A dream I’ve nurtured since I was 13 years old is to write a novel. I purchased an iron Underwood manual typewriter and taught myself how to type in 1966. I use the first two fingers on each hand. It has served me well. I can type 63 words per minute with these four fingers. More if I know how to spell the words I’m writing. I don’t “touch type”. I smack the keys just as I did when I had that manual steel contraption. I wear out keyboards at work like apes going through bananas. The Tech People hate me. OK, maybe they just dislike me.

What happend to my creative writing career? Well, high school came along, and I got distracted from my novel writing. Then college, than I discovered girls. This was in the 1960′s and early 70′s. Eventually marriage, career, divorce, new career, marriage again and damn I don’t know where the time went. Here I am at 52 smacking the crap out of a wireless keyboard and guess what? No novel. I must have written a billion office memos. A few hundred thousand white papers, proposals, procedural manuals and annual reports. No novel.

In fact, the main reason I created this blog was so I could develop a daily writing habit. Now, besides my career, my husband and step-fathering responsibilities, I write almost daily here and also publish a blog of creative photography. I’ve improved my writing habits and maybe even my skills a tad. But no novel.

So, I am going to pray about this novel thing. And maybe write more there, and less here.

However, blogging is a hell of a lot easier than writing a novel. I have five chapters concluded, so a good start. I just need to focus more there. But babbling in a blog is way more easier than writing dialog, narrative, and remembering the names of all the characters!

If anyone has experience writing novels, drop me a few lines of encouragement. I want to finish this book. I don’t care if it sucks weasel snot. I don’t care if it never is published. After 39 years of dreaming about the damn thing, I just want to finish it. And no, it isn’t the same novel I started in 1966. My ideas have evolved some.

Let this be a lesson to any youngsters reading this. Don’t put off your dreams. Time has wings my friends, time has wings.

Peace out people.

CNN headline “Paris Hilton ‘can’t believe’ her cell was hacked!

‘I don’t know why this stuff always happens to me’

Who the hell reads this crap? Why?

I don’t think I can take this decade. Maybe not even this century. At the rate our society is de-evolving I expect we will be Neanderthals by the year 2020. Only not as smart.

CNN has an interesting article today on blogging. Its main focus is Six Apart and the 27 year old married couple that creating the blogging software Movable Type, as well as the hosting blog software Typepad. It is an interesting story about them, their history and blogging in general. Their company is called Six Apart because they are both 27 years old, and born six days apart.

But, the observations that CNN make is what today’s blog is about. Here is one quote:

The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that 27 percent of online adults in the United States read blogs, and 7 percent write them.

Of course, I don’t know how many online adults exists, so I can’t say that 27% is a large number. And only 7% write blogs? That is interesting.

More fror the article:
The potential of blogging itself elicits strongly divided opinions.

Denizens of the so-called blogosphere believe the practice is destined to revolutionize the way people distribute and get information, increasingly marginalizing traditional mass media outlets.

This is true. There are so many excellent blogs that are written by informed individuals, who don’t have to report to corporate editors, or any editors at all. They are totally free to report whatever they wish. Granted, there are prejudices and personal slants, but most intelligent people can read around that. Hell, we’ve been doing that with the mainstream media for decades!

Critics, though, view all the fuss about blogs as the latest bout of Internet hyperbole, one that will eventually fade away ones readers realize they are rife with inaccuracies and mundane minutiae.

Hmmm….”inaccuracies and mundane minutiae”? That sounds more like the major news media than anything else. Certainly the Dan Rather attach on President Bush was totally inaccurate. And mundane minutiae? How times have you logged onto CNN and one of the top headlines was that marriage/divorce/arrest of some stupid Hollywood actress? That is news??? I think not.

I think the future of blogging is exciting. Imagine how new technology will raise blogging to a new level. We already combined news, photos and movies into blogs. But imagine what it will be like in a few short years when bloggers carry a pen-camera behind their ear, capable of broadcasting clear high quality live feed via wireless connections to their blog? They will be the new reporters. Anyone with an internet connection and a sharp mind could start their own news company. We don’t need no stinking CNN!

And I bet the stories will be a hell of a lot more accurate.