11.30.08
How To Read More Books
People often say they don’t have time to read, but most of us read all day.
Blogs, email, and internet new stories are all reading, after all. What people usually mean is that they don’t have time to read long form stuff like books and magazines.
I, too, often have this problem. I go through periods where I read a lot of books, but then I go back to just reading online. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, but I often find that reading in short bursts is not as satisfying as reading a book that more deeply explores a single topic, idea, or viewpoint.
With the short bursts, I never get to spend as much time on one thing before I’m off to the next thing. It’s all sound bytes and incomplete information and bits n’ pieces. It’s a great adrenalin rush of info, but reading longer works (even long magazine pieces) is usually a much more relaxing and satisfying experience for me.
There’s another problem too, from the writing perspective. Writers tend to become really good at writing what they read. So when I only read very short things, I tend to write shorter. When I spend time with longer texts, I find myself thinking longer.
So what’s the solution? Force oneself to read books?
11.27.08
Two Easy Ways To Write
I got a good response from several friends yesterday when I posted about how I consider my writing method nonconscious. It sounds a bit weird, I know, but here are the only two ways that I seem to write:
1. The idea comes FULLY FORMED for the thing I want to write about.
Usually in the shower when I am running late to work and don’t have time to jot it down! Since I often write essays for a local magazine, the idea usually comes in the form of “Wow, that idea would make a great essay!”
Sometimes I get the topic and then have to sit on it for a few days, waiting for the different parts of the essay to come to me, or for my brain to remember stories and thoughts connected to the topic that I can use. Often, the whole thing comes and I can imagine the entire essay from the first sentence — even the wording — all the way down to the last sentence. When I finally sit down to write, I am almost just transcribing the essay that is already in my mind.
11.25.08
Boiled Eggs
Although I love eggs, I had totally stopped cooking any here due to the messy clean up of frying eggs.
But a new girl I met recently gave me a HUGE idea when she cooked some BOILED eggs for me. Why, I should have thought of it myself!!
No clean-up, just the great egg taste you know and love. After you finish boiling the eggs, no burnt egg stuck to the pan. Goes great with a tuna sandwich!
What could be easier, I ask you?
No hate mail from vegetarians, please.
Rating: Five Stars (Out Of Five)
Branding Your Blog Made Complicated
As much fun as I’ve had with Spiddlement, I realized at some point recently that we didn’t really have a “brand”.
What the heck is Spiddlement? Is it a music blog, a political blog, a personal essay blog?
This got me worried. I thought, I need to just redo the whole thing, change the name, find one big focus and stick to that. This being all over the place stuff isn’t effective. Who am I trying to reach?
When I started this blog in August 2007, I had become inspired by blogs like Neatorama and Boingboing. The original idea was to post the cool links that I would usually send to my friends. That would reduce the amount of email I sent — if people were interested, they could just check the blog. I figured some others might also enjoy seeing the links.
But, at some point, I realized that I didn’t have the time to find/ post cool links every single day. It involved a daily commitment to being on the computer a lot, and there were other things I wanted to do with my time. I also felt like I was not giving it enough of a “personal touch” with original material. Also, as one blogger said, it’s almost impossible to “break news” on the net — people can just go directly to the source. Why duplicate effort?
So recently I got the idea to “focus” and figure out what this blog is supposed to be about. But there’s something — at least to me — about any creative act that has absolutely nothing to do with planning. The more I thought about it deeply, the less I posted anything. As I posted less, I watched Spiddlement’s Technorati rating plummet from 25 down to 4 (the last time I checked). Ouch!
Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
George Michael performs “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” which he also recorded for his great 1999 album Songs From The Last Century.
A great tune for the recession!
11.09.08
Decluttering Made Easy
I’ve finally reached that awful point where my home has become a museum of souvenirs, books I’ve already read, CDs I don’t listen to anymore, clothes I no longer wear, receipts of things I can’t even remember buying, knick knacks that aren’t cute anymore. I think everyone eventually reaches that point. The question is not “What should I keep?”, but “Should I keep ANY of it except the bare essentials?”
My conclusion: No way. Get rid of it. Make space for something new. Free up the storage space.
It wasn’t always like this. It took me almost five years of living overseas before I collected enough stuff where I find myself spending way too much of my free time organizing my old stuff, trying to find the useful or important stuff somewhere in the sea of crap.
It’s too painful to decide what to keep, and that process is too slow. Easier to just get rid of all of it. In many ways, it’s similar to when I moved overseas in the first place. Two suitcases was all I could take. That was just enough room for clothes and a few extra things. It was easy to leave all my stuff behind, because I simply couldn’t take it. And to be honest, I never missed most of it because I was too busy living in the present to spend time sorting through the past.
