Writing Frustration and Blog Books.

I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: – ‘No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’Eleanor Roosevelt

Isn’t that just the best? I was obsessed with her when I was younger and read every biography I could. I was torn between thinking her husband was the biggest jerk ever or the best friend she ever had. And I doubt I could ever be as saintly as she was. I have a hard time with the whole volunteering thing and don’t really know about spending my life in service to others. I also don’t think I could spend hours a day writing letters back to people either. Don’t get me wrong. I love my correspondence and all, but I’m not that devoted. She is one of those superior human beings.

In searching for the perfect historical role models and ideas for characters, it’s funny that I completely forgot about her. I suppose I was staying more in the time period and didn’t think more contemporary, but Eleanor Roosevelt would be perfect for some character ideas.

On an entirely different topic, I’m also a little frustrated with myself because I checked out a bunch of research books from the library which are, of course, due now (and can’t be renewed because other people have holds on them) and all the cheap used copies that I had in my shopping cart on Amazon.com are gone now. All that’s left are the expensive new versions. Just one of those days, I suppose. Lesson learned. When you find the $40 book for $10 online? Just buy it. Spend the extra $4 for shipping and buy it.

Which brings me to another topic. The Blog Book. This is amazing to me. Blog2Book.com is a site that turns your happy, digital blog that’s floating around out there in the ethernet into a book. A printed book with a title and a cover and pictures and a dedication and everything. Does no one else find this amazingly strange? Amazon.com is telling me that the Kindle is the wave of the future (and don’t get me wrong–I love having the digital books while I’m on a trip. And I didn’t buy a Kindle anyway. I love iPhone apps…) and that print books are dead; Google books comes up just as often as Alibris.com and Amazon.com does when I do a book search; the whole publishing industry is turned upside-down because of digital books; and newspapers are proclaiming that only the iPad can save them now.

So what gives with the Build-a-Book out of your blog option? The blog is already right where everyone keeps telling me the action is–why change that? It just blows me away. It seems like there’s some sort of chaotic, end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it implication there. But I just can’t put my finger on it. Soon people will start making blogs into books and books into blogs and the world will end in a fireball of death…or something.

 

What counts as writer’s block?

Suffering a bit from it, I think. I haven’t been able to do anything for a couple of weeks now. If I’ve taken a break, it’s usually a bit trickier for me to get back into again, but it’s never taken this long before. I sit down and want nothing to do with writing. I still get ideas and scribble them down and have written a couple of scenes, but nothing really productive.

So I decided to fall back on my next best skill-set–research.

This is the definition from Wikipedia:  (Don’t even get me started on what I think of Wikipedia, but it’ll do for now.)

Writer’s block is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task in hand. At the other extreme, some “blocked” writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers.

If that doesn’t depress you… The entry goes on to describe the pressure of genius and how creativity could come from a particular portion of the brain and how writer’s block could be because of damage to that portion. From trauma or just from drinking too much? What if I’m just bored? Lazy? Tired?

The Purdue Online Writer’s Lab has an article about Symptoms and Cures for Writer’s Block.  However, it’s for students working on assignments and papers. No help there.

Then there’s the Writer’s Block site. My first impression was not a good one. The bad music and little movie at the beginning didn’t impress me. I’m not particularly fond of websites that start playing music as soon as you link to their site (See?  I’m giving you a warning.  Nice of me, eh?)  Worse–I don’t like it when they’ve played their movie and music and then you have to click to enter the site. Frustrating. That’s why I went to the site in the first place–because I wanted to enter it! Why should I have to click again? Hm. I call myself low-maintenance…perhaps I’m mistaken.

Once you’ve accessed the site (again), it’s not that attractive. Black and blue–like a big bruise. Seems to mostly be for musicians anyway, although there are links to forums for writers and poets and even visual artists as well. And there’s a never-ending story started, although I didn’t want to register just to find out what that was all about.

The best seems to be Language is a Virus. Much more interesting site (although way too many ads) and there were even creative writing games like the Haiku-a-Tron and Poetry Generator. Unfortunately, their website design for the games puts black words on a black background, so you have to highlight to read the results, and I only discovered that by accident. (So much for being impressed by the design.) But the content is still good. Writing exercises from Burroughs and Kerouac and Dali and even a link to NaNoWriMo and photos for visual inspiration… Oh my, yes. It’s my new favorite. Definitely check it out. I don’t seem to be writing more because of it, but at least I have a legitimate excuse to be wasting time now.