In the meantime, please enjoy this map of the United States. I made it myself!
Monday, August 31, 2015
Genesis, Interrupted
For the entirety of my online presence as an author, my writing style has made heavy use of images plucked from search engines to bring an exciting visual element to what would otherwise be an uncomfortably text-heavy medium. After years of doing this, it finally occurred to me last week to get familiar with copyright laws and how they could possibly pertain to my "business practices," which is when I learned that what I've been doing this whole time has been, in fact, laughably illegal. Therefore, my grand return to the world of cyber-literature has been put to a temporary halt while I try to figure out a workaround to something that has apparently been a problem the entire time, because I'm simultaneously too stubborn to write a post without visual aid, and all too aware of the illegitimacy of my previous work to stay my current course.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Genesis
Devon stared at his computer. The computer stared back. Unfortunately for him, computers are not burdened by necessities as mundane as blinking, and as such, Devon was losing this impromptu staring contest quite badly. Words began to blink into existence on the tablet's screen. "You don't even know where to begin, do you." It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement edged with painful truth; he really had no idea where to start. It had been well over a year since Devon had engaged in anything resembling creative writing. He had a litany of excuses, of course - he'd been terribly busy with both a full time job and night school, he had recently moved out of his parents' home and into an entirely new city, he'd finally upgraded his desktop and Arkham Knight JUST came out and you have to play it dude, it's so nuts - but in all honesty, he'd just been lazy. Obstacles and distractions had simply gotten the better of him, and over time, the prospect of picking up the pen again became daunting (This was figurative, of course. Devon's handwriting looked like the manic scribbles of an illiterate cripple during the height of his worst epileptic fit, and he had long ago forsaken the primitive pen for the much more comfortable and modern keyboard.)
"Oh hush up," Devon snapped back. His head was swimming with self-doubt. Why, after all this time, was he trying to write again? Before, the words had come pouring onto the screen with almost no effort on his part. He'd been a wellspring of language, a haphazard and eager young wordsmith whose products were rife with errors but also full of promise. What was he now? Weeks, months, well over a year of stagnancy had left him feeling like a wash-out. He felt he could barely write up a grocery list, let alone a post worthy of an audience. Even his speeling had beagun too deetereoate.
What the hell am I doing? He wondered glumly.
He supposed he must have a reason for writing. Even during his long hiatus from the written word, he found himself in a state of constant composition. Here a line of bad poetry, there an amusing passage describing his least favorite coworker; there was always a train of half-formed literature choo-chooing its way through his mind. During his time alone, he could usually be found muttering under his breath, tapping a steady 4/4 beat with a pen as he whispered incoherent rhymes and filled pages of notebooks with the type of stream-of-consciousness ramblings that would seem right at home in the diary of a serial killer. Yes, he thought, I very much do have a reason for writing. He simply had a lot to say.
After some time, he made up his mind and set his fingers to the keyboard. I might be out of practice, he reasoned, but the only way to fix that is to start practicing again. He typed in the old address, that same site he'd once tended to like a rose, but had a change of heart just as his finger had begun applying pressure to the Enter button. A new site, decided. A new site and a new pseudonym. He felt himself an altogether newer and hopefully better person, and he would need a fresh canvas on which he could dump his letters.
The writing was difficult; it had no flow, and the staccato clatter of his keyboard came to a stop quite frequently as he struggled to verbalize his thoughts. His brain was more mush than matter, and the tablet's spell check feature caught him in the wrong far too often for his liking. But he bore the difficulties with a sort of grim determination, and eventually the tell-tale signs of a grin crept onto his face like green vines on a concrete wall. Finally, as he clicked the bright orange Publish button, a single swollen thought echoed through the chambers of his head; a happy sing-song statement that, for the moment at least, blotted out the majority of his previous misgivings and left him relatively happy.
I'm ba-ack.
"Oh hush up," Devon snapped back. His head was swimming with self-doubt. Why, after all this time, was he trying to write again? Before, the words had come pouring onto the screen with almost no effort on his part. He'd been a wellspring of language, a haphazard and eager young wordsmith whose products were rife with errors but also full of promise. What was he now? Weeks, months, well over a year of stagnancy had left him feeling like a wash-out. He felt he could barely write up a grocery list, let alone a post worthy of an audience. Even his speeling had beagun too deetereoate.
What the hell am I doing? He wondered glumly.
He supposed he must have a reason for writing. Even during his long hiatus from the written word, he found himself in a state of constant composition. Here a line of bad poetry, there an amusing passage describing his least favorite coworker; there was always a train of half-formed literature choo-chooing its way through his mind. During his time alone, he could usually be found muttering under his breath, tapping a steady 4/4 beat with a pen as he whispered incoherent rhymes and filled pages of notebooks with the type of stream-of-consciousness ramblings that would seem right at home in the diary of a serial killer. Yes, he thought, I very much do have a reason for writing. He simply had a lot to say.
After some time, he made up his mind and set his fingers to the keyboard. I might be out of practice, he reasoned, but the only way to fix that is to start practicing again. He typed in the old address, that same site he'd once tended to like a rose, but had a change of heart just as his finger had begun applying pressure to the Enter button. A new site, decided. A new site and a new pseudonym. He felt himself an altogether newer and hopefully better person, and he would need a fresh canvas on which he could dump his letters.
The writing was difficult; it had no flow, and the staccato clatter of his keyboard came to a stop quite frequently as he struggled to verbalize his thoughts. His brain was more mush than matter, and the tablet's spell check feature caught him in the wrong far too often for his liking. But he bore the difficulties with a sort of grim determination, and eventually the tell-tale signs of a grin crept onto his face like green vines on a concrete wall. Finally, as he clicked the bright orange Publish button, a single swollen thought echoed through the chambers of his head; a happy sing-song statement that, for the moment at least, blotted out the majority of his previous misgivings and left him relatively happy.
I'm ba-ack.
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