Monthly Archives: February 2011

ePublishing, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, mE

work avoidance or dedication?

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First off, this is most likely neither and both work avoidance, and dedication.

What do I mean?

Well, this is work avoidance in that although I am only presently commuting to work I should really be studying my ITIL V3 prep coursework.

This is also dedication because it is about writing (mine and in general).

While getting ready for the (lovely) commute to work this ‘brisk’ English morning (meaning quite cold, a bit windy, but dry), I found the time to read Jeanne Veillette Bowerman’s guest blog post on the Writer’s Digest website regarding the benefits to her as a writer of becoming a twitter addict Confessions of a Tweetaholic.

While finding the post insightful and illuminating, two words in particluar jumped out at from the page (or Blackberry screen, to be precise).

What were those two words? “Two Hours”.

Now, on their own these words do not hold much sway over my life. In any other context they may have had little or no impact.

However, as an aspiring self-published author they rang the “oh my god” bell deep in my chest.

Why is that? I hear you ask.

Well, simples, really.

The maximum time I have to write in any given day is about two hours (if I am lucky, am willing to forego sleeping a full night, and don’t mind looking rough the next day).

Jean spent two hours a day on twitter alone, working her way up to several hundred followers.

This is a successful playwright with accolades and shows under her belt, writing full time, tweeting with fellow writers intelligebly and articulately about her passion (two hours a day!).

On the other end of the tweet spectrum is our dear friend 50 cent, with umpty-thousand followers, tweeting requests for groupies to plunder in the local vicinity. (This presuming we have a clue where in the world he is – I see a new Facebook game – Where in the world is 50 cent? With points for how close you can guess he may be. More on that later.)

Where was I? Oh yes, ‘two hours’.

So, although I fully appreciate the need to ‘get yourself out there’ for us aspiring writers, if all I have to give is two hours of writing a day then I am not sure I will be able to invest the ‘right’ amount of time tweeting to build up a sizable twitter following.

Fingers crossed what takes one two hours a day can be done in 15 minutes instead!

Speaking of rewriting (we were, weren’t we?) I did manage to lose a good few hours’ sleep working on rewriting killer application last night.

Whilst tempted to right-off (or is that ‘write-off’?) several of the characters, fundamentally change the story arc and basically rewrite the whole story from a third of the way in, I recognised the exhaustion levels seeping into my writing decisions and held myself to less drastic changes, forcing my typing fingers to make notes where drastic changes may be required and enforcing the existing and new world rules and regulations within the story itself to drive the narrative.

Last night I either completely chickened out of a ‘proper’ rewrite, or I saved the heart and soul of the tale. Only time (and readers!) will tell.

As for twitter, I’ll do what I can and hope for a miracle. Slow burn media not-so-frenzy here we come! 😉

Back to the scintillating ITIL V3 world of study.

Til next time, this is mE

Em

a day in the life, Poems

grey hairs

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To punch a wall,
Light a cigareete, deep
Breathe, inhale, feel
The burn bite deep in
Throat, taste the sour
Acrid smoke, nurse the
Bloody knuckles, and
Wonder where the basest
Emotions spring from, within
This chest, from under breast,
Deep inside the core, need
I say anything more?

What caged lionmonster
Paces within, growing older
Days shorter, growing double chin,
The tea-time Sunday of life’s
Short weekend, the 30’s half-
Way done, teens long past,
The forties bearing down, all
Too fast, hair thinning, greys
Sprouting, don’t know about
Innings, yet it’s been a good
Outing, so far, not so bad, yet
Somehow still quite sad, not just
What I’d hoped for, yet more
Happiness than ever had, this
Stillness, a dream, this patience
Like steam from the shower,
Leaving skin soaked clean through,
Not half of life lived, the yoke sat
Quite skew, dragging half of me
Down, no lower than ground,
Which in my own personal health,
Is as good as could be hoped
For lower than that I have been
For so long, that ground level is
At least solid, something strong.

A place to stand, but not for
Long, for the changes that
Come, as we grow each old tonight
Bring the dawn of a new day, the
Taste of the future, though teasing
Still bright, blinding me to my
Own, still feeling for what is right,
Striking out on my own, no fear
Is the only way forward, for fear
Is the ultimate leach of the soul,
Crippling our very being through
Unfair weight and poor sight.

This is not the end, nor even
The beginning. This is the middle,
Time to start building. Foundation
Is strong, bricks easily formed,
Mortar of tears thickened by years
Of being bourne.

And me in the middle, still young,
Laughing, as the walls of a new
Place grow all around, this is me
This is mine, it is home which I
Have found.

Home, to build
On finally solid ground.

Poems, Random Thoughts

i do not know

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…if we’re truly aware
That each time we cross the road
Stepping out into that vast abyss
Of today and forever tomorrow, if
We truly understand the gravitas
Of the step we take, that we
Ourselves, are trusting in faith,
Believing in the base sanity of
Others, putting our hands in the
Lives of total strangers, as if
It were the most natural thing to do
Yet at the same time, each day
We bitch and quarrel, love and hate,
Judge and are judged, by those
Same people, friends, family, total
Strangers, in front of whom we place
Our lives, every day, as if it were the most
Natural thing to do, as if the madness of one
Small moment, a shuddering nerve-ending
Misfired synapse, could not plunge
Their foot to the floor, and all of our
Hopesaspirationswishesdreams
Vanish in instant blackness, the
Echoes of crying voices, twisted metal,
Broken bones and forgotten dreams,
Lives changed for those involved, forever
For those who watch are involved as well,
All just a momentary lapse, a shuddering muscle spasm,
A foot slipped from break to gas,
Moment frozen in time, the scene
Painted like an illusion on the minds
Of those who cannot stop it,
Even those involved, once set in action
This thing cannot be undone, and so
We stand and watch, or sit and cringe,
Or take the hit and fall, each one of us
Changed irrevocably and forever,
Telling ourselves that we will be more
Careful ourselves next time, or
Damning ourselves for a lapse of concentration
Or taking the hit and praying to live.

Yet time passes, not much really,
Just enough though, and we are left
Stepping thoughtlessly into the street
Putting our faith into total strangers,
People we would not invite into our home,
Into our lives, for we do not know
Them, instead we put our lives
In their hands.

And we are the sane ones?

a day in the life, Compilations, ePublishing, Random Thoughts

junk jettisoned, ebooks printed…and all’s well

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This is just a quickie…I know, I know, usually it takes a good couple of dates, some wining and dining, a few smiles, a hug, a kiss a cuddle…and then onto the final frontier…space…or at least what’s left of it aside from the junk we jettison out there as the ultimate chav planet in the galaxy…but more on that later.

(No, more on that now! Are those in charge of disposing of earth’s rubbish the same senseless oiks who dump old refrigerators in front of their homes on the off chance someone else wants it, or maybe the neighbours will get fed up enough – as I sometimes do – and clear it to the dump themselves? Seriously! If I was an alien race hell-bent on world domination, or just a friendly neighborhood alien race looking to drop in on the newbies and see how they are settling in, whether the kids have found school to be tough, or even just to borrow a few million gallons of oil, and I saw the rubbish floating around our planet by way of dead satellites, space waste, jettisoned rubbish and general debris that we humans have surrounded our planet with…well, I would think twice about visiting. Do you regularly go meet and greet neighbours who have old kitchen sinks dumped in their front gardens? Think about it! We could be missing out on the evolutionary-jump of a sentient race which thinks we are the chavs of the Milky Way…and we’ll never know…and now back to our regular broadcast…)

What was I on about? Oh, yes, I’ve published three compilations of, well, stuff from this blog as ebooks on Amazon – just search for ‘Emerson Freedman’ on amazon, or type in ‘Poemetics’…or even just click on one of the three links to those books on Amazon on the rigth hand side here…no not there…over to the…yeah…to the…to the right…your other right…yeah, there, the ‘Poemetics’, ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Storytology’ links. Yup. Those. No, you can’t download them for free. They cost a whole £0.71. Not cause I’m greedy. Cause Amazon don’t do free ebooks. Go figure. Cheapest I could make them….no really…it was….whatever.

So, go on, have a look, download them, let me know what you think. Share them with a friend. This is the first foray into epublishing for me…the first ‘real’ epublishing books I created…by way of Word to Plain Text to Jutoh to Amazon…cool stuff, eh?

Let me know what you think. Feedback is always appreciated. Even if it is not precisely what I want to hear. (The truth is not always pretty, I know. But if you’re going to be honest, go easy…I am more fragile than I look!)

Til next time, bon nuit,

Em (mE)

ePublishing, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, Writing

the rewrite thang

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Some say that the first draft is the beginning of the story. That all we need to do is get the story down in the first draft, beginning to end. Then we can start rewriting it for the second draft. We can clean up the prose, cut down on the fluff, align the story, pull the threads closer and knit ourselves a mean novel.

From recent experience rewriting Killer Application I am not so sure that the first draft of a novel is, as I originally thought, actually a first draft. In my estimation the first draft is more like the clay a potter makes before making the pottery. Or even the dough the baker beats for hours or days before baking the bread.

The first draft, although lovely in its completeness, is just that, the lump of unmolded clay or unbaked bread. All of the ingredients for a good story are there in pretty much the right form and consistency, with all of the possibilities that a wide-open horizon can give.

Only now do I realise that the rewriting, that which defines an author (as I have been told / read many times over), is where we really begin to hone our craft, to shape the dough into something special, something unique, something extremely personal.

Here is where we get to put our own touches in. Like my grandmother baking the boiled egg smack dab in the middle of her meatloaf (oh for a slice of that meatloaf now, so succulent and crumbly all at the same time!), a good author can work in their sense of humour, personal preferences, world view, perspectives, thoughts and feelings into the story without letting it take over.

All the while this weaving is happening (apologies for the inter-changeable metaphors – rewriting really is like a cross between pottery, baking, knitting, weaving and eating egg-centred meatloaf all at the same time, seriously!) the story itself is given new life. Characters that were stretched too thin are removed or fleshed out, killed or fattened (only to be killed off later or even reborn, depending on the angle of the story and where the rewriting takes us).

In truth, I find the rewriting almost more exciting than the original writing. Okay, that is not entirely true. This is a different kind of excitement for I am watching the story mature and grow under my own hands. I get to watch the characters delve into themselves and pull out wonders of unique personality with which I can help them along, or change the story itself. Anything is possible right now.

I am excited by the process of writing. I can see why Philip K Dick used to get depressed after finishing a novel. (Not that I am comparing my writing to Philip K Dick, just the sense of accomplishment at each stage of the writing, and the subsequent emotional endorphins triggered by that feeling of ongoing success and creation.) It makes perfect sense.

I managed to keep myself away from my ebook publishing games this evening, mostly because I wanted to get some good writing time in before going to bed (not too late this time!).

That’s it from me, for now.

Til next time, enjoy life,

Em (mE)