Author: Don

Unintentional Eavesdropping

Nope. I was in Indianapolis six months. No one paid me a dime.

(repeat x3)

No, not a song lyric. Just the ramblings of a probable itinerant (judging solely by appearance, I admit) sitting one comfy chair over in the café I’m sitting in. I didn’t see a Bluetooth earpiece. And if I had, I don’t think I’d necessarily be less disturbed.

Nothing to See Here

Jaysus, I’d tell this person to give it up already, except that this person obviously didn’t find what he or she was looking for. Maybe this can serve as a warning for the next lazy-ass cheating bastard: Read the damn story yourself, you goldbricker! As if your prof couldn’t spot your plagarizing a mile away.

Good Reads

I know what I’ve said about commenting on short stories. But I’ve read a couple of things worth talking about at certain places. All of these stories are worthy of comment, but alas–so many stories, so little time.

Solo Action

I can relate to this.

“And maybe it’s our drive to be alone — not all the time, certainly, but enough to read and dream and reset our mental energies in order to deal with People again — that at least partly impels the drive to write. Reading and writing become the bridge crossing us from our carefully guarded alone-zone into the world, into the human condition itself. We contain multitudes, and those multitudes contain us.”

The sad irony of course is that I’m in a cafe doing this, instead of in the home office with the door closed. I can’t help it, I either need to be completely isolated or be surrounded by people who aren’t entitled to one iota of my time and attention.

I’m not so sure the solitude has to do with my particular drive to write. My drive comes from the struggle to take ideas from my head, some that’ve been there for years, and spit them out in a form others might appreciate. I’ve been doing the spitting part for years, anyway–why not construct something from it?

Tough Love

Today, I had my first story critiqued by the writers group I joined two weeks ago. “The one about the angel.” God, it was exactly what I needed! A lot of the criticism mirrored some of the general feedback I’d get when I’d submit it: “Good prose/writing, nice concept, but…” They gave me a lot to think about, and one or two things I hadn’t even considered.

Because of the length limits, I only brought in the first 2/3 of the story, picking a place that was somewhat of a cliffhanger. I figured that if I did my job right, they’d be interested in the end. Despite some of the problems they pointed out, most of the group–the ones present, despite Fathers Day–did want to know what happened next, which was pretty gratifying.

Childhood, Redux

“Utopia” has to be the best DOCTOR WHO episode of the new series, if for no other reason than it made me feel like I was twelve again, jaw dropped in awe of all the levels of awesome!

I’d always thought more of David Tennant’s episodes were more good than bad, but there was something that didn’t click the way Christopher Eccleston’s run did. I think it has something to do with age. Not mine, but the actor’s. To me, the image of the Doctor as this older, adult figure went hand-in-hand with his being a 900 year-old traveler in time and space. Whereas David Tennant is just over two years older than me. Not that his Doctor isn’t all manner of awesome; it’s just that some of the edge was taken off. Eccleston, on the other hand, has almost a decade on me. His Doctor, and his episodes, still held a bit of that larger-than-life gravitas for me. I enjoyed his run while fondly remembering the old childhood nostalgia.

But watching this last episode, I was right back there! Eleven or twelve years-old on a Saturday night with the lights out watching the only thing that PBS was good for (at the time, to me), getting my geek on.