PureBlogging

Lately there seems to be a lot of efforts being made to make blogging even more social than it already is. I have written several times on sites like WebProNews and SmallBusinessNewz about some of the things different platforms like Movable Type, WordPress, and Blogger are doing to make their services more social, and why blogs are really kind of like social networks anyway.

Rather than rewrite these articles here, I will just provide you with a few links. I don’t intend for posts on this blog to just be collections of links in the future, but since I am new to the blog, maybe it will give you a little taste of where I’m coming from.

- The Social Part of Blogging

- Google’s New Blogger Features

- Movable Type: Blogs Not Social Enough

- Facebook Connect Plugin for Wordpress Glimpsed

Anyhow, I just thought the topic of blogs as social tools seemed like a good topic for me to start with here, so I thought I’d throw these at you.

As far as this blog itself, you can start expecting at least one new post usually about 5 days a week. So those who don’t subscribe to the feed, please come back frequently!

Happy beginning-of-the-week, everyone. As promised, I saw The Dark Knight over the weekend and, unsurprisingly, nearly pooped my pants with glee. A little plot-heavy, a little crazy at times… but good gravy, what a Joker. And that Aaron Eckhart was pretty damned unbelievable as Two-Face as well. I still haven’t seen Mamma Mia (nor have I heard good things about it, sadly), but that’s why the good lord made weekday matinees. I’m pretty sure they got made on the fourth day, somewhere between naked mole rats and Tejano music.

So, let’s see what’s going on in the world this week…

(opens newspaper, shakes creases out)

Freelance Writing Gigs asks: Is a Blogger a Writer? My answer: Sure! Every blogger is a writer! Not every blogger is a good writer, mind you…

Two good Twitter-related posts over at friend-of-the-site Crenk: Steven Finch points out ten great tools for using Twitter, and Luis Sandoval offers the top ten Twitter add-ons for Firefox. I’m about the world’s worst Twitter user; I tweet about once per week. Or I won’t tweet for five days, then make between six and eight updates in two hours. Then I’ll neglect it all over again. You know where I belong? 1850, that’s where.

Speaking of Luis Sandoval, he’s got a great post that asks one of the purest and most important questions every writer should ask his- or herself: Are you writing intentionally?

The folks over at SEOmoz are in the midst of a great discussion: What part of the SEO process is hardest for you? For me, it’s pretending I know what I’m talking about. Kidding, kidding. Or… am I?

At the Writer’s Bag, there’s a brand-new post about semicolons which does two things: Settles a discussion I had with commenter PS3 after my comma post, and makes completely obsolete the post I had planned on semicolons.

Cracked offers up its holiest of holies in two articles: The Top Seven Secrets for Writing a Cracked.com Top Seven List, and Seven Cheats for Hitting the Front Page of Digg. My prediction is that they won’t work for you. But then, I’m a depressive, pessimistic bastard who likes seeing other people fail, so I may not be the best source of advice. Again, I’m kidding. We all know by now how awesome I am.

Now: Stop reading websites and start writing something that excites you.

So, who else hated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

Well, OK: I didn’t hate it. And neither did you, probably, right? I mean, it was bad, yeah, but you didn’t hate it, right? Think about it: Harrison Ford has still played Indy, Han Solo, Jack Ryan and Rick Deckard. And nothing can take that away from us. If Harrison Ford wants to make movies about flying refrigerators and interdimensional quartz-skulled aliens for the rest of his career, he’s more than earned the right. Hell, I watched Random Hearts — and nothing, not even an entire league of Shia LaBoofs, swinging on jungle vines surrounded by monkeys, can be worse than that movie.

One thing I dislike more than Random Hearts, however, is reading the same damn thing over and over again on the Internet. I realize that the sociology of the Web means that memes will crop up over and over again, but good LORD if I read one more comment by the Keyboard and Mountain Dew Game Fuel League about how Stephen Spielberg raped someone’s childhood, I’m gonna raise $200 million to shoot Indiana Jones and the Long, Meandering Conversation With Justin Long, just to cheese everyone off.

Unfortunately, the fact that 100 million mouth-breathing basement dwellers believe a thing does not make it untrue. Skull is still, more or less, a crappy movie — and crappy movies are always a great excuse for good writing. But how to do it without sounding overdone?

Rod Hilton has figured out how, with his “abridged script” for the latest Indy movie. Here’s an excerpt:

SHIA and HARRISON go to SOUTH AMERICA to look for the next CLUE. SHIA flips his knife around in his hand trying to look badass, but actually grabs it by the blade. Twice. Seriously.

HARRISON FORD

Alright, the walkthrough for the movie says that our next clue is in a spooky graveyard. We should probably save our game here.

SHIA LABEOUF

Pick up MAP. Use MAP on HARRISON FORD. Walk To TOMB.

Here’s the ironclad rule that Rod Hilton stuck to when he wrote this (whether he knows it or not): If you’re going to say what everyone else is saying, you’d damned well better have a better way to say it than they do.

See, we all look for ways to reaffirm what we already think. It’s why I watch Keith Olbermann and my Republican friend watches Sean Hannity. And there’s nothing wrong with trying to capitalize on the current zeitgeist by taking advantage of people’s tendency to seek out the comforting and familiar. Unfortunately, that tendency is also our Achilles’ heel — particularly for those of us who are writers.

Let your personal rule be this: If it’s been done, don’t do it again. If it’s been said, don’t say it again. If it’s a popular opinion, don’t add to the din; create your own voice.

I never watched much Saved By The Bell. And I’m reasonably certain it’s not a great show.

But there’s a lot it can tell us about writing.

The show, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993 (and in syndication thereafter), documented the dating adventures of a small congress of high school students — sort of like the Archie comics, but less sexually charged, as though each episode were given Tipper Gore’s stamp of approval. During the years it was on TV, I was just old enough that social pressures forced me to think it was stupid, and not watch it. Of course, those social pressures turned out to be correct, and the upshot is that I’ve never really seen a whole episode.

But there is one thing I have noticed about what I have seen of show: The lead character, Zack Morris, has the power to stop space and time. He does this roughly once per episode, mostly so he can talk to the audience. I can’t imagine what this is like from his perspective — how does he perceive the audience when he interacts with it? Does he know it’s out there? Or does he perceive it as some horrific Lovecraftian space-god, hanging massive and aloof at the edge of his consciousness, having granted him this celestial power that he may entertain it before it devours his soul? Is that weird prickly energy we see in Mark-Paul Gosselaar not tenderfoot acting, but barely restrained terror?

Frankly, I don’t care. Whether or not the pitiful vestiges of Zack Morris’s consciousness mourn for the days of summer love and Sadie Hawkins dances as they lazily flap from the muscularis mucosae of Nylarhotep’s oily duodenum is of no matter to me or you.

What does matter is that, whether you’re using Microsoft Word, a pen and paper, or a rusty Smith-Corona with a missing K, you are far more powerful than Zack Morris could ever have hoped.

Most of us tend to forget that when we write, we are the master of all we survey. When faced with rules of grammar and usage, and the panoply of websites telling us how the Really Good Writers do it,  and the many, many voices out there claiming to be experts, we fail to appreciate the pure power we have when we site with a blank slate before us. And even more, we fail to appreciate the extent to which that power grows once we’ve committed words to that slate. The editorial process is scarier to many of us than Zack Morris’s ancient and polypous captor was to him. So too often, we bloggers dash off a post without drafting, without taking a third look, without an editorial process that goes beyond proofreading.

I do it too. And the reason is because I don’t really absorb the full scope of the power I have as a writer. Like Zack Morris, I can stop time. But I can also change the past. I can travel back in time, to six paragraphs ago, and make a change that reverberates throughout all four dimensions of my essay or short story or blog post. I can create the future before the past has even happened — then create a past to match it. I can make changes whose ripples create other changes, whose results I could never have dreamed of.

Too many of us see the drafting process as something that limits us — a slate-grey mechanical process with no art to it, far removed from the blossoming spring of initial creation. A few weeks ago I met an aspiring screenwriter who boiled all of this thinking down to four simple words: “Write drunk. Edit sober.” Usually, any aphorism that advises heavy drinking is one I endorse. But not here.

Editing is power. Drafting is creativity. And to end the writing process after the initial heady thrill of creation is to rob yourself, and your readers, of all the brightness and Brobdingnagian creativity within you.

You owe that to yourself. You owe it to your readers.

And, god knows, you owe it to Zack Morris’s soul, as it is slowly digested over thousands of millennia.

As a writer, you’ve always got to be ready to learn. Because writing lessons can strike at strange times, in strange places.

Like at two in the morning when you’re trying to stare down a guy who’s got six inches and fifty pounds on you, all while wearing nothing but a pair of Snoopy-themed boxer shorts and a t-shirt that reads “I (heart) Puddn.”

But I should start at the beginning.

A couple of nights ago my girlfriend and I turned in for the night only to hear our downstairs neighbor’s booming voice as he talked on the phone.

He does this from time to time, talking on the phone for upwards of three or four hours, always well past 2:00 AM. It doesn’t happen often — maybe twice a month — but it’s consistently annoying. And while I don’t begrudge anyone the right to keep unusual hours, the overall rule is simple: Shut the heck up between midnight and 8 AM.

So finally I went downstairs to talk to the guy (we’ll call him “Bellows von Shoutington”). I threw a shirt on so I wouldn’t look totally outlandish. Unfortunately it was a shirt my girlfriend had had made for me a few years ago. (”Puddn” is a term of endearment she and I use to describe a very specific set of activities. I won’t get into it here.)

I was polite but firm. I told Mr. von Shoutington I could hear every word of his conversation even though we had two fans on (it was a hot night). I asked if he could please shut his window while he was on the phone. There’s no chance we’d be able to hear him through the floor, since our building is old and well constructed. Shutting his window was really all he needed to do.

Of course, this was just too much for Mr. von Shoutington. He told me the window was shut, and that he should be the one complaining, because of all the constant stomping around he hears coming from our apartment. He made it very clear that the problem was mine.

So I gave him a slow, measured stare, and said: “OK, whatever. But right now, could you just keep it down, please?”

I don’t know what you’re like, but I’m not the world’s most confrontational guy. I’m no doormat, but looking someone directly in the eye and making a demand, or even a firm request, isn’t so easy. Particularly when you’re wearing Snoopy underwear and a shirt advertising the snoogy woogy language you use with your sweetie.

Good writing is a lot like staring down someone bigger than you while wearing silly clothes. If you’re not laying it all out on the line, If you’re not, as Walter Smith said, sitting down at a typewriter and opening up a vein, if you’re not taking the risk of looking like a complete sod, then you’re not doing your best.

And looking your reader in the eye is a good way of testing your writing out.

Whatever you write, take a look at it and think to yourself: Am I really looking my reader in the eye with this? Could I look someone in the eye and say what I’m writing?

As writers, it’s our job to engage our readers on the most basic emotional levels. It’s our job to make them understand just how serious we are about what we’re saying. It’s our job to look them in the eye. The more scared you are to say it — and the more scared you’d be to say it while looking someone directly in the eye — the more you can do with it on the page.

There were a lot of things I wanted to say to Mr. von Shoutington, but I didn’t say them — partially because they were irrelevant, but partially because I just didn’t have the guts to look him in the eye. Things like “God, but you stink! What did you do today, smoke every damp cigarette butt you managed to find on the ground? You smell like French cinema in the 60s!” Or, “Well, I may stomp around a lot, but you look like a damn cartoon rat. What’s up with that nose of yours anyway? Does it always twitch like that, or just when there’s a triangular wedge of Swiss cheese nearby?” I’d argue that the humor value of those lines comes from their inappropriateness. It’d be almost impossible to look someone in the eye and deliver one of those.

Later, when I got back up to bed, I heard the sound of a window sliding shut from just below us. He hadn’t told the truth about his window being shut — yet he still felt compelled to shut it. That’s what looking someone in the eye can do.

When you’re writing, if you’re not terrified on some level, you’re not doing it right.

You know, after all is said and done — after you’ve internalized all you can about grammar and usage, after you’ve learned how to structure essays and arrange paragraphs, after you’ve learned all the little tricks, there’s really just one secret to good writing. Just one.

(Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what it is in just a couple of paragraphs.)

Two weekends ago the charitable arm of the Writers’ Guild of America held a conference for wannabe TV writers; there were a whole slew of writers and showrunners there, representing a pretty broad range of shows. I went, and sat through four separate panels, where writers from a whole bunch of shows I love (Lost, The Shield, The X-Files) and whole bunch I, um… don’t love, but for which I hold some degree of respect (Sex and the City, Everybody Loves Raymond) said the same thing:

Write what you love.

Write what you love.

Write what you love. Seriously, they said it over and over.

Practically each one of them said it, at least once. And — not to put too fine a point on it — these are people who have managed to make what your major economists like to call a “crapload” of money, just from making up stories.

Now you’re saying, “But I love writing about something that everyone else seems to hate. Wouldn’t it be better if I just worked up a Lost fan site or something? You know, something everyone likes? Something that’s bankable?”

Well, no. I sort of thought that too, but the WGA writers on the panel — many of them bright-eyed and well-rested after having a few months of strike-inspired “vacation” — were adamant. These are people who are constantly seeing spec scripts from hopeful writers looking for jobs in TV (A spec script is essentially a sample episode of a TV show that you write as a “calling card” in the job search process). The vast, vast majority of these scripts are for whatever hot new show is hot this season. This year it’s 30 Rock and Grey’s Anatomy. The year before that it was The Office and House.

And from their point of view — and what are they but another audience — the whole affair gets very tiresome. But once in a while, they’ll come across a script for a show that’s good, but maybe not so popular. A Crossing Jordan or a ‘Til Death. Often, these scripts make it to the pile simply because someone out there loved Crossing Jordan so much that they just had to write a story with those characters. And often, because the writer has focused so strongly on something he or she loves so much, these will be some of the best specs out there.

So their advice was to write what you love, instead of trying to write something that has mass appeal. There are two reasons this advice works — they provided the first, and I’ll provide the second.

The first advantage to consider is simple enough: The more you’re invested in something, the better you’re likely to make it. Sure, your Founding Fathers slash-fic site may not be as immediately bankable as, say, a Hillary Clinton fashion analysis site, but your very adoration for the concept of John Hancock and Benjamin Rush making sweet forbidden fop-love on the cold cobblestones of Elfreth’s Alley is more likely to move you to invest in its success. Here, I’ll get you started:

Jefferson ran his hands through his lover’s hair. “You know,” he said, “I never can resist you when you come to my office so sweaty and musky, smelling as you do of malt and hops.”

Sam Adams couldn’t resist either, and wished Tom would live up to his taciturn reputation and stop jawing so much. “Shut up and kiss me, you agrarian fool,” he said, and they fell to the floorboards in a mess of passion and wig powder.

The second advantage is the one I came up with, so you know it’s good: Sticking primarily to writing what you love will kindle your love of writing overall — and that means you’ll excel even when you’re writing about things that might not excite you as much. I’ll give you an example.

Part of my work involves writing about things that are — apologies to my clients — somewhat boring. Things like industrial-grade refrigerators and mold remediation. And though I contend that anything becomes interesting if you research it thoroughly enough (just ask Malcolm Gladwell), writing about these topics often becomes so tedious that it’s really, really hard to give it my all. But I get paid for this sort of thing, so I can’t slack off. What’s the answer?

For me, it’s spending a portion of every day writing about things that interest and fascinate me. I just finished a short story that really excited me (I spent about seven hours on it Thursday alone). And ever since I started making sure I work on that story every day, I’ve brought more and more of myself to the writing I get paid to do. It’s sort of like a miracle, but it’s not — I just reminded myself why I love the written word so much.

So: Those ideas you’ve written down in your notebook that you’re saving for some day when you have enough time to devote to them? Make the time now. Even if it’s just a half hour a day. And it might take a week or two to get into the habit and really see results, but trust me: It’ll happen.

Now get to work! But seriously, keep the Founding Fathers thing to yourself. It’s not a good idea.