10.12.09
How To Write A Personal Essay
Over the years, I have written tons of personal essays — many of which have been published in print for cash. Personal essays are slightly harder to write than articles, but not by much. After a little practice, you will probably be writing them in your sleep. Readers tend to respond more to personal essays than articles, since the writer reveals more about himself.
I usually write essays between 500 and 2,000 words. That seems the ideal length for most magazines and websites. A rule of thumb for personal essays is to start by discussing something very specific to you and then expand that out to a universal theme or life lesson.
Don’t be worried if the universal theme you find turns out to be an old cliche. People enjoy being reminded that life is worth living, money isn’t everything, things are going to be OK, the good are eventually rewarded, and that all people have the same problems, more or less. In fact, the greatest art is often considered great simply because it reminds us of such simple truths when we forget.
Parts Of The Personal Essay
Most personal essays seem to have two basic sections, which I will call the Motivation and the Reaction.
10.11.09
How To Determine Your Writing Style: Imaginative vs. Pragmatic Writers
There are two kinds of writers in the world: Imaginative Writers and Pragmatic Writers. Imaginative Writers are people who dream in fiction. They generally love novels and fantasy. They have a gift for drama.
The second kind of writer is the Pragmatic Writer. The Pragmatic Writer typically reads non-fiction, interviews, and biographies. The Pragmatic Writer likes learning about the real world.
What is Your Writing Style?
The good news is that it’s very simple to find out what kind of writer you are. The bad news is that you don’t get to choose. The way to find out what kind of writer you are is to ask yourself, “What do I like to read?” Or better yet, “What can I not put down?”
Whatever it is that you can’t stop reading — or thinking about — is the thing you will likely be good at writing. Whatever else you try to write will probably be mediocre at best. Who but someone that loved Westerns ever wrote a good Western novel?
I first got paid for writing about 7 years ago. The first thing I got published was a short essay. That little bit of success made me decide to attempt a bigger, more serious project. I never stopped to consider that the thing I had written — effortlessly and with joy — was the type of thing I myself enjoyed reading. So I wasted a few years writing short stories and two novels (now sitting in the bottom of a cardboard box). The process was painful and depressing because I was trying to write the wrong thing for me.
Meanwhile, I kept getting little essays published, as well as short articles on the Web. I didn’t think of this as serious writing, yet I did it effortlessly, enjoyed the work, and received good feedback from others. Luckily, I finally
Spiddlement Returns !
OK, I’ve been thinking about reviving Spiddlement for a while now.
We disappeared last March when I moved to another town, and then just never got back in a blogging routine. But a few things made me decide to revive it:
1- I read Penelope Trunk’s Guide to Blogging. It inspired me the way she encourages people to just do it and not worry about all the small details. Kind of the way I think about playing rock music — just have fun, you learn along the way.
2- This blog still gets TONS of traffic every day — even though I haven’t posted in five months. The search engines find it easily. If you fill up a blog with a lot of content, it’s amazing how people will still read it and comment on old posts even years later.
And once the search engines can find you, the blog becomes a powerful medium for posting NEW ideas worth getting out in the world.
So Spiddlement is back. Don’t look for new posts every day, but keep us in your RSS.
03.13.09
Help The Economy By Addressing The High Cost Of College / Student Loan Debt In America
With college costs continuing to soar and more college graduates struggling to make their student loan payments, the Reduce The Rate Petition is urging lawmakers to extend the benefits of the federal bailout to students.
Rev. Jesse Jackson has launched a new website to bring attention to the Student Loan Crisis in America.
He also recently appeared on Democracy Now! alongside Alan Collinge, author of the book The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt In U.S. History And How We Can Fight Back.
If you have student loans or have a family member with student loans, here’s how YOU can learn about this issue and help:
1. Visit Jackson’s new website ReduceTheRate.org, which advocates reducing the interest rate on student loans to 1%.
2. Visit StudentLoanJustice.org, which advocates restoring standard consumer protections to student loans.
3. Watch Rev. Jackson and Alan Collinge on Democracy Now! for full details.
4. Read The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt In U.S. History And How We Can Fight Back by Alan Collinge.
5. Listen to Alan Collinge interviewed on the Michael Savage Radio Show.
03.07.09
Shonen Knife — Brown Mushrooms
02.23.09
How To Understand Jazz Music
I wrote this article years ago for a website that is unfortunately now offline. Luckily, I had a back-up copy in my archives. It will probably seem a very simplistic explanation to a serious jazz lover, yet I think it might be a good start for a person who knows nothing about jazz and is interested in dipping his toe in the water. Hope to post a few other “lost essays” from that website in the future, as the fresh content seems to be decreasing lately here at the Spiddlement office while we work on a few unrelated projects.
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How To Understand Jazz Music
For much of my life, I was needlessly intimidated by jazz music. A lot of people who come from a pop music background are. I mean, I liked jazz music a lot, thought it sounded great, but I never understood it.
Whenever I would see a live jazz band playing in the park, it was easy to enjoy the groove and notice the proficiency of the musicians. But what kind of structure were they using? It certainly wasn’t the “verse-chorus-verse” structure of pop tunes like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Be My Baby”, or even the Tin Pan Alley structure of early pop and show tunes like “Come Fly With Me” and “‘Til There Was You”.
Sometimes I heard songs that I recognized played by jazz bands, songs like “Night and Day”, “Stella By Starlight”, “Georgia On My Mind”, or “Midnight At The Oasis”. I could relate to the great melodies, but was amazed at the way the players would totally deconstruct these songs and create new interpretations on the spot. How the heck did they do that? I finally decided that I would try to solve the mystery of jazz music.
