Category Archives: Writing

Google+ What’s the Big Deal?

We writers like to stay up on the whole social media thing. I tweet and blog. Inevitably, I knew I’d have to check out Google+, the newest shiny network on the block. I can’t say I was bowled over.

The interface looks like a milquetoast version of Facebook. Yet it doesn’t seem to have the social factor boiled in the way Facebook does. Ultimately I could see Google+ killing Facebook. After all, Facebook seems to mess with their privacy settings on a monthly basis.

On the surface, the circles function of Google+ seems like a superior solution. Yet there’s something to be said for Facebook’s simplicity. On Google+, I needed to move all my friends to circles. I’m not sure what would happen if I had more than would fit in that little circle. Now on Facebook, I have close to 100 friends. If I could port these over to Facebook, I’d have to manually move them into circles. What a pain.

One strange limitation about Google+ is that you can’t direct message someone or write on their wall. When I wanted to send a message to just one friend, I had to remember their exact name and then add that to my post. Plus, my message would simply appear in their stream. It could get lost.

Folks say Google+ will take down Twitter. Frankly, I don’t see it. Google+ feels too cold and logical. Everything is thought out. Twitter is funky. It has this bizarre system of hashtags that doesn’t follow any rules. Just like the English language, it evolves. I couldn’t imagine Google+ used as a revolutionary tool in countries around the world.

My final complaint with Google+ is the lack of a good iPad app. Without it, I can only access the mobile site. Have you ever seen the mobile site? It feels like I’m working on a computer terminal circa 1985. Almost DOS like. It’s horrific. And this is the best Google can do? I know that Apple is their competition, but if they want to woo users over, they have to jazz up the joint.

Tim Kane

Selling Your Sister to the Goblins

A challenge was issued and of course I couldn’t resist. Anna Meade ran a contest to promote the book The Fairy Ring by Mary Losure. The goal was to write a 300 word flash fiction about an encounter with a fairy folk. I chose to make it completely fictional, with a very young protagonist. I incidentally do not have any siblings. At least not anymore.

Selling Your Sister to the Goblins

My teeth cut into the slimy bar of Irish Spring. All I did was call her a dirty liar. Totally true.

Lizzie saunters by the bathroom door, her mouth curled in a smirk. What’s she so glad about? She’ll never find her book. Not where I hid it. She leans against the railing, staring at me.

“Wha…” My tongue strikes the soap and a bitter taste fills my mouth.

She giggles. I kick shut the door. I’d give anything to make her disappear.

Fwah-thunk. The water gurgles in the toilet bowl. Then the room fills with the odor of rotted cheese. A hairy hand grips the side. I jump, the soap clunking to the floor. A man the size of a cat scrambles out of the water. Matted black hair speckles his body.

He bows. “Og-Alog the goblin.”

I scoot against the towel rack. “What do you want?”

“I make people disappear.”

This has got to be some sort of hallucination. Soap poisoning.

“You can take kids away?”

“I can and I will. A changeling steps in. No one will know.” He grins. A thin layer of moss coats his teeth.

This is no joke. Lizzie could really be gone. I glance at the soap and smile.

“Do it. Bring that change thing.”

The goblin scurries up, blackened fingernails gripping my pants. “I have your permission?” He smells like sour milk.

“Yes.”

Cracks spread along the wall in the shape of a door. Wood squeals as it rotates inward. A small figure about my sister’s size crouches inside.

I can’t do this. Not even to Lizzie.

“I changed my mind. Take it back.”

“She did not hesitate,” the goblin says, lips spread wide over mossy teeth.

The figure looks up. It’s my face.

The changeling is me.



The Nook Makes Me A Better Reader

While attending a young adult workshop at the SDSU Writer’s Conference, I gleaned an interesting tidbit. Someone in the audience brought up the idea of a protagonist in his early twenties at college. Our presenter nixed it. College bound folk are inundated with textbooks and studies. Often, they don’t have time to read.

That was the case for me. College killed my reading instincts. Before that, I read like a fiend. Afterward, I hardly picked up a book. Magazines drew me in, mostly because of the brevity of the articles. I remember distinctly my first serious novel that I read form cover to cover: The Alientist.

I continued to write, yet my reading suffered. Finally audiobooks came to my rescue. I read, or listened, while commuting. This worked well, but I yearned for that actual visual experience. (Try writing down a clever quote from a spoken text. Not as easy as it seems.)

Then my wife purchased an iPad for my last birthday. I checked out the ebook options. There were limitless. Trouble was, the iPad as so heavy. (I have and iPad 1, but even the iPad 2 is weighty.) Meanwhile, my reading had picked up. I am addicted to several young adult series. My latest favorite is Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.

Much like other YA books, this one is a tome. Reading it makes my arms hurt. I tend to read in bed with the book held above me. So my mind drifted back to ereaders. I checked the whole spectrum. I didn’t need all the fancy web-browsing and apps. (I have an iPad, after all). What I wanted was a basic ereader that was very light. Enter the Nook.

I adore this product. The eink is amazing. It reads just like my paper book. The buttons make page turning easy and my arms never grow tired. Finally, it’s created a renaissance in reading for me. Just as the iPod revitalized my love of music, so has the Nook spurned me to be a more voracious reader.

Long live the ereader.

Tim Kane

Addicted to Pinterest

Gah, yet another social media site to drag me away from writing. If you’ve haven’t visited this site, you might be frustrated when you do. It’s by invitation only. Granted, you simply apply and a few days later get the invite in the mail. The site will give you a sample, but, the waiting is hard to deal with.

Once you’re in, kiss at least three or four hours of life goodbye. (I was fortunate enough to have this happen while holed up in a cabin in the woods, so the time drain wasn’t nearly as detrimental.) The idea is this: remember all those amazing pictures you download from the internet and then stick in a file and forget? Pinterest lets you post and share them. You can comment and repin pics you see from friends. The topics are endless.

Most of the pinners seemed to concentrate on products and people. I guess folks find that time worthy. Me, I went to all the amazing art I’ve always loved, yet could never find a way to catalog. Illustrators, steampunk artists, comic book art, you name it. I also plan to add all those spelling and grammar goofs I constantly see, yet seems wasted when seen individually.

I suggest you check this site out, but be warned, you may never return the same.

Tim Kane

The Myth of Writing in a Cabin in the Woods

Jonny Depp from Secret Window

It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Granted, my cabin was also full of other teachers and the whole place is surrounded by sixth graders. However, I do have certain conveniences you wouldn’t associate with cabin life: a constant stream of hot coffee, blistering hot showers, and wifi. So writing up a whole new novel should be a snap, right? Not so much.

I find that I’m a solitary person. I like to write alone. Blog posts and the like, sure, I can do that anywhere. Writing on a fiction manuscript, for that I need total concentration. It’s true, there were bits and times where I was completely alone in the cabin, and I could have worked it in. Yet those times were never reliable. What I mean is, you never know when a colleague will wander in and want to talk.

Add to this the lack of any kind of desk or table. Not too bad if you’re typing out a 250 word blog post. But if you intend on crunching 1000 or 2000 words, you’ll find that neck cramps ensue. Trust me, I know. I got them midweek just working on curriculum.

Finally, there’s the lack of structure. Sure I need to show up at meals and there’s a recess block to oversee, but between those my time is mine. Yay, more time equals more writing. Try it sometime. I think you’ll find it’s the opposite. At home, I can carve out one or maybe two hours a day. Always at the same time. Reliable. Both before and after are filled with things to do. It makes my writing charged because I know if I don’t get it done, then I’ll have to wait another day.

This is not to say I got nothing done. Since I could tell that formal words-on-page style writing was going to be a challenge, I tackled things that I typically have a hard time doing at home. Plotting. I plotted out the whole dang novel. Start to finish. Not every scene, but the milestones. Seeing it as a whole allowed me to fix some plot problems. One particularly pesky one dogged me for a while. I stepped into the cabin shower for forty minutes and worked out the solution in my head (without having to pay for the water bill).

So the next time you dream of being alone in a cabin in the woods, think again. It’s not the best environment for writing. Try writing every day. Repeat until the novel is complete.

Tim Kane