Hot Writes

Good Saturday morning. Soon to come my experience on trying to update my brain to accept this new technology. Must admit that procrastination does have it's merits. Look at my first posting, created 3 years ago.

Now though the tweaks made to google blogger have allowed me to seamlessly cut and paste from my word documents in to this space.

Blogging is shifting from being less important as a social tool and more of an online journal.

Ask yourself this, after a decade of LOOK AT ME writing on the net, do you really want every thought, feeling or discontent in the public domain?

Summer time, and the living is easy as the Gershwin song goes, take a line from it and slow down to think about what you publish before it goes out there into the wide, world web.

Take a swim, bake some cookies, (when the sun goes down or before it comes up) and pull out that journal. Write by hand. See what falls onto the page. Put the garbage there. Save your finest thoughts, feelings for the hungry public. Or not.

In the last days of my workshops some people showed up sans laptop forcing them to borrow pen, paper and remember how to scribble things down when the prompts were tossed out.

What a revelation. Writing by hand actually slowed me down, I had to think...one of the participants offered. Try taking your coffee and your journal out back for a few minutes in the morning and wake up to the birds an squirrels squabbling over the feeders while you sip your brew and have a go at the blank page. Peace

From: >Yo, what are you lot doing with my money? Put the people who do the work, do it well, back on air. Stop wasting my tax dollars on interviewing new people. I've cleaned up the language for this text. I'm from Detroit and would love to tell you all what I really think but who would that serve? Give Nancy back her job. Il n'as pas logic. And you owe people an explanation of what went wrong. This is not kosher. I'm not buying the ratings story.

I list many CBC radio programs on my blog and face book page that spark creative thinking and writing. Spark; The Next Chapter; Writer's and Co; Ideas; The Current; and Gian Gomeshis' program. I need my news hour. Climb out of your limited thinking, leave the box behind. Rethink this decision.

Peace, Trudy Kerman

CEO Freelancer's Ink

Oscar bunk

I'm ready for my close up Mr. DeMill. Why all the hype? I don't get it. Why would I sacrifice 3 hours of my life I will never get back, in front of my TV, watching people weep and blather and run off to a drunken Bacchanal which I'm not invited to. Nobody sending me a limo, or lending me finery or giving me free swag, which is another word for expensive junk that 99.9% of the world's population is doing without, some just fine. Isn't it enough I'm shelling out $10. of my blood sweat and tears, earned income to keep these guys in designer duds and luxury homes? Truth be told I was one of the slaves of Oscar night back in the day when my friend and movie buff, Marlene, lived a couple of doors down. She'd brew a pot of coffee and we'd smoke cigarettes and sup java, commenting on the speeches; clothes movies good and bad we've seen. That was fun. My favorite Oscar show when Ben Aflick and Mat Damon won for best original screenplay. Writers everywhere rose up and cheered from their couches. Plus they took their mom's to the after parties. Love them then still an fan now. But since Marlene's decamped for Toronto, and we've moved to a bungalow, I don't have time to watch. Unless there's laundry to fold. Now my son, on the other hand will be glued to the set. He's an actor and someday, perhaps maybe there, in the audiance holding his breath while the ballot is being read. I hope I'm in the seat next to him. I'll even buy my own dress.

Slogging through blogging

This is not easy. Go to the help pages and then to Blogger buzz. Look at the signitures. Google blogging is for software engineers. I say that because a lot of the people posting the anseres in the help section are html experts. And the Bogger buzz reminds me of the neighborhood coffee joint where the tech heads, unwashed artists or other specialty groups of people hung out to speak in code amongst themselves, sounding like another language altogether to the average passer- by. I thought blogging was suppose to be easy, fun and inclusive. Blogging is suppose to be the conduit by which I enter the information highway. I feel like I'm driving around in circles, doubling back trying to find the entry to get on.

Being a visual gal, I wanted an electronic spot that I looked forward to seeing every monring or evening as There are so many problems writing in this little box that are not addressed. For example, I have the font color but not the font. And spell check nicely highlights my misspelled words in yellow. I reach for my handy Collins gem mini dictonary and look up engineer. Publishers take head, at this speed paper backs are going no where.

What is that serenity prayer? something about accepting what I can't change? Note to self, don't blog when the full moon is on the wax or on the wane....Owooo

Of Bloggers and things

I set up a blog last week only to realize I already had a blog out there in cyber space. The inaugual blog is titled TRUDYKPLACE. For no other reason than that’s what popped into my head when I came to the question part on the fool proof, Get Blogging site at Google Blogger. Com, asking, what do you call your blog?

Why am doing this? I thought that as a computer owning, cyber space prowling writer that I should join the 21 centuries Guttenberg revolution and put my opinions, ideas and poetry out there; for the masses. I would thus join in with my compatriots of computed thoughts in a kind of global discussion about anything that struck my fancy.

How wonderful for me. I’m a writer and a blogger. However what it looks like folks is a lot of hot air blown into the web soon to be forgotten not only for those who stumble upon it but for the ubiquitous author who created it.

Just as that old cliché goes; no good deads go unpunished; I thought I’d begin my journy as an electronic columnist by creating a place where I could sit down at the computer; write and perhaps share it with a few readers. I could pass on to the world at large my news and views and get the daily due dillagence of writing off to a productive start. After all wrtiers write; right?

Well, this week past happened to be spring break. I had a whole week to edit my novel or paint the house. Instead my good friend encouraged me to start a blog. “It’s actually the bones of a website. You don’t realy need to know how to build a website to blog and it actully looks like a web page. You’d have a forum for your work.” She was convincing.

I thought about the shelf full of yet unpublished stories and essays that would some how transpose themselves into a book deal once some hungry editor saw my stories gleaming like the holy grail in the eather net. I had visions of JK Rowling like success with literary repartee between me and Oprah, dancing in my head.

So I went to Googleblogger.com and followed all the steps to create Freelancer’s Ink. That’s the clever name of my company on my business cards. I’m an editor and have business cards to prove it.

Imaging my surprise when Trudykplace popped up alongside my new blog like an abandoned car. Other than the title, it was a blank page in cyber space waiting for content. Oy. I remember creating this blog last year where it’s been languishing for lack of any content whatsoever much less my latest insight on surviving winter’s ninth storm. (stay in the kitchen and bake untill you run out of ingrediants or electicity until the storm ends. Invite friends over to sample your wares and trade snow storm stories)

Now I have two orphan vehichles to fill with content. I’m bogged down by may own bloggs.

To add to my delima, my good friend sent me a link to a vetran blogger who decided to write an essay titled; The 10 Reasons Bloggers Don’t Succeed. I thanked her for the vote of confidence. At least now with this essay, I can add yet another vaccuos personal experience to the cyberworld. I wonder if all this electronic hot air is contributing somehow to global warming. HMM that sounds like a conspiracy theory emerging. Perhaps I should create a blog on that. I could call it Crazy stupid and foolish conclusions I have come to. See you on the net.

Looking back

Regrets By Trudy Kerman

Regrets always begin when I look back, over my shoulder at the might haves, would of should of, crossroads of my life. In 50 some odd years there have be a few places where I think “…I should’ve turned left at Albuquerque,” as the great Bugs Bunny would say.

Yup, plagued about once a week by the once wases and might have beens if only I’d said, done or not, this or that. Stayed in Detroit and finished my degree there for example.

Or moved to Florida with my widowed mother and gone to art school on Sana Belle Island. Me and dozens of silver haired ladies and gents.

What ever happened to that dream of becoming a parapsychologist? And what person in their right mind moves to San Francisco at 18, and then moves back; to Detroit?

Every road not taken, give up fine arts and get a degree in Journalism; marry husband # 1 but not the guy before who haunted my dreams every night for 15 years after we pushed each other away and into the arms of someone seemingly more appropriate rises up behind me and leads to a different horizon, another life for a different me.

When I find myself in head swivel mode, I’m usually running smack into some obstacle right here in the present. This path is littered with them.

I’ve not come this far on my own, having chosen companions along the way, a husband, and our children who are now nearly grown up. We are very merry travelers who’ve decided that this year we will have more fun times. We will go to the theater to watch a play, see an opera or a musical.

I think I dive into that swamp of regrets when I look at the landscape of life around me and see only the obstacles.

If I stop for just a minute on this journey and just listen, to the robins singing on my front lawn. The wind whispering the promise summer or a storm; If I just look up and see a new hue of blue or vivacious shades of green sprouting from every bush and tree; then I take a deep breath and savor this, the life I have right here. There is no other time, or place but now.

On Writing

“ Your power lies in recognizing your weaknesses; strength lies in admitting them. Freedom is felt with their acceptance. Courage comes with careful action. Honor lies in doing it all with a pure heart.” Edurtreg Namrekcuz

What kind of writer are you? I’m every kind. I like writing non- fiction; reporting news, current events, social commentary and the frequent opinion piece. (Rant) I enjoy delving into my novel I delight in spurts of poetry and wandering into short story territory. Bur most of all I enjoy being in the mood to produce.

It is a state of being where everything comes together like a laser beam and falls word for word onto the page just as this piece I’m writing now is doing.

The process of writing is in the pleasure. I like the pause put in by the comma, the change of idea signaled by the semi colon; and the full stop to breath, a period provides.

I like the art and craft of writing although I didn’t always. I once dreaded approaching the blank page or screen. In my mind, I built up writing as a Herculean task to avoid.

Then I read a book by Robert Fitz, The Path of Least Resistance, in which he describes in the first chapter the theme of the book. Everything, water, cows and people, seek the path of least resistance when going from one point to another. Well written, Fitz uses both humor and brevity to make his point, as he describes how the roads in Boston were built from existing cow paths, continuing his analogy involving building a structure that allows creativity to flow.

It’s taken me about 25 years, but I think I’ve done, just about that. I’m sitting in my dining room, writing this down, on a piece of loose-leaf paper. I’ve eaten breakfast, washed my vitamins down with coffee. Practiced a bit of yoga and exercised all week. I’ve slept well, and don’t recall any major domestic squabbles with the husband or kids. My week included girlfriend time, where we aired hopes, shared dreams.

Now it seems I’m free to write. I need a lot of different things to be in order, before the writing begins. Sometimes the dishes must be washed, meals made and the bathroom wiped down.

Other times, like this, I begin one such chore and the words from my syllabus, a question I pose, what kind of writer are you, pop into my head as I’m rinsing a mug while keeping in mind that there are plums to be picked from the drooping branches of a decrepit tree in my back yard. Thunk.

My focus is drawn to the words rushing up one bumbling behind the other, higgly piggly jostling for space in my brain. In a trance, I turn off the tap, giving in like a hostage, by a swarm of ideas. I place the mug in the drain board. I cross the threshold of dining room where I lay my hands on a pen and some loose leaf, buried under the week’s worth of publi sac flyers and old newspapers.

The pad is blank except for a line I’d scrawled across the top in a moment of inspiration, some time ago, which had since fled.

A novel approach, it said. Followed by about 50 empty lined pages. I’m charmed for a moment by the word play before that phrase is left to die on the page and the proverbial torrent of this writing pours forth. I try to bridle this wild flow keeping to one idea per sentence, each obeisent paragraph following the next until I’m now winding up what I have to say.

My son Brendan cranks up the music on the computer in my office. The outside world begins to creep into my concentration but like an athlete who’s trained for 25 years I stay on task. Maybe that first sentence or a first word will break the curse of a blank page and it’s endless well of false fears. I don’t know what inspired the phrase a novel approach or if it will go anywhere else besides right here right now.

But I do know that in the beginning was the word. I can stop here or continue, as I am now free, free to create, free to write what ever I want whenever I want because I’m a writer. I’m the decider and I’ve decided. That this is what is. My reality lies here on the page inside what is thought, felt or observed, savored or repelled. Spun into fiction word by word, woven from ideas and then made into worlds. Ripe plums are falling no further than my own back yard. Harvest what is ready, pluck what is near, enjoy what is yours share it.