Writing

How Jack Handles Writer’s Block

February 6, 2007 by Jack Steiner 5 Comments

Stories that are never written might as well be dead.

In the previous post I complained about feeling Blogadaisical. My blogging has slowed down a bit. Some of it is due to lack of time and some of it is precisely because of the Blogadaisical feeling I have.

Now I certainly don’t have the same lack of interest that The Shmata Queen has. Because you know that left to her own devices the The Shmata Queen would just give up and stop blogging. I think that some of this is attributable to her cleveland upbringing. Think about how hard it must be to have The Browns, The Cavs and The Indians as the teams that represent your city.

It is not easy. Ezzie had to leave the burning river. Just look at his bio and you’ll see that as soon as he was of age he got out of Dodge.

Now where was I before I was distracted by The Shmata Queen. Sorry, sometimes I get schlattered. Anyhoo, the point of this post is to discuss how I handle writer’s block and I will answer that question. Posts like this are exactly what I do to get beyond it.

More specifically I just start writing about anything. Eventually whatever is holding things up for me goes away and I am able to construct more meaningful posts that have some sort of rhythm to them. As a writer I find it terribly frustrating to be pumping out inferior material. If this were a professional endeavor I would cull the herd of the really bad posts and leave the good stuff up.

But it is just a blog and it makes more sense for this to be virtually unedited. In theory this will one day be read by my children, grandchildren and whomever else. It will give them some more insight into what their old dad/grandpa was like. That gives me an idea for a new post. Excuse me while I try putting that together.

I am Feeling Blogadaisical

February 6, 2007 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

I am feeling rather Blogadaisical. If you are interested in the etymology you can look at the following:

lackadaisical \lack-uh-DAY-zih-kuhl\, adjective:
Lacking spirit or liveliness; showing lack of interest; languid; listless.

I think that the issue is that I am just frustrated with my writing. I haven’t run out of ideas for posts. I still have plenty of those but I am very unhappy with the quality of my writing. I can’t tell you how many posts I have trashed because I couldn’t stand the garbage I pumped out.

My best writing just rolls right off of my fingertips and onto the screen. I like to think of it as being somewhat like sand from an hourglass. The challenge that I am facing right now is that this is just not happening. To give you another analogy it feels a bit like I am trying to run a marathon while stuck in molasses.

Which reminds me I have a taste for sarsaparilla. But I won’t go there right now. Time for a new post.

How I Write Fiction

February 4, 2007 by Jack Steiner 1 Comment

A reader asked me to produce a post about how I write fiction. They wanted to know how I came up with ideas and then how I translated those ideas from my head onto the paper or in my case screen. It is a good question and one that I have written about before. It is called:

I Don’t Always Believe In Happy Endings

In an effort to avoid being repetitive I am going to try to cover some things that I didn’t speak about in the initial post. I have been described as being very intense and passionate person. I am not sure that I can provide an accurate assessment as to whether I am any more passionate or intense than the next person.

What I do know is that I have had a bunch of life experience. I have been in love and I have been heartbroken. I have friends that I love, who I would die for. It goes without saying that I feel even more so about my family. In my life I have celebrated great success and deeply mourned my losses.

Heartbreak is not just about loving a person. Sometimes you can be heartbroken about missed opportunities, or at least suffer from severe regret. There is not much that I regret. I have gotten pretty good at just shrugging my shoulders at life, but there are those few things.

I write based upon my gut, it is just instinct. I compose at the computer and the words just kind of show up on screen. I suspect that my best writing comes from my being able to get in touch with certain feelings. Sometimes I can find the old wounds and rip the scab right off of them. Sometimes I can relive those moments of pain and frustration and transfer it to the keyboard.
Sometimes I am surprised to find a tear or two hit the keyboard. It doesn’t happen too often, but sometimes.

Really what I am saying here is not all that insightful. My best writing comes from what I know or at least what I think I know. It is a subjective thing. Some people love my writing and others hate it.

I don’t know if that is a satisfactory answer, but it will have to do for now. It is late and I am ready for bed.

Lailah tov from LA.

Magazine Renewals

January 30, 2007 by Jack Steiner 6 Comments

I subscribe to about six different magazines. Newsweek, PC World, Consumer Reports, Better Homes and Gardens and a couple of others. I am good about reading them. It is rare that I don’t spend some quiet time flipping through and not unusual for me to read them from cover to cover.

Frankly I spend too much time here at the PC so it gives me another excuse to get away and disconnect from the net. There is something quite nice about sitting in an overstuffed chair to do nothing but read.

There are a couple of problems with that. The first is trying to find the quiet moments in which do said reading. The second is that every time I open a magazine I spend the next ten minutes cleaning up the 27 subscription cards that pop out. That leads me to my next comment.

Is it just me or does every magazine begin soliciting a renewal from you two weeks after your subscription begins. Newsweek does this all the time. I sign up for a year and then three weeks into the new year they begin bombarding me with special offers for renewing my subscription.

It makes me wonder how much money they spend on filling the magazine with content I want to read versus how much they spend to try and grab more eyeballs. There is something not quite right with this formula.

Creative Writing

January 30, 2007 by Jack Steiner 4 Comments

I enjoy writing. If I could figure out a way to support a family by being a full time writer I probably would, especially if it meant being a full time blogger. I love doing this.

I also very much enjoy writing stories about all sorts of stuff. It may come as a surprise to some of you, but some of the things that appear here are fiction. Now that I have switched over to the Beta version I am labeling them as Fragments of Fiction.

If you are interested in reading any of it here is a link to a story that I have been working on for quite some time as well as a couple of pieces that I enjoy.

He Put a Gun To My Head
Stumbling Through Life
Me & The UItimate Fighter- Road Rage
Sometimes the hardest part of life is just living
Two Kinds of Pain
The Story of Two Souls
Fragments of Fiction- Version 178