Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Writing: Main Course, Desert, Snacks

While gathering my thoughts, or procrastinating, before working of Friday's post in another blog, I checked in at Google Plus. A post there took me to this:
"Meat and potatoes writing and other stuff"
Paul Sofranko, In the Land of My Exile I Praise Him… (July 2, 2013)

"Some other rambling thoughts I've developed since starting Listening to the Lost Voices is the interrelationships between the various forms of writing I care about, namely fiction, blogging and posting...."
Food as a metaphor for written material isn't new. Neither, I suspect, is his main course/desert/snacks breakdown.

That's okay, since I also think that there aren't new stories: and haven't been for thousands of generations. What matters is how a storyteller presents the old tales, and that's another topic. Sort of.

Here's Paul Sofranko's breakdown. That didn't come out right, and I don't have time to rewrite. More topics.

Original writing, Sofranko's view:
  • Fiction
    • Meat and potatoes
  • Blogging
    • Desert
  • Posting on social networks
    • Snacks
I appreciated reading that Paul Sofranko thinks blogging can be (self-) indulgence or service to others.

Even self-indulgent 'my opinion is better than yours' blogs are a service to screenwriters and columnists, sort of. I suspect that the ditzy blogger is a good substitute for the crackpot neighbor in sitcoms. Serious columnists facing a deadline can whip out the required word count with a 'death of reason' piece by writing a '60s column: with "blogging" substituted for "television."

Most of my blogs are of the 'indulgence' variety. I'm still astounded that folks keep reading Apathetic Lemming of the North posts. The 'service' blogs, like A Catholic Citizen in America, take more effort: partly because I realize that nobody's going to read those posts unless I make them mildly entertaining or informative. Yet more topics.

I'm in the happy position of being a semi-retired old coot, so I can indulge my enthusiasm for sharing odd bits of information and spend time sharing not-so-odd ideas.

A deadline looms. I can't put this off any longer, I've got to get back to work.

Vaguely-related posts:

Privacy Policy

Nothing spooky here.

These days it's important to have a "privacy policy" available: so here's mine.

I do not collect information on individuals visiting this blog. If you leave a comment, I'll read what you wrote: but I don't keep a record of comments, apart from what Blogger displays. (In other words, the only record of what you write or who you are will be what people see at the bottom of the post.)

I do collect information about how many hits this blog gets, where they come from, and some technical information. I use the WebSTAT service for this purpose - and all that shows is which ISP you use, and where it's located.

You can stop most of Webstat's data gathering by disabling cookies in your browser. I don't know why you would, but some folks do.

I'm also an AdSense affiliate, so Google collects information on what I've written in each post: but that's mostly my problem.

I'm also considering starting an affiliate relationship with DAZ Productions. You should be able to keep DAZ and Commission Junction, their provider of affiliate services, from collecting information by - again - disabling cookies in your browser.

And you can keep DAZ Productions from finding out anything about you, by not buying any of their products.

Again, I don't know why you would: but some folks do.

Or, rather, don't.