Blogging and Writing

Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining 'blog' is a fool's errand.
Michael Conniff, writer

The article in the New York Times about why bloggers abandoned their blogs titled “Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest,” says it’s because they are not making money or getting book deals. From my personal experience with On The Mark and B2, we didn’t get into to make money. It was more to have a platform for our opinions about current events. We did for one year and we posted every day by 9 p.m. PST. Keeping that pace, trying to have a life, and working took a toll on our time. After one year we said goodbye to everyday blogging.


Now we blog when we feel like it and readers come by when they feel like it. The article also mentioned that most blogs have an audience of one, but when you add in my family and everyone who wants to see the Hopper artwork, we have a readership of approximately 100 or so a day. I haven’t blogged lately because I have been extremely busy at work and that has taken a toll on my personal time. Things are returning to a somewhat normal pace and my desire to write has also returned.

I had started this post on Sunday, but was sidetracked by the Laker game (even with a section of the TV screen blocked out. See post below) and the book I am reading. So, I visited Random Thoughts and Jack had already posted about this. I agree with him, so check out his post and he even has a link to the NYTimes' article.

Another source of inspiration that is encouraging me to write is that a former sports editor Bill Sherwonit from the local newspaper, where I once worked while in college, has now published a number of books about the Alaskan wilderness. I thought how great to do something you absolutely love and become a recognized expert. I don’t dislike what I do, but I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t paid to for it.

I blog because I enjoy it. I love our little platform for sharing opinions, photos, and grips; and, if you enjoy it too, all the better.

Blogging is just another form of creative writing.
The Misanthrope, blogger

Personal Thoughts

“Sometimes I wonder if I'm the person I was born to be, if the life I've lived really is the one I was meant to, or if it is some half life, a mutation engineered by loss, cobbled together by the will to survive."
Anderson Cooper, journalist

All day I have been thinking about my life’s occupation. Lately I have been wanting to be a reporter/writer, again. Sunday morning, I read the LATimes book review about William Vollmann and his latest book “riding “Toward Everywhere," which is an account of his adventure as a slumming hobo.” I had a week’s vacation planned when I was in my early twenties to jump trains with the managing editor of the local newspaper where I worked. We never did it. I don’t recall why, but I am truly sorry we didn't. The reviewer called Vollmann an intrepid cultural interpreter. Also, yesterday morning in the NYTimes was an article on Jimmy Breslin. It talked about his style of reporting and it named many of peers who are now dead such as Norman Mailer, Murray Kempton, George Plimpton, and Arthur Schlesinger. Saturday’s Wall Street Journal featured an opinion piece on Fredric U. Dicker, state editor for the New York Post, who doesn’t let politicians get away with their usual lies and half truths. Finally, I started reading Anderson Cooper’s “Dispatches from the Edge.”

In some respects Toner Mishap is my opinion page outlet for not following my heart, but my wallet, not that I am doing so great, but my career choices have been slightly more lucrative than being a local reporter somewhere. I still have a fantasy of working for some local newspaper in my golden years. I suspect I have too much of an independent, contrarian, cynical streak to appeal to a local readership, so you're stuck with me.

Tuesday I go to court regarding the posts about my experiences as a juror, so even blogging I get into anxiety causing situations. Writing can be a dangerous and costly occupation, if you offend someone. Breslin was beat up badly by a mafia member of the Lucchese family. On The Mark called me early at the office the other morning and highly recommended that I take down the post that wrote, which was just a quote, but he thought I was asking for trouble. I removed the post. I will use the quote again shortly I have no doubt. I have deleted another post a few months ago that had to do with the CEO of a once major mortgage company, after the newspapers reported that he collected millions of dollars in bonuses and stocks, but the company was going to lay off thousands of employees, I asked how could he sleep at night.

There is certainly a chilling effect on writing if you are not careful. For my own good, I think I will just stick to Toner Mishap and attempt not to aggravate the powerful and litigation minded, as best I can.

Missed Explosion

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), novelist

I hadn’t heard the news. I am on vacation for a couple of weeks. I was sitting in the backyard starting a new book, “Out Stealing Horses” by Per Petterson, when Johnna from Blindsquirrel called and said she was okay and just missed New York’s latest explosion. You can read her more detailed story at her site.

Thank goodness you’re okay. I turned on the local news and there was nothing on, so I knew it couldn’t be a major disaster, so I turned to CNN and they were reporting it and I discovered a steam pipe burst from under the street. Working late sometimes does have its benefits. Immediately following the explosion she and other workers were told to leave, as in get out of the building now.

Johnna moved to the big apple to further her playwriting career, but she misses Los Angeles, but she is doing well and doing more than holding her own. She is fifty pages into her trilogy of plays and attends a writing class that workshops her scenes with real actors.

What happens is that when I don’t write for the blog I also don’t read other blogs as a general rule, because I usually get to the blogs through Tonermishap. Johnna’s dedication to writing has served as an inspiration for the past couple of years we worked together.

I guess it’s time to poke my head back into the world of blogs.

On The Mark -- Reporting from Russia: Mourning Vonnegut

It should be no surprise that Kurt Vonnegut was loved throughout the world, but he is especially missed in Russia. He was not only a favorite author among the generation that grew up in Soviet times in the '70s and '80s, he also was one of the few Western authors who had authorization to be read (whereas most others, such as Saul Bellow and Joseph Heller, did not).

Victor Sonkin has written a wonderful piece for the Moscow Times. It follows:

Salon
By Victor Sonkin

When Kurt Vonnegut died last week, it sent powerful ripples through Russia, even in these days of declining readership. The generation that grew up in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s listed Vonnegut among their favorite authors. There were at least four reasons for that.

One was Vonnegut's life story and his aversion to war. Enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, he was captured by the Germans and was one of a handful of American POWs who survived the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945; he was later freed by Soviet troops. This experience formed the core of his novel "Slaughterhouse-Five."

Throughout the postwar era, both official Soviet propaganda and popular feelings were strongly antiwar (even the infamous Afghan campaign was never heralded in belligerent terms), so Vonnegut was in tune with the nation's mood. Another reason was that he wrote science fiction, one of the few ways for writers to address important issues that would have been censored in other genres. "Cat's Cradle" was about scientists' (and society's) responsibility; the seminal short story "Harrison Bergeron" showed how egalitarianism could turn into tyranny. Such issues, taboo in everyday Soviet writing, could be smuggled in through science fiction and enjoyed considerable success.

Third was Vonnegut's style. This usually gets lost in translation, but Vonnegut was lucky to have Rita Rait-Kovalyova as his translator. In one of Sergei Dovlatov's satirical sketches, someone asks him who has the best prose style in Russian. He says, "Rita Rait," and the reaction is, "You mean Vonnegut in Russian is better than Fedin? How awful." (Konstantin Fedin was an official Soviet writer and bureaucrat.)

Finally, it was just sheer chance. No book by a living foreign author, especially an American, could appear in the Soviet Union without the blessing of the Party. Vonnegut was, in a sense, authorized. This explains the extent of his popularity, which other authors of a comparable caliber, such as Saul Bellow or Joseph Heller, did not achieve here. In a 2006 interview, he said: "The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"

Vonnegut has gone home. Russians, perhaps, mourn him more than others; his books have been encouraging and educating them for several decades.

Writers’ Stuff

I always write a good first line, but I have trouble in writing the others.
Molière (1622–73), dramatist

The Los Angeles Times’ Book Review had a center spread that asked famous writers to think about which object, picture or document in their study reveals most about the relationship between living and writing.

Stealing the idea, I ask you what is the item(s) in your writing area? The three pictures I favor in my den are below: