Tag Archives: blog

2024-07-16 · 08:31

500~Words on 2024-06-12

Today I want to talk about distractions. The world today has so many distractions. Right now, as I type this (Ironically on my distraction free writing computer) I have a YouTube video playing. It is a video from the TV series The Orville.

[I am also distracting myself with the editing phase of this post.]

For those that do not know The Orville is a science fiction series created by Seth Macfarlane. I am not a fan of Family Guy, his most famous work, but The Orville is brilliant.

When you watch The Orville it is quite obviously a homage to Star Trek. It has humans and aliens working together, colour coded uniforms, a prime directive, and social commentary.

The first season is a little ropy. I think it was a comedy Trojan horse. Can I put it like that? Am I making any sense?

Let me explain. A science fiction story about exploring the galaxy is, obviously, going to bring Star Trek to mind. However that idea isn’t something Star Trek (specifically TNG) can claim rights too. Nevertheless I think there are those who would question it. It is my supposition that Macfarlane made the series a comedy as a way to make it different and get it green lit. Then, once that was done, he could slowly adjust it to something more serious. In my view each season has been better than the one before. Fingers crossed for a fourth season.

I don’t want to make this post all about The Orville. In order to achieve that I should stop letting myself get distracted.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Technically, I suppose, I have done that as this is a new editing session from the last time I said that.

I saw something on Facebook the other day about life being better before social media and maybe the internet in general. I am inclined to think there might be something to that.

I remember dial-up internet and only having one computer for the whole family.

(This is funny. My grammar checker doesn’t like the phrase ‘dial-up internet. We have come so far even the computers don’t remember that time.)

There is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, (I, Robot… You, Jane) that deals with the early internet. It is not one of their best episodes. It does, however, have a retrospectively funny line about being able to tell someone wasn’t online because the phone wasn’t busy.

They say that silence is very important. They say that our minds were not designed to be constantly stimulated. Yet that is what we have in this day and age.

104 words of this to go and then I can do something else. I am still distracted. I have had a long day today.

(Only true for the original writing. This edit is being done at 0756.)

104 words of this to go and then I can do something else. How do I keep from getting distracted?

Obviously I can shut off YouTube. For reasons I cannot understand I am not doing that.

(I didn’t then I am now.)

Do you ever have that battle with yourself? Where you are doing something that is annoying you? And you know your future self is going to be annoyed and yet you can’t seem to stop. I know that my future self is annoyed with me right now.

It is now another day – and we are so far adrift from when the above draft was written it is almost completely meaningless. I will leave it be. It can be a monument to my deep personal stupidity.

I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/SDuKYJBkJm

500~Words on 2024-05-15

One of my writing goals is called ‘other’. That might be confusing. I suppose a more accurate phrase would be ‘free choice.’ The following is what I do…

The first thing I need is a random number. I could just ask Google but instead I use playing cards. The number cards are taken at face value. The picture cards, including ace, are 15.

I draw a card, if I was doing it now it would be a four.(Diamonds if you’re interested but it is irrelevant.) Then I go to the fourth spot in my writing list. Actually there are more layers to it than that but I want to limit how much I bore you.

When ‘other’ came up this time I decided I would work on this blog post. On other occasions it might be something else.

The main focus of my writing is my novel. The whole point of taking a sabbatical is to get it done. It is currently at 99 pages. There are another 77 pages that need to be edited and checked.

I’ve mentioned before that I am using a Freewrite for my first drafts and it has been invaluable. There are a lot of spelling errors but it still helps to get the words down.

This blog post will be rather random. I could very well make that observation again and again as I do these. The idea is 500 ~words and then stop. But you knew that as it is the title of the post. It will be stream of consciousness so it will shift gears in unpredictable ways – even to me.

Did you see Eurovision? It was an interesting event this year. To me it seemed more calm than usual. I have to say though no songs stood out to me – in either direction as good or bad. There was, for example, a completely forgettable song called “Unforgettable.”

The UK entry was terrible.

One thing I find especially fascinating about Eurovision is the voting. I don’t just mean for this year I mean in general. The voting is complicated. All you really need to know is that half the votes come from a jury of experts and the other half come from the public.

The jury votes are announced one-by-one by a representative from each country. It doesn’t take long to see that the eventual winner is going to come down to one of two countries.

I would have expected the votes to be more evenly spaced out. If each country puts their best. (They do not.) Then it might be expected that another country would agree with that assessment. Thus, at the end, the votes would be fairly evenly spaced. This never happens. This year the winning song got 36 times as many votes as the song at the bottom of the table.

I wonder if there is a lesson in all of this. I don’t know I am just a blogger. However it has to be said, or at least I want to say it, that the European continent ( more or less) seems to be in agreement on the subject of music.

It is rare that my favorite wins however most of the time I can at least see why they won. This year I am not sure I had a favourite.

I went off on this subject for longer in the original draft and now seem to have come to a natural end. Still I have words below this so I might as well see what else can be written.

I apologize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one.
Mark Twain

It would seem that the rest of what I wrote back on the 15th is all waffle. Mark Twain was right. Making stuff shorter actually takes longer. It is illogical but it is also true. I could go on and give you some bad metaphors involving Swedish meatballs and their Welsh equivalent. (Google it) However I believe I will cut off the post at this point. See you next time.

I just wanted to say that I have checked this post. I really have. Unfortunately my particular combination of dyslexia and dyspraxia makes it really hard for me to spot typos. Please enjoy and I’ll try not to make too many errors.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/SDuKYJBkJm

I’m Not Sure That’s Such A Good Idea

I have an idea for a blog post – but I’m not going to tell you what it is. I had this idea sometime ago. I never got as far as putting fingers to keyboard because I decided it was a bad idea.

I’m not going to even give you a hint. I have a degree of anonymity here but only a degree. As a writer we can use real life experiences to inform our fiction. Of course you don’t want to annoy a friend or alienate a member of the family by basing a character on them.

Let’s say you’re using your sister as a base for a character. She might be able to see that the evil overlord with his five mile long magnifying glass – which will blow up buildings – is actually based on her killing ants in the garden.

This is a safe example for me as I don’t have a sister.

Actually the idea I was going to write wasn’t fictional. It was based on something funny that happened. What I wanted to say was also complimentary. At least I thought it was.

Compliments, and insults for that matter, can be tricky. I once read a book review that was negative because the book was too much like Star Trek. For me that’s all the more reason to read it.

Now for a awkwardly segue. What do you do if a friend shows you a drawing and asks for your opinion. You look at it and you’ve not sure what it is. You think it might be an elephant. Do you say ‘Nice elephant’? They might say ‘Its an aeroplane.’ If you say ‘What is it?’ – then it might cause offense.

The last thing I want is to case offense. I feel the internet gives us this opportunity. We can write something in the comment box, for instance, and while reading it over we can deiced that saying that might not be the best thing. Some people don’t seem able to do this.

Maybe we should have intelligent error messages

*** You are 27 are you sure you want people to know you’ve been looking at My Little Pony. ***

It was for a story damn it!

So I will leave the funny story. At least until I can figure out how to make enough changes so its completely unrecognisable as the original story.

Hell it probably wasn’t that funny anyway.

_____

You
How did that elephant thing fit with the rest of the post?

Me
Look over there. What in the world can that be?

You
(Turns around)
What where? I don’t see anything.

**Scampering feet, scream, splosh**

Tag Archives: blog

500~Words on 2024-06-12

500~Words on 2024-05-15

I’m Not Sure That’s Such A Good Idea

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