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I've been told that keeping a journal helps a writer, so why not keep it in public? |
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Hello. My name is Taylor, and I'm a writer. An indie, to be specific, and that means obscure, unnoticed, unsuccessful if one goes by sales. It's been decades since I let go of the dream of being a Best Seller, and a couple of years that I've been blocked, but the dream of being read dies hard. That's why I'm here. I was here long ago and remember that people here read, so I'm back to share some of my work... and maybe even write something new if you fine authors can inspire me! Some of you may recognize a story or two, which is flattering, but I most humbly request that if you work out who I am, you keep it to yourself. I would like, for personal reasons, to start fresh and keep it focused on the person I am now. As suggested above, I will update this journal every time I interact here, so should anyone like to follow my progress, I'm an open book. Most of my work was written for adults, so much of it will be 18+, but lots of people who don't know each other have proclaimed it to be downright adequate, so enjoy the reading! Taylor... 
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"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen." ~ WILLA CATHER Good day, all, and I hope it finds you writing! Welcome to the gateway of another weekend, and may it be memorable for all the right reasons. Today I'm going to talk about my newest series, "Tales from the Beach"  . These stories are the product of my "new" muse whom I'm only just getting to know, and is feeding me material that I'm learning my way around. The stories themselves come from my own childhood in the form of personal experiences, those of close friends, or stories I heard but cannot confirm. What? Fiction is fiction, after all!I've set the time as '67-'68, a time of social upheaval rarely seen in human history. The war in Viet Nam was ramping up, Lyndon Johnson, who wanted to be a social reformer but found himself distracted by the war, had declined to run for another term, but Richard Nixon hadn't yet come to power. The characters in the stories are on the cusp of adulthood, old enough to do things, yet lacking the experience to know whether they should or not. The boys, the ones who can't afford or can't qualify for college, are looking down the barrel of being drafted to fight in what might be America's first unpopular war. These are dangerous times, as anyone who lived through them knows, and the cast of rotating groups of friends are making dangerous decisions that they may not be ready to make. Decisions that are nonetheless forced upon them by circumstances moving too quickly to step back and ponder. The stories are populated by little groups of friends, some in their last year of high school, some just out and working their first menial jobs. Parents don't figure into these stories much. The parents aren't what's interesting. They've completed school, they served in the Second World War, their careers are mostly established. They're kept in the background because the principal actors are the kids, and in any case, that's the way I experienced it. They were, in a very real sense, simpler times, and you didn't have to worry about Chester the Molester scooping up your kid the minute he or she left your sight. Most of us were pushed out the door after breakfast and they didn't expect to see us again until the street lights came on... bedtime, for the older teenagers. So consider this your invitation to check out the stories. Actually, there is only one story posted at the moment, but two more are finished, and I plan to post one every fourth week. The next one is scheduled to go up on the 30th. I'm hoping that at that rate I can keep the writing ahead of the publishing, and carry this on indefinitely. Doesn't mean I don't want to do other things from time to time, but this is the primary. Whether you're an old git like me and want to wallow in a pool of nostalgia or you're a young whipper snapper that harbors some curiosity about the Legendary Sixties, I'd love to see you there. You'd be very welcome! Here's your ticket...
Stay Inspired, Taylor... |
| Good morning, all, and I hope it finds you writing! I have a bit more to talk about this morning, so I'll dive right in. Chronologically, then: Yesterday evening I got a ton of work done on my new "Tales from the Beach" story, The Fix-up. It's moving even faster than I'd hoped, none of which means it will be available in the next few days. I'm only a story-and-a-half ahead, so I'll be keeping to a schedule that allows for at least semi-regular releases. That puts The Fix Up a few days after Christmas. Hopefully I can get ahead on these, and add to my horror collection ("Icy Fingers in the Shadows" ). That will be fun, but I'm eight ahead on those, so that can wait for a while.I reviewed "The Black Hole" this morning, an essay on the joys of Writing.com, and suggesting to the author that it be turned into a blog post. She has apparently done just that, so I'll need to get over there and offer a comment, which I told her she would get a lot of, so it would be pretty snarky of me not to do that. Inspired by this essay, I have changed all my works to Unrestricted Public Access. By my own lights, I am here to be read, and a glance at the left sidebar will show that guests constantly outnumber members here at a rate of 2 or 3 to 1, all potential readers that I've been leaving out. No longer.Finally, a word about muses. Some writers say they're excuses to not write while others swear by them. I'm sort of ambiguous on the subject. I don't for a minute believe that a tiny person with nothing else to do lives in my head guiding my writing activity. That seems silly when I just write it down like that. At the same time, it's a helpful visualization for me to speculate on how this imaginary homunculus is affecting my creativity. So, let's visualize... About two years ago my former muse, who I visualized as a grumpy old man, took another job or maybe just retired. He cleaned out the office and left it a haven for freeloaders where only spiders tie their lines. Sometime in the last month, likely inspired by my enjoyment of WdC, a new one moved in, rearranged the furniture, and began pushing ideas up the pipe to be developed, the first of which is my new "Beach" story. We haven't met in a corridor yet, but judging by the material I'm receiving for development, my guess is that she's a woman, probably one who's been hurt a few times but hasn't quite given up yet. Maybe she'll find me worthy of being her permanent writer. Here's hoping... Have a great writing day! Taylor... |
| Good morning, all. As you can see, I'm back, and I started the day by reviewing "Never So Alone (c. 11,000 words)" a fairly long story that has some issues, but drives relentlessly to its conclusion with a power that is rarely matched. As a footnote, my current WIP, my first writing in several years, is progressing nicely. The block, burnout, whatever you want to call it, seems to be gone, replaced by a new muse who brings a very different kind of story to the table. It will be a bit before it's "ready for prime time," but when it appears it will be in the "Tales from the Beach" folder, and go by the name of The Fix-up. Might even have Romance as one of its categories, although a more skewed version than you're used to... I'll see you guys tomorrow!Stay writing, Taylor... |
Welcome back, fellow traveler. I hope your writing is going well. Mine is; see yesterday's entry for the details. Today I have a lot on my plate, but the morning was available and I made use of it by responding to the Spritual newsletter, and knocking out a 5-star review for a most inspiring poem:
I'm beginning to see a pattern on the Please Review page: Some of the folks who post there might be kidding. A good half of them so far request reviews that I might like to undertake, but I hover over the suitcase and find that they haven't logged into the site for months. I enjoy meeting folks, which reviews tend to encourage, so it hardly seems worth my time to write a review that will never be read by the intended recipient. I even found one person who requested a review, but when I clicked on the story, it was Private. To each his own, I guess, but seems like a waste of everyone's time to post a request then disappear. Another trick I never learned, I guess. See you Tuesday if my schedule holds. Stay writing, Taylor... |
| Good day to all my writing friends, and I hope it finds you well. Had a most excellent day today. I wrote a review of a fun little story called "Hot Pursuit. " , but much more earth-shaking from my personal point of view, I am writing again! I completed scene one of four of the third story in my "Tales from the Beach" series. Good times when you consider that the first two stories were written two years ago! Now, I don't want to fall back into block and I don't want to burn out, so I'm going to go raise some chaotic heck in Fallout 4, but assuming everything stays on track, I should have this finished by this time next week. I'm excited, can you tell? Anyway, be safe and do good works, and I'll see you around here again tomorrow, fate willing. Stay lucky, Taylor... |
| I got very little done as relates to WdC yesterday, and it looks like that's going to be the norm for the foreseeable future. Other things go on around the old homestead and it's convenient to concentrate most of them on Thursdays. I did get some notes assembled for my WIP, so it wasn't a total loss, but I'll try to assemble something... clever... to present each Friday morning. We'll see how long I can keep it up... Lying for a Living “Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels. Literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf,’ and there was no wolf behind him.” ~ VLADIMIR NABOKOV Lies are funny things. The smaller they are, the bigger the consequences. Lie to your boss or your spouse about being late because you were stuck in traffic, and they'll never trust you again. Lie to your drinking buddies about your exploits with a certain cute blonde across the bar, and you'll find your stock slipping to record lows among the group. But tell an outrageous whopper about a mythical race called Hobbits, one of whom has found a magic ring that its owner, a supernatural being of great power, wants back enough to make war on the races of men, dwarves, and elves and lay waste to a continent, and tell it in writing over a series of books, and it seems people will compete for the right to turn it into movies and knock each other down to throw obscene amounts of money at you just for the right to read and view these lies, and buy souvenirs of the experience. Why is that? That's what I'm going to explore this week. People, it seems, are hard-wired to fall into a good story. For how many millennia have people, lacking all but the most rudimentary form of society, sat around a camp fire enthralled by the spell woven by a master storyteller? This continues to this day, practiced by primitive societies as well as modern city-dwellers on a camping trip. The novel is a fairly recent addition to the pantheon of storytelling, but far from being buried by the competition arising with the advent of motion pictures and television, not to mention the modern onslaught of e-everything, from the internet to the i-phone, it thrives and grows more popular than ever. After careful consideration, I believe this is because the narrative was of vital importance to our proto-human ancestors. Most anthropologists agree that the road that elevated us from hunter-gatherers at the mercy of the elements and more powerful predators began when we became fully able to communicate with one another, to store information, and transmit it in usable form to future generations. How would those talented elders have gone about that? Imagine a handful of the group's teenage boys on the threshold of manhood who need to be taught to follow the spore of an antelope. One veteran hunter tells them, "Look for A, then B, then C…" and so on, like a laundry list. Another gathers them in a circle and begins to regale them with the epic story of Grog, the mighty hunter, who went on a grand adventure, did A, and B, and C, and came home with the antelope that fed the clan all through the winter. Who are those kids going to absorb the lesson from? I think the willingness, and maybe even the need, to fall into a skillfully woven narrative has been with us from the dawn of speech, and it is fully ingrained in our genes. Those whom the gene has skipped are the dullest people you know. They become bean counters and shovel technicians, and there is no spark of life's joy in their eyes. If you try to share with them the book that has held you enthralled from cover to cover, they look at you with an expression of condescension, and say, "I only read professional journals." Yeah, and they're on the short list for the Most Interesting Person in the World award, aren't they? So, that's my take. I think we love to engage with a rollicking good yarn and some of us love to tell them because it has been vital to our survival for so long it couldn't be changed without changing our fundamental humanity. Doubt it? Then why do some works achieve Classic status, and others become Cult favorites? Of all the books published every week, why do some break out of the pack to become best-sellers? Why do some resonate with you, and not others? Want to see a practical, modern demonstration of this principle in action? Let's shift media for a moment. 1938. New York. Orson Welles stages a radio presentation of his father's classic science fiction story, War of the Worlds. Panic grips North America. Police dispatchers are inundated with calls from terrified citizens seeking protection from the Martians. Families flee from cities, running to where, who can say, to escape an invasion from outer space. The Canadian military is mobilized to block three bridges from the U.S. to prevent the passage of anyone displaying a Martian passport. Ten years later, it's repeated in Lima, Peru. When the panicked crowds filling the streets finally tumble to the fact that it's a hoax, they set fire to the radio station. The last man on the air pleads for police and fire services to come rescue him, but no one comes; the police are mobilizing to fight the invaders. Engulfed in flames, he jumps three stories into a hostile mob that attempts to throw him back into the building before cooler heads prevail, and drive him to a hospital. He was lucky; six people died in that building. Are we done yet? Hardly. In 1962, a rock and roll station in Buffalo, New York recreates the broadcast with results similar to the original. I am told that there was a disco version a decade after that. But modern audiences are too sophisticated to fall for something like that nowadays, right? Right? I offer three words on that subject: Blair Witch Project. For those too young to have participated, this film was made with hand-held cameras filming unknown actors in eerie lighting conditions. It was purportedly about a group of student filmmakers who went into an old-growth forest area on the eastern seaboard to make a documentary about a witch who was supposedly burned there back in the day. The movie began with three stark sentences on the screen; I don't remember them word-for-word, but this is close enough: LATE IN [year], A GROUP OF FILM STUDENTS SET OUT TO DOCUMENT A LOCAL LEGEND. THEY WERE NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN. ONE YEAR LATER, THEIR FILM WAS FOUND. There followed a visceral psychological horror-thriller that consisted mostly of young adult actors exhibiting the condition of being paralyzed by terror, and didn't even have a guy in a rubber suit. The film was a blockbuster success, but more to the point, the filmmakers were questioned by police concerned with how they had acquired this film, the name of the individual who had found it, the exact location of the discovery, and all the sort of things police want to know when someone disappears. I heard the director being interviewed on PBS in conjunction with the approach of Halloween, and he said that the production company continues to this day to receive e-mails and tweets asking whether the remains of the students have ever been found. That is a powerful piece of storytelling, not a word of which was true. It is one thing to turn on the radio and hear reports of an invasion from outer space. You tune to another station, and if they're playing talk or music as usual, you can figure maybe it's entertainment. A movie about a few kids you never heard of disappearing somewhere is harder to vet, and its ready acceptance by millions is a clear statement on our willingness, our eagerness to buy into a good story. In "Tales from the Beach" I am attempting to craft that good story. I would love to know what you think is the reason that people are so ready to throw themselves into an obviously fictional narrative. I think this would be a fun discussion to have, and of course, if I learn anything that improves my own understanding of the mechanism, that could lead to even better stories, and that would benefit author and reader alike. So join the discussion, tell me what you think. The only day I consider wasted is one during which I don't learn anything, so to borrow from another well-loved piece of fiction, "Go ahead, make my day!" |
A bit of a slow day thus far, though I hope to get some writing done over on Word. As far as today, I did a review of one fine story. Check it out at
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| A productive day today. I wrote a review of "OI! DRAGON!" , an entertaining piece of satirical humor, and logged in to Weekly Goals to record my plans for the week. That seems an easy way to pick up a few extra GPs which I'm going to need to support this monthly award I've started giving. With the on-site mechanical things done, I then created the lead character for the third story in my "Tales from the Beach" series. This is the first time I've sat down with writing materials and actually produced something tangible in a couple of years, and it feels great. I have a few more story points to sort out, and the writing will then be ready to commence. Can't wait to see if it comes as easily as it used to. Wish me luck! |
| Had a bit of activity today, as I reviewed "The Supervillain's Cape" , and set up this blog as well as a folder, "Icy Fingers in the Shadows" , to display my horror/thriller/mystery stories. There's only one in there right now, but that will change. Now all I need to do is attract some readers. Not to worry, though. They'll come... |
| I started keeping these entries in a static item some 2½ weeks ago, and in the interest of completeness, I'm copying and pasting them here: November 2nd, '24 Took this morning to post some of my most recent writing, a short story that is part of a planned anthology about my youth, in a very shadowed, not-historically-accurate sort of way. Interested parties can find it at
Be sure to read the folder notes; there's a lot of backstory there that will make it more understandable. November 1st, 2024 Well, I'm back. The first of the month is always very busy for me, so there's a good chance that I won't be taking a leisurely read and writing a review today. If things lighten up this afternoon, I may do some experimental writing on a project that's starting to tickle my subconscious. Significant, as I haven't written anything new in at least two years. Also, I gave three 5-star reviews during October, and I need to single one of those out for an award of some kind... or maybe all of them! I'll think about that while I'm doing the morning drudgery. Of course I'll leave the site open, and should anyone talk to me, I'll be right along with a reply as soon as I see the flag. Have a wonderful writing day, and stay lucky! October 30th, '24 Logged in to again find not much waiting for me. I was nominated in the Hallowe'en Handles contest, but opted out as I didn't change my handle for Hallowe'en; the date is merely coincidence. Also, a few days ago I was invited to join a reviewing group. Flattering, but after careful consideration I've decided to decline that as well; want to maintain my freelance autonomy. I have a doctor's visit this morning which may cut into my plan to review today, and yesterday she sent a questionnaire. The first question was "What is this visit about?" My answer was, "You called me. What do you want?" Probably going to try to put me on a diet. Yeah, hold your breath... Update coming if I get back here. October 28th, '24 Didn't expect to be able to get in here today, but I made time over lunch to change my handle and bio to better reflect what I'm doing at Writing.com. That old Jack o' Lantern was always temporary. I had planned to change it after Hallowe'en, but I had a few moments, so it's done. What you see here now is the Real Me, for better or worse. I'll be back Wednesday to do a review, fates permitting. Ask not for whom the Reviewer comes... He comes for THEE! October 27th, '24 Logged on to find nothing new once again. This has decided me; I'm going to post one promotion for "Sea Story" . Mostly, though, I'm here to review, and I'll be looking at "Let's Hurt Tonight" shortly. If anything else develops, I'll add it here later.October 26th, '24 Logged on after two days off to find... nothing new. Not unexpected, as I've only posted one story and haven't promoted it at all. I may have to change that policy to, say, one promotion for each new story. That's a decision for later. I wrote a review for "Wile E Coyote and The Roadrunner" , a rousing satire, and now wait to see what happens...UPDATE: Received a most gracious reply from my reviewed story's author, and one new view on my short story. Same person? Doesn't matter, it's a view. October 23rd, '24 Logged on this morning to find a couple of Merit Badges and a stack of GPs for a review. This was a nice surprise, and also tells me that I'm reviewing correctly on the whole, so good stuff. One of the Merit Badges was for logging in on seven consecutive days, and I'm going to have to think about my approach to that. On the one hand, I stay logged in all the time even though some days I don't come here. Yesterday for example. That's why I've set my privacy to Exclude Me; I don't want people to think that I'm sitting here at the keyboard ignoring them. That means that this MB is sort of a lie. To be honest about it, I should log off and stay off on those days I'm not around the site. That will lower my MB count, and I'll start lagging behind the people who are always on. Hmmm... To lie or not to lie... what a dilemma! I have, thus far, been choosing my items to review from the Please Review page. Seems a logical first place to look, and the people posting there are less likely to get offended when some newb comes along telling them how to write. That's a horse I'll keep riding until it won't run anymore. Speaking of running, I'm off to write another... October 21st, '24 Logged in to find a Newsfeed item urging me to post my goals for the week. Difficult, as I rarely plan that far ahead. Sea Story has logged one additional view since yesterday, so perhaps the honeymoon is over? That's all right. I reviewed "Unbridled Showdown" and shall now wait for developments...October 20th, '24 When I signed off Friday night, "Sea Story" had seven views and one 5-star review. Now it has 32 views and three reviews, all positive. I believe I've done the right thing returning here. These are the people I've attracted in three days. To put that in perspective, I've had four sales on Amazon during 2024. I'm never going to get rich doing this, I might as well get read, right?October 18th, '24 Set up "It Was a Dark and Foggy Night," a now-defunt folder for my creepy stories, and placed "Sea Story" in it. It is shortly after midnight; I intend to attempt a review during the morning tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how it goes.UPDATE: When I logged off about 8:55 local, "Sea Story" had seven views and a 5-star review. This is what I loved about WdC back in the day: my stuff gets read, and in the wake of my {sarcasm} crowning success {/sarcasm} in the book-selling market, that's enough. One of my old, dear friends found me today by reading my review. Said she recognized my work immediately. I thought I'd changed enough, but it's good to be talking with her again anyway. Taking the day off tomorrow; we'll see what Sunday brings...October 17th, 2024 Today I set up my membership, a year of Upgraded, and bought 100,000 gift points so they'll be on hand should the need arise. My only plan for today is to get my port and this log set up, and be ready to start working tomorrow. I know I should be raring to go, but buying this account was a sudden decision, so I'm going to take my time and get it right. Bear with me, I'll be posting soon... UPDATE: Received two supportive reviews. Folks know I'm here, so it will be interesting to see how well the ripples spread. |
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