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The place has been renovated and the door is open. Come on in and take a load off! |
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Hello and welcome. My name is Jack, and for around a decade, my "muse," whatever you conceive that to be, has been lying in a coma, rising occasionally to spout a line or two of gibberish, then falling back into oblivion. While I wait for her return, I offer reviews and this blog. Feel free to partake, but don't get too excited; the wake is still in progress. But thanks for your support, by the way. You guys are the best! Jack... 
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| Good morning, friends. Friday again, and I'm back with more of my hopefully amusing musings. I'm toying with 3.5 Verdana as opposed to 4.0 Arial. What do you guys think? I'm now into my second month here, and I'm learning things about myself, a process that I suspect will continue for some time yet. For example, I've learned that for all my soapbox preaching about loving to do reviews, I prefer 'em on the easy side. Yup. I'm leaning toward the short story and the simple poem, one with a well-delivered bite, that maybe needs a few comments, but not a 5-page laundry list of corrections. Guess I'm lazier than I first thought. More likely, though, it's that I have a host of things I need to divide my time among, and taking two or more hours to produce a review five days a week is excessive. May happen once in a while, but don't sit by the keyboard waiting for it. Here's an example of one I found this week: "Underwater Silence"  . A magnificent Hitchcockian story that needed a little polish, and I can only hope the recipient enjoyed my review as much as I enjoyed writing it.I like to find stories that are pretty good right out of the gate, and that has less to do with laziness than who I am. Some people aren't cut out to be writers, and it's obvious when you read a story if its author is one of them. But I'm not here to stomp on people's dreams. I could never imagine myself saying, "You can't write. Why don't you do yourself a favor and stop wasting ink?" I don't have the credentials to tell anyone that anyway. I'm no great writer, I'm no renowned professor of English. I'm a guy who's written a few stories and maybe learned a trick or two that I can pass along, but I doubt that I will ever give a rating lower than three stars, and very few of those. Incidentally, I've worked through the Please Review list, and I have to say that it was pretty disappointing. About half of the requestors haven't logged in to the site in weeks or even months. Of the half that are left, half of them are asking for long-term reviews of ongoing novels, have posted poems that fly so far over my head that they're safe from anti-aircraft missiles, or items that don't meet those criteria above. Some few are even marked Private. Why would you ask for a review and then set the item so that it can't be read? No matter. I'll still check out items that appear on the list, but I'm now taking most of my material from the Read a Newbie page. Folks love the welcome wagon, right? Anyway, that's 30 for this week. Everybody keep your minds in the worlds of wonder and your fingers on the keyboards, and have a wonderful journey to wherever the muse takes you. Stay Inspired! Taylor...  |
| Good morning, friends. Just a quick note today to bring everyone and myself up to date. In the month (anniversary today) that I've been here, I've learned that I do my best creative work in the morning before the trials of real life have gotten their grubby fingers into the porridge and stirred everything up. Thursday and Saturday mornings find me as busy as a stud tick around the old homestead, so don't look for me on those days; call them my weekend. As a footnote to this, I'm not going to blog every day that I'm here. When there's something worth saying, I'll say it. During my recent time away, I managed to finish the first draft of The Fix-up, the third installment of my "Invalid Item" series. Now I'm going to set it aside for two weeks, let it get cold in my mind while I work on something else, then get it out and polish the narrative. The pros among you probably call that Editing the Content. Once I get it to where I don't think I can improve it further, I'll begin the fruitless hunt for typos and other misspellings. Proofreading, in other words, the "writer's best friend," though I've rarely had a friend who was simultaneously so demanding and unforgiving. Anyway, I see that story going up in December, and I very much hope you like it!Finally, this morning I read and reviewed a bittersweet poem about the pain of the holidays. It's very much worth a read, and the poetry fans among us (and even those among us who aren't, like me) should definitely drop by and show it a little love!
Stay inspired, Taylor... |
"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, "Invalid Item" . 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 "Invalid Item" 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 ("Invalid Item" ). 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 "Invalid Item" 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 "Invalid Item" 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... |
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 "Invalid Item" 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, "Invalid Item" , 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... |
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