Blogging the Day Away

Tags

daily post, memoir, WESat (Writing Essential

The blogosphere is a dangerous place for someone so easily distracted. Not only are there millions of gigabytes of reading material available, there are seemingly inexhaustible opportunities for writing. At first glance you might think this would be a treasure trove for a writer. You would be wrong.

With two books already in print, a third in preparation, and a dozen more ideas lined up to be lasered onto electronic memory, there are no shortage of words to organize into inspired sentences. But a book is a long-term project and blog articles are short and, hopefully, sweet. Therein lies the problem.

Besides my website blog, which I endear with the name Science Traveler, I contribute posts to a science policy blog, this creative writing blog, a Lincoln and Science blog that hasn’t yet gone live, Goodreads book reviews, and even Facebook. That’s a lot of writing and I’m not even counting the zombie writing sites that dwell in the shadows of the internet. Add in the more productive article writing for magazines, newsletters, Lincoln websites, and the occasional grant application and editing project, and well, there are a lot of distractions.

The good news is that I write every day. If I’m traveling without my computer I’m scribbling essays down on a pad of lined paper or thumb-typing into my notes app on the smart phone. The bad news is that the book writing has a lot of competition. Too often the competition wins.

Which reminds me…I’m off to write.

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His next book on Abraham Lincoln is due out in 2017

 

[Daily post]

Saltwater Loser

Tags

Saturday), WESat (Writing Essential

[Response to a creative writing prompt; see details below]

The guy was a loser. He had been out there for nearly three months and by now epitomized the old saying that fishing was the act of drowning worms. Worse, the kid’s mother thinks the guy is a pervert. I mean, what else could he be doing with the boy out on a little dingy? It certainly couldn’t be fishing; not one dang fish even looked at his bait, never mind took the hook. Now the kid is making a killing with the other guy. And to rub salt in his wounds, the kid mocked him by helping him tie up his crappy boat every day. The whole town looked at him with pity, just waiting for him to die so they could sell his mooring to someone less pathetic.

[The above is a rewrite of the beginning to “The Old Man and the Sea” by Earnest Hemingway.” The original is:]

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”

[The prompt was: Using prose or poetry, rewrite some famous piece of literature, poetry, opera, or song. Not the whole thing, obviously, just a sampling of a few paragraphs, stanzas, or verses. Make it your work. (Include the original text so readers can compare them.)]

David J. Kent is an avid traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores late summer 2017. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like”my Facebook author page for more updates!

[Daily Post]