one shot show for a special event) in the future. I have the technology, some of the ability, and would just need some recording software (I think Cast Blaster would work fine for me) to help me pull the idea all together.
But what I’m not sure about is: What the heck would I talk about for 20-30 minutes? I sure can write to my heart’s content about whatever the hell I want, but talking for that amount of time would require that I generate content ideas. Again, not a problem, but when would I make time to do this? There’s a lot that I would like to do, but then I need to ask myself the important questions like: When am I going to make time to write? Last week I wrote up a short (1,100) article for a travel site. I’ve been keeping up with my blog and I do have a story idea that I’m playing around with in my head. But there’s questions of:
Do I keep working on short stories and articles?
When do I make time to go back and rewrite the novel?
There’s some personal time issues on the home front that are causing me to hold off on the novel. I’m making a short term decision to keep working on short projects while the time issues are worked out. However, I might need to revisit this in a month. At some point, I’m going to have to say: “There’s never going to be more time so I need to just sit down and start rewriting the first draft of my 2nd novel.” That day will come. It’s not today though. And not tomorrow. So in the meantime, I’ll start working on that story idea I have. I have a general plot but it’s filled with holes. I have a character in my head, have a situation that will result, but I’m not sure who the main character is. I’m not sure what she will be doing. Well, I know some of what she’ll be doing and what she believes, but not how I can make the story short and interesting. I’d like to keep the story under 6,000 words. I’ll let the idea brew in my head and keep jotting down ideas as they come along so I don’t lose the thread of the story. Have a good one and keep the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in your prayers.
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