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Push vs. Pull

snipejaeg — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:12:54 +0000

I was thinking the other day.

Shocking, I know. Fortunately, nothing much came of it.

But I realized that in high school, when I read comics in the newspaper that were selected by an editor (probably a middle-aged dude trying desperately not to lose his audience of Midwestern retirees – how’s that working out for you, old media?), I read maybe a half-dozen strips every morning. The rest just weren’t funny or interesting. Some of the ones I read weren’t funny or interesting most of the time, but once every two or three weeks they came through.

Now, using Google reader and a handful of bookmarks and acting as my own gatekeeper, I read a few dozen strips every day. Well, not on weekends, but so it goes. And these strips are great – the ratio of funny/interesting to not has been reversed since the days when I was captive to the newspaper.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, I love the Internet.

Trope of the Day: Badass Bookworm – you’ve got to love a trope that includes both Giles from Buffy and Dexter Morgan.

Never Enough

snipejaeg — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:23:45 +0000

There’s never enough.

Never enough time, never enough money. Never enough time to run, to write, to read. Never enough time for friends and family, for relaxation.

Never enough excuses, anyhow.

Time to get to work on living.

Trope of the Day: A Very Potter Musical

Just Because You’re An Idiot Doesn’t Mean Other People Don’t Exist

snipejaeg — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:25 +0000

To the punk high schoolers who created a nightmare line all on their own: I hope you realize that before you blocked off the box office with your five minute discussion on what movie to see, before you took another five minutes (each) to find your money or credit cards, and before you each spent a minute accusing me of cheating you, there was no line. After you did all that, there was a line out the door for the next forty-five minutes.

I’m not one to mistake correlation for causality, but there does seem to be a connection here.

Creative People in Movies

snipejaeg — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:02:16 +0000

I just saw Julie and Julia last night (and I can’t praise it enough), and I’ve only seen bits and pieces but Funny People has been out a while now. Both of these movies are having similar effects on me, though. Both remind me that creative success takes a while. More importantly, they’ve taught me that creative people are often most successful when they’re working with someone – sort of a creative positive feedback loop.

In other words, I miss my theatre Fam.

From an IM conversation

snipejaeg — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:01:54 +0000

-you’ve got to break an egg to make a chicken that will lay more eggs
-why did the baby cross the road?
-it was stapled to the egg that came after the chicken
-wait
-okay, so there’s this chicken, and there’s an egg next to it
-they add up to 30 cents, and one of them is not the lesser evil
-which one is worth two in the bush?

Sometimes

snipejaeg — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:30:11 +0000

I get frustrated with myself.

Right now, my falcon cannot hear the falconer and the center is not holding.

I was thinking today about Edison’s workshop. Though the man was a bit of a jerk sometimes (and isn’t romanticized by steampunks like Tesla), he knew how to get things done. According to radio-electronics.com, at Edison’s ‘invention factory’ in Menlo Park

“He said he would create a minor invention every ten days and a “big trick” every six months. In fact he had over 40 projects under way at any one time and he was applying for around 400 patents every year.”

Menlo Park was founded when Edison was 29, so clearly age was not a factor.

I keep hearing about the tremendous output of professional authors, people I respect. TV writers have astounding production when you look at what a good show does in a season.

So what’s my problem?

Writing Progress

snipejaeg — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:55:00 +0000

I’m starting working on my submission for the ABC Television Writing Fellowship, and I’ve added a progress bar to reflect that. (So far I’ve just brainstormed and started outlining, ergo zero progress as of this post). But since this is time sensitive (a very hard deadline), I’m going to be focusing on this project for a bit so the other status bars probably won’t be moving for a bit. FYI.

Why I Have A Headache

snipejaeg — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:25:39 +0000

See, when you’re working with things you only half understand (like, for example, css and php and other wordpressy things) and you know one way to solve your problem, it would be a bad idea to spend two hours looking for another way just because you think it’d be “the right way” to do it. You can solve things in about 45 seconds and move on to the way you’d planned to spend the night. Looking for another way to do things would be silly. It’d be idiotic, and roughly as painful as smashing your head against a concrete wall.

Sigh.

New site is starting to come together, although trying to figure how to make Wordpress do what I want is taking time I’d like to be using writing. The first round of that’s closer to being over every day, though.

Interviews, eh?

snipejaeg — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:25:12 +0000

Set up two interviews today; a new one for tomorrow and a redo of one from last week where the manager was transferred to a different theater.

Made a few tweaks to the new site, made notes of a couple more for tomorrow. Got some writing done on WIP, started brainstorming for a couple more. Will be tweaking status bars soon to add them.

Roll with it

snipejaeg — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:45:41 +0000

Tonight did not go as planned. My internet connection went kerfritzen for a while somewhere between the wall jack and the rest of the world, so that threw off a lot of my plans for the evening (job apps online, working on the new site, etc).

So instead, I tackled one of the projects around the apartment I’ve been putting off. Not only did I clean up the pile of chaos that’s been following me around for the past few years (well, this particular pile anyway), I then put my new productivity plan/strategy/thing to work and started brainstorming/planning some things I’ve been saying I wanted to do for about 9-10 months. So while it’s only been a couple days, I’m liking how this productivity thing is working out.

Because of the brainstorming, though, I didn’t get any writing done on the current WIP. Which I guess is okay: they way things are looking, I’m about to add two or three WIPs, and I’m gonna want to be working on them all. If I get in the habit of high production, that can only help.