And when you tweeted in my dream you could actually deliver small items to other twitter users. For instance I was tellling people about my community site Pan Historia and I tweeted a key for it. All you had to do was take the key from your end to gain access to the site. But then as I was dreaming I was thinking about other kinds of things people could tweet, like their business cards, and paperwork, like a fax.
Of course... in a sense that's what we all do already, only in the dream it was not digital but tangible. I gave you all a key to Pan that you could hold in your hands. It even came in a ziplock baggie.
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Share This!I blogged this morning Warming Up about some of the distractions and challenges of getting back to my writing after my move. Just as an addendum: one of the things that happens to me when I'm unconsciously trying to avoid writing is finding other things to do around the house. You know the one - where you start to work on that project you had been previously putting off, or oh hell, you might as well just do a spot of vacuuming while you are up from your desk. DO NOT succumb until you have met your writing quota.
Oh wait... I need to just unpack this one box...
There is hardly anything worse in my online writing career than the ubiquitious typo. The little buggers pop up everywhere, pops up like a gopher, and riddles my lovely blocks of text with ankle-breaking holes.
If I sound hard on myself I think not. The fact is that I try to avoid typos at all cost. I spellcheck and proofread. I even proofread my instant messages. I run everything through my spellcheck and grammar check if it's longer than a paragraph or two - and don't we all hate those errors that Word doesn't catch like 'site for sight' or 'four for for'?
But it's just one little mistake, I hear the chorus chime, and everyone makes mistakes. They sure do and if you are like me every time you read a blog, news story, or any other post you see other people's typos and sneer: "oh what a jerk! Giving advice about writing and they can't even spell or proof their posts!" We all mock and jeer. We're all critics when we read, and then chagrinned when it happens to us: "really! I know how to spell, I know grammar, it was a typo, I swear!"
Now let me just scan this wee thought for any typos that will trip me up and prove me an idiot.
This is an interesting dichotomy – well at least it is to me – I never know which category to put my interests or my community site into. Is it art, literature, or gaming? I just signed up to Technorati and once again I’m faced with that dilemma.
It’s story play, it’s word play, it’s play. It is art.
I was about to tweet a random thought about how if I was a real programmer many of the little hands on tasks that I do at www.panhistoria.com would all be nice and automated, fully intergrated with the software, and then I remember what happened a few months ago when I promised to fix something that was VERY hands on at Pan and everyone rebelled. Now why would folks rebel about something happening more efficiently? Well it seems that through being a sort of Jack of all Trades and master of none (except art and people) I had inadvertantly succeeded in giving people at my community a feeling of personal service and old-fashioned people based priorities that is often lacking elsewhere, and not just on the internet.
One of the most important things about Pan, I think and I think most of my membership agree, is that it's a very people orientated site. There is live support almost 24/7 by friendly and enthusiastic volunteers and staff. There are no bots, and if you mess up your home page - you know who to come to.
it was so hard to find.
I posted a new blog post this morning about finding time and motivation and discipline to write. I concluded the post with an affirmation that I was going to go write. For inquiring minds I will tell you now that I failed to write any fiction this morning. Time is a commodity in this modern world and for a multi-tasking multi-job sob like me it's very hard to come by. I did cruise by my collaborative story to add my piece but found I had been sucked so far behind in plotting and discussion with my coauthors that I was too clueless to easily whip out a little piece in 20 minutes. I had been busy with administrative tasks and coffee drinking.
I really need to contemplate trimming down all the things I do so that I do what I do BETTER.
I read a lot of technology news about the amazing new apps being developed and the uses to which users creatively apply them – and I find it interesting. In some cases, apps like Twitter for instance, I even embrace them, but really when I use the internet or a web site it’s still content that draws me, and I still want my user experience to be easy. I see nothing on MySpace, for example that seems so incredible that I need to endure the clunky interface and slow load times of the pages. Facebook is relatively more cohesive and streamlined but since I don’t have a large pool of associates I need to keep in touch with around the country that I already know it has little appeal to me.
Why is it that I get some of my best lines just as I'm falling off to sleep, lights out, no notebook in reach?
Last night it was so bad, my mind tumbling in turmoil, I had to get up and write some of them down.
In the cold light of morning they still looked good, but the brain refused to take them further as ideas.
Recently I started writing an historical character by the name of John Clum. While he's just a footnote in history for the most part he played a big part in the whole Wyatt Earp/Tombstone/Shoot Out at the OK Corral saga. He is, however, a really interesting guy with a whole lot more going on than just his Tombstone period. I read a wonderful biography of him (well volume one anyway) and then started writing him in Pan Historia and I'm finding it a lot of fun. He's very different from my usual character in being colorful, exhuberant, moral, vain, and churchgoing. It's definitely taking off in ways I didn't expect it to.
So the thoughts that muddled through my brain this morning were about mortality and the hereafter. I have certain spiritual beliefs that include some sort of consciousness after death, but I have, like every good heretic should, some doubts about that.
The Ancient Egyptians, once you strip it down of all their Names of God and funerary practices, believed that a man lived on in the afterlife as long as his name was remembered - hence it was chiseled places, effigies and images were drawn, and his relatives were supposed to bring offerings. That's not so different than the act of history today.
Through our shared history, art, religion, politics, we have a story - and certain names live on because they're part of the narrative, however small the part they might have played is. It's not the individual's soul, but his name that exists, as it were, in history.
What name have I left? Have you?
Do you have an afterlife?
About panhistoria
- Name panhistoria
- Location Northern California
- Web http://www.panhis...
- Bio Owner of www.panhistoria.com, writer, collaborator, writing community creator and moderator, artist, seeker.
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