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

Writing

Bernie Sanders Is Sleeping With Hilary & Trump

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Don’t tell anyone but a teenager just pressed every one of my buttons and three I didn’t know I had.

It probably doesn’t explain why I want to tear the door off of the hinges, throw every loose item in a garbage bag and start vacuuming at 4:30 AM or maybe it does.

Maybe it would be smarter and safer for all parties if I pretended aliens came down from outer space and sucked out the common sense from the still-developing teenage brain.

Bernie Sanders Is Sleeping With Hilary & Trump

You might wonder how a man like myself can move from the opening ‘graph into a subhead that should be taken as an example of hyperbole.

The reason you shouldn’t wonder is if you are reading this you are clearly surfing the net and are aware it is populated by nitwits, buffoons, morons and three village idiots who have yet to find their way home.

And some of the aforementioned folks seem to believe that articles by The Onion and their competitors are truth.

Hell, some of them clearly believe anything that appears online should be accepted as gospel and not questioned because logic and reason are tools that other people use, not them.

Did I mention I just broke a tooth and how much betrayal by my body pisses me off.

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I was tempted to put a caption like ‘Shofar sho good” on this picture but I don’t know how many of you would understand it, let alone find it funny so I didn’t.

Truth is I am writing this post in large part to clear my head and calm down because I truly am frustrated with multiple things and people.

Instead of going to a second seder we went to a wedding tonight.

Typically that is not something that would happen but this was a special occasion and something that required adjusting schedules around.

Ten minutes within arrival I was introduced to a man who I took an immediate dislike to. Can’t say if intuition told me that he was going to be a jerk (he was and he is) but I can tell you I had a visceral response to meeting him.

It surprised me and when I walked away I felt like I hadn’t been fair and made a point to go speak with him again.

I was disappointed by his proving my initial assessment correct and frustrated that I was seated at the same table.

Part of me felt guilty because if my kids told me they didn’t want to spend an evening with someone they disliked I would tell them they could manage it for a short while.

I’d say that we aren’t going to be sitting the whole time and tell them part of growing up is learning how to be civil with people we dislike.

Well, I wanted to civilly tell that schmuck to smile while I jammed that ram’s horn up his rear. I didn’t want to jam it up there to hurt him, but to help him.

How else would I help pull his head out of his ass?

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I am not going to lie and say I don’t have a temper because I do and you don’t want to be on the wrong end of it.

But I can say the benefit of having some life experience is it takes some doing to bring it out of me.

Generally if I focus my ire upon you it is because I have made an effort to remove myself and you have refused to allow me to do so.

As I told my teen, that doesn’t mean I am not human and that I don’t get angry or that I never fly off of the handle.

I have done so and will do so again.

Can’t say when, why or how, just that I will.

But I can say I am very aware of how I feel and hold myself accountable for my behavior and my actions.

It is just part of being a responsible person and understanding that acting out of anger is probably going to lead to consequences I prefer to avoid.

How Do You Find The Write Stuff?

There is a story called Timing that I have run several times here.

Technically the first time I published it was on the old blog way back in 2010.

It receives comments and compliments every time I run it and I am proud of the writing. It is a fragement of a bigger story and a reminder.

A reminder that I need to bear down and take the time to write the whole damn thing. I need to do more than just publish the fragments.

I pay attention to the posts where I feel like the words flow my fingertips. Spit or Swallow is another one of those too.

The question I ask is what distinguishes these from the average post and how I can duplicate that each time I put pen to paper.

No need to reinvent the wheel, especially if I don’t have to.

****

I can tell you there is No Cure For Blogging and say I walked away from the computer for a moment because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say about good writing and how to wrap this post up in a neat little bow.

The beauty of blogs and blogging is that it provides us with a cybersandbox in which we can both practice and experiment with our craft.

That is what I here and a big part of why I write.

And now my friends it is time to go see the teen and talk about this last moment and see if we can come to an understanding.

If not, well someone will be reminded about who is called dad and who isn’t.

(P.S. Yeah little sisters, I know I sound just like dad. It happens. 🙂 )

The 10 Minute Blog Post

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I don’t write solely because I want to, but because I have to. It is an  involuntary exercise like breathing to me except

It is an  involuntary exercise like breathing to me and though I won’t physically die if I don’t do it I will see my heart and soul shrink a size or two.

For a long time I forgot about the importance of writing but twelve years ago I started blogging and in some ways I was reborn.

If that sounds like hyperbole to you I am guessing you are not a writer and that’s ok. Or maybe you are a writer and it still sounds like hyperbole, that is ok too,

The world would be dull if we were all the same.

A Blogging Experiment

I decided I wanted to link to some old posts but that this time around I would experiment a little bit with how I do it.

We’re going to create a list with pictures and links and see what happens.

The Birthday Party Dilemma

The Shackled Writer

The Cure For A Bad Day

The Great Dad Blogger War Of ’06

The People In Your Life

It Happened One Yom Kippur

Time Is Almost Up

My ten minutes is almost up so I have to decide if I should talk about the value of comments, whether Twitter is still a valuable platform or children and social media.

Chances are I will focus on the children and social media angle in a post later today. Got a situation here that is unfolding that reminds me about how happy I am that this sort of cyber world didn’t exist when I was a kid.

It is not easy helping my children navigate it either and sometimes I find it disheartening to see how cruelty can be extended throughout the night and day.

But there have been positives that are tied into it all too, but we’ll save that talk for later.

For now I will leave you with this thought which applies to writing as well as to photography.

aboutphotos

What Is The Proper Length For A Blog Post

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My favorite posts are raw and authentic. They are the ones where we don’t hold anything back, pieces where you place raw emotion upon the page and say ‘this is me.’

I have one of those floating around inside my head, a post that is intimate, personal and painful but I haven’t figured out yet if I am going to publish it publicly.

But I’ll write it down and put it upon paper because that will help provide clarity and understanding and maybe it will illuminate the path I need to walk upon to get to the other side.

Sometimes the way forward requires looking back so you can see where you have been.

In the interim I’ll share a piece I wrote a few years back that people still talk about because it is timeless.

whytowrite

The Proper Length Of a Blog Post

She accused me of plagiarism and gave me 12 ‘F’s. Don’t ask me to try and explain how I received those 12 failing marks on one paper because I can’t tell you.

It happened twenty-six years ago and I simply don’t remember what sort of cockamamie grading system she had in place. I remember her black wig and how she liked to eat raw sticks of butter.

And I remember how she told me that my writing was inferior. It made me angry but I didn’t let that stop me. When she refused to listen to me and insisted that I had cheated on my paper I decided that she was unhinged.

Of course that was before I noticed the wig and sticks of butter. When you are a 17  year-old boy you tend not to notice that kind of stuff because you are too busy trying to look cool in front of the girls.

I don’t know that I ever managed to pull off cool, but I think it is fair to say that I learned how to write. That is assuming that you accept her insistence that my writing was inferior.

I suppose it is possible that it was, but I doubt it. Since I don’t have any of the papers I wrote for that class you’ll have to decide if you accept her word or mine.

Writing Isn’t About Limits

Every week I try to participate in several different online writing groups. Some of these groups provide writing prompts for us to write about. In addition to a topic they usually provide a word count and ask that we not exceed it.

I hate word counts. I don’t like limits. Writing isn’t about limits.

Writing is about telling a story. It is about using words to paint a picture inside the minds of the readers.

Word counts create limits that impact the tales that must be told.

Don’t limit yourself. Don’t let your stories be ripped apart, shredded and destroyed by the limits of length. A tale must be as long as it needs to be to be told.

Tighten Your Tale

A while back someone told me that word counts were a good way to instill discipline in our writing. They said we should limit our words to only those we require to tell the tales that must be told.

My response was that “brevity can bite me.”

That is because my stories are going to be as long as they need to be. I wish that I had told the Butter Eater to adjust her wig and suck on another salty stick. She wasn’t supposed to try to crush the imaginations and dreams of her students.

Don’t get me wrong because she didn’t crush mine. She lit a fire under my ass and made me want to prove her wrong. But that is neither here nor there.

When you are telling the tales that must be told you need to just write. You need to put pen to paper or fingertip to keyboard and let the words flow forth. Write first and edit later.

Word counts cause confusion because they create a condition in which you let your internal editor take creative control. Don’t do that. Write with reckless abandon and use as many words as you need.

I am not repetitive because I am forgetful. I am repetitive because it is necessary.

Tell A Story

A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Every story you write needs those three things. Go read It Was Logical and you’ll find them there waiting for your visit.

Word counts are for bad stories. Word counts are for worriers who wonder how they are going to read 100 papers. Word counts are for very specific papers and purposes but they should only be used as guidelines and not as law.

Learn how to tell the tales that must be told with talent and you won’t ever have to worry about a word count again.

And now if you will excuse me I am going to start stretching because in a moment I am going to be chased by a thousand angry editors. So I am going to run and lead them on a merry chase hither and thither.

Once they are exhausted and worn out from our time on the road I shall sit down and let them know that I believe in brevity. I will tell them that we should all work on tightening our tales and using fewer words to tell them.

But it should only be done after we have spit out how ever many words it takes to tell the tales that must be told.

Just write my friends without wonder or worry. Just write without regard for word count, editors or readers because when you do that your passion will come out and your personality will prevail.

Success shall be ours.

P.S.  Don’t forget to take a gander at A Confession About The Secrets We Share.

There Is A Rhythm To Writing

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There is a rhythm to writing, a beat I follow that helps me keep pace with the words flowing through my head.

I can’t tell you if music is my muse or if my muse uses music to move me because I lost my perspective on that so long ago I cannot remember what life was like before it.

There was a time when that would have bothered me more than I can say, when I would have been ashamed to admit weakness.

But that time is past and now I use these pages to chronicle the moments of strength and fear and don’t give a damn what is seen or taken from what is laid down upon them.

There isn’t time to worry about it, life moves far too quickly for the frivolity of my ego or yours.

whytowrite

Florence is singing Shake It Out and my head is nodding along with the music because this resonates with me.

The demons that live inside have sprung free from their cages and I don’t care because I am done listening to their whispers and it is time to confront every last one of those motherfuckers and do battle.

Picture the Wild Rumpus in Where The Wild Things are and maybe you’ll get some insight into what I see.

Maybe you’ll see me clad in nothing more than shorts running through the jungle with those beasts or circling a fire or maybe you’ll just see us wrestling because sometimes that is how boys work things out.

And though I am very much a man there is still a boy that lives inside and that dude needs to wrestle so he can work his shit out.

I Can Still Hear Music

Saw in my stats that someone read I Hear Music several times and smiled.

It is one of my favorite posts, liked writing it and it makes me smile for more than a few reasons. There are layers upon layers of life in it and it is part of a giant tapestry that tells one hell of a story.

I still hear music and the bells inside my head push me to take action.

Maybe those same bells are what pushed me to open the cages and go after the demons or maybe not.

Some people dance in the fire until they choose to step out of the flames.

****

Bowie is singing Life On Mars and I am tapping away at the keyboard smiling again because my jaw is no longer clenched and the anger and frustration I felt a few minutes before is fading away.

Writing is and has been my favorite therapy and the best moments for me always come from times like this where I write with reckless abandon and ignore the whispers in my head about whether this post will make people read more or run away.

The reason I have lasted as long as I have in this rat race is because I have focused on fun and the benefits it provides me knowing that if I am happy it will benefit the readers too.

Happy writers provide happy content and that makes for happy readers.

Ok, that is not entirely true you can be a miserable SOB and still put out some pretty damn good content.

But there is a balance between the two places that we can find.

It is not a static place, it is really more of a seesaw that moves from side to side but it does exist.

****

Bowie moves into Elvis singing If I Can Dream and my lip does that little curl thing The King did and I softly sing along with him.

In just a moment we’ll hit one of my favorite lines ever:

But as long as a man
Has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly

Write Like A Motherfucker

I might have to find another basketball game to play in because my regular one feels like it is dying.

Technically I have been playing with the same guys for about seven years now but the game isn’t quite the same anymore.

A bunch of the old guys have moved on and I am not especially fond of some of their replacements.

It is not that they are bad guys because for the most part they aren’t.

But they suck.

They haven’t any clue what they are doing out there and the game suffers because of it.

It bothers me because I want to keep getting better and my window for improvement is shrinking.

I can’t stop the clock and I can’t turn back time so I have to make the most of what I have got now and that might mean finding a new game with better players to challenge me.

A short while ago my son and I ran into one of the guys who used to play with us.

He looked at my son and said, “Your dad plays like a motherfucker. He plays so hard sometimes you think someone is testing him.”

As he walked away I looked at my son and told him I only know how to do things at two speeds, fast and slow.

******

And I know how to write like a motherfucker.

Can’t say every post I publish is great or even good but I know the only way to get better is to work hard.

I don’t have the same time constraints here as I do with physical activities.

Hell, it is an advantage to be pushing 50 in this world. I have a ton of life experience others don’t have.

Out on the court I know I can get three solid days of play per week out of my body, but only if I take a day off in between games.

I don’t have to worry about that here.

Here I just write.

Here I just push myself to follow that rhythm and keep its beat.

What Kind Of Writer Could You Be?

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They say sculptors can look at a block of stone or metal and visualize what that unfinished hunk of material can be.

I am told that painters can do that too, they can look at an empty canvas and see the picture they are going to paint before it is painted.

Ask me if I can do the same with my writing and I’ll say…sometimes.

The lack of a definitive answer isn’t because I can’t say yes or no because I can.

I can see and heard the stories inside my head long before they hit the page but the thing is, sometimes the characters force me to change directions so what I really have is a basic outline.

Think of it as a rough map with not much more detail than North, South, East and West plus a couple of other odds and ends.

aboutawriter

Steiner the Minor and I are playing Call Of Duty on the Xbox and my heart swells with pride because this boy of mine, this child is calling out orders and suggestions that make perfect sense.

He sees things I don’t and has ideas about how to handle the make-believe situations that don’t occur to me and I know that this kid is on track for something special.

“Dad, I’ll be the sniper. I’ll find a place to hide and pick them off one at a time. I am better at that than you are. You do a better job of wreaking destruction, go out and destroy.”

I smile and do as I am told.

The game is a pretty good example of how well we understand how to leverage our individual strengths and weaknesses.

But I don’t tell him I see an opportunity to use it as a teaching moment and insist that I take a turn at being the sniper.

“Dad, you were awesome. I can’t believe how patient you were.”

I tell him I like to take myself out of my comfort zone and push the limits by doing things I might not otherwise do.

His comment about patience is spot on, in this game I don’t like waiting. I want to push ahead and rain fire and destruction upon all that cross me.

I don’t spell out that it is a game and I don’t have to worry about trouble. There are infinite lives and it doesn’t matter what I do.

So I take my turn as sniper and demonstrate how I can adapt and adopt to anything I encounter. My focus can be absolute and I hope he takes this moment and integrates it into his own life.

My focus can be absolute and I hope he takes this moment and integrates it into his own life. It may be just a game, but maybe it can be something more too.

What Kind Of Writer Could You Be?

I don’t want to be the kind of writer who puts together meaningless expressions like my doppelganger shared like “Optimize and prioritize so that we can maximize.”

Granted that dude used those seven words as part of a post about writing and the importance of not being another member of the echo chamber.

He, I, we are in complete agreement about this.

The question isn’t what kind of writer am I now but what kind of writer can I be.

Old Jack Steiner’s tag line about being the original dad blogger was developed as a sarcastic reply to the dad blogger popularity contests of some years ago.

But I am not just a dad blogger.

I am more than that.

Not because there is anything wrong with being a dad blogger, it will always be part of the core but it is too small to define who and what I am now and will be.

I write about too many different things to limit myself and a guy like me is compelled not just to write, but to push, poke and prod.

It would be a mistake to imprison my mind in a cage I’ll never agree to live in.

Would You Recognize Me?

Many years ago I told The Shmata Queen that we had one of those rare connections where it would never be broken.

We could go for fifty years without speaking and pick up where we left off.

“My heart will always recognize yours.”

“How do you know that and how does it work?”

“I know things and you don’t really want me to prove it to you, do you.”

I share that moment with you because I have this funny feeling, this hope that one day someone will read my works and recognize me.

They’ll see more than words, they’ll see…me.

“Jack, we have something for you. We have a writing gig you can’t say no to you because you are the perfect person for it.”

And I’ll somehow know this is the click I have been waiting for and I’ll drop my guard and natural cynicism and walk towards the future.

But even though it might be a blank page I’ll move faster and faster towards that canvas because I can see the painting that doesn’t yet fill that empty canvas.

Some Writers Ignore The Oscars

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One day my books will be on a shelf like the one in the featured photo but I hope that if they look like they are worn it is not because of age but because of use.

You might wonder if this is connected to why I say some writers ignore the Oscars and I’ll nod my head and smile at you.

I’ll tell you about how I am listening to Carole King sing Home Again and say if you are very lucky you’ll have someone who doesn’t just listen, but hears that song with you.

There is something special, something magical about having that person who shares a song with you, doesn’t have to be one that anybody but you two can hear either.

The Reason I’m Not Watching The Oscars

It has nothing to do with politics or anything of import to anyone other than me.

The reason is I am ambivalent about most of the awards and am focused on doing what I can to make that dream I shared above into something more than just a dream.

That means I have to take the time to write and to do it when the words flow freely and when they don’t.

It means sometimes it is convenient and sometimes it is not. Success doesn’t come without some talent and some luck, but more than anything else it doesn’t come without hard work.

Put in the time, put in the effort and put in the hours and you position yourself for good things to come to you.

That is what I tell my kids, my friends and more importantly…myself.

The blog helps me provide proof of such things, if ever I doubt it I find evidence in posts like Who Knew That High School Would Be Connected To Retirement?

whytowrite

If we agree with King life becomes much easier and in my case I do, I write because it makes me happy.

It is the best way I know to figure out what I think, what I want, what I need and what I intend to do about it all.

When I flip through the pages and come across something like More Than Heaven Will Allow I smile because I see more than raw potential.

I see past and present moving to the future.

And I do that knowing some people will scratch their heads and wonder what the fuck I am talking about. Some will read these words and be infuriated for reasons they can’t figure out the same way others will be moved in a positive way.

Some will read these words and be infuriated for reasons they can’t figure out the same way others will be moved in a positive way.

That is the point, to move people, not just me, but you.

And to do so knowing full well that once you put your pen to paper and dump the contents of your head upon it you no longer have control of how your words will be interpreted and understood.

The funny thing about it is that your understanding can change too. Time, age and experiences impact it all.

It Doesn’t Matter If People Read

Carole has moved onto singing Tapestry and it occurs to me the first ten thousand times I heard this song I didn’t appreciate it.

I was too young, too this or too that.

But today, now, I am in a much different place and it touches me.

This is what my grandfather meant when he said you can’t screw an old head on young shoulders.

Life experiences make all the difference in how and why we appreciate or don’t appreciate some things.

An Intermission

It is why when my son asked me if I was going to do anything besides criticize him I laughed.

“Dad, it is not funny.”

“Sure it is, ask grandpa and he’ll tell you to suck it up the same way he told me to.”

“I don’t have to make the same mistakes you did.”

“No, you don’t. Be smarter than I was. Do a better job of managing expectations and don’t make me ask you 15 times to do what you already should have done.”

“Stop asking me.”

“I am not fucking around any longer. I am going to log into Verizon and turn off your phone. Then you can call grandpa and ask how I responded to that.”

“You didn’t have a cellphone. That is not a fair example.”

“Life isn’t fair. I love you which is why I am riding you about this. Get it done. Manage your time better. Be smarter than I was and you won’t hear from me about it.”

He glares at me, walks away and I know he is going to test me on this. I have to smile, because I would have done the same, but still I hope he proves me wrong.

End Of Intermission

There is always someone who knows better than you and I. Always a critic who will tell us how we should have done something and some of them might actually be right.

But then again they might not be.

We who wish to be taken seriously as writers can’t afford to worry about whether people will read our words.

We have to write. We have to write. We have to write.

Somewhere in between the periods and pauses we’ll look up and see someone has noticed our work.

Someone will respond and react.

That is my belief.

That is my approach.

Remember when I called myself a professional itinerant?

Well maybe that is tied into my having more adventures and experiences to write about. Maybe that is what I need to help push me into pulling out the write words.

Or maybe it is not.

Either way it doesn’t matter to me because I am going to write and write and write and rest assured that good things will come from that.