pres.umptuo.us

• 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

  Monday April 23, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut passes away at 84.

This may be the first time a famous person’s death has made me sad. Reading “Slaughterhouse-Five” in college wasn’t just about “getting” the message of the novel, it also showed me the power of writing and how it can affect an individual. While Vonnegut may not be around anymore, his books will always be read.

• All Hallows by Jim Coudal. More good writing. How apt for the eve of NaNoWriMo.

  Tuesday October 31, 2006

• My Rapist. Very well-written.

  Tuesday October 31, 2006

I went to Mazda Zoom Zoom Live! yesterday and got to drive the Mazdaspeed6, RX-8, Mazda3, CX-7, Miata, and Mazda5. It was awesome fun. The Mazdaspeed6 is really fast, and I had forgotten how much fun it is to throw the Miata into turns. We used a stopwatch on the matched time course and I got within .004 seconds of the target time.

I got a couple of The Cardigans’ albums to answer the question of “Whatever happened to those guys?“, and they’re pretty damn good.

I am signed up once again for NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck.

You know what sucks? The five paragraph esssay (aka funnel method) that we were all taught in high school. It’s great to begin with, but for some reason nobody ever told us to stop using it and learn to write like you know how to write.

• Why Writing is Harder than Programming. It’s all so true.

  Tuesday October 3, 2006

• Ottobib. Makes a bibliography for you. Handy for you college kids.

  Wednesday September 20, 2006

• Author Too Much Of A Pussy To Kill Off Characters | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source. Someone tell Tom Cruise that he was supposed to die in The Last Samurai

  Monday September 18, 2006

• Self Publishing Blog: 101 Resources for Self Published Writers. Handy.

  Thursday September 7, 2006

Iowa was awesome this year. I started on my novel, and despite the fact that I’ve only added a paragraph to it since I’ve been back, it’s really gotten the thoughts and ideas flowing. I’m trying hard to sit down for at least an hour a day and write, and if not write then do nothing else but think of the story.

Why don’t we tip flight attendants? We tip people who serve us our food in restaurants and people who park our cars (I could go into a long rant about how lazy we must be to have someone else park our Mercedes for us, but I think that says it all), so why not the flight attendants? I dare say the flight attendant has to do way more work than the average waiter does.

I read through David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day” while in Iowa and waiting at airports. I’ve found myself emulating his style in my writing. He’s so smooth and flowy with his writing. Really funny stuff too. Some of it didn’t do it for me, but most of the time he was on the money.

I’ve been using WriteRoom to write my novel, and highly recommend it for anyone else who has problems concentrating. Plus it looks damn cool to be working on an all black screen with green text on it. Makes me look like some hardcore writer dude.

My desktop machine has died on me for no reason at all. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s the power supply or the motherboard. Either way, I imagine it could be a blessing in surprise disguise since I no longer have access to Warcraft 3 (Damn that footmen frenzy is addicting) or my music. More time to write write write!

• Improving your Writing. Great collection of tips.

  Tuesday July 18, 2006

Write a story in which a store is robbed. The cast: The robber, the store employee, a shopper. Start with the robber in first person, move to the store employee in second person, and finish off with the shopper in third person. Tell the robbery from their POVs.

I sit in my car parked across the street from the bank. My eyes dart back and forth from the clock on the dash and the entrance to the bank. 8:56, it says. Anytime now.

Continue reading “POV Writing Exercise”

I’ve been meaning to write up reviews for The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon but just never got around to it, and then today I finished reading Crossing California by Adam Langer. I came to the quick realization that I didn’t care much for either of the previous books, but will heartily recommend Crossing California.

I can now categorize books into one of two categories: Books that I recommend to anyone and everyone to read, and books that I tend to forget I had read and won’t say much about unless provoked by someone else. Of course there’s always books that are horrible and I abhor and will probably tell everyone how much I hated it, but that usually has more to do with my own personal taste in novels.

And with that, I will say nothing more about The Alchemist or You Remind Me of Me

I am in Iowa attending the Summer Writing Festival once more, this time taking a workshop on starting the novel. We just had our first meeting and I’m feeling good about our instructor (Leslie Schwartz) and the workshop. She told us not to share our work with anyone else unless they are writers themselves because only then will they understand our plight.

That’s cool cause that makes me feel better than all the non-writers. You hear that? I’m better than you.

I saw fireflies for the first time in my life today.

• Simple Things You Can Do Right Now To Jumpstart Your Writing Efforts. The sad thing is they’re the same tips I hear over and over again yet never try.

  Wednesday May 31, 2006

• Student’s Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy. *In Nelson voice* Ha ha!

  Friday April 28, 2006

• Luke Seemann’s eulogy for his father Howard Seemann. I’ve always thought that eulogies and graduation speeches were excellent forms of writing.

  Saturday April 15, 2006

• How I Write by Bertrand Russell. Ken also points me to the NY Times archive for “Writers on Writing”.

  Thursday March 30, 2006

Tomorrow I leave for China for yet another FOB Bus Tour. Normally I hate going on the FOB bus tours, but when it’s in China it’s technically no longer a “FOB” Bus Tour, and it’s friggin’ China so it’s gonna be lotsa fun.

I would write out a list of where I’m going and when, but I actually don’t know all the spots and the names would be meaningless to 99% of the people reading this. I just know that it’s more of the southern area of China we’re visiting this time, and at the end of the tour we’ll be staying in Guangzhou for a few days on our own, mostly to shop and enjoy some of the city at our own pace.

However — just like last year, I’m signed up once again for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), with the set goal to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Last year I accomplished a startling 50 words before giving up.

I’m going to see how this two-week trip hurts helps with the writing. I might not be aiming for an entire novel, more like just making sure I write as much as I can, so hopefully some good blog entries to post up will come of it.

The closing remarks of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival were lead off by Bret Anthony Johnson. After an awkward yet amusing rendition of “Happy Birthday” for coordinator Kurt’s birthday, Bret opened with a joke, which I will poorly paraphrase here:

A writer out of town on business receives a phone call from the police department. They tell him they have bad news — that his house was burnt down to ashes and nothing remains. They have good news though — they caught the guy who did it. It’s his literary agent.

The writer says, “Really? My agent came to my house?”

An inspirational speech about writing followed, and thus ended my first experience at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

But not yet! My plane back wasn’t until Saturday evening, so I actually had an entire day to myself just to enjoy Iowa city. The Mayflower dormitory forced me to check out at noon, so I left my luggage at the desk and went off.

I enjoyed an Iowa omelette at Hamburg Inn No. 2 before heading back to the used bookstores where I picked up a few more books to bring back in my box. I’m really into used bookstores now and hoping I can find some good ones back in Los Angeles. With still a few hours to kill until the shuttle would arrive, I rested in a coffee shop and just read to pass the time. Having nothing to worry about and just tons of free time was more than worth the trip.

Although my primary goal of just “to write more” wasn’t accomplished simply because the workshop was not very writing intensive, I still learned a lot from the people I met and have more insight into the writing process now. I’m fairly certain I’ll return next year, and encourage everyone who has even the tiniest bit of interest in writing to check it out too. If anything, it’s a good, relaxing, vacation away from everything.

Final flickr photo set of Iowa City.