Moving Forward

I'm trying to a regular time and day for blogging. So far, it's not working. I keep thinking I just need to get in one blog post a week to get started, but the days and weeks fly by and the "great idea" I started in draft is weeks old now. Consequently, the project that is the focal point of that post is also in limbo, poor thing being relegated to the "to do" pile.

But today I decided to post - little did I know the new app I paid two bucks for would go ahead and post a paragraph at a time rather than letting me work in draft first. Has anybody figured out how to get a refund on a bad app?

I'm trying to make Sunday afternoon my Writing Time. I was pretty much in that habit, whether it was blogging or master's thesis or fiction bits or even just research. Then Borders died and I crashed... Well, Panera has free wifi and great bagels so it's currently my writing spot.

One of the challenges of coming to Panera has been passing the empty hulk of Borders. Today I'm happy to say that is not such a hardship. It two stores to fill the space so the facade has totally changed.

(Note: further busy-ness prevented me from posting this. The stores are probably open by now. Ugh.)

Moving in the Write Direction - 2

Writers write.
...and they study their craft to improve their skills. I have a laundry list of blogs I subscribe to but I don't read them all religiously. I can't. There aren't enough hours in the day. But I do check in on articles that interest me and I find a few common themes to take away. Now all I have to do is start using that good advice.
For example: I get so excited when I check my stats and find people are reading my blogs. I've had readers from several different countries, in fact, which blows me away because I have no idea how they found me and I'd love to find out so I can learn more about what works and what doesn't. So I think, "Man, I wish they would leave comments or follow me or something!" But other than following the blogs I follow, I tend to forget the advice they all give: post comments.
I need to build a few bridges in the blogosphere. I'm still trying to come up with a workable writing schedule - not tough in the summer, but during the school year... And I need to network a bit while I'm learning. I did comment to one or two bloggers and they had very positive responses. That's always encouraging.
Task: Comment unto others as you would have them comment unto you.

Moving in the Write Direction - 1

So I came up with a new term this morning. I told my sis-in-law that I'm experiencing "writer's sludge." It's not exactly writer's block - I mean, I have ideas and word strings and all the good stuff in my head, but getting it onto the page, so to speak, is like slogging through ankle-deep mud. I can almost feel the sucking pull of the struggle to get words out of my head and put them where I can see them...well, where others can see them. Like I said, they're in my head.
Sometimes it's like video. I see fiction in scenes like a movie and it doesn't all format right when I try to puke the guts of it out, but that's drafting craft and editing craft is always necessary, at least for me. Editing is where my perfectionist OCD kicks in.
Sometimes it's audio - I hear the sentence structures and how the words flow. Usually that's my poetry, but it happens in just about everything I write at one point or another.
Sometimes it's a tactile thing. I'm a writer who still needs to hold the pen and scribble words to physically force them out of my head most of the time. Blogging isn't like that, but the rest of my writing usually is.
Writers write. Procrastinating writers...uh...study writing techniques and make excuses about why they aren't finished with their projects, aren't published yet, aren't making progress...well, you get it. It's like any other procrastinating. I want to move beyond the excuses and make a success of myself in my writing the way I have in education (so far - I have dreams and goals to achieve yet in that arena as well). 
So I have a summer goal: write a lot.

Scary Smart or Ya Gotta Love Math Geeks!

My daughter texted me about a book I needed to look into written by Mike Keith. Naturally, I checked Amazon for the book, but at first all I found was a link to a book on Java. Unfortunately, although equally mathematical and certainly technical, I don't think this is the correct Mike Keith. The book she told me to research is called Not A Wake: A Dream Embodying (Pi's) Digits Fully for 10000 Decimals. That's right, he wrote a book using pi as the basis for the words he used to write the book.
It's called "constrained writing" and involves using a set of rigid rules to write poetry, fiction, etc. In this case, each consecutive word must represent the next consecutive number in the sequence for pi. What's even more interesting is that it's not his first. In fact, this set of rules is common enough to have its own language: "pilish." It's true - I looked it up!
Okay, so I think having a word count is often a tough enough constraint for writing and academic writing is full of rules, but I get those and I can abide by them. I'm enjoying my new blog-world because the rules are what I make them and that's very freeing for an unknown writer with a lot to say. But I followed the link on his page and it gave a link to a PDF of the first few pages. It reads beautifully like poetry, which, if you understand the universe in terms of the music of the spheres (I know - you're hearing "blah, blah, blah"), it makes sense. Numbers and music are so interrelated in so many fundamental ways and the beauty in both is astounding. Just the same, I found myself checking his word lengths against a short calculation of pi . 
On one hand, I'd like to get it and read it...and keep checking pi to 10,000 decimals. Not A Wake appears to be the first novel written in Pilish. Or maybe I'll take a whack at reading his anagrammatic paraphrase of three books of the KJV Bible, The Anagrammed Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. Of course, I should really read his music writings...
On the other hand, maybe I'll just start by looking up poetry in Pilish that only goes to the 31st or 50th place and start small. I mean, this is a guy who wrote a book about numbers called "Keith Numbers." If he can name a number system after himself...
Baby steps...  

UPDATE: The article Lexi read that led her to contact me about Keith's book can be found here. There are a number of interesting numbers mentioned in the article ;)