First Impression: 750 Words

Yesterday I found this fun website called 750 words. It's a free writing tool to help writers set and keep writing goals, and sharpen their skills by practicing them every day. It's got a function that keeps track of how many words you're typing as you type them, and saves your work every couple of seconds. After you're done you never have to look at your writing again, so lots of people use it to journal and get bad feelings out by writing them down.

I have a lot of trouble free writing. I never saw the point. To me, if you're going to write something, you should take a little time and think about what you want to say before getting it down. I like to edit as little as possible. I was the one always getting in trouble during English class because I'd glare at the clock during free writing instead of putting a pencil to the page. "I don't know what I want to write!" I'd protest to my frowning teacher. "Then write THAT!" she'd reply. My glare would grow deeper, because I knew in my heart that writing "I don't know what to write" is a HUGE WASTE OF TIME, and of my writing talent. If you're going to write, write something interesting.

Anyway.

What makes 750 Words even more fun is that when you're finished, it shows you all kinds of stats about your words: how long it took you to get them down, how many breaks you took during that time, and how many words you typed per minute. Then, it shoves eight or nine pie charts in your face, showing you the main feelings of your writing. Yesterday I wrote about a game I'm playing called Neko Atsume (Kitty Collector), and mostly whined about the money mechanics, so my stats for that day say that I was mostly "self-involved." Well, yeah, but it wasn't a bad thing. There was also a chart that informed me that I spent most of my words on the subject of money. I didn't need a colorful pie chart to tell me that, but it's pretty, and I like the font. There are a few bar charts near the bottom of the page that I'm not sure about yet, but since today I'm writing about something completely different, I'm hoping that I'll be able to puzzle them out when I look at my stats from THIS piece.

I had so much fun with the site yesterday that I told my very-busy-doing-National-Novel-Writing-Month writing partner about it so that she could check it out if she wanted to. I don't like to recommend things to people unless I know they're not going to come back to me and say "hey, this thing you told me to check out is crap; why did you tell me about it?"

So that's why I was so disappointed this morning, when I was poking around on the site and saw a teeeeeny tiny bar at the top that said something along the lines of "you're enjoying your 30 day free trial of 750 words!" And I was like... "Um, I'm WHAT?"

Usually when a site makes you pay to use it, they won't let you sign up for any kind of free trial without giving them the goods so that they can start charging you the second your month ticks over. But there was NOTHING about paying after a certain time, or paying at all, when I signed up. Just name, email address, password, make sure your password is right. No check box for a terms of service, making sure I knew what I was getting into, nothing.

I was really looking forward to using the website to get back into the habit of writing every day, since it was super easy for me to fall out of it. And based on some of the things that other users are saying, it's a really fun way to do it... and it gets addicting. "We hook you with the free Flamingo Badge, and you'll be paying us five bucks a month for the Super Squirrel Badge!"

I guess I'll stay... I mean, I do have 30 days. I really enjoyed taking days off of writing, though, and just relaxing on the weekends, back when I was posting every weekday on my blog. If I'm going to pay to write, I'd feel bad taking a day off to relax, even if I needed one.

Also, there's no italics. I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT ITALICS. (Apparently caps lock will have to do.)

I mean, how fun is that?! (Answer: SUPER FUN!!!)

Scheduling

Got some stuff to do today. Mostly going to be a combination of these two things:

"Time Management" by Randall Munroe

"English Paper" by the Brothers Chaps

Looks like I got my blogging done. Now it is my intention to sit down and play video games for several hours.

Blog Canceled on Account of Sleepy

I worked all day and I'm too sleepy for anything tonight.

Words for the Blog

I answered phones at work all day today, but my boss is awesome so he didn’t object when my brother called me at about 4:30 to chat. “I haven’t written anything for my blog today,” I told my brother, “on Fridays I usually write about crocheting.” I pronounced the last word incorrectly (with a short o instead of a long one), because pronouncing things incorrectly is hilarious.

“What? What are you saying?” my brother said. “Talk to me like I’m a human.”

I assumed a more businesslike tone. “The documentation I have informs me that you are a human;” I said, “is this correct?”

“Yes,” my brother replied, pretending to sound relieved.

“Anyway,” I said, discarding the banter, “I haven’t written any words for my blog today.”

“I’ve got some words!” my brother declared, and without preamble, produced a list:

"And now, I choose to recite a list."

Kitten

Twenty

Forthwith

Heretofore

Inasmuch

Pronto

Salad

Scissors

Withering

Icy

Philandering

Bricks

When he was finished, I said, “Thanks for the words.”

“Anytime,” he replied, “that’s what I’m here for.”

Labor Daybor Vacation Distractions

Most people take vacations during the summer. That’s what we did when I was a kid. We took trips to Kansas City to go to Worlds of Fun/Oceans of Fun, went to Iowa to the State Fair and Adventureland, road tripped across Colorado and Utah to visit my aunt, and traveled to South Dakota to see Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore.

But since my kids are little enough that we can still take a trip after Back-to-School season, there’s no good reason not to. So this week my family is going on a Labor Day Vacation. And I’m going to take a blog vacation.

I always hated it when my favorite internet things went on break. And while I realize that this blog might not make your top ten staple websites, there is a small chance that you might miss it, so I am willing to provide you with a few distractions.

Strong Bad went on vacation once, and sent postcards to his fans. You can pretend they’re from me if you want. (I sing “It’s that Clock” pretty frequently, though I usually substitute my husband’s name in for the clock. “I can’t believe it!”)

I was going to list a few different websites, but I think all the content on homestarrunner.com will probably keep you busy for at least a week. A few of my favorites include Lookin at a Thing in a  Bag and Bug in Mouth Disease.

And next Monday you can celebrate the holiday with SB’s Labor Day email. I, myself, will be sitting on a cooler saying stuff to people as they walk by.

2014 State of the Blog Address

I know it’s a little late, but I was looking at my 2013 State of the Blog and decided I wanted to do another one this year. It’s nice having all of my accomplishments (and disappointments) up in one place so they’re easy to find.

Stuff I did:

Posted every weekday, except that one Friday that I forgot and posted the next morning but it says I posted it on Friday even though I didn’t. Found out that I apparently write poetry when I’m sick. I took Thanksgiving off and about a week off for Christmas. Two hundred sixty six posts in all, 187 in 2013 (since my last State of the Blog, that is) and 79 so far in 2014. Altogether, blogger says I’ve posted… five hundred one times. So that’s awesome! Yay me!

Stuff I wrote about:

My childhood memories. Stories that I love. My wonderful family. Games that are fun to play! Holding my published works in my own hands. CRAFTING!! Sports. The internet. History!

Stuff I was pleased with:

Most/all of my writing prompts! I never realized how fun it was to write a super short story (known in some circles as flash fiction)! I love to take a quote, a picture, or an idea and make up something about it. I’ve always loved doing that! I’m not sure why it took me this long to realize it. Specifically, I enjoyed writing Finding Fantasyland, which was meant to be super short but just kept getting longer… and longer… I loved writing it and couldn’t stop! The Tale of Lady Wolfsbane wrote itself. And I enjoyed The Girl from the Floating Forest so much that every time I look at it, I want to write more of it.

I actually gave in and joined tumblr a month or so ago just for writing prompts. I’m still using the tried and true prompts from writingprompts.tumblr.com, which is full of awesome things. But I’m also following a few other prompting tumblrs (is that what you call them? tumblrs? or is it tumbls? Only youths know). I haven’t delved too deep into the frightening black hole of the internet that is tumblr because I don’t want to get sucked in. But hopefully I’ll find more fun prompts there, and write some more cool stuff.

Stuff I was displeased with:

The many hours that I wasted whining internally about writing or not knowing what to write. Also probably a few things that I wrote, but going back and searching for them isn’t going to make me feel very good about myself, even though pointing out what was bad and talking about how to improve it is sometimes beneficial.

Stuff I accomplished:

Last year I wanted to promote myself more, gain more readers, get published, and get paid.

I did join twitter, which I used mostly to follow web cartoonists around and be silly with them, but I also made the acquaintance of a few awesome bloggers, who have helped me a lot. (Especially Jen, who answered my questions about work for hire! You can find her blogs here.)

By sharing things on google+, I got quite a few follows, but I’m still not sure I can trust blogger’s hit stats, so I’m not terribly sure how many people read my blog. I’m not too worried about it; the number is most likely higher than it was last year.

I got published. Twice. If you’d like to have a copy to hold in your own hands, you can get your very own Being a Grown Up: A User’s Manual for the Real World, they are available on bigcartel.com, and you can find Forge 7.3 on lulu.com.

Well, maybe I got published three times. But the third wasn’t a book. It was an amazingly fun project for my boss that let me hear a whole bunch of hilarious stories from the awesome DJs that I work with. If you’re in the Lincoln area and need a DJ, my words will help you pick one out!

I think I accomplished the goals I set for myself last year. I had a pretty awesome time working toward them!

Stuff I didn’t do:

I didn’t submit things for publication often enough. I stopped posting links to what I’d written on facebook and google+ and twitter around Christmas time; at first it was because I myself didn’t like what I’d written, and then it was just because I got lazy. I didn’t want twitter consuming my life (and believe me, you can lose hours and days staring at the inane things people put up on twitter), and so I didn’t want to log on just to tweet a link to some writing that I didn’t think was very good. If that sounds like an excuse, that’s because it is.

Stuff I plan to do:

Submit things I’m proud of. Find an artist or publisher or someone to help me put together a book. Keep writing daily. Be awesome.

Thursday in History: Bloggining

On this day in history in 2012, I searched feverishly for a name for my blog. I’d promised my husband I’d start one, and when I get excited about writing something, I want it to go up right away. I tried a couple of clever-sounding urls, but they were all taken (and in hindsight, kind of ridiculous-sounding). “usingmytalents” was also taken, but I was pleased to find that without that ‘s’ on the end, I could get my first blog post up while I was still excited about posting it.

“It Begins,” I began.

Since then I’ve joined twitter and google+ to share links to my blog. I even got on the tumblr train (veryprompted.tumblr.com). I’ve started doing writing prompts on Wednesdays, Thursday in History on Thursdays, and sharing my current crafting projects on Fridays. I have had something to share every weekday.

That first day I didn’t have a ton of confidence in my writing. I didn’t think it was that great. I still don’t think I’m the greatest writer on the planet. I know I’m better than some, but some (most) days I’m not satisfied with what I’ve written. The point is, though, that I’m doing it. I’m writing every day, even if it’s not an amazing piece of literature that will change the world.

I’m using my talent.

Happy Blogaversary to meeeee…

A cake just for me.
(Actually the image belongs to Lori Watt,
who sells blingy birthday candles on etsy.)

Review: BAGU

I love my blog. It’s a wonderful place to share my writing, and at the same time has that pull that reminds me to write every day: “if you don’t work, there won’t be anything on the blog!” I like to go back and look at it from a reader’s perspective sometimes, and see the way it looks on the website instead of just staring at the software. And it’s nice, but it’s not something I can hold in my hands.

Last month my husband stopped at the mailbox and brought in a package in one of those bubble wrap envelopes. “This came for you,” he said, and tossed it to me. It had a customs stamp in one corner, and I recognized the name of the sender.

I ripped the package open with my hands, not wanting to use a sharp pointy object that may have subjected its contents to harm (and not wanting to wait to procure said pointy object). “It’s HEEEERE!” I sang. “What?” said my husband, who was already in the other room. I held up the small gold and black paperback, dancing it around in front of his eyes.

Being a Grown Up... cover design
by Adam Murray

It was my copy of Being a Grown Up: A User’s Manual for the Real World.

I agreed wholeheartedly with Harriet Putney’s Use Your Hands: it does feel great to do physical work, to be tired after working and to know that you earned that feeling. Carl Palmer’s poems were wonderful, and I’m not a poetry person; I had to put the book down and find a kleenex after reading Dad’s Hands. Jurassic Park and Jewel-Toned Suits is exactly the piece I’ve been thinking of writing for months; Morgan Ashworth expressed the thoughts that have been rolling around in my head perfectly: “People don’t ‘grow up’; they stay the same, while things just happen chronologically around them.”

The Words of Wisdom were great, a sentence or two of common sense and advice which served as a buffer between essays. My favorite was one of Raisah Ali’s: “If someone deserves to be in your life, they will make the effort.”

Alya-Monic McKay presented an refreshing idea about baskets and apples in Categorically, Love; it was wonderful to read something so straightforward since you expect things written  about love to be all squishy feelings and romantic sighs. I loved the idea presented by Judith Marks-White that memories soften and change as we “rewind the tapes” to look back at them. And I have stood at the edge of Kathleen C. Healy’s well of creativity, and have been similarly washed away by its waters.

I may be a biased source, but I found many of the pieces in Being a Grown Up entertaining and thought provoking. They grabbed my heart and made me laugh. Ideas that were conveyed well made me agree out loud: “yes! I love this!!”

Don’t worry, you can procure your own copy by going to http://allgrownupbooks.bigcartel.com/ or by going to BAGU’s facebook page, facebook.com/BeingAGrownupBook.

I love my blog, but it’s not the same thing as having my work (The Life Cycle of Dish Washing, by Patricia Livermore, page 13) bound in a book, alongside such good company.

Thanks for Reading

Hello? Is there anyone out there?

I am the master of MS Paint Stick Figure comics.

When I first started this blog, I knew that I was going to be doing the equivalent of writing a personal journal and then showing it to the internet. “What if people read it?” I thought, then followed it up by reminding myself, “but that’s what I want.” It’s a little odd to think about the fact that I have an audience that doesn’t share genes with me (Hi, Grandma!); it’s not like my living room is a concert hall and my laptop is the stage.

But in a way, it is. It may feel to me like I’m just talking to a wall, but there are actually people on the other side of the wall, (hopefully) finding my words amusing.

I’m not begging for comments or demanding that you share my hilarious writings with every single person you come in contact with on the internet.

I just wanted to say, “thanks for reading.”

Thursday in History: Nothing Piratey

Logo property of Marc Summers & John Baur

I wrote about Talk Like a Pirate Day last year. It didn’t stop me from being excited about writing about it this year, though. And I was very excited to find something piratey that happened in history to perhaps give a little credibility to the date. I scrolled down today’s date on wikipedia, hoping to see a famous crash or a victorious plunder that I could share, along with a yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.

I got nothin’. The destruction of Jamestown, the passing of the first budget by the United States Congress, the publishing of George Washington’s Farewell Address in major newspapers… but nothing piratey. (Jamestown was burned because of Bacon’s Rebellion, and I can find no piracy involved; I’m not sure about the first budget, though, but that would only be political piracy, as I don’t believe any of the founding fathers had peg legs or wore eye patches or brought their pet parrot with them to discuss the running of the country.)

Sadly, nothing of note happened of a piratey nature on this day in history, except in 1995, when the holiday was first observed. Maybe that’s a good reason to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19: there’s nothing more important, pirate-wise, to upstage it.

Ya scurvy dogs.

Shorter Week = Busier Week

We usually don’t look at a three day weekend in any other way than a blissful extension of our ‘being at home instead of at work’ time. It’s not often that we look at that lost Monday or Friday and think “I could have gotten so much work done!”

The fact of the matter is, a week that’s shorter because of a nice three day weekend is a week you’re going to have to squish five days of work into four.

Thankfully, I did Monday’s work on Monday, but since I have extra work on Wednesday, I’m going to have to squish that day’s work into today. I should probably attempt to take on Thursday’s work as well, since my fabulously talented writing partner and I just started a new project, and the giggling/“ooh, ooh, what about this?!” phase is in full swing, so I know it’s going to distract me from whatever else needs to be done.

Friday is right out. Friday is when my fabulously talented writing parter and I update our completed story (which you should check out if fanfiction is your thing), when I update a completed story of my own, and when I have the normal work of this blog’s Friday Craft Diary, which usually consists of a twenty minute photo shoot followed by writing three or five sentences.

It might occur to my reader to bring to my attention that since I was able to get some kind of work done on Monday, that I might have used that day to complete other work. Well, I could have.

But that would defeat the purpose of a three day weekend.

Not Perfect, But Positive

Scrolling through twitter this morning, I spotted a question posed by fellow blogger LJ Williams: “Why do we make our online selves seem so perfect?”

The answer to that is simple: we aren’t perfect; the internet is a place where we can think and edit before we put ourselves where others can see. We can control the awkward pauses and the blemishes and the dorky laugh and only present what we wish others would see in real life: a cool, hilarious person who’s fun to be with. As Abby Howard once said on Strip Search: “I don’t want the internet to think I’m an idiot.”

There are people who don’t mind what the internet thinks. They are the people who tweet when they’re tired, rant on facebook when they’re angry, or post nothing on their blog but derogatory comments about their co-workers, friends, and family.

Though the internet is a place where we are able to put forward the best things about ourselves, it doesn’t mean that we should go overboard with it. Otherwise, when you meet an internet friend in real life, they are going to look at you and say, “why aren’t you as awesome as you were online?”

By all means, think about how to make that reply better before you post it. But don’t mistake my meaning; I’m not advocating “Keeping up with the Joneses” style internet use. It doesn’t do anyone any good to brag about your personal life if you aren’t really happy. And the only person you’re gratifying by taking a selfie on the balcony of your hotel in Cancun (with the tagline “don’t you wish you were here?”) is yourself.

It’s okay to be real online. But it seems to me that we focus too often on the negative things in life. My policy is that if you don’t have anything nice (or uplifting, or positive) to say, then you shouldn’t say anything at all. If you must respond to someone rude, make it as polite as possible.

Everyone has triumphs and defeats, good days and bad days, ups and downs. It’s your choice how and when to share those things with the internet, and how to respond to people who choose to respond or interact negatively.

You’re not helping anyone by when you have a bad day and decide to spew your hatred all over the internet. You can be positive online and still be true to yourself. The internet won't think you're an idiot.

Haters Gonna Hate

I just discovered this song. Apparently it’s been out for several years, but it’s not a style that I normally listen to, so that’s probably why I missed it.

I’m sure it could be a completely serious criticism of a specific someone, but it's more likely that it’s just making fun of people who endlessly criticize free content that they are in no way required to pay attention to.

The weird thing about the internet is that there’s lots of wonderful stuff out there that is worth paying attention to. But instead of finding something else to look at, listen to, or read, people turn into poo flinging monkeys when they encounter something that’s not great. And the whole situation could be resolved if only the monkey could pause before flinging and remember the obvious: no one is being forced to watch this video, read this webcomic, or listen to this music.

Before you get into a flame war on facebook, step back and ask yourself if the argument you’re about to engage in is actually worth your time. It isn’t? What could you possibly do with that extra time? Here's an idea: go outside and look at the shapes of clouds in the sky. (As long as you promise not to tweet about how the clouds above you suck because they aren’t shaped like anything.)

If you absolutely insist on staying online, go read some hilarious comics at harkavagrant.com. Watch Nika Harper’s vlog Wordplay. Follow Maureen Johnson on twitter (even if you’re not a fan of her books, I promise, she’s delightful).

And if you honestly hate all of those things, then there’s a great big internet out there that you might possibly enjoy. No reason to spew all over something you don’t like when the smart thing to do would be to stop paying attention to it.