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Quiet Writing Days & Muni Diaries Submissions

Things have been relatively quiet on the writing front lately; not much writing in terms of leisure/pleasure, but exercising my writing muscle at work and through academic essays. I’ve been also reading a lot, flying through a book per week on average. Reading for speed isn’t a big goal of mine, but I find myself feeling quite satisfied when I’m able to pick up a book that’s THAT good that I can’t even put it down for a moment.

I’ve had a few of my older blog posts featured over at Muni Diaries, a local flavor blog on the wonderful public transportation system here. It’s been one of my favorite blogs to read ever since I discovered it via Twitter about a month or two ago; it’s just nice and amusing to read what others have to say/think about their daily bus rides. There’s always something new to write about when riding on the bus anyway: new characters for future writing, interesting conversations picked up, etc.

And in other news, I somehow must have missed the sudden increase, but I just checked and found that I had 15 new fans on my Facebook Page. That’s a rather big jump from the last time I visited the page. It’s great to see that people are checking in on my works (albeit, I haven’t posted recently); just 70 more fans to go before I can customize my URL for my page. It’s not so important, but it’ll make my Page a little more personable, right?

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#amreading genres list reading

Book Genre Preferences

You know, it’d been awhile since I had read a book for leisurely purposes. Throughout the last half of high school and all of college, I put my hobby of reading on hiatus to concentrate on reading school textbooks. Six months after college, I decided I would make up for all that time by compiling a book list for myself.

In general, I’m open to almost anything in all aspects of life. It’s the same thing with books: I had no real idea what kind of genres I preferred since I had taken such a long leave-of-absence form reading, so I just asked my friends and family for any book recommendations they had.

As of this past week, my book list is at 330+ books (yikes!) Of course, I’ve been adding onto the list ever since last January, so that explains the huge number of books on the list. I read 26 books last year, and so far have read 16 books this year. From these 40some books, I notice where my preferences lie: in self-help, nonfiction, and general fiction. I have a lot of books on my still to-read list from all sorts of genres, but it seems that I find books in the three aforementioned categories most enjoyable.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with other genres I haven’t read/don’t prefer to read. It’s just, I tend to enjoy books that make me think a little more past what I already know. Many of my peers/friends prefer books in the Science Fiction/Fantasy, or Chick Lit genres. While I may not prefer reading those kinds of books, I wouldn’t say I would never read anything from those genres.

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Cutting Down The Duties–

I’ve come to a big realization the past week: it’s really no surprise, but I admit I am quite a perfectionist. It’s come to the point that I notice how many goals I set each day and how all these little goals continuously stress me out to no end.

Last Tuesday evening, I was sipping on some Good Earth Tea; it’s a nice brand of tea since it also features quotations on each tea bag tag. I got a quotation last week that really stung me (in a good way) for its truthfulness/relevance to my situation:

“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.”
– Eugene Delacroix

Every day, I’m making lists, it seems, with all these lists and goals I create, I’m just making myself feel worse over things that don’t get “finished”. This flows through everything I do, including my writing. I feel disappointed when I’m unable to get some writing done, e.g., some sort of progress on my Novel 1 rewrite.

So, I’ve decided to cut back on a lot of things to get myself back into a better state of mind. For one, I have reduced my blogs down to just this one and my Cinnamon Juice food blog; I was working on Photo 365 for the past six months, but, since May, I’d fallen behind and found myself constantly in need of “catching up”. It’s still like that with Cinnamon Juice, but, well, there’s no need to feel like I need to catch up on things all the time.

I suppose the same can be said about many things in life.

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#amwriting contest Internet magazine news Twitter

Cell-phone novels: A Fad or More?

I read about cell-phone novels in the latest issue of The Writer Magazine, and honestly, I hadn’t even thought about cell-phone novels before the article (didn’t even know they existed). According to the article, this genre really took off in Japan (not surprised), and is just now starting to catch on in the US (isn’t it always like that when it comes to technology/trends?). The point of a cell-phone novel is material posted serially via, you guessed it, cell-phones. 140 characters per post–sounds like Twitter to me. Two websites, Quillpill and Textnovel have popped up in the US serving this genre: post your clips on the sites, get user feedback, and, possibly win a prize for a well-written cell-phone novel.

I think this genre has potential, but it also seems too early to tell since I had never even heard of this genre before I read the article. Since the article was featured in The Writer Magazine, I’m not sure if non-writing folk know of this genre just yet.

For some people, reading novels on a cellphone works for them; for me, I still prefer to hold an old-fashioned book and read that way. I am sure there is still a considerable number of people who prefer to read books the old-fashioned way.

Also, I took a look at the two websites earlier and my first impression of both places (in terms of layout/usability of the site) was not so great. Quillpill had a cleaner look than Textnovel, but Quillpill was also pretty dark with colors. Textnovel uses lighter colors, but I can’t help but feel like the colors don’t work so well in usability either. The point of the websites is not to show off great layouts, but still…when it comes to drawing people in to use their services, it’d be better to have layouts that are usable and attractive to some sense.

But, that’s besides the point of what Quillpill and Textnovel are offering. Would I consider signing up with one of the websites to try things out? Well, I’d consider it, but I believe I could do the same (write a “cell-phone”/serial novel) via Twitter. The difference between Twitter and the other two sites is that Twitter doesn’t have the votes/feedback options. Textnovel offers a contest for the best written cell-phone novel, and one Textnovel writer is actually in the process of getting her novel published traditionally. Sounds like a good deal, right?

I’ll probably wait on this prospect since I’m already bogged down by my backlog of blog entries and other writing projects. I already post little clips of potential stories to Twitter, so I’m not sure if I’d be able to utilize Quillpill or Textnovel fully. Would you try these services out? Do you think the cell-phone novel can survive?

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holiday memories

Quiet Holiday.

I’ve spent Independence Day doing nothing overly festive. I had an early celebration meal with my brother in the morning: grilled some steak and had broccoli and yams. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary; just another regular day to me. It’s not that I’m not patriotic; mainly, I continue to think about the crowds out, and how difficult it’d be to get home after seeing fireworks at the Wharf.

Last year, I was lucky enough to be able to watch the fireworks from my apartment window since I lived right by Pier 39. That was fun, considering I could have spent that time out with the crowds instead.

The year before, I watched the fireworks from the Lone Mountain Campus at USF. In 2006, I was in Japan, and I remember one of my classmates said to me, “Happy America Day!” That year, I “celebrated” by going to a pizza parlor in Harajuku with one of my friends. We decided we should celebrate by eating something typically American.

Well, hope everyone has had a good holiday in the US today.