Is it just me, or does anybody else notice they have an addiction to internet lists? not all lists, of course. When there are hundreds of them out there, a proper addict reserves the right to be choosy, but nine times out of ten, when we are bored and surfing (or stumbling) on the internet, a list can be the right pick-me-up. So just what's in a list that makes it so addictive? I'm guessing for the majority of us, we all have a pretty decent amount of confusion about ourselves, the world, or life in general, and when we see lists that offer us advice or insight into these things trimmed down to pocket-size, we eat it up. For instance, the following are topics i made up, but how likely are you to pick on them if you saw them... 10 Things A Guy Loves About You 10 Ways To Make Her Burst Out Laughing 5 Steps To Avoiding Debt The Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of All Time These lists almost function like the day-time television version of the internet- absorbing us with relatively useless social nuance everyday. I always wondered what lists would be made for certain groups of people, like terrorists... 10 Ways To Make A Bomb Without Including Yourself As An Ingredient or politicians 10 Ways To F*** Your Nation And Get Paid Doing It or even Jehova's Witnesses 10 Ways To Annoy Society On Their Only Day Off One could make a business doing this. or t-shirts
So many poems but the same old style, and reviews with the smiles of crocodiles; where average is lauded in hopes that they audit and return, in kind, your praise. A few gems, there are from the rawest of poets; the new ones who don't have their vision contorted. And amongst the old there are the bold and the gifted, I respect much. But for all that I see- a spamming spree- of boring rhymes of complexity; attempting to be more than they should be- a bore lacking imagination.
Jesus Frickin Crist...I get one of these questions at least once every two weeks. It's like I have "Love to argue about stupid things" written on my face somewhere. Argument always begins as "Do you believe in God" and then degenerates to me defending myself against the half-poetic guano-fountain that sounds like years of poorly funded brainwashing. The argument always ends with grudgingly agree to disagree. I always dream that if I had the hackers touch, I would go into their bank accounts and give all their money away to the poor and needy like Jesus would have done. Then I would hide in the bushes and laugh watching them go bat-**** crazy in a tirade that would have Mel Gibson and Christian Bale blogging about it. I used to be religious mostly for the sake of the very, very spiritually and mentally strong, formidable, and amazing example of a human wonder that my grandmother is...and the fact that it was one of the first comic books I ever read. But then you go to school and get your brain turned on and, well, you know... But is God even relevant anymore...really? He seems more like one of those retro topics you bring up when you remember the weird things that symbolized past ages like bell-bottoms, disco, and the horoscope. I'm pretty sure the church understands this and plans to come out with the exciting new and sleek version of iGod sometime around 2012 when the world ends. Even the horoscope is being replaced with a much more twenty-first century personality-dictating fascination called "humanmetrics" or "Psychological Type Profiles." If you want to find out who you are also, click below...you'll be amazed just how specific this general description of you is...just like the horoscope. http://typelogic.com/ or http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp Really, God is such a boring topic. The only fun you get out of it is in arguing about it with someone else. Things get even more exciting when AK-47's and RPG's come into the picture like in the Middle East. Those guys know how to punctuate themselves.
I have a dragons mentality. The dragons of antiquity, I mean; Tolkien, St. George, yada yada...I have a treasure and this treasure I guard day and night. I don't like visitors, especially unwelcome ones, and I tend to sit on my treasure and enjoy simply having it rather than actually putting it to any practical use. What's my treasure...ideas. New ideas. One of the things that will make your story more interesting than most is that you have new ideas; a new look or perspective on something, or just something so mind-blowingly new and intriguing your idea becomes the modus operandi of a number of pop-cults- if not the new emotional center of your reader. New ideas fascinate. To put it another way, anybody can administer Facebook, but very few would have been able to come up with the ideas that made it successful. In writing...in the market...new ideas are gold. So as I am getting psyched to finally be able to post some of my work online and share a piece of mua with the world, I stop and think. Hey dummy. What's to prevent someone who comes across your writing from...borrowing...your idea. Hmmm...I don't know, self. Copyright is nice and all but I don't think that is offered here and even if it were, it's TOO easy to sidestep that. A person sees your idea and becomes inspired by induction. They reuse your idea and now it is no longer your idea, but the person who is able to market it first. Seeing as though I actually want to be a writer with something new to bring to the table, I think it best no to leave all my new on the table. This is not to stoke or promote any paranoia in the site. It's just my kind of common sense. You don't leave cash sitting out in public and you don't leave your diary on the table at school. Therefore, the work I would like to get feedback for the most is the one I cannot post because the hopefully good qualities I hope will bring attention to my story I don't want to become the good qualities of another. Writing lesson number two...be wise as the serpent, and just as sly.
So you are a Writer. I've been telling myself that for the past...I don't know...as long as I've been talking, probably. But if I were actually talking to myself, myself would turn and say. "Really! What did you write?" To which I would have replied, "...Stuff...." I can make the argument that "I write, therefore I am a Writer," but there is something missing there. Dissatisfaction...incompleteness. Something has not been fulfilled. Today I realized what that is. Everybody writes. Everybody can say they are writers, but what separates a Writer from a "writer" is that they have the ambition to want to be admired. I don't want to just write things, I want people to read them and be like "Wow, amazing, I really agree, you're right on." I want to connect many. I want people to see and agree with the things I create and the views I take. That's what a "writer" is, and because I haven't made anything I felt truly got myself across to people...I haven't "written" anything yet.
How does one review an item that has been reviewed at least five times already? Either you really do have new insight or you have to repeat what others have already said? But I am being narrow-minded, I guess. I can also find a post that doesn't have any reviews. Is that why they did it? Getting feedback is gold, and I guess this is the moderators way of spreading the wealth. And so this concludes today's episode of the painfully obvious but somewhat annoying.
It is very hard to come up with a genuinely new idea. I've tried. I wrote them down. Then I read or watched TV...sorry. Not only were they proven not new- sometimes quite old, but they were used to far better effect than I would have. I guess the only thing to do is bring a new perspective or insight on an old topic. No one writes new things anyway, right? Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Robert Jordan's 'The Wheel of Time'... All these works are very popular, but the general plot is never new. But they have brought to us a new perspective on things. When reading, one clearly sees references that can be described as the literary poaching of other older authors, myths, religious icons, real life events, etcetera, etcetera. But did they have a choice? After three thousand plus years of art and story telling, there is nothing new under the sun. So what to do? What draws people to a good story? I made a list, but it kept going and going. Many things inspire us at different times in our lives, but all those things have one thing in common; they grab our emotions. Joy, fear, hatred, shock, love, surprise, COMEDY. Great stories are one in which we find ourselves emotionally connected to. An emotional investment with great returns, we get something back from such stories that make us value them as much as any other great life experience. The moral of writing lesson number one...there are good stories and bad stories, but there is no perfect story. Relax.