I Can't Believe It's Not August: An IWSG Post

The Insecure Writer's Support Group was founded by Alex J. Cavanaugh and is co-hosted this month by Alex, Chemist Ken, S.L. Hennessy, Michelle Wallace, and Joylene Nowell Butler. More about the group.

This time, my insecurity is . . . well, time. Time and productivity. Time flies like an arrow (fruit flies like bananas) and I feel like I haven't done nearly as much writing as I could have this year, and it's already past Labor Day. Furthermore, I feel like I'm crashing on the blogging front as well, which I consider to be a kind of writing. I've been blogging, but not on The Eagle's Aerial Perspective, and I don't know for sure how to revitalize it.

I've been sinking time into Tumblr, and while Tumblr is a great deal of fun it's not the same as having to type things out and express ideas, and also to comment on other people's posts. So I suppose my insecurity is: How am I going to get back to blogging, for real this time? I've been considering jumping into some kind of prompt-influenced thing (if any of you would like to give me prompts for posts, I'd love it) or forcing myself to post every day to get me to at least visit my dash daily. I don't want to give up on Blogger, because this blog is important to me. (Much as that might not be apparent based on my lack of activity.)

What do you do when you're in a blogging slump and can't find the words? 


-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (116)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules for participating:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I've never read anything by Dickens before, so a couple weeks ago I checked out this book and Oliver Twist from the library. I don't really know how his individual books are regarded, therefore Great Expectations is mostly being read by chance; I'm hoping it will be interesting.

And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who visited our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory process under similar circumstances.

-p. 72

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Have you read anything by Charles Dickens? If so, any favorites? What are you reading now?


-----The Golden Eagle

Writing Styles: An IWSG Post

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh, and co-hosted this month by M. Pax, Karen Walker, and Melissa Maygrove. Find out more about the group.

My writing insecurity this month falls under the header of the subjectivity of different writing styles/voices. A lot of writers and authors these days seem to recommend, or at least lean toward, a very short, direct sort of style. Short sentences, simple sentence structure, uncomplicated dialogue. Granted, this style can be quite effective. But occasionally I hate it and I cannot really write it, or at least I don't enjoy writing it very much. My preference is for long, flowing sentences with plenty of semi-colons and hyphens, and as many variations in sentence structure as possible.

Of course, that goes against a lot of advice, particularly in terms of publication. My main question, I suppose, is whether my love of a . . . let's say, longer writing style (I'm sure there's a technical term I don't know or have forgotten) is actually just bad writing. My inclination is that it's not, but I'm wondering what your opinion is.

Do you consider a certain writing style better than others? If so, which one do you have a preference for? Or do you enjoy all styles?


-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (115)

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules for participating:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from Shadows Over Baker Street edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan, which is an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories written by various authors combining Arthur Conan Doyle with H.P. Lovecraft. To be honest, I took it out of the library for one author--Neil Gaiman--whose story "A Study in Emerald" is included. It's quite a good story, and the others I've read are also well-written.

The thorned branches thrust sharply outward like claws, and the whole growth gave one the impression of many black entities congealed into a single one. Each step I took was laborious, each outthrust root a cause for alarm. 

-p. 91, "A Case of Royal Blood" by Steven-Elliot Altman

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Do you read anthologies? Who's one author you'll hunt down if you discover they've written something new? What are you reading now?


-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (114)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules for participating:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I'm not very far in yet so I'm not sure what to make of it, the book being one of the so-called classics (I try to read classics during the summer each year). Though I do find some of the passages rather funny, if in a black, cynical sort of way.

The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government paid him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. 

-p. 79

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Have you ever read Catch-22? If so, what did you think? What are you reading right now?


-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (113)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules for participating:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Gosh, it's been a long time since I've done this meme. Over two months, really. Ahem. Anyway, this week my teaser is from Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It's taken me a long time to get around to reading this book; with the recent NSA spying issue/debate and the general constant political concern that government is getting too big, I suppose it's better late than never.

(Not the cover of the copy I'm reading. But I couldn't find the right one.)

He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain.

-p. 161

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Have you read Nineteen Eighty-Four or anything else by George Orwell? What are you reading now?


-----The Golden Eagle