Up Your Dated Writing

Yes, I know you really don't want me to do this, but I simply must make your eyes glaze over with lukewarm honey. After all, this will be the kindler gentler mind control scene that was made so infamous by Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange" (if you have to ask, then seriously, you need to brush up on your pop culture as it applies to Stanley Kubrick), and being kind and gentle to my fellow reader is what Father Nature's Corner is all about.

Now that I have your attention, let's continue with the starting of the beginning, shall we? We shall!

I finally got around a few weeks ago to sitting my cherry red buttocks in my tired old comfy chair, so that I could force myself to write using my Dragon software. Surprisingly, I have made some decent progress using it. To whit:

1} I rewrote three short stories for my new novella, working title Creativity Inaction: Oblivion, The Beach and Patience Is A Sin, which totaled roughly 6 pages/6650 words.

2} For the novella, not counting two of those stories that I had inserted into the mix, I wrote roughly 2700 words/5 pages.

Most importantly though, I managed to actually do some normal editing with this re-write, instead of simply transcribing everything verbatim. Trust me when I tell you that when I originally wrote this story back in 2009, it was what I like to call now, above average mediocre, so being able to do some solid editing while rewriting this is a very good thing.

I's Gots Pics!

As I alluded to the other day in a previous blog post, I played around with my new digital handheld camera. In addition to shooting three videos (of which one was posted. by the way gang, a format of MP4 takes roughly 50+ minutes to upload on YouTube, which was due to the fact that Blogger doesn't accept that format), I took roughly a half dozen photos of that day.

So if you join me in a trip back through time, I will be appearing at Shooting Suburbia today, with my post called "A Walk Through The Park".

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

Wired Differently Am I

I never truly realized just how differently I'm wired when it comes to writing until I started going through an old longish (19 page) short story that I'm currently rewriting using my Dragon voice software. I was refreshing my short term memory on what it was I exactly wrote the other day when I started reading the few short story snippets that were peppered within the overall story, as well as skimming through the various sections of the overall story as well, and I came to the delightful conclusion that my writing is somewhat on the darkishly funny side, aka black humor.

Basically, the plot of the story is that a writer (original name of Georgie) took a day off from work to do a little writing. I originally created the story of a writer writing because I had a bunch of short story snippets (4 short snippets, ranging from a couple of paragraphs to about 4 pages in length) that were gathering dust on my hard drive and I wanted to get rid of them, so to speak.

Anywho, the opening paragraphs kind of sets the tone for the rest of the story. To whit:

1} Georgie's job is unspecified, but...
2} Georgie's wife is a debt collector;
3} Georgie's kids are going to school to become street hustlers;
4} Georgie's mother is a typical senior citizen who spends days at the casino.

The story itself chronicles a day in the life of Georgie as he attempts to do some writing but keeps suffering from people interruptus whenever he gets on a roll with his writing. All of the snippets featured within the story are uniformly black, with one being NC-17 (yes, I was writing that kind of stuff way back when this was originally written in '09).

Staycation!

For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook (and why not? I is witty there too) I am taking my first long official vacation since 2008. In previous years, I would take a day or two off here and there, mostly so I could stay under my vacation cap and continue receiving my vacation accrual (yes, you can hate me now, 'cause the public sector is nothing like the private sector when it comes to things like sick and vacation time). This year though, since my kids are with their grandmother on a cruise ship to the Bahamas (no I'm not jealous), the wife insisted I take a vacation while they were gone so that she wouldn't be home alone.

I said, "Sure, why not?"

Besides doing something completely foreign to me, which is actually decompressing/relaxing/goofing off/having fun, I'm also having a good time exploring the little things in my life. One of the little things that I've started exploring is my new (for me, at least) digital camera that I had received for my b'day last month. It's a pretty cool camera, with a touch screen and a 135+ page user guide.

Anywho, the other day I started shooting some video in the late morning, mostly for ha-ha's as I wanted to take this thing out for spin. I ultimately shot three videos as well as 11 pictures at the park later that day (had a picnic with the wife). So for today, I thought I would share with everyone a video that features narration by yours truly. I did this some three years ago or so at my other blog, so I thought the time would be right to do it again with a whole new batch of friends. Hope you like.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

Hark, My Muse Is Calling Me?

"Yo! Miller! Where the hell are you boy?"

"You bellowed oh bodacious one?"

"I don't bellow little boy, I announce my presence, and when my presence deserves respect, you are to show your sorry white ass in front of me ASAP! Do I make myself clear?"

"About as clear as your complexion little girl."

"Excuse me?"

"Is there really an excuse for you? In any event, what are you doing here? I thought you were on hiatus in the land where the beach never ends, the surf is always up, and tequila sunrises are always in high demand."

"I heard an ugly rumor through the grapevine that you might be on vacation."

"Rumors aren't ugly, only the people who create them are."

"Is it true?"

"What, the rumor?"

"Yes."

"What's in it for me?"

She steps closer, feather touches his chin and purrs softly, "I'm all yours."

"Really?"

She lightly nibbles his ear. "Really."

"It...it would definitely make things different, that's for sure."

"In more ways you can possibly imagine."

"Oh?"

"Listen, I can rock your world you know. Already did it in your debut novel, which was brilliantly written. Then I moved on to your short story trilogy, what's that called again?"

Smashwords

"First I played lovelorn singer Tamara pining over Tim the man of her dreams. Then in the second story, I upped the ante by playing a strong independent and vivacious young woman who was at a crossroads with her male bestie. Finally, in the last one, I brought all the passion and my deep rooted fears to the forefront and showed everyone just how vulnerable I could be."

"I agree, your performances in all three were outstanding. So what do you want from me?"

She pushes him to the ground and quickly straddles his waist. Undoing the scrunchie that was holding her hair in place, she runs her hand under hair to free it up. As the three foot long tress splays out over her face, chest and back, she leans in and purrs, "I want more."

to be continued...

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

What The?

Exactly.

For those of you who are expecting their Wednesday dose of Father's Nature Corner, it's my sad duty to inform you that what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Specifically, a failure of the memory to communicate with the brain to produce an insightful and slightly thought provoking post. The reason for this epic failure to communicate is really simple and incredibly basic.

Lack of sleep the previous night.

In my household, the worst arguments usually take place late at night, when I need my beauty sleep so that I can be a functioning unit at work. Suffice to say, it didn't happen, so not only were we NFU at work, but we were pretty much NFU at home as well.

Thus, what we have here, is a post that was hammered out at 6:49a (yes, I know the time on the post says 9:49a, but I always schedule my posts for later in the day) on Wednesday June 18th that says absolutely nothing. And in keeping with that spirit of saying absolutely nothing (no, no Seinfeld, can't stand his comedy), we have Mr. Rogers.

Have a truly fantastic Hump Day no matter what you might be doing today to occupy your time.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

A C.M. Classic: Post #106

Time now, for the redundant portion of Father Nature's Corner, where we produce another post in the occasional series entitled "Cedar's Mountain's Classics", in which we take an old post from the original five year odyssey that was my first blog and retool, revamp, regurgitate, reactivate and simply reanimate to something new and shallow.
The Cedar's Mountain post in question today is entitled, Hey Hon, How About We Take This Exit?

Back in the day when I had first started writing my blog, I came down with a good old fashioned lethal overdose of OCD. Which basically meant that I would post twice a day every other day. Which meant that I would post 8 to 10 posts a week. Which meant that in no short order, my brain was milquetoasty to a golden pale finish. Which meant that I was putting pedal through metal until we were hot roddin' like Fred Flintstone, which is not be to confused with an early Gary Doonesbury character called Phred Phred.

Retro Is The New Broke

I was participating in a conversation with the guy who runs our mailroom and our local snail mail carrier the other day. The topic of choice was old things that are now hip, or rather, old things that are now new and thus wickedly draining on the purse and/or wallet.

We first got to talking about music, specifically geezer rock featuring Rod "The Mod" Steward & Jeff Beck, which soon dovetailed into vinyl, specifically how vinyl is making a serious comeback.

What? You don't believe me?

Well my friends, feast your eyes on this. Nowadays, you can be the envy of friends by going retro with your music. How? By purchasing vinyl. Some major alternative bands as well as a few mainstays have released some of their music on excellent high quality vinyl, the likes of which the past two generations haven't seen before.

How does this fit into the statement of "Retro is the new broke"?

What Moves You To Blog?

While I was motivating around my other blog the other day looking for a particular post that I could refer to for a potential post about darkness, I decided to explore the tag called Music. The main reason for doing so was incredibly basic: I was striking out like Stormin' Gorman Thomas in trying to ascertain just exactly where that post was, but I knew it had something to do with music

So I clicked on the Music tag and seconds later, 67 well written and well thought out posts popped in my screen. Sighing very hard because I had my work cut out for me (if you have to ask why, then please, return to scoffing down that triple shot espresso and come back to me when you're bouncing off the wall like a super ball), I proceeded to slouch down in my seat, pry open my eyelids with a couple of toothpicks, and to quote Aunt Bee, get to it.

About a half hour later, after reading and/or skimming through approximately 77% of the posts, I found the one that I wanted. A four year old post that was part of a series about my c.d. rack. Anyways, today's post isn't about that particular post (although in the future I will link to it), today's post is about what moves me to blog.

Reluctantly Facing The Inevitable

I have Dragon voice software on my old XP computer. I actually wrote a nifty review about it four years ago at my other blog, which you can read about here. In a nutshell, I haven't really used it for original writing due to having a major mental block in regards to using my semi-wonderful voice (I do elaborate on this in that four year old post). I've also written extensively over the years why I use pen and paper as my preferred method of writing as well as the issues with my hands, of which you can read a nice synopsis of each by clicking on the respective links.

Anyways, last week I wrote about the brilliant idea of writing outside with old computer. I dove headfirst into the deep end of the pond that weekend, like I usually do, details of which can be found here. Last Sunday I bought a 25 foot extension cord and a mini-surge protector and proceeded later that afternoon to do some writing.

Let me tell you, it was not all peaches and creamsicles. It was time consuming, laborious, frustrating and every other nasty adjective you can come up with. But, I persevered and cranked out about a page and a half of rewritten material. However, the other day sadly proved to me that my writing would continue to be those previous adjectives and then some. I decided to do some writing, but after spending about twenty minutes pounding out a total of three very short (about 8 sentences total) paragraphs, I sadly bowed to the realization that my very worst fear was about to come true. 

I Is Book Reviewer!

For the first time in roughly six months, I wrote a book review.

Now, I bet you're asking yourself, or rather, asking me, "And this is news why?" (my friends, this kind of statement regularly gets me into trouble at work, but rest assure, it won't happen here). Well, to bring almost everyone here up to speed, from late spring 2012 through early fall 2013, I wrote quite a few book reviews on Amazon, the bulk of which were contractually required by my soon-to-be ex-publisher. If you count the ones on my other blog, I've written roughly 45+ book reviews, somewhat evenly split between fiction and non-fiction.

To also bring everyone up to speed, and for my longtime regulars you can skip this paragraph, I'll read/take a crack at almost any genre under the sun. I say almost, because the one genre that I cannot deal with/understand no matter how many times I've attempted to read it, is literary. The main reason, apart from almost every story being incredibly formulaic and MFA driven, is that I get the feeling that the writer is being wickedly condescending and/or arrogant towards me.

In short, the publishing world can take the literary genre and force feed it to the pretentious snobs that occupy the various nanny governments that are running the country into the ground (1984).

I Is Writer!

I thought I would give everyone a fighting chance to mock me today. Why? Because I'm about to enlighten you about a magic mysterious phantasmagorical stupendously incredible tale of woe, the likes of which you've never ever ever ever heard before on this blog!

Feast your eyes! Feast your ears! Feast on the smiling little bunny rabbit, the wisecracking duck and the ever-so-fat milquetoast of a pig what's sitting there at your feet, along with a dish of fava beans and a fine chianti.

Yum!!!!

To quote the young lady wot made my avatar that you see today, "Not!"

And now that we have efficiently and succinctly allowed our whimsy to roam this blog for the past 15 seconds or so, we now grab it by the scruff of the neck and gently carry it over to the orchestra pit and slam dunk it into the bell of the tuba.

Exit our hero through the front door, stage right.

Well, maybe I should perhaps take hold of some nutritious nutrients to start my day off proper, because quite frankly, the last time I looked like that was when I munching down some good old fashion Ritalin. Now that, is truly yummy.

Sensory Overload: Sound

For today's post I thought I would revisit a topic that I last wrote about a few years ago (or at least a post that wasn't creative non-fiction about that particular sensory). The impetus for revisiting this particular topic was the type of battery recharging I've been able to accomplish sporadically in the past few months.

I don't know about you, but for the past few months I've been figuratively battered from pillar to post by a lethal combination of family stress, work stress and financial stress. The only way that I've realistically been able to combat this triple thread to my sanity is to take refuge in my surrounding and surrender myself to the sounds of what life has to offer. More often than not, these interludes, whether for a few minutes or a few hours,; have been my saving grace to dealing with a troubled mind.

For those of you who may not know this, I don't use an external alarm clock to wake up. I have an internal alarm clock/snooze button that starts waking me up at 4a every morning (yes, that includes S&S too). Right now, because overnight temps are in the lo 60's/hi 50's, I sleep with the windows open. And because of that propensity for wanting to breath fresh air, I'm usually serenaded by the mountain's fine feathered friends in those early morning hours.