DESPERATION : EXPERIENCE FOURTEEN : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 

What's it like like to be DESPERATE ?

Absolutely no one likes to admit to desperation but absolutely everyone experiences it. So remember that this workshop doesn't insist you show your work to anyone. 

Write about a time in your life when you wanted or needed desperately.

Just kick off the covers and get down to your humanness.

Why were/ are you desperate?

How did/do you feel?

What did/will you do?

If you are one of the few who has never ever experienced desperation, I don't believe you, but try to imagine it. Imagine a character who is desperate. Then write. 

Christine Trzyna

This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop. 

C 2018-2025  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

EVALUATING YOU TUBE VIDEOS

Once upon a time I had an embedded YouTube player in this blog.

I enjoyed listening to the favorite songs I loaded on to it as I wrote.

Then one day YouTube got sold, soon enough my password into it which was attached to a Yahoo account stopped working, and the forsaken YouTube channel still shows up on the Internet though I want it taken down and many of the songs I loaded on it went poof a while back. 

There were a couple ways to look at the borrowing of music from YouTube. One was that it was a lot like a lending library.  We've used books, films, music and so on from our lending libraries without guilt about what happens to the intellectual properties involved.  Re YouTube, those were the days when people posted videos with some notion of community interest and volunteerism - not much for profit.

However, the more commercial YouTube got, the more posters profited - while original artists languished in unpaid hell - the less comfortable I got with this borrowing.  It seemed to me that crediting the artists might have given them some advertising or some patronage. But I've met artists who were ripped during their careers and seeing their work up on YouTube just ripped them back up.

Some people are making a living on creating YouTube videos with original content and art.  

Some of these are of high quality, a pleasure to look at, intriguing, and worth your time.

Finding videos that are worth your time is increasingly difficult.  It's one more thing that can waste your time.

More often I find videos that are confusing because they have agendas, sound authoritative, but are spinning opinion.  Conspiracy theories are often in this category.  There's nothing wrong with having an opinion.  It's all American to have an opinion.  However, I WISH YOUTUBE WOULD HAVE AN OPINION CATEGORY when you chose to advance or refine your search.  I'm sure that those who are trying to present themselves as alternative news stations would hate to put themselves in the opinion category, but to a viewer/listener it would be helpful.

Among the things I would like to filter out are ROBO VOICES.  I don't want to hear any "news" delivered by a robo voice, which often mistakes words and pronunciations and has a hint of "anonymous" in it.  I'd like to filter out the names of accounts.  If I determine that an account is fake news (exaggerated gossip) maybe I would prefer to eliminate it from selections.


C 2018  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

VISITING JAM MY SENIOR FRIEND

I made a surprise visit to my senior friend JAM recently. 

I met him maybe 6 years ago when I was friend with a friend of his, a woman poet.  The elderly woman used to take walks around my neighborhood and when I engaged her, she recited short lovely poems to me, poems she was proud of and wanted to publish.  Our first conversations were about putting together a chap book (usually a small book published by the person or an editor meant for small distribution, like at poetry readings at coffee houses or art galleries, often free or for the cost of printing.)  She wanted her only grandson to have her intellectual property rights.

I have a soft spot for seniors who are alone in life, without living or local family to look in on them. 

The woman poet only had her grandson and Jam, who with his wife, had been this couple's best friends.  The woman poet died several months after I began visiting and phoning her frequently.  She was dying of cancer and had not yet been told the truth, though she suspected.  I was with her the night before she died, and met her grandson only then. 

JAM was also depressed not only because he was surrounded in a senior living place with people who were dealing with illness or dying, because of the death of his wife, who he had known and been married to over 60 years!  Now in his 90's JAM is my "oldest" friend, but because he does have family to look in on him (people I will probably never meet) I don't visit with him as often.

JAM's way out of his depression was WRITING.  He joined several senior - oriented writing clubs and classes and recorded mostly memoirs some of his short stories or chapters published.

This visit he surprised me by pulling out his Barnes and Noble NOOK! JAM bragged that he might be ready to go but he always kept up with technology and with this NOOK he was able to access Los Angeles Public Library and download books.  He had read near 40 in the last several months on the NOOK.  He surprised me by telling me he didn't like non-fiction especially not history, and naming his favorite writers of suspense, mystery, and murder.  Since he is slowing down physically, this has saved him the hardship of walking with a cane to take public transportation to the library.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2016  ...JAM DIED THIS PAST SPRING...

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES / PERMISSIONS

ALL ORIGINAL WRITING OF THIS BLOG and the design and composition of this blog is and remains the INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY of CHRISTINE TRZYNA.



All videos, art, and writing linked to or quoted REMAIN THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY of others. I claim all Rights to my ORIGINAL WRITING, and the design and composition of this blog, including INTERNATIONAL and INTERNET RIGHTS. As a requirement for using my intellectual property, I must be contacted in advance for permission. (If you do not contact me and get it in writing, then the answer is NO. )



CHRISTINE TRZYNA and CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITERLY LIFE are NOT ASSOCIATED WITH ANY COMMERCIAL SITE. I/we do not endorse any product or petition that is using links to this site. I/we also do not endorse the sale of any product, book, chapbook, etc being sold on the net using my name or authorship or links to this site for the purpose of sales.

PERSONAL DIARY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA : THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME

TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

by Christine Trzyna

For some time, I spent a large chunk of my day, sometimes every day, in a privately owned coffee house on a major boulevard in a ritzy shopping district. That it was a ritzy area is mentioned here, only to say that a lot of people who came into this place had a lot of money and time to burn. But not everyone. Not most of the writers who decorated the place. I was one of those writers who was tolerated for hours with my laptop taking a small table, though not without purchasing. I bought a lunch and nursed a few refills and once in a while one of those people with money to burn filled my cup for another 50 cents.
My purpose was to write in an environment that was somewhat stimulating so that when I needed to take a break and have a good, intelligent, conversation, I could. I wanted to write in a place where food and beverages were easily affordable and available and that wasn't too far from my place. (I did meet some interesting conversationalists there.)

I think a lot of writers do the same, escaping their environments not supportive of their writing by taking their laptops and heading out. There is even a kind of club for some that suddenly ups and goes to X, abandoning Y, making the owners who counted on them, for their bread if not their butter, wonder what they did wrong. Usually it's just the in-crowd as they think of themselves excluding someone they are tired of.

HERE IS THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE THERE EVER SAID TO ME ABOUT WRITING and PUBLISHING A BOOK:

"You go to the book sales at the libary or to garage sales, and you buy books for a dollar or a quarter, and after all the time and effort, that's where your book ends up."

The guy who said this to me was a rich bum, the equivalent of someone satisfied to live off a trust fund and not do much of anything, not even volunteer work.

Of course I think it's WONDERFUL that books get recycled and go from one reader to the next, that those books got cleared out of attics and bookshelves, so that SOMEONE ELSE could READ THEM! I know that the moment for the author themselves to profit from the sale of such a book is over, yet, this is how some people become familiar with a writer, through an old book. You can't put a dollar on that. And writers write for publication because they want to share with the world. When I get a book from the library that I love and want, I too look for it at library and garage sales. I THINK "GREAT! AT SOME POINT A WRITER GOT PAID FOR THIS WRITING!" That's better than being ripped off from the get go!

SO NO I AM NOT OK with someone stealing my intellectual property, which has happened. That's one of the reasons I don't send work out as I used to, having trust and faith because someone claims they have a great opportunity for me; it seems that promises made by certain chap book publishers (I should sue) and even people with Doctorates in Literature who put out anthologies (I should sue) turn into BS.

A steaming simmering pile of BS...

Hey, thanks for reading!

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITERLY LIFE COPYRIGHT

Christine Trzyna Writerly Life Rights Information  AKA Christine Trzyna BlogSpot AKA Christine Trzyna

Every once in a while I'll be posting a notice like this one that reminds readers that the content of this blog is Copyright Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.

If interested in communicating with Christine Trzyna please send a comment that includes your e-mail address and full name.Comments do not automatically appear on the Internet and are moderated.

THANKS!

CHRISTINE TRZYNA - WRITERLY LIFE RIGHTS INFORMATION

Christine Trzyna BlogSpot / Christine Trzyna

Every once in a while I'll be posting a notice like this one that reminds readers that the content of this blog is Copyright Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.





THANKS!