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The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

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Writing

A Story With No End

June 12, 2020 by Jack Steiner

A long while ago I started writing a collection of stories that are tied into a main story and I am starting to see the potential for new entries.

Starting to think I really need to take the material here and work with it again. There is some really good stuff in it and I have others that I am pleased with that I can incorporate.

Part of what I find interesting is how I can see some stories in my head and know how they will play out.

Might not know all of the details, but enough to work with it and then there is a story with no end. Those have…possibilities.

Got more I could say, but I think today less is more.

Filed Under: Writing

If I Wore A Dress

March 24, 2020 by Jack Steiner

Been starting too look at the posts with a red dress and thinking about working on them all again.

If you ask if I am thinking about a blue dress too, well maybe I am and maybe I am not. 🙂

Filed Under: Writing

Blogging For Money

November 9, 2019 by Jack Steiner

If you have been around long enough you won’t be surprised to hear me say I have thought about updating the Shmata Queen’s blog just to see if she noticed.

It is only 12 years since the last update and it could be fun to update y’all on her life, cuz believe me, Texas women have stories.

But I also thought about sharing some of the tales of engagement with brands and agencies who have contacted me to discuss sponsorships and brand ambassadorships.

There are some good stories there and the headline alone guarantees that I’ll get more traffic than normal.

But I am in sort of a funny space.

Blogging For Money

If you love writing and want to pay some of the bills blogging for money can be a great thing.

That is assuming you figure out how to make the system work for you. I never was as successful as some others but I did ok.

A large part of my lack of success stemmed from my refusal to share pictures and details of the kids and family online.

It created some distance that is harder to overcome with just words and stories. It prevented me from getting as many comments and likes as I could have.

Though it is not the only thing.

I didn’t play the game the way some others did. I wasn’t as nice or as much of a suck-up. Nor did I go to the blog conferences so that made it harder to make connections.

It would have been nice to meet some people and who doesn’t want to make more money, it would have been nice, but I am ok with it.

Like I said there are still people knocking on the door and if I worked on cleaning up and doing a few things I could make much more happen.

I just have to decide if I have enough interest in that. It is a funny time of life, guess I’ll see what comes of the next few months.

Filed Under: Writing

Writers Don’t Quit But Bloggers Do

December 12, 2018 by Jack Steiner

The launch of the mighty sailing ship called The Jack B. was about 7.5 years ago or maybe it is eight or nine, who can remember.

Sure we could go into the archives and locate the date with ease if we wanted to or we could just say we started blogging in 2004 on a different site that was integrated into this one.

If you looked through the joints and removed the duplicate posts you’d probably still have around eight or nine thousand of them.

Based upon unscientific research that means I produced more content than most with a few of those posts falling into the good, very good and excellent categories.

Production levels were steady for the first decade or so and then courtesy of work and life responsibilities they slowed down to the current place of semi-hibernation.

Why is it important to mention?

Because writers don’t quit writing, but bloggers do.

I am a writer who is a blogger, not a blogger who just happens to write.

Stay Drunk

I have been drunk on writing for so long now I can no longer remember what it means to be sober.

There is no time I can remember where writing wasn’t on my mind or a part of me in some way.

Although there were and are times in which it was lower on the list of priorities it always occupied a spot on the list.

I am not sure I recognized its import when I was younger, but for certain I have and I do.

The hardest challenge for me now is to write with the complete freedom I wish to under my own name.

I come closer all the time, but have been holding back just a little, not always, but enough.

That will change.

Filed Under: Writing

Missing Shmatas

February 6, 2018 by Jack Steiner

Sometimes you walk under a moon lit sky searching for a missing shmata and sometimes you do the same under cloudy skies.

In light and in darkness you search because the echoes of the past reach into the present and the future and you wonder.

Wonder if what you hear is a lie told many times over many years or if it is the simplest and most powerful truth you’ll ever know.

Conflicted you stand in a field wondering if you’ll always wonder of if one day you’ll be able to say you know the truth without question or concern.

Once there were two souls…

Filed Under: Writing

The Kind Of Blogger You Want To Read

November 6, 2016 by Jack Steiner

Sometimes I play around with spending time rooting through the archives here to try and do a thorough analysis regarding the evolution of the blog.

I am curious to see a breakdown of the types and kinds of posts that have run here and see if that gives me any insight as to how it has grown or regressed.

Probably won’t happen because I don’t have enough extra time nor enough interest to do it. Maybe I’ll win the lottery and take it on then or maybe not.

The Kind Of Blogger You Want To Read

That is the single best and worst thing to happen to me as a blogger.

It is the great contradiction that has pushed me to become better and at times stifled my words.

The desire to have more people read me and the concern that they’ll dislike or even worse be so bored they won’t return.

poetryandcommunication

Not going to lie and say my ego doesn’t love being told something I wrote was good, but what really resonates with me is when someone says my words move them.

There are times where I am sincerely surprised because I didn’t think what I wrote was particularly good.

Moments where I wonder why no one cared that in the prior post I bared my soul and yet this piece of nothing caused them to cry.

Times where I shake my head because I issued a call-to-action that was met with ambivalence and the story I wrote in five minutes has people asking for more information.

It is just more proof about how subjective our feelings about writing is.

Speaking about subjective, I get chills watching this video below.

Sometimes I forget how much Chicago is in me and that even though I am forever a California boy, I wouldn’t exist without Chicago.

It made and molded so many people in my family it is impossible for it not to influence me.

Who knows, I may even live there one day.

In spite of my love for Chicago, I still wish my Dodgers had won it all, but this isn’t bad.

What Comes Next?

That is a question I have been asking myself for a while now.

What comes next?

I am still growing and learning how to become a better writer and storyteller but that is not really the question here.

The question is what direction do I want to take the blog in. What will make me happiest and serve the greatest good.

What will drive me to sit down and just write with reckless abandon.

I am still evaluating and thinking about those things.

There is no rush to come up with an answer either.

If you stick around for the ride you’ll see what happens and if you don’t, well maybe our paths will cross again at a different time or place.

Filed Under: Blogging, Writing

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