Over on BibiOZ.com (The Booksearch Wizard), they have a page where you can type in your birthday (use the calendar tool, it is easier to make sure that you get the right results) and the system spits out a list of the bestsellers on the day (week) of your birth (unless you were born before 1950, then you just get the bestsellers for the year).
(The link is on the topbar, far right---I could not get a clean link to the direct page.)
The fiction bestsellers for the week of my birth (ending September 5th 1965) were:
1: The Source (James Michener)
2: Up the Down Staircase (Bel Kaufman)
3: The Green Berets (Robin Moore)
4: Hotel (Arthur Hailey)
5: The Looking Glass War (John Le Carre)
6: The Man With the Golden Gun (Ian Fleming)
7: Night of Camp David (Fletcher Knebel)
8: Don't Stop the Carnival (Herman Wouk)
9: The Ambassador (Morris West)
10: The Rabbi (Noah Gordon)
The non-fiction bestsellers for the week of my birth (ending September 5th 1965) were:
1: The Making of the President 1964 (Theodore H. White)
2: Intern (Doctor X)
3: Is Paris Burning? (Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre)
4: Markings (Dag Hammarskjold)
5: Games People Play (Eric Berne)
6: The Oxford History of the American People (Samuel Eliot Morison)
7: Journey of a Soul (Pope John XXIII)
8: A Gift of Prophecy (Ruth Montgomery)
9: Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed (Elizabeth Longford)
10: Sixpence in Her Shoe (Phyllis McGinley)
How many of these books have I read? None.
I have read a couple of pages each from The Man With the Golden Gun, Games People Play, and Is Paris Burning?
I imagine that someone out there will find this sad; I hope that they have read more of the bestsellers of their birth week than I have.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Changing Resolutions
One of the things that I have noticed over the last few years is my changing attitude towards making New Year's resolutions. At one time, I used to make New Year's resolutions, and I would never keep them. Today, I no longer make New Year's resolutions (except when required to).
(This year, CCD Campus Connection, the college newspaper that I write the astrology column for, gathered a set of resolutions and matching pictures from all the staff. My resolution? To clean up a certain table before the end of the year.)
I think that the reason I quit doing resolutions was that I was making impossible choices. "This year, I am going to write a novel." "This year, I am going to make a greater effort to get published." "This year, I am going to make a greater effort to actually make money."
Those were the days that I used to do the annual New Year (Spring) writing campaign. You know, one of those frenzies of activities that make you think that you are busy and making progress, but in reality you never really accomplish anything.
Nowadays, my writing campaigns occur 365 days a year. Oh, there are times of increased activity, such as my school breaks. But the times of increased activity merely correspond to those times that I have extra time to work at my craft.
At some point, I became one of those writers who is always working.
A small reminder of this is one of my latest projects: a set of coloring pages based on the Splendor Solis illustrations. There is no definite self-imposed deadline on the project. And I have posted one of the rough Splendor Solis coloring pages on my Golden Dawn blog. Hopefully, I get it done by the end of the year, and figure out a viable way to profit from the project.
Ok, it might be a resolution to finish it by the end of the year...but I am not under any delusion that it will make this my big break-out year. I guess that I am older and wiser...well, older. I have discovered that as long as I am slowly increasing my stock of material, the urge to make resolutions is not going to rear its ugly head. And that makes me much happier than I was when I was making resolutions.
(This year, CCD Campus Connection, the college newspaper that I write the astrology column for, gathered a set of resolutions and matching pictures from all the staff. My resolution? To clean up a certain table before the end of the year.)
I think that the reason I quit doing resolutions was that I was making impossible choices. "This year, I am going to write a novel." "This year, I am going to make a greater effort to get published." "This year, I am going to make a greater effort to actually make money."
Those were the days that I used to do the annual New Year (Spring) writing campaign. You know, one of those frenzies of activities that make you think that you are busy and making progress, but in reality you never really accomplish anything.
Nowadays, my writing campaigns occur 365 days a year. Oh, there are times of increased activity, such as my school breaks. But the times of increased activity merely correspond to those times that I have extra time to work at my craft.
At some point, I became one of those writers who is always working.
A small reminder of this is one of my latest projects: a set of coloring pages based on the Splendor Solis illustrations. There is no definite self-imposed deadline on the project. And I have posted one of the rough Splendor Solis coloring pages on my Golden Dawn blog. Hopefully, I get it done by the end of the year, and figure out a viable way to profit from the project.
Ok, it might be a resolution to finish it by the end of the year...but I am not under any delusion that it will make this my big break-out year. I guess that I am older and wiser...well, older. I have discovered that as long as I am slowly increasing my stock of material, the urge to make resolutions is not going to rear its ugly head. And that makes me much happier than I was when I was making resolutions.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Denver Zoo 2011 Free Days
Ok, this is not writing related (unless I decide to spend a day at the zoo instead of writing), but I am posting it anyways because I like animals.
Denver Zoo 2011 Free Zoo Days
January 8 (Saturday)
January 24 (Monday)
February 6 (Sunday)
February 19 (Saturday)
October 12 (Wednesday)
October 20 (Thursday)
November 6 (Sunday)
November 12 (Saturday)
Denver Zoo 2011 Free Zoo Days
January 8 (Saturday)
January 24 (Monday)
February 6 (Sunday)
February 19 (Saturday)
October 12 (Wednesday)
October 20 (Thursday)
November 6 (Sunday)
November 12 (Saturday)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Writing Christmas articles
One of the markers I use to gauge how mentally healthy I am at any given time is the stuff that I am writing. As all writers know, your writing is an indication of your mental state; some writers even use writing to change their current mental state. It is like a giant feedback loop. Your mood affects your writing; your writing affects your mood.
Last week, while I was supposed to be studying for finals, I had a couple of evenings where my brain absolutely refused to do any more schoolwork. I find myself cruising the internet, looking for distraction. While on Facebook one night, a friend of a friend joked about giving someone a lump of coal for Christmas. I seconded the notion, then found myself wondering how much a lump of coal actually would cost. So I googled it.
What I discovered was that a lot of companies were selling lump of coal themed products. Looking at the date, I decided that it was way too late in the season to write a Christmas shopping article. Ha! The idea and one other just stuck in my head.
Today, I broke down and wrote the artiicles. The shopping piece might do me some good next Christmas season. I never actually have time to write Christmas articles during the time that internet writers are uploading them; a pesty thing called the University of Colorado at Denver gets in the way and takes up most (if not all) of my writing time during the height of that season. As a result, I have no Christmas test articles out there---I know a lot of writers have a big stock of Christmas articles online, but I have no idea how many pageviews they are getting. Are Christmas articles (or any holiday articles) worth the time and effort necessary to write them? I don't know. I need to find out. So I now have a test Christmas shopping article up on Associated Content---oh wait, it is now the Yahoo Contributer Network.
The other piece I wrote was simply to get it out of my head. It was a short semi-fictional piece about my mother playing Christmas music in July. My mom playing Christmas music in July is not the fictional part. That is some god's honest truth; she actually plays Christmas music in July. Don't ask why---I never figured it out. I have also never figured out why I get the urge to play Christmas music in July either.
This is not the first semi-fictional piece I have done about my family. The first one I did was actually done for an Introduction to Fictional Writing class I took at the Community College of Denver. It was a piece about the time I fell down the stairs at school and said a few choice words. The assignment was to fictionize a real memory; in my case, it was already partially fictionized (because my memories of it consisted of my father telling me the story). I never published that piece; maybe someday I will (mainly because I like the story).
The first semi-fictional family piece I actually published to the web (first on Helium, then on AC) was a piece about recieving a fruitcake for Christmas. (Lump of coal---fruitcake---there seems to be a pattern there.) It is definitely fiction. For one thing, I actually like fruitcake. The second thing is...well, I took liberties with how I depicted one of my relatives. It is still one of my favorite pieces.
Unfortunately, short fiction does not generate a lot of pageviews. There is also the little fact that it involves my family...it is semi-fiction; there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. It is that last part that promises always to get me into trouble. Comedy about one's family is not the way to go if you want peaceful familial relationships. It is time like this (when I have written pieces that I like, but know other people will be upset by) that I find myself wondering if other writers and entertainers also have this problem.
Oh well, odds are (if I am being honest) that none of my family will ever read the stories in the first place. Which is even more depressing than them being upset with me. But I suspect that is true of half the writers in the world. I have this theory that as a writer you have a fifty/fifty chance of your family loving everything you write or absolutely hating everything you write. The universe is balanced---I just got the pillar of severity section in this particular regard.
Nevertheless, for some reason (well beyond my ability to reason it out) I had the urge to write a semi-fictionized piece about my family around the holiday season---again. I think I see a pattern forming here.
Happy holidays!
Last week, while I was supposed to be studying for finals, I had a couple of evenings where my brain absolutely refused to do any more schoolwork. I find myself cruising the internet, looking for distraction. While on Facebook one night, a friend of a friend joked about giving someone a lump of coal for Christmas. I seconded the notion, then found myself wondering how much a lump of coal actually would cost. So I googled it.
What I discovered was that a lot of companies were selling lump of coal themed products. Looking at the date, I decided that it was way too late in the season to write a Christmas shopping article. Ha! The idea and one other just stuck in my head.
Today, I broke down and wrote the artiicles. The shopping piece might do me some good next Christmas season. I never actually have time to write Christmas articles during the time that internet writers are uploading them; a pesty thing called the University of Colorado at Denver gets in the way and takes up most (if not all) of my writing time during the height of that season. As a result, I have no Christmas test articles out there---I know a lot of writers have a big stock of Christmas articles online, but I have no idea how many pageviews they are getting. Are Christmas articles (or any holiday articles) worth the time and effort necessary to write them? I don't know. I need to find out. So I now have a test Christmas shopping article up on Associated Content---oh wait, it is now the Yahoo Contributer Network.
The other piece I wrote was simply to get it out of my head. It was a short semi-fictional piece about my mother playing Christmas music in July. My mom playing Christmas music in July is not the fictional part. That is some god's honest truth; she actually plays Christmas music in July. Don't ask why---I never figured it out. I have also never figured out why I get the urge to play Christmas music in July either.
This is not the first semi-fictional piece I have done about my family. The first one I did was actually done for an Introduction to Fictional Writing class I took at the Community College of Denver. It was a piece about the time I fell down the stairs at school and said a few choice words. The assignment was to fictionize a real memory; in my case, it was already partially fictionized (because my memories of it consisted of my father telling me the story). I never published that piece; maybe someday I will (mainly because I like the story).
The first semi-fictional family piece I actually published to the web (first on Helium, then on AC) was a piece about recieving a fruitcake for Christmas. (Lump of coal---fruitcake---there seems to be a pattern there.) It is definitely fiction. For one thing, I actually like fruitcake. The second thing is...well, I took liberties with how I depicted one of my relatives. It is still one of my favorite pieces.
Unfortunately, short fiction does not generate a lot of pageviews. There is also the little fact that it involves my family...it is semi-fiction; there is a grain of truth in there somewhere. It is that last part that promises always to get me into trouble. Comedy about one's family is not the way to go if you want peaceful familial relationships. It is time like this (when I have written pieces that I like, but know other people will be upset by) that I find myself wondering if other writers and entertainers also have this problem.
Oh well, odds are (if I am being honest) that none of my family will ever read the stories in the first place. Which is even more depressing than them being upset with me. But I suspect that is true of half the writers in the world. I have this theory that as a writer you have a fifty/fifty chance of your family loving everything you write or absolutely hating everything you write. The universe is balanced---I just got the pillar of severity section in this particular regard.
Nevertheless, for some reason (well beyond my ability to reason it out) I had the urge to write a semi-fictionized piece about my family around the holiday season---again. I think I see a pattern forming here.
Happy holidays!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Motivation malfunction
The last few days, I have noticed a definite lack of motivation on my part. Or at least, a lack of motivation geared towards what I was supposed to be doing---studying for finals and working on last minute papers.
But what I found interesting is the fact that I would catch myself researching articles to write. I guess it has been awhile since I wrote anything and my mind is itching to go. We will see how long and strong the motivation to write is in a few days when I will actually have time to practice my trade.
For those who are curious, one final is done, two to go, and one I don't have to take (taking the final adds nothing to the grade I already have---I already have an A).
But what I found interesting is the fact that I would catch myself researching articles to write. I guess it has been awhile since I wrote anything and my mind is itching to go. We will see how long and strong the motivation to write is in a few days when I will actually have time to practice my trade.
For those who are curious, one final is done, two to go, and one I don't have to take (taking the final adds nothing to the grade I already have---I already have an A).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
