FUN LINKS

Finances

What I Learned From a Six Month Spending Freeze

Now that the Christmas behemoth is behind us, why not just jump on over to the other extreme, eh? You're probably broke anyway. Or even better, you can read an article about someone who went through all the hard parts so you can skip straight to the lessons learned. However, you may want to go through the not spending part to break out of the habit of spending. Just a thought.

Reading

Why Reading Is Important

Okay, this is fairly self-serving, I admit it. What I'm hoping this offers is an entryway into the reader's mind. One of the questions facing writers is what a reader wants. This should hopefully clear up some of that mystery.  

Apps

Top 12 Apps To Download in 2014

There may be a few here that you haven't heard about. I'm going to try out the photography apps, because I usually don't use my phone to take pictures. Nothing beats a real camera for beautiful details, but I could be wrong. There may be a post on this waiting to happen. 

Efficiency

How To Perform At Your Peak Everyday: 10 Tips For Working Smarter in 2014

I don't make resolutions on new years. It seems to limit you to making all changes all at once, at the beginning of the year, just so that you can forget them about a week later. These are some interesting ideas here that you might want to try - whenever I see a list, I tend to pick and choose what to try. Apparently checking email immediately upon waking is a bad thing - I'm going to try not to do this and see if life improves.

Creativity App

Coffitivity

This app claims to boost your creativity by providing that "coffee house" allure anywhere you go - for when you don't have time to go to a cafe, but still want to recreate those special moments.

Writing
Why You Should Be Writing Short Fiction
I don't read short fiction, and on that basis, I don't write short fiction, and that was that. Then I read this post - from 2012 no less, but it's still valid - and realized that I shouldn't make decisions based on my own self-centered, short-sighted preferences. Time to fire up that pen. 

DREAMY MUSIC: YOUNG SUMMER

This song is kind of mesmerizing. I'm experimenting with this format, in case YouTube is too annoying. Thoughts?

WRITING PICTURE PROMPT NO. 2

You are walking along a dirt path, following the long line of a man. He trails in front of you. He cannot see you. You weave along the shadows of trees until the path opens into a clearing. What now?

EMAIL IN PERSPECTIVE

“The only way we will avoid being crushed by the weight of the hundreds or thousands of emails we receive every day is to free ourselves from the need to treat each one like it matters and like it merits a response. The only way we will avoid being emotionally crushed by having other people not respond to our emails is to stop expecting a response. If we can adapt our expectations to fit the realities of this new paradigm, we will all crawl out from under the weight of the curse of email. Email will prove a blessing.”

 - Tim Challies

WHY YOU MIGHT WANT TO MAKE AN AUDIOBOOK

So...I waited until I was reading something blatantly intelligent before before completing this post. There you have it. Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, one of the most emotionally taxing, mentally overwhelming, lives-up-to-its-own-legend books I have subjected myself to. Have you ever read a book and thought - "hell, I could've written that." Well, that won't happen here.

That aside, I "read" this on audiobook. Cheating? I don't know. I used to know - I used to have all the answers, but now...I don't know. I've had some truly moving experiences via audiobook, of the same kind that reading a good book will do. That, I have discovered, is not a bad thing. Because the point of a book is to create an experience, and having it read to you, while easier (there is less focus, less concentration involved) will create an authentic experience. It may not be the exact same as hearing that perfect voice in your head, but that doesn't make it any less. 

I started this practice, like most things, under duress. Sometimes the library will have an e-copy, sometimes a physical copy, and sometimes an audio copy, but never all of them and never at the same time. Alas. So to continually feed my appetite for that particular novel, I had to compromise, and considering the state of my morals, it wouldn't be the first time. 

After compromising myself several times over while listening to books in this inferior format, I began to notice a few things:

The voice is everything. If you do not have a good reader, it will bring a good book to its knees; the experience of a book becomes irrevocably tied to this single voice. In the best case scenario, you will have a full professional cast of actors reading each individual character with symphonic interludes (See: The Golden Compass).* In the worst case, you will be subjected to hours in the company of that nasal twat-sicle that sat behind you in History 1B. Between these two extremes, you simply need to be able to read both genders without sounding whiny and high-pitched (men reading as women) or just plain weird (women reading as men). I have noticed that reading, not acting out characters, may also make the listening experience less offensive while enhancing the listener's enjoyment of the language of the book.

Audiobooks may be better or worse for certain genres. Poetry could really benefit from being heard - you can replay them over and over again like songs, until the rhythm of the words really sinks into your head. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I would want to have certain types of books read to me. I suggest you google Gilbert Gottfried and 50 Shades to see what I mean by this.  

Now, here is the crucial question - why would you want to make an audiobook? In my own experience, when I've asked people if they want to take a look at a draft of my book, the answer is almost universally the same - they would love to, but they have no time. This "I have no time" is the most popular rationale that well-meaning people have for not reading anymore. Or for only reading the news, it amounts to the same thing. The book is a monopolizer. You have a carve out a chunk of time to truly experience a novel in the traditional way, and I don't think people will give that kind of time to just anyone. This is where audiobooks come in. 

The experience of an audiobook is different than a book, because suddenly - Look! Free hands! Your hands are not tied to a book! And this allows those same hands to do a variety of other things, like wash the dishes, or drive a car, or surf the internet. Yes, the experience of reading this precious book that it took forever to bleed out from the ashes of your heart is being split between a crying baby and road rage. I try not to think about that part. I try to focus on the other part: this may be how you will reach a broader, busier audience, who would otherwise not grant you their time. It's a tactical maneuver. It's your way in. Let me put this another way, if I could pack the experience of my book into a syringe and inject it into the bloodstream of a reader, I would do it. 

This is all still theoretical on my end, though. I've never tried it - I'm still in the editing phase. But I can provide links to two posts that provide practical advice on how to do this Here and Here.

* The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was also a very good, straightforward listening experience, if you want another example. I could provide negative examples, but that's just being mean. 

G.F. WILKINSON BOOKS

It was one of those days where you back into an alley...only to discover a bookstore.

In the middle of the day, which is the only time I gravitate towards alleyways, I took a random turn and there it was: seemingly built into the wall was a series of three windows. Outside each was a polite cart of books. In each window stood a shelf, and on the shelves were more books. All different kinds. All selected with taste. 

I chatted with the owner, Wilkinson (surprised?), and he handed me his card. The store, he explained, was inspired by his European travels, where he saw people selling books on the roadside by laying their wares out on blankets. You walk by. You browse. You buy. It's the kind of idea that can vary between romantic reminiscence or book prostitution, depending on your inclinations.

I found the idea charming, both in concept and execution. 

FUN LINKS

Websites

The 100 Best, Most Interesting Blogs and Websites of 2014

Books

The Observer's Books of the Year

Every once in a while, I will read a book because it appears on a list. And the only way to know if you should trust a list is to test it out. I don't like the New York Times year end recommendations - I've been burned more than once and it's not happening again. So it may be time to give the Observer a try. Do you agree with this list?

Mind

Mentally Strong People: the 13 Things They Avoid

This article is about cultivating good mental habits - the spoiler is that there is nothing novel about any of the ways of thinking advocated here. I point this out not to be a jerk, although that is a perfectly valid motive, but because I believe that good habits should constantly be reinforced.

Writing

Joan Dideon's Thoughts on Everything

She is the master of the perfectly timed pause - it's in the way she visually distributes her line breaks to gently prod you along. Dideon encapsulates the model of glamour that you usually don't find in writing. I don't know how exactly she managed this. The effortlessness is part of her charm.

Apps

Duolingo

I came across this app recently. It's free. You can learn basic French, English, Italian, Portugese, Spanish, or German. A little owl harasses you everyday to keep moving ahead with your studies. Don't mind if I do!

Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham interview from Slate

I am oddly fascinated by Girls' writer, director, and Star Lena Dunham. I can't stand to see pictures of myself, and yet there she is: hanging around naked, awkwardly trying to seduce her boss, talking during sex. In every way possible, she throws herself out there, and then gets ripped for it. The she goes and does it again. It's fascinating.  

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy new year! I hope 2014 is good to you! 

For some, a new year is a time for new resolutions. For me, it simply means change. Neither good nor bad, just different, with a little bit of hope. So I'm going to mix things up a bit and attach some pics from my instagram account, because I forgot my actual camera and decided to see how the world would look from my phone. If you can't tell, I really really want to go snorkeling off the great barrier reef in New Zealand. It probably didn't help that I saw the second Hobbit movie, and every time I see dwarves being chased across a grassy knoll into a haunted forest (you know that scene, right?), it makes me want to go to New Zealand. 

What would you like to do this year? 

DESCENT INTO SLOTH

The Friendship Between a Girl and Her Cat

It's that time of year, and I feel I've done a great deal, so I'm going to relax and post content that earlier...let's say that earlier in the year, I was trying for higher standards, intellectual wit and whatnot, and right now...my brain just feels like looking at cats. You can click on the link for more pics. Go ahead, I dare you. I will now go read some Nabokov.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Via Showhome.nl

Merry Christmas!  As I have no tree and I live in an small apartment, this is realistically my best alternative. If you click on the link, there are also many other creative ideas as well.

I hope you have a lovely holiday!