Adventures With Triond and HubPages

After writing my blog post, Gaining Perspective, last week, I was browsing around Digg.com and found a submission about writing for Triond.com. I'd never heard of Triond before and decided to check it out for myself. An interesting premise, Triond allows you to submit articles for their various associated websites. What do you get in return? Revenue sharing from the ad clicks generated from your articles. Obviously, this isn't the most efficient way of making money on the web, but I decided to give it a try.

My first article, Can You Win a Writing Contest? was accepted and published in the wee hours of Sunday morning. As of this post I have made 41 cents and the page has received 417 views (not necessarily unique). This article took me about an hour to write up and edit before we headed out to the amusement park for the rest of the day. I felt pretty good about submitting the article and it was just the trick to get my spirits up for a long day in the heat.

From there I started poking around at other online publishing options. I've never really been one to cling to the idea of writing articles. Back when I spent a semester writing for the school newspaper in high school, my articles were more of the editorial and opinion nature. If nothing else, I was a gimmick. After years of stewing on that and later having an article printed in the Hilltop Times that could have used a bit of final editing and polish, well, I guess I lost the taste for article writing altogether.

So why start now? I'm not sure how to answer that question. It was all sort of on a whim, you know? After poking around a bit I noticed that some of the Triond users also had accounts with HubPages. I hopped on over to take a look and ended up signing up there as well. I've even added a widget to my blog here that will list my hub activity. A hub is basically a standalone page that can be linked with other hubs or left on its own. I figured I would give it a shot and created my first hub, How To Give Writing Feedback.

On one hand, writing these articles satisfied my desire to write when I just didn't feel like I was in the frame of mind that I needed to be in for working on my Science Fiction short story. On the other, even if I never really make much money from these submissions, I've succeeded in expanding my web presence and I've added a few writing notches to my belt. In-so-far as expectations are in order, I don't see a problem spending my time writing articles; as long as it scratches the writing itch and doesn't detract from the writing I really want to do. Using this as an escape from completing my short story isn't acceptable. I still have the goal of completing my first draft by the end of August.

Another bonus to writing these articles for Triond and HubPages is that I don't have to worry about specific content and whether it is in line with where my blog is currently headed. A review about a green-living magazine or tips on working from home may not fit well on a creative writing blog, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't take the time to write something that I find an interest in. These sites allow me to post my non-related articles without having to go through the hassle of creating and maintaining separate blogs.

For any who might be interested, two additional articles were published on Triond this morning:

Mother Earth News: A Review.
Five Tips for Working From Home.

Creative Writing Prompt:

Gaining Perspective

A very short man with a large belly walks into a Fun House. He stands in front of a distorted mirror and sees that his reflection is tall and slender. A man from a neighboring village, who is quite thin, stands beside him. His reflection is short and rather plump. Both men leave the Fun House. The short man returns home, boasting to his wife that he was the best looking man in the magic house, where panes of special glass showed your true reflection. The skinny man returns home in shame. Over the next few months he works out, determined to force his true image to become better. The short man attends parties, telling all his friends how handsome he is and recounts the story at every opportunity. Every other habit remains the same, he’s the best looking man in the magic house; there is no need to change. He gives anyone who will listen advice on how to improve their own true reflection.

Three months go by and the Fun House has again returned to their corner of the world. Both men make the journey, followed by several of their peers who seek to find their measure in the reflection of the magic glass. One by one they pour into the Fun House and stand in front of the mirror. As chance would have it, the two original men find themselves standing side-by-side once again as the others file in around them. Shouts of laughter ring out and both men leave. The fat man is angry, his face is purple and beads of sweat roll down his brow. The magic glass has made a fool of him; it refused to show his true reflection. The skinny man, who has put on muscle and tone and now looks more like chiseled stone, scratches his head and asks the ticket vendor, “Sir, when I came before my reflection was short and fat. I worked hard and built muscle. Now my reflection is tall and skinny. What must I do to look normal?”

The ticket vendor laughs aloud and claps the man on the shoulder. “Smoke and mirrors, my boy, smoke and mirrors.”

(This is an anecdote of my own creation for this particular post. If you would like to use it for your own purposes, please attribute it to me, Brady Frost, and mention its origin, www.huntingthemuse.com)

What is perspective? Is it just a particular point of view, or can it be distilled down to the pane through which we view things? I suppose that would depend on the connotation.

I received a good lesson on perspective last night at my Speculative Fiction writing group. Let me be honest, it was a meeting that I almost skipped out on, and I’m so happy I didn’t. Why did I almost miss out on this invaluable lesson? I can say this primarily because I know I’m not alone; I almost didn’t go because I hadn’t had time to finish my Science Fiction short story. I felt embarrassed. I felt like I wasn’t much of a writer. I still had work to do and it just didn’t seem like there was enough time to get to where I could take an hour break, on top of that I only had two pages (double spaced). Honestly, I thought I still had another week before our meeting.

In the end I bucked up and put down another three pages and figured it was better than nothing. I was late out the door, but work was taken care of and I made excellent time on the way to the library. I showed up at five minutes after six o’clock with four copies of my work in progress in hand, not bad at all.

The format of this meeting was much more relaxed. Instead of reviewing an article or a snippet out of a writing book, we spent our time reviewing each others writing right there at the table. I preferred this a lot more than taking each piece home and fighting for time to sit down and give good reviews. I had missed the last meeting, as work simply would not let me go, and a new member who was attending his second meeting had brought his teenage daughter. The other new member hadn’t showed up. Interestingly enough, that provided four reviewers – one for each copy that I had brought.

The first story I read was from Steven Cherecwich. (Haha, google your name now Steven!) It was very short, a sort of flash fiction piece. I got caught on setting for a brief moment, then there was a bit of descriptive confusion, but the conclusion of the piece caught me completely off-guard. It was disgusting and yet pleasantly surprising.

The next story came from Angela Perry. (Did your personal SEO rating just go up?) Right off the bat my mind ignored the mention of a gold recliner and I found myself sitting in a Native American wigwam. When I read mention of a dilapidated trailer a few paragraphs in, I was immediately transported from ages ago into the present, complete with Indian reservations and sad memories of an age lost. It was the perfect transition in my mind to prepare me for the story to come. The theme revolved around a Native American girl who was about to turn 21, who was struggling with discovering her identity. Like many young people from this culture, she was internally at war with the traditions she had grown up with and the way of the industrial world around her. The journey through college had left her view of the old traditions tainted. The character dynamic between the main character and her boyfriend was spot on and made for a very romantic, yet not cheesy, baseline that truly carried the story for me. The ending was pulled off in a manner that completely worked for me. If done without the tact, style, and detail it could have been a cliché nightmare. I was impressed with how it was pulled together.

The third, and final, story I read was from the teenage girl. I’m sorry. I didn’t quite catch her name. This story was written primarily by her friend on notebook paper, but was transcribed by this girl who was providing editing and revision assistance. It was also a work in progress. The quality of the writing was what one might expect from a High School level. There was a bit of awkwardness in the wavering tone of the first person narration. Repeat words were distracting, and the peppering of adjectives revealed a writer who is not quite comfortable with the power of her descriptions. Her secondary characters seemed to lack intelligence while the main character had it in barrels, though no explanation was given as to why the “normal” people were dumber than dirt and didn’t ask questions that you or I might, given we found ourselves in the same situation.

This is where the lesson in perspective really hit me. Any time you put something out there, you leave yourself open to be judged. Most people long for the praise and adoration of anyone who reads what they have written. Some hope for critical comments so that they can improve on their writing. But in the end, you really have no idea why some people respond the way they do. It is easy to mistake jealousy for an experienced and helpful hand, but more often than not I would guess the mistake is the other way around. It’s hard to receive criticism, even if you were expecting it. On the other hand, it’s also easy to imperialize your own experience. You can usually tell when people have done this to a high degree. Symptoms are mentioning their own published work and credentials, going on about “the craft”, and a general holier-than-thou tone throughout their message.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that critiquing that story was an easy opportunity to fall prey to a perspective shift, yet I did so with care and tact. I thought about the context of the writing and took it for what it was, not what I might expect it to be. It was truly an enjoyable drive home as I realized what had taken place that evening and what I had learned.

Creative Writing Prompt:

A Dream Remembered

I posted a lengthy comment over at David King's blog this morning and figured I would take a moment and post it here on my blog as well. If you haven't visited David's blog, Pics and Poems, I highly encourage you to take a few minutes to do so.

Many years ago, perhaps before I married my wife, I had a very memorable dream that I was at a park. Of course, as in many dreams, the park was a bit different than it was in real life but I understood in my subconscious that it was one and the same. Much as the case in reality, the park had a long walking path and at the end there was a bridge over the river the path had followed, from there reality and dream diverged from one another. Instead of the baseball diamond being to the right of the bridge, it was located on the other side. To get to it I climbed through a gap in the chainlink fence that appeared to have been made by bolt cutters. That is where the dream started getting interesting, and it had nothing to do with baseball...

I had long forgotten the dream in the years that followed, perhaps ten or more but it's hard to place a date on it. It's like grasping at a dream that you want to hang on to as you begin to wake up and regain a foothold in the conscious realm.

Last night we went to that park for the first time in a very long time, probably since as late as 2001. We threw down a blanket and ate dinner, the children ran off to play on the jungle gym, and soon enough I was left to fend for myself, my wife had taken the kids to feed the ducks while I had a bit of quiet time. The memory of the dream remained buried.

Time trickled away and I looked up from my Mother Earth News magazine and glanced at my watch. I slowly gathered the trash and threw it away in the bin and then packed up. I dropped our stuff off at the van and set out on the path to find my wife and kids.

At nearly the halfway point of the expansive trail I caught sight of them and jumped the fence to hide in the bushes, hoping some rogue goose wouldn't decide to creep up on me instead. As my two oldest came into view between the gaps in the foliage, I jumped out! "Yaaaarrrrghhhhhhh!!!!" I roared.

My oldest, Becca, cowered in fright, Gryphon jumped in alarm.

Having had my fun, I turned them around and we headed back the way they came, to the end of the trail. We wound our way to the end of the line and I was surprised to find the fountain that had always splashed and gurgled in my youth was dry. Something in the back of my mind began to itch.

A bit further up the trail was the familiar bridge that had escaped my memory. I passed it without second thought and the itch became stronger. Following the sidewalk instead, we veered right.

"You can't go that way, Dad." Becca told me. I shook it off and rounded the bend. There in front of me, cutting across the sidewalk that had been forever unobstructed was a chain link fence.

At that moment I felt akin to reaching the pinnacle of a roller coaster ride, in that speck of time that feels slower than reality. And then with a whoosh it all came flooding back. Like a father jumping out at his children from the bushes, it was alarming, but there was nothing to be afraid of...

I couldn't help but wonder if the fence ran around to the other side of the bridge as well... and if it did, had someone cut an opening with bolt cutters? A stray thought crept into the back of my mind. If there was a fence and there was no hole, was I supposed to cut it?

I left the thought unanswered, turned around, and sped down the hill, pushing the stroller and yelling, "Vroooooooom!" as we passed the bridge again.

The rest of my thoughts on the matter were drowned out by September's giggles as the stroller bounced on the tiny cracks in the sidewalk.

So, what happened on the other side of the chain link fence in the dream so many years ago? I can't say. It's not like I was sworn to secrecy or anything... It just wouldn't feel right to tell. I hope you enjoyed the journey, the end is up to you.

Creative Writing Prompt:

Picking Blackberries

Alas, the weekend has come and gone. While I was unable to enjoy every single hour without interruption from work, I did begrudgingly begin my shift this morning with a feeling of satisfaction for the time I had with my family and my writing.

Saturday began with a trip to the Davis County Fair. You must understand, of course, that this fair always has been, and I suspect may be for quite some time, the bastard-child of fairs everywhere. It's almost a complete joke and this year was no exception. The kids did enjoy their time at the petting zoo, though, so it wasn't a complete waste.



After we made our hasty retreat from the grounds, we headed to Barnes & Noble to kill some time. The sun was out in force and it was far too hot for the adventure we had in store.

While in Barnes & Noble, I bought my wife a knitting book she's had her eye on and I picked up a magazine on Renewable Energy; it had some pretty decent articles for home use of Solar and Wind generated power. I found it quite an enjoyable read and decided to hold onto a copy of my own. I also swung by the Starbucks, conveniently located next to the periodicals, and purchased a Mint Mocha Chip. The gal put extra whipped cream on it, much to my delight. (Thank you!) It felt good to cool off with a nice cold drink.



From there we stopped by a grocery store about 15 miles away and picked up a 1 gallon pitcher, then headed up the road a bit to our super-secret (no-so-secret) blackberry picking spot. It didn't take long to fill that container all the way full, the berries were large and delicious! It was easy to tell that we hadn't been the first pickers to the spot, as most of the easy pickings were long gone. That left us to brave the thorns and brambles in search of the berries that had been just outside convenient grasp to earlier visitors. Even so, we had a great time!



After our berry fun we drove up the canyon and ate at a quaint riverside restaurant called "The Oaks." Dusk was fast approaching though, so we missed out on visits by hummingbirds, but the evening was still quite enjoyable. The sound of the water splashing and gurgling as it made its own epic journey was quite relaxing and really quenched the creative thirst.



Sunday night I took my laptop outside to the swing in my "writer's nook" and worked on a crazy little project I dreamed up over the weekend. (Henceforth referred to as "Project Daisy" ... yeah, yeah, I know...) It was a decent start, but the project has a low priority and I resolved to finish my SF short story by the end of the month, even if I have to do so by force. I will continue to work on Daisy though. Over time I plan to string bits and pieces of the storyline together. I won't really go into detail, just let me say that if I ever do seek publication for it... you better believe it will have a pen name! Haha!

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

Keeping a Writing Journal

I've admitted recently, several times if memory serves me correctly, that I haven't been writing much lately. But fortunately for me, the muse has not yet stopped a knocking. For those moments of random creativity, I am thankful to have my little writing book handy to jot down my latest idea.

Here is my Journal. I picked it up at Walmart for about five bucks.



When I get an idea I open it up and jot it down. The journal is small enough to fit in my pocket or I can toss it in my backpack or camera bag.



With a small pocket in the back I can tuck little treasures into. These two leaves were interestingly aromatic. Now I can pull them out and take in their scent or shape for descriptive assistance if need be.



All in all, I've really enjoyed having it around. I've collected several good ideas for when I finally get more time to write. I've also started setting up my writing nook in the backyard to give me a safe haven to escape to.

Writing Powered by iTunes

In my previous post, How Does Music Influence Your Writing?' I talked about how I like to use music to help me focus on the task at hand.

Lately I've found iTunes Radio to be a very useful tool to help me get through the day. I haven't been doing much writing, to be perfectly honest, what with the long days I've been working and all. In fact, I worked 21 hours yesterday and while today promised to carry a lighter load, I'm now probably looking at maybe 17 or 18 hours if this server I'm working on continues to have connection issues. That's just the way it goes sometimes, there's just no helping it. But the international radio stations have helped get me through the long hours and I'm currently writing this post to the sounds of "LiveIreland" in the folk category.

Music just has that quality, much like stories, of being able to take us to another place or time. We can escape our momentary troubles and work through the things that have got to be done.

Listening to different kinds of music can open a new portal, so choose a station and close your eyes for a minute. Imagine walking down that busy parkway, or running your hands across the tops of the wild flowers in that secluded meadow. Let the music fill the sails of your craft as you skim over deep waters towards the distant cliffs and outcroppings where you'll spend the cool hours of the evening with anchor set and a cold brew to keep you company. Or perhaps you'll find yourself in a crowded underground facility with sweaty, hot bodies wriggling and writhing to a jungle trance beat. Maybe you'll look around at the blank expressions and feel like a stranger within your own mind. Will you lose yourself to their drug-induced pilgrimage, or will you remain the wallflower, watching their world drift slowly by through a complex swell of intertwined songs and remixes?

Creative Writing Prompt:

Repeat Words: The Spawn of Satan.

Personally, I can't stand them. But even so, from time to time I find myself slipping into the darkness that awaits when I write when I'm exceedingly tired or somewhat less focused. During these moments of weakness they sneak into my writing like thieves, the bouncer is asleep at his post, the uninvited guests are helping themselves to the champagne. Who are these miscreants? These manglers of hospitality? Repeat words, the most unholy of unholies, the most evil of evils. Well, at least in my mind.

The cure? One might think it would require the use of a dictionary or thesaurus, always kept at the ready, perhaps even behind a glass pane with a little hammer that says, "Use me in case of Emergency" in bold red lettering. For me the struggle lies primarily in unnecessary adverbs. At first glance I don't always catch them all. My brain, like most, is lazy in nature. It's perfectly happy if someone smiles dryly two or three times in a conversation. I find it better to get my writing off the screen, double spaced, and then I go over it with a pen and circle mistakes and write notes between the lines where I intend to make changes.

It may seem a little off, sometimes repeat words have their usage; to stress a point, perhaps? I suppose it just bothers me seeing the same word used over and over again in a short period of time when I'm reading a book. I get the unnatural desire to pull out a pen and circle the words and then draw lines connecting all the circles together, somehow gathering up the clones and taking them back to the factory where they were created in some rogue scientific experiment.

It just seems to me, and believe me when I say I'm no authority, that over usage of a word equates to tired writing. If you can remove excess usage without losing meaning then, to me, it's the reasonable thing to do.

I bring this up mostly because I'm currently reading a best seller that is just so distracting in word usage that I wonder who could possibly have edited the thing. The writing is mostly good, the story has gotten much better once I broke past the first 75 pages or so, but the way it comes together is bothersome at best. I'm not usually one to get caught up on the minor details but I've already run into two instances where the sentences appear to have been half written and then changed partially without being caught by proofreading. An example (not directly out of the text) *Then he then they walked out of the building* (indicating one group of people). This, combined with the repeat words, is very distracting for me. I think it might be partly because I'm thinking to myself the whole time that I must be more careful in my own writing. While it sold enough books to become a best seller, someone out there just like me cringes when they read over the same page I did and they think to themselves, "What was the point of all that?"

Writing Exercise:

Why Do We Write?

This blog post was originally featured back in February. From time to time, I find myself asking the same question. Why do I want to write stories so badly?
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The first story I ever wrote was called something like "The Lion and the Turtle." I was in first grade and my mom helped me put it together in a nice plastic document protector. I remember seeing it hung outside the classroom on the bulletin board and feeling an overwhelming sense of pride.

The next memory of writing that I have was in fifth or sixth grade when a few friends and I started writing a story together. By then I could walk from the library, all the way down the hall, and to my desk while still reading the book I had checked out. It was during this time that I got my first look at the writer's ego. As senior elementary students, all boys at that, the topic of our story was none other than the secret adventures we shared with our super secret supernatural powers. As the story went on it seemed as if each of us had to compete to be the toughest superhero. In no time at all the steam fizzled out and we gave up the venture, the competition for having the best super powers sapped our desire to write the story.

In Junior High I started writing poetry and attempted a few short stories. More than anything I loved to draw. I wasn't really ever very good at it by normal standards but it was my passion. There is a sad story behind why I stopped drawing but we'll save that for another topic.

Once I reached High School my writing really took hold and I wrote very passionately. I took Creative Writing classes every semester I could and was even allowed to join the High School paper for the second semester without having participated in the first semester. It wasn't that I was an exceptional writer by any means, I was just passionate. In all actuality my articles in the school newspaper were a joke, a mockery of the hard work and dedication that the rest of the students had put into the process. I had no beats, I wasn't assigned specific events to cover. I was nothing more than a funny/quirky editorialist. Though I must admit, I am still quite proud of my article on the adverse effects of smelly lotion on teenage females, even if it wasn't factually based.

It was in High School that I first suffered my major disappointments with writing. Every year I would submit what I felt was my best work to the school literary magazine and each year I was told by the presiding faculty member that while they had felt my entry was very well written, the student members of the magazine staff had felt it was too dark. This was probably true of a lot of my writing during that time. My parents were getting a divorce and I, like most High School students, felt utterly alone. Part of me wants to say that I never got into the literary magazine but another part of my memory wants to believe that I finally made it during my senior year.

Another huge devastation for me was all the attention I got in my creative writing classes. People would ask me for suggestions on plot or ask me to read over their stories and give them my honest opinion. It almost felt like being some kind of quasi-celebrity. It turns out that at this particular time of my life I just wasn't ready for that kind of attention. I stopped writing for me and started writing for everyone else. As soon as I wrote something I would rush to show it to someone, devouring their praises in my greed. I honestly believe this was a turning point in my writing development, I stopped trying to expand my writing ability because I began to feel like I already knew so much. There comes a time when consistent rejection and consistent praise start to intersect in a young writer's mind. One day it became impossible to separate the two emotions and the first real form of writer's block set in.

All of this boils down to the question of why writers write in the first place when it can be so hard on them emotionally. Well? What drives you to write? For me, in recent years, it has been a very underlying feeling somewhere deep inside of me. I've mentioned before that I have an overwhelming desire to create. Writing allows me to do just that. Even if I never show a single person what I've written, there is a certain form of release that comes from writing.

In all honesty, it could be months before I start to see regular visitors to this blog. Why even bother? It's simple really, I don't have much of a choice. It's a decision ingrained into who I am, and if by writing this blog today I can help another writer later down the road then it was all worth it!

If you happen to come across this post please take time to share your comments on why you write. I would love to hear from you.

Writing Exercise:

Today we'll do something a little different. Write about the first thing that comes to your mind after reading the following word:

Disintegration

CoffeeShop Confessional

On the 24th of July, I forced myself out of the office and spent about an hour at Barnes & Noble. While I was there I stopped by the Starbucks and got myself a nice cold mint mocha chip frappuccino and set to work. I had a stack of napkins at my disposal and before long I had three confessionals completed. I liked two of the three, but since it had been a while since my last confession, I decided to keep all of them and set about tucking them into books that corresponded with each theme.

This isn't something I normally do. I would usually find a quaint little spot out in the open, and yet somewhat conspicuous, and that would be it. For some reason that just didn't feel right that evening.



This was the one I didn't like. The wording seemed off, the doodle wasn't that great, and it isn't really a confessional. It's like opening a fortune cookie that says, "Steam rises from a hot turd in the coolness of the morning." First of all, WTF!? And second, WTF!? And third, how is that a fortune!? Anyway, this "confessional" got placed into a book about performance guitar, or something along those lines.

The next confessonal was a little better. It was actually a confessional. And I must say, I think I did rather well on the doodle of my office. I mean, it's no Picaso, but then again, I don't plan on cutting off my own ear anytime soon. If you can't pay the price of brilliance, you're destined for mediocrety, and your ears will love you all the more. Anyway, I can't remember where this one ended up. I might have actually left it on the table under the plastic advertisement thingy, but I really can't say for sure.



And finally, my last confessional ended up in the green books area. I'm so into the whole idea of renewable energy and moving away from fossil fuels. I love the futuristic idea of electric cars and solar panel parking stations at grocery stores and malls and other large parking facilities. The idea of pulling up to a parking stall and plugging your car into a metered electrical outlet and paying for a quick charge while you shop sounds awesome. Instead of asking if I would like a large for 25 cents more, I want someone to ask me if I'd like clean, renewable energy.