Home | Personal

Category: Personal

Personal Writing Process

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on June 25, 2024

What is My Personal Writing Process

By definition, a personal writing process is, well, kinda personal. Asking, “How do I write a book?” is almost like asking how to breathe.

My personal writing process may or may not help you. After all, mine differs from, say, Stephen King‘s. And while he is a bestselling author several times over, that still doesn’t mean his method is better than my own.

Furthermore, his method will not work for me. And that’s not a failure on either of our parts. Because we are, simply put, rather different writers.

Plotting

For longer stories and novels, I find planning to be essential. And this can take the form of everything from an outline to some random notes. Either way, though, I create what I refer to as a ‘wiki’ although I am the only person who contributes to it.

‘Pantsing’

The term ‘pantsing’ refers to flying by the seat of your pants. So essentially you write with very little idea of plot or structure. And the intention is to fix it later.

For the most part, I write shorter stories this way. However, they might be part of a larger overall story arc. Hence the actual writing might end up a tad haphazard but the scene or scenes fit into a greater whole, which has been planned.

See, I’m a planner. Usually.

A Personal Writing Process In the Middle

Sometimes, I’m in the middle. Mettle was a lot like that, where I had a detailed outline for the first three quarters or so and then I had absolutely no idea of how to finish the piece.

There’s also the act of going in the middle by writing a far sparer outline. That’s another idea, to know the arc of the chapter and maybe even the first and last lines of it. But nothing else. So you have both the planning and the flying by the seat of your pants.

Story Arcs

Currently, aside from the Obolonk stories (which are still deep in beta reading hell), the only real series and arcs I was writing tended to be fan fiction until I started in on the Real Hub of the Universe.

Easter Eggs

One piece of my process is the addition of Easter eggs. Stories include the following (usually, but Untrustworthy has very little of this, due to the nature of the story):

• Boston, somehow, although sometimes it’s just an accent.
† Somebody named Shapiro (a cousin had this as her maiden name, but I also think of the character from Stalag 17).
• Jews, and often not just Shapiro. They aren’t necessarily terribly religious. But they are there all the same.
† Dreams, but I am relying on them less as a crutch these days. Characters have inner lives but that’s not necessarily front and center in a story anymore.

Personal Writing Process: Takeaways

Planning can’t really be avoided. Even if your personal writing process is 100% pantsing, you usually end up paying for that with a lot more time spent editing.

This does not mean that planners don’t edit! Of course we do. But the scenes are better ordered or at least they should be. So that can save on editing time.

This is what works for me. It may or may not work for you.

Sharing Less

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on April 23, 2024

Sharing Less

Did you know that sharing less can help you out in dozens of ways? Because there is something to be said for mystery.

For a fan dancer’s artfully concealing fans, if you will. For a dark corner where the camera does not go, and where we do not allow others to see. Perhaps not even our lovers, our mothers, our children and, most assuredly, not our government.

Origins

This post is a riff on Learning Not to Share, an article by Rich Barlow in my alumni magazine, Bostonia.

Wait a second, oops! I just told you where I went to college. Better cover that up, and sweep it out of the way.

Oh no, wait! I just told you it was undergrad. Good thing I didn’t tell you one of my professors studied under Wittgenstein.

D’oh! I probably just gave away that I majored in Philosophy! Wait, I’ll come in again.

We Keep on Sharing

It is like this, over and over and over again online. We share. And we share again. And then we overshare. While the above few tidbits probably don’t tell you too much about me, there is plenty of additional information out there. There are plenty of minefields.

So, I might accidentally drop something whereby someone could steal a password, stalk me, take my identity, burgle my house while I’m away, etc.

Digital Nosiness

Stephen Baker, the author of The Numerati, talks about what essentially amounts to digital nosiness – too much information out there, and we’re all inviting it in.

And we do so in the name of greater security, or peace of mind. We want to make sure our teenagers are driving safely so we agree to put a black box in the car.

And we want to know that our elderly parents are all right (but we are not committed enough to move them home with us, or move to their homes or cities, even briefly), so we install sensors in their beds to make sure they get out of them every day.

So then, as privacy erodes, we accept more and more of these intrusions until they are no longer seen as intrusive. And a privacy (and shame!) tradition that harkens back to biblical times is canned in favor of The Age of TMI.

Stop Volunteering Information

Is it possible to shut the barn door, when the horse has hightailed it for the next county? Sadly, probably not. But this oversharing is nothing new. I well recall, when I was practicing law (uh oh, another identifier!), prepping witnesses for depositions.

E. g. if the opposing counsel asks, “Were you driving?”, the answer is yes, no, or I don’t remember. It is not, yes, and the car is blue. If the lawyer wants to know the color of the car, she’ll ask. Don’t volunteer anything.

Yet, inevitably, people would do just that – they would volunteer all sorts of stuff. The vast majority of it was completely harmless. However, every now and then, it opened up different things, and drew others into question.

Or it got the whole thing onto some wacky tangent and it then became hard to throw a lasso over the proceedings and get them back to the matter at hand.

And a deposition, once, which was going to take maybe 45 minutes took the better part of a week as a witness and opposing counsel kept feeding one another more digressions.

This was even after I repeatedly told the witness to just stick with answering the actual questions and nothing more.

This tactic, by the way, did not, ultimately, harm my client or help the opponent. All it did was make the matter stretch out that much longer. And, I am sure, it nicely increased my opponent’s bill.

I was on salary – a deposition could take three years and I would not make any extra money. Dang, there I go again, oversharing!

Wiping Away Shame

Some sharing, particularly in the face of things that have been taboo for too long, seems to be, to me, to be a very good thing. Take, for example, the physical demands and changes that go along with weight loss.

In the interests of full disclosure, this is a subject rather near and dear to my heart.

So I put it out there – the fact that stretch marks don’t really go away and what post-weight loss plastic surgery is really like and how sometimes, no matter how much you want to convince yourself otherwise, the oatmeal just does not taste one bit like fried chicken.

I think that this kind of oversharing can have a true benefit. Give hope, or at least some amusement and information. And trample away shame until it’s gone.

But there is plenty more out there where that came from, and it is often all too much, and it can be damaging. Give away too much and you are the naked fan dancer, all out of fans.

How to Strike a Balance by Sharing Less

So my suggestion is: tread lightly, and as wisely as you can, and ask yourself: will this information do more harm than good? Will it hurt me or my family?

So, even if the answer to both questions is no, my advice is: consider it and weigh it anyway. And decide, one way or the other.

Do this based upon reasoned understanding and not on expediency, or going along to get along, or trying to be cooler than everyone else in school. Above all, do not sleepwalk and step backward into these kinds of giveaways.

If you are going to toss aside that last fan, at least look your audience in the eye when you do so.

Reinvention

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 2, 2023

In Which I Turn Myself Inside Out With Reinvention

Reinvention for fun and, hopefully, some profit? Well, kind of. At least, that’s the idea.

Moving Onward and Upward

Reinvention is such a lonely word, isn’t it? We are so used to being one way, and the world is used to it, too. But then there we go, screwing it all up.

I mean, changing it up.

Oops, I mean, improving ourselves.

Well, but what if we liked everything just the way it was?

Ready or not, changes are going to happen. So we may as well embrace them.

Changes

For quite a while, Adventures in Career Changing ended up somewhat stagnant. At the same time, I was running a blog for independent writers called Lonely Writer. The numbers for that other blog were not so great, and they fell off dramatically after I graduated in the summer of 2016. Furthermore, it was costing me some bucks. Hence I decided to simply not allow that URL to renew when it came up again.

Instead, I decided to combine the two works, back here, on Adventures. Because career changing, for me, has also been about writing.

As a result, a lot of the Lonely Writer has simply been republished here.

Cosmetics

You may have noticed me making some housekeeping changes. There is a lot more color. The theme is considerably livelier. But beneath the surface there is another change, and it is not merely a cosmetic one. For these changes also contain adding the Lonely Writer videos, updating what I post here, and what I put on Facebook as well.

And then there’s Twitter (or Twitter for Lonely Writer). Plus of course there is still a YouTube channel, although I may eventually figure out a way to rebrand it.*

Some things cannot be changed (such as the audio in preexisting YouTube videos). But for the most part, I have changed anything that can possibly be changed.

*Just about ten years after graduating, and I still haven’t changed it. Heh, ewps.

Reinvention and Going Pro… ish

These transformations are folding Lonely Writer into my professional social media brand.

But please do not worry! What is free is still free! Rather, I want to introduce you to what I can do. So, that is another purpose behind this particular blog post, all right?

I can blog about virtually any topic, and I can write landing pages. I can create WordPress sites, and I can develop and manage them. See, I can get you started on social media platforms. And I can help you with SEO.

As a freelance blogger, my job was to write about maritime law one day and ad retargeting the next, and then about real estate a few days later. And I can still do that, of course.

Reinvention: Takeaways

In the old, pre-Internet days, people like me would put out a shingle.

So, here’s my shingle.

Almost Six Years Later…

I have worked in regular jobs and not so regular ones. Yet through it all, I have been writing! So, maybe there’s something to this after all?

And why am I reposting this a few weeks after Valentines’ Day? Because self-love is important. And reinvention is a part of that.

1 Comment

Writing Progress Report – First Quarter 2018

Writing Progress Reports, First Quarter 2018, Second Quarter 2018, Third Quarter 2018, Fourth Quarter 2018, First Quarter 2019, Second Quarter 2019, Third Quarter 2019, Fourth Quarter 2019, First Quarter 2020, Second Quarter 2020, Third Quarter 2020, Fourth Quarter 2020, First Quarter 2021, Second Quarter 2021, Third Quarter 2021, Fourth Quarter 2021, First Quarter 2022, Second Quarter 2022, Third Quarter 2022, Fourth Quarter 2022, First Quarter 2023, Second Quarter 2023, Third Quarter 2023, Fourth Quarter 2023, First Quarter 2024, Second Quarter 2024, Third Quarter 2024, Fourth Quarter 2024, Writing Progress Reports Hub, First Quarter 2024, Second Quarter 2024, Third Quarter 2024, Fourth Quarter 2024, First Quarter 2025, Second Quarter 2025, Third Quarter 2025, Fourth Quarter 2025

Writing Progress Report – First Quarter 2018

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 29, 2018

Progress Report – First Quarter 2018

First quarter 2018 proved to be a good time to write. Since this is the first of my writing progress reports, here are the details.

I wrote all the time or at least I worked on something to do with writing. The process generally runs from idea to percolating that idea or combining it with other ideas, outlining, drafting, preliminary editing, and reading aloud to my husband (a HUGE help for spotting flow errors). Then it’s beta readers sending feedback which I work out, off to the pro editor, write the query letter, query, wait for acceptance or rejection.

Accepted work? Then it’s time to work on promoting it. Rejected work? Then it’s time to regroup. This may mean more editing on my part, or changing the query or just shelving a work for a while.

Finished Works

First of all, I worked on a number of new short stories. A lot of these had been drafted on paper and so I spent some time fixing and polishing them. This included an older story, You Call is Very Important to Us.

Here’s what I created and improved.

January

I wrote well and regularly this month. It was a great kickoff to first quarter 2018.

January 1 – 7

During the first week of first quarter 2018, I wrote a piece every day. there are two pieces over 2,000 words long: The Resurrection of Ditte and A True Believer in Skepticism. Another four are under 2,000 words: Short, Sharp; Dragon for Sale, Cheap; Too Tired (tiny!); and The Landing. The seventh was also under 2,000 words and is a little scene from The Real Hub of the Universe trilogy: Snowy Allston.

Of these seven short stories, Dragon and Landing are both comedies. Allston is kind of melancholy. Tired was really just so I could get something written that day. The other three are somewhat ironic and all of them give off a Twilight Zone sort of vibe.

My favorite for this week is a tie between Ditte and Skepticism. They both having something to say about the human condition.

January 8 – 14

Then I wrote more short stories during the second week of first quarter 2018. All of the pieces are under 2,000 words. I wrote: The Forest; I Used to be Happy; The Star; I Hate Promises; A Kitten; The Outside World; and The Meeting.

Of these seven short stories, The Star; I Hate Promises; and The Meeting are comedies. The Forest and The Outside World are more like fables, with the former being about helping a stranger and the latter about being curious about freedom. A Kitten is heartwarming and could be read to a child.

My two favorites for this week are I Used to be Happy and A Kitten. Both should make a reader think, and I love writing like that.

January 15 – 21

And I wrote even more during the third week of first quarter 2018. These are all under 2,000 words: The Other, Canada Saves the World, Worthy, Nothing Good Ever Happens at 3 AM, Who Do We Blame for This?, None of this is real, and Inventory.

Of these short stories, The Other is another fable. Canada Saves the World and Inventory are comedies. None of this is real is more of a nascent romance. Nothing Good Ever Happens at 3 AM and Who Do We Blame for This? are both tragic first contact stories. Worthy is kind of an odd story about what is a sort of dystopian society that has lost its way.

This week, I had a lot of favorites. In fact, the only one that wasn’t a favorite was Canada Saves the World as it was just kind of silly. Even Inventory was better.

January 22 – 31

So, I wrote a lot more during the final ten days of the first month of first quarter 2018. Everything was under 2,000 words long. And these stories were: Soul Rentals, And the Horse You Rode in On, The Guitarist, The Metuchen Mystery, So Long, Will’s Dog, I Used to be Cruel, Just Married (sequel to The Meeting), Justice, and This is My Child.

Of these short stories, Soul Rentals is kind of spiritual. And the Horse You Rode in On is historical. The Guitarist is YA. The Metuchen Mystery is fantasy. So Long is tragedy. Will’s Dog and Just Married are more fluff pieces. Justice is dystopian. I Used to be Cruel and This is My Child are both drama.

For these last ten days, my favorites were pretty much everything but The Metuchen Mystery, which felt too light and silly. I’m not a fan of dragons, even if they are in New Jersey. The Guitarist was a particular fan favorite. I wrote almost 29,000 words during this month.

February

By design, I did no writing. However, I edited Mettle and The Enigman Cave. I didn’t do any promotions although I was busy with some work for Wattpad (I’m an Ambassador there). Working with beta readers was iffy/spotty at best. Since I do my best to nurture those relationships, but I also need to get a lasso around version control, I created a Facebook group and started using Google docs.

So far, that’s had a mixed reception. Plus I didn’t work on promotions. It’s not so much that I was busy; it was more that I’m just kind of burned out on that.

Beta readers, so far, have enjoyed The Guitarist, The Obolonk Murders, None of This is Real, and The Forest. Who Do We Blame For This? got a mixed reception, as did So Long and This is My Child. I’ve been trying not to be too pushy but unfortunately Facebook algorithms require a lot of activity. I’m still trying to find a good groove there while, at the same time, respecting everyone’s time and interest levels. And my own, too!

Plus I worked some more on the plot for Real Hope of the Universe.

March

There was even more writing!

March 1 – 7

I started off the month with a bang, writing Kelvin 505.928, Oh Little Town, Almost Shipwrecked, Courage, Hot Mess, Enchantment Street and Clay. These were all under 2,000 words long.

So of these short stories, Kelvin 505.928 is science fiction. Oh Little Town is horror. Almost Shipwrecked is humor and is a lot like The Meeting. Hot Mess is a prequel to Almost Shipwrecked. Courage is a romance with a twist. Enchantment Street is kind of dreamy and it’s one of the more positive stories I’ve written this quarter. Clay is a kind of odd deep future type of time travel story. Yeah, it’s weird.

My favorites this week included the one-two punch of Hot Mess and Almost Shipwrecked, plus Courage is a sweet story.

March 8 – 14

And then I kept it up by writing Blue Card, Protection, Shadows, The Path, Guinea Pigs, Loud, and It’s Five O’clock Somewhere . These were all under 2,000 words long.

Hence of these short stories, Blue Card is dystopian and might even be about the Nazis or something like that. Protection is a bit of a true crime story. Shadows and It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere are both time travel stories and they are representative of how I’ve been thinking about that premise lately. The Path is another dystopian story but there’s a bit of hope in there. Guinea Pigs is a weird science fiction story that’s kind of underdeveloped.

My favorites this week included Blue Card as it’s evocative and creepy at the same time. I also liked Shadows and It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.

March 15 – 21

During the following week, I wrote Space Con, Daybreak, AM/FM Ghosts, The Interview, Modern Sonnet, The Witness and How Much?. These were all under 2,000 words long.

Therefore of these stories, Space Con is something of a science fiction true crime story. Daybreak is about a medical miracle. AM/FM Ghosts plays with some urban fantasy I’ve been considering. The Interview and How Much? are both truly creepy science fiction. Modern Sonnet is a touch of poetry. The Witness is a little crime drama.

This week’s favorites included the matter-of-fact vibe of Space Con and the creepiness of How Much? But the big winner is also the fan favorite: The Interview. Beta readers told me they wanted to see more, which is always a great sign.

March 22 – 31

During the final 10-day period, I wrote Appealing, The Cause, The Invaders, Halfway, Merciful, Wicked Ways, and A Trip (there are three more but they’re being posted after this blog goes live). These were all under 2,000 words long.

Hence of all of these, Appealing is an after-prison story which I admit I cribbed from my own fan fiction. The Cause and Halfway are both historical. The Invaders is a little bit of unexpected humor. Wicked Ways and Merciful feel like they relate to each other, as an oppressive society turns to good. A Trip is similar to a work I did for an Alzheimer’s charity Anthology, called Props.

This week’s favorites included Appealing (one beta reader liked the main character’s strength) and Halfway. I also like Merciful; it’s a hopeful story. During this month (apart from three stories which won’t make it to this blog post), I’ve written just under 19,000 words. The big drop-off in production makes sense as work ate me alive.

Milestones

Also, I have written over two and a half million words (fan fiction and wholly original fiction combined). So right now my stats on Wattpad for wholly original works are as follows:

• How to NaNoWriMo – 5,662 reads, 74 comments
† My Favorite Things (like kibble) – 969 reads, 133 comments
• Revved Up – 57,999 reads, 523 comments
† Social Media Guide for Wattpad – 11,870 reads, 587 comments
• The Canadian Caper – 436 reads, 37 comments
† The Dish
• There is a Road – 188 reads, 28 comments
† WattNaNo’s Top Picks 2018 – 236 reads, 8 comments

WIP Corner

The current WIPs are as follows.

The Obolonk Murders Trilogy is a futuristic crime story where our society is divided into three parts – humans, semi-sentient and sentient robots, and aliens. I may end up writing a sequel trilogy. I’m not sure, so stay tuned.

The Enigman Cave takes place about a half a millennium from now and imagines a first contact where the aliens are at the level of Australopithecus.

The Real Hub of the Universe Trilogy takes place about 140 years ago and covers an Earth overrun by alien factions during the Victorian Era.

Mettle takes place only a few years from now and is the story of how society crumbles when metals begin to disappear.

Prep Work During First Quarter 2018

So currently, I have been working on some writing prompts to keep me sharp and keep the words flowing through first quarter 2018.

My intention, for this year’s NaNoWriMo, is that I will probably write the third novel in the Real Hub trilogy. But I need a plot! So a lot of this year will be spent on that.

And – heh – I might actually have a different plot for this year’s NaNo, taking place in, of all things, the Obolonks universe. But I really should finish Real Hub. Really. Shut up, plot bunnies!

First Quarter 2018 Productivity Killers

Work, and what else during first quarter 2018? Plus I have all sorts of offline junk going on, including house renovations and the inevitable lousy New England weather which means shoveling snow and also running the car when it’s really cold out so it won’t stall.

Another productivity killer was my own mood. Not only does winter do it to me (I get Seasonal Affective Disorder), it’s also that I’ve got some burnout. Sometimes the writing days did not come so easily.

Note: there is no previous progress report post!
Next progress report post

1 Comment

The Future of Lonely Writer and Adventures in Career Changing

Adventures in Career Changing, Welcome Mat, Color Theory Videos, Cheat Sheets, future of the lonely writer, Second 5K, Contact, Tech Boston, More Than This, First 5K, Sunday, Monday morning dash, Appointments, Andala, Job interview, site map, reinvention, karmic wheel, sail on, which universe, videos, Sense, universal explorations, job at Neuron Robotics, Social Media Club, enough spoons, Happy Birthday Mass Innovation, Pegasystems, future, Future of the Lonely Writer, Job Seeking, AI hype train, Writing Freedom, Chance Encounter in Time, Show for the Galaxy, Sense,

The Future of Lonely Writer and Adventures in Career Changing

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on March 9, 2017

The Future

The future? Well, more specifically, I mean the future of the Lonely Writer website.

Wait, What?

So as some readers may recall, I started that website as my capstone project at Quinnipiac University. I needed the project in order to graduate with a Master’s in Science in Communications (social media).

Well, graduation happened in August of 2016. However, I had paid for the domain until the end of March of 2017. It seemed silly to try to cancel early.

But now it’s March of 2017.

Changes

Hence I want to change things up. My life has gotten considerably more busy since I graduated. I currently hold down four part-time work from home jobs, all centered around various tasks having to do with blogging. I also podcast every month and I blog for that podcast and for its parent podcast. Furthermore, I still blog about social media and even about fan fiction.

In addition, I still write and still work. I always try to get more of my work published. As a result, I just plain don’t have the time for yet another domain. Most noteworthy, I’d also like to save a few bucks. This project does … okay. Yet Adventures in Career Changing does better.

Therefore, I realized: I should combine the two.

What Will Happen in This Future?

The Lonely Writer YouTube channel and Facebook groups will both live on. And the Twitter stream won’t be going away, either. They do not require as much work as a separate blog. Plus, they are also free of charge. I am only talking about the other domain and those particular blog posts.

So, where did they go? Why, they came here! As a result, the blog URLs changed, and the blog posts themselves were removed for later re-posting. I changed them up, too, so they would be more up to date. That’s all. So don’t worry, okay? That advice and that work will not go away.

It all just moved here, down the street. I was excited about the move. I thought it would help to freshen up Adventures without losing the focus, which is altering my career and also embracing social media. And the writing-related posts, of course, would give that more of a writing bent. That’s all.

Thank you so much for reading.

But then…

Greetings from the Future!

It’s 2024 as I update this post. So, here we are, seven years later. Still no flying cars.

Just kidding.

But in all seriousness, combining the two blogs was a good idea but it also wasn’t. Because the God’s honest truth is, like for so many blogs out there, this site has too much content. And, the content’s focus is often scattered.

So, how do I fix this? One way is here, by updating things. Another is by deleting (or, rather, unpublishing) a ton of stuff. But then that runs into issues with other posts pointing at the stuff which is no longer live.

Of course, I can stop pointing at them. Which… is more work.

I swear, I have the ambitions of a full SEO team for this blog, and the team is just, well, me. Heh.

2 Comments

Just Trying to Make Some Sense of it All

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on April 21, 2013

Be aware, there are adult words in here, for very adult events. Turn back if four-letter words bother you more than terrorism. That makes no sense to me. But maybe it does to you.

Stay Strong and Keep Every Sense About You

For all who have been living under rocks, things here in Boston have been astounding over the course of the past week. If it were a film script, it would never be made. Because no one would believe it.

On Monday, April 15th, 2013, the unthinkable happened, when two bombs went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Three people died, and nearly 180 were wounded, many gravely.

Adventures in Career Changing | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Trying to Make Sense — Close call in Brighton – the blue star is more or less where I live

Then, going from Thursday, April 18th at night, into about 24 hours later, Friday, April 19th, at about 8:40 PM, there was a lockdown and a manhunt here. To give you an idea of how close it all was, check out this map – I can scarcely fathom it.

And I have friends, former colleagues, who were even closer, people who heard shots and explosions.

This is reality.

But I want to put in what, to me, is a bit of perspective, I hope.

A Sense of Destruction and Despair

There are plenty of horrible images and I will, mainly, not focus on them.

But this image should tell the tale of Friday. We, like most people, did as requested and stayed in our home.

I took maybe 20 minutes at about lunchtime and sat on my front porch. I saw a guy walking his dog and another getting a smoke. Plus maybe three cars went by.

And that was it.

I firmly believe that staying out of law enforcement’s collective way was vital in not just keeping bystanders from being harmed but also in the swift conclusion to the manhunt. Also, I will not publicize the alleged (yes, alleged; I believe in the right to a fair trial) perp’s name.

A Sense of Hope and Glory

There are a lot of images and words and I cannot possibly cover them all so I will cherry pick a few.

Neil Diamond and Sweet Caroline

So Neil Diamond hopped on a plane yesterday morning at 4:30 AM.

He just showed up, 40 minutes before the Red Sox game was to start, and asked if he could sing “Sweet Caroline“.

Sure thing, Neil.

David Ortiz (who never made more sense than at this very moment)

David Ortiz got on a microphone and dropped the f-bomb on live TV. The FCC shrugged and said the equivalent of, hey, no sweat.

Ortiz, I am sure, did not plan what he would say. He just spoke from his heart.

And I am sure most of us agree with him and aren’t about to hold the f-bomb against him. I know I don’t.

People care. And they have also expressed their caring in some amazing and offbeat, quirky ways. These are the ways that make the most sense to them.

Always & Forever

The Always & Forever Tattoo Salon in Watertown has a sidewalk memorial going. Add to it, if you like.

Fundraising

There are multiple fundraisers going on. The big one is OneFundBoston. This charity was started by Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick and is of course legitimate.

The local running club, the Brighton Bangers, also held a fundraiser.

Sense, Memory, and Healing

I refuse to provide the names of the alleged perps. But I will gladly share the names of the lost and the injured.

Krystle Campbell

This young woman was 29. She was a restaurant manager at Jasper White’s Summer Shack and mainly worked in Hingham and Cambridge, putting in 70- and 80-hour weeks.

I celebrated my 50th birthday at the Cambridge location last September, and may very well have seen her.

Sean Collier

This MIT police officer lost his life in the Thursday night shootout. Boston Police stood at attention with respect as his hearse passed, remembering this young man who gave his all.

Lingzi Lu

This young woman was a graduate statistics student at Boston University, my alma mater.

The wildly generous trustees of Boston University have already raised over half a million dollars for a scholarship in her name.

Martin Richard

This eight-year-old child was wiser than most of us, eh? His father, mother and sister were also hurt. So please remember them, also.

Jeff Bauman

This young man‘s image was all over the news, as Carlos Arredondo helped get him to safety and care. Some images were cropped. Others showed the full extent of the awful damage to his legs. This site is a legitimate fundraising site to help pay for his care.

Also, if you want to send him a card, send it to:

In care of Jen Joyce
for Jeff Bauman
117 Tynsboro Rd.
Westford, MA 01886

Celeste and Sydney Corcoran

Sydney and Celeste Corcoran at Boston Medical Center

These women are mother and daughter, and they were both also hurt (Celeste has more extensive injuries). Also, there is a legitimate fund to help with their care.

Dic Donohue

This police officer and Navy veteran was also wounded in the Thursday night gunfight. And so here is a legitimate fundraising site for him.

Patrick and Jessica Downes

These newlyweds also each lost a leg. This is a legitimate fundraising site to help pay for their care.

Marc Fucarile

So he is neighbor to a friend who lives in Stoneham. And this young roofer has already lost one leg, and there is shrapnel in his heart. There is a legitimate fund to help him, too.

In Every Sense, It’s Personal

I have loved Boston ever since I attended BU (I am from the Class of ’83) and am also a runner (but only 5K races – marathons are too long for me). Many of these directly affected people are second and third degree of separation from me.

I cannot begin to describe just how personal it all feels, and I know that my feelings are rather small within the scope of this immense tragedy.

So I leave you with this image –

The Strip and sense — The Strip made a ton of sense!

and with this song.

Peace. Please.

27 Comments

Category: Personal

Personal Writing Process

What is My Personal Writing Process

Plotting

‘Pantsing’

A Personal Writing Process In the Middle

Story Arcs

Easter Eggs

Personal Writing Process: Takeaways

Like this:

Writing Progress Report – First Quarter 2018

Progress Report – First Quarter 2018

Finished Works

January

January 1 – 7

January 8 – 14

January 15 – 21

January 22 – 31

February

March

March 1 – 7

March 8 – 14

March 15 – 21

March 22 – 31

Milestones

WIP Corner

Prep Work During First Quarter 2018

First Quarter 2018 Productivity Killers

Like this: