Writer for Hire?

by | Jan 22, 2010 | Writing

Yeah, I know, I’m a big whore. Deal with it. Last night I went to see Our Lady of 121st Street at Carolina Actor’s Studio Theatre. I liked it. For more details, I’ll let you know when my review is posted at Charlotte Viewpoint, which is an online magazine that I’m doing a little writing for. So that’s a gig, albeit one that is in its infancy right now. And I’m still writing for the PokerStars blog every other week, which is about all I can handle with my day job given the hours that are required to cover major online tournaments.

But I also have a couple of other irons in the fire. I am trying, once again, to post new content to Lighting for Worship, another website that I own. That site with practically no activity gets about 40% as much traffic as I do here writing every day, which kinda goes to show how many people are interested in lighting design and technology for churches, and how few people are interested in redneck poets. But that’s no huge surprise. I have a plan to monetize that site later in the year, but I have to get it more consistent with content before I can make that happen. Currently it’s a good resource for information, but I need to keep it current and update some of the technology on there to make it really good. I think one post per week there will be enough, if I can squeeze it in.

And I’ve decided to start an online literary magazine, called Red Dirt Review. The focus will be on Southern literature, but I’m going to use a pretty loose definition of what is Southern. If you can find Greenville, SC on a map, then I’ll accept submissions from ya. If you’ve ever spent any time outside of an airport in any Southern state (and despite its status as a sovereign nation, we’ll count Texas, too), you’re Southern enough for me. If you’ve ever read anything by Tennessee Williams, Pat Controy or William Faulkner, good enough. I’m just looking for stuff that feels a little like you’d read it (or sing it, or say it) while sitting on a porch drinking moonshine. So if you want to submit, email me at reddirtreview@gmail.com. There’s gonna be a contest, too, hopefully the contest will bring in enough entrants to pay for the prizes and printing of the journal later in the year.

But in the meantime, I’m still available for hire as a freelance writer, either on poker or theatre, or about anything else I might have any experience in. So let a brother know if you need anything scribbled, I’m available.

Free Books – worth what you pay for?

by | Jan 21, 2010 | Poems, Writing

So I got an iPhone a few months ago. Yes, I love it. No, I don’t have any problems with AT&T’s coverage. Yes, I had Verizon before. No, I had no problems with their coverage, either. Yes, I think the commercials are witty, and no, I don’t like Luke Wilson any better.

Now that we got that out of the way, the point of this is that the iPhone has a free app that mimics the Amazon Kindle. Now some folks have wondered to me about the size of the screen, but let’s face it, the words are the same size as a paperback book, you just have fewer on the screen at one time than on a page. No big deal. So I love the app, and have bought several books for the Kindle as a result. And it was during some of my shopping the other day that I thought “Am I actively devaluing the book by searching for passable free books for my phone?”

Because I have a limited budget, and a stack of books waist-high in my house that I haven’t read, I’m on a moratorium on book-buying. This doesn’t mean I haven’t bought any new books, it just means that I don’t buy nearly as many and have the good grace to feel bad about it when I do. So I finished the last book on my phone, and went looking for another. And I cruised the bestseller list and decided not to pay any real money for an e-book this week, then moved on to the free books. Now most of these books are like crack, one free sample in a series to get you hooked, which I think is a good marketing ploy, but some of the others are just books that people have written that are out there for free.

And some of these are free for a reason. Namely, they suck. I’m all for the idea of allowing the market to determine the relative worth of a product, and allowing consumers to even set pricing for things by their decisions to buy or not to buy something. But I wonder about the market for writing becoming so devalued by the presence of so much free content out there. Already I see freelancers talking about rate cuts, and there’s always another kid coming along willing to do the same work for 2/3 the money, and there’s always somebody willing to sacrifice a quality writer on the altar of the dollar, but I wonder if the same deal transfers.

So am I devaluing my own work by becoming a lowest common denominator consumer? Is this the same as a local store owner shopping at Wal-Mart and feeling guilty? Or am I just overthinking again? I do believe that as people try to survive in a challenging economy, we need to make choices on where our money goes. And we need to make conscious, personal decisions regarding our spending, and on what we value. So I’m pretty sure I’ve answered my own question, and justified buying more e-books instead of grabbing free ones, but what about the bigger picture?

On the smaller picture front, here’s another video from Returning the Favor.

Tips for Writers on Reading

by | Jan 20, 2010 | Writing

Before I get into the real topic, here’s a question – am I insane for even considering publishing a literary journal? You know, the whole accept submissions, get subscribers, go to press kind of literary journal?

So more and more often I’m going to readings of things that people, myself included, have written. And more and more often I’m less than impressed with the way that writers present themselves when reading their work in public. I know, I know, it’s supposed to be a solitary pursuit full of staring out windows and empty whiskey bottles and perpetual gazing into navels, but folks, if you’re going to read your stuff in public, please take a little time to work on the craft of reading just like you worked on the craft of writing. It’s a set of skills – develop it! So I decided to put forth a few tips on how to improve your reading, based on my years in theatre and performance.

1) Stand up. Most untrained readers will benefit hugely just by standing up, or at least sitting upright on a stool. This opens the airways down to the lungs and diaphragm and allows you more access to air. More air = more volume with less strain. The chest is a big resonant cavity that serves as an amplifier to the voice, use it. Sitting, and especially sitting slouched over like a shy little mouse, compresses the esophagus and makes it harder to get to your Air Supply (and I don’t mean the “guilty pleasures” playlist on your iPod). So get off your ass, or at least, sit up straight like your mama told you.

2) If you don’t have much personality, don’t try to force it. You’ll know pretty quickly if you don’t have any personality, count how many time people look at their watch when they’re talking to you in a normal day. If the answer is EVER, then you’re probably boring. If you’re boring, don’t try to tell stories or jokes, just read your shit and get it over with! You might be the greatest writer since Shakespeare, but painful to converse with. Not necessarily your fault, but there’s no point in standing in front of a room full of people boring the crap out of them when they came to hear you read, rather than tell stories anyway. Now, if you’re a storyteller and still boring, then you’ve got bigger problems.

3) Pay attention to the guidelines of the show. If the producer/host tells you to keep it to five minutes, don’t read five pages of prose text. A page of prose takes several minutes to read, and even longer to read well, and that time is inflated by the size of the page, too. So don’t run long. If an audience is told to expect five minutes and you run fifteen, you’d better be brilliant. If they’re told to expect five minutes and you’re done in four, they feel like you’ve paid attention to the guidelines and have given their time some value.

4) Learn a little bit about technology. In some rooms there will be microphones. Sometimes, you’ll need them, sometimes you won’t. Either decide not to use them and move them aside, or learn enough to use them well. Standing in front of a room full of people fumbling with a mic just makes you look uncomfortable and stupid. It’s less high-tech than your TV remote, take a few minutes before the event begins to figure out height adjustments and how to tighten the mic on the stand. It will make you look like a pro, even if you’re not.

5) Practice. Really. I’m not kidding, practice. I have a very good friend who is an excellent actor, but can’t read in public worth a damn. He has a slight case of dyslexia, and even with text he’s very familiar with, this sometimes bites him in the ass. He has that excuse, and doesn’t read in public often, if ever. You don’t get that excuse, because you are choosing to read in public. So if you have a reading problem, memorize your text. If you stutter, get speech therapy. If James Earl Jones can get rid of his stutter and become who he became, so can you. And be familiar enough with your material to look up, meet someone’s eye in the crowd, and go back to the text without losing your place.

I don’t expect writers to turn into professional actors overnight, but these tips should help you present yourself better when you’re reading in public, and that should help you book more readings and sell more books.

Sushi Etiquette

by | Jan 19, 2010 | Travel

I’m not surprised to find out that there are a lot of bits of sushi etiquette that I didn’t know about, but some of these I think I’ll purposefully ignore moving forward.Now I like me some sushi, but the biggest problem I run into is with rolls. There’s a joint I frequent in Atlanta called Aqua Bistro in Buckhead, and I love a roll they have on their menu called the Yummy Yummy roll. I can be found there pretty much any Monday night that I’m in the ATL, because it’s 2 for 1 roll night, and fat boy likes to eat. But the rolls that I get some places are so big, it seems like it’s impossible to get it all in my mouth in one bite without cramming my mouth full and looking like a huge boor.

Now typically I don’t care, because in many cases I am a huge boor, but I wonder why the rolls are made so huge that I have to try to bite through it, which typically leads to a huge fail on my part. So I try to eat as delicately as possible, but often end up making a huge mess. But back to the rules – some of these just don’t work for me. For one, I like dipping my rice in the soy, so I’m going to dip my rice in the soy. And if you don’t like it, deal with it. And if I’m given disposable chopsticks, I’m gonna rub them together. That’s just the deal. If I get high-tone chopsticks, I’ll trust them to be splinter-free. And sometimes I like dropping a little wasabi in my soy. Not always, depends on the mood.

But more importantly, where are there some other good sushi joints that I’m missing? In Charlotte I love New Zealand Cafe, and Rousan’s is always harmless. But I’m always looking for recommendations in Charlotte and Atlanta, since those are the cities that I eat most of my meals in.

Upcoming

by | Jan 18, 2010 | Real Life, Writing

It’s a busy week, and we got some spectacularly good news right before the Just Do It performance last weekend, so here’s what’s up.

Tuesday night – Charlotte Writer’s Club meeting at Joseph-Beth Booksellers at SouthPark. I’ve been going to this for a few months now, and am still deciding exactly what I’m getting out of my membership. The people are all very nice, and the speakers are usually pretty interesting, but there’s not a lot of sharing of member’s work that goes on. I did meet Jessie there, and I’ve since started to enjoy her blog daily, so that’s good. But I think it might not be something I invest too heavily into long-term. Just enough to get a little boost now and then.

Sometime this week I’m trying to get out to CAST to see Our Lady of 121st Street and review it for Charlotte Viewpoint. I like the script, and several of my friends are in it, so that should be fun.

Saturday afternoon I’ll head over to the Charlotte Comic Mini-Con put on by Heroes. I actually worked at Heroes for a while some years back when they were still on Central Avenue. This was back when I was playing Magic the Gathering a lot and I ran the tourneys at Heroes and basically made enough money working there to pay for my comics and my Magic cards. I’ve recently gotten back into reading comics, so there’s another cash-suck in my life, but these little cons are usually good for picking up trade paperbacks ridiculously cheaply, so I can get a lot of volume reading in. Comics have been a part of my life on and off forever, and this weekend I spent a lot of time curled up with Volumes I & II of Absolute Sandman, reminding myself how absolutely beautiful those books are. I think I’ll bust out my Chris Bachalo Death T-Shirt for Story Slam Saturday night in honor of the books.

Yeah, everything is leading up to Story Slam for me this weekend. 8PM kicks off another Carolina Writers’ Night, and this time I’m sharing the stage with a novelist, a guitarist/short story writer and a columnist. It oughta be fun, and there’s always enough beer at Story Slam to make me seem witty, so come on out. It’s only $10, and then you can buy a book later and one of us will sign it for you. If you’re lucky, the one that wrote the book will sign it!

So last weekend, just before I went on for Just Do It, Suzy pulls me aside and tells me that the testing lab called. Now most of you don’t know that Suzy was recently tested for the breast cancer gene, and given the fact that her mother, aunt and grandmother all died of breast cancer, I figured the odds of her not having this particular gene were pretty slim. And her doc had already told her that if she had the gene, then she should seriously consider a double mastectomy.

Now a lot of you have met my wife. There’s a lot of boob there. And I’m a boob man. So telling the two of us that the girls might have to be removed was NOT a happy statement. Besides the scary genetic stuff, and bringing back memories of her mother’s death, telling a woman she’s gonna have to have her breasts removed is a pretty big damn deal. So it was with no small measure of delight that she told me that the test came back negative, and she does not have the genetic deformity that typically indicates a prediliction towards breast cancer, so we can return to our regularly scheduled program of mammograms and routine maintenance. So that was our good news for the day, and it was good indeed.

Talk with y’all later, and I hope to see you at Story Slam this weekend!