Good News and Good Dreams

I have asked a small handful of fellow bloggers, all of which are from one or other of the Carolinas, for permission to link to their blogs from here. Hopefully, that will be the beginning of a small loose network of Carolina blogs. I enjoy each one I read, and feel that others will also. Prior to getting permission though, I won't be linking any of them, except in this post. On Barry Ready's blog "Palmetto Pundit", scroll down to the post titled "It Doesn't Have to be Grim to be a Milestone!" I can't resist referring readers to that post. I've had similar situations so many times on a much smaller, and less serious, scale; but still similar. The borderline valueless media really does put a damper on my spirits. http://palmettopundit.blogspot.com/

Anywho, if you happen to be from either of the Carolinas, have a blog, and would like to be included in the blog links, drop me a line. No damnyankeewannabees need apply. I also almost tripped over David Terrenoire's blog titled "A Dark Planet" which I won't provide a link to in this post because the last couple of his posts I read were carefully uncrafted pieces with key words inserted which may or may not be the intention of the author to generate hits in searches. By key words, I mean phrases such as teen sex, gay marriage, and well, I really didn't analyzee them very closely. Those phrases (teen sex and gay marriage) just jumped off the page in an almost otherwise semi-unrelated narration. Why not include the whole bent list of terms David? There are quiet a list of bloggers out there who regularly use and heavily sprinkle their blogs with various morphations of the "F" word. I find that I can be just as offensive, if not more so, by not using such profanities, vulgarisms and damnyankee regurgitations. However on reflection, perhaps an abundant use of the "F" word gets you more hits from search engines, or more frequently blocked from Net Nanny, and thus fewer adolescent comments. I really don't care. I still wonder if David was using teen sex and gay marriage to garner search engine hits or what. The polite thing would be to ask I suppose.

The "F" word, and all its permutations at one time were my favorite nouns, verbs, adjutives, and adverbs. I still lapse into a string of them when I become extremely addled. Anywho, back to David Terrenoire's tortured outcry of writer's cramps... Okay, truthfully, David I enjoy your writing style. HOWEVER, your most recent two posts suxored badly. Did you have a ghost writer? As a friend of my gay brother is fond of saying, "I unknow". I may sound as the pot calling the kettle black, but I don't proclaim myself to be any kind of writer other than a marginally literate person, dabbling a brush load of simple vocabulary over the canvas of the net. I pronounce the pictures that I paint aren't cute, pretty, nor very amusing. But I know fairly decent writing when I see it, even if I can't do it. David does a fairly decent writing job most of the time. In fact, its much more fairly decent than any writing that I do. And, I consider myself a fairly decent judge of fairly decent writing. Its that really fantastic writing that seems to swim over my head.

Half the renown writers of today are people that seem to make a living by being outlandish or rude, but not by writing. Another fourth of the renown writers have been misclassified as writers. They are actually something else, but I couldn't find the profession listed in the CIA Fact Book, and the word escapes me just now.

Carolina writers though generally have a charm about them that you don't find anywhere else in the world. I hope to prove that point to readers soon, by collecting the links here that will most definitely prove that fact. Hopefully including David Terrenoire's link. He's a transplanted yankee, but been here long enough, and suffered the passions of living Southern long enough, to now qualify as a Southern writer.

I wish I would have followed the advice that was passed to me in my youth by one of the Carolina writers of that time. He said that the way to become a renown writer is to be a prolific writer, but only a prolific writer who hid away at least 95% of what he wrote, and only revealed to his publishers his best 5%. I asked him if it was true that his publishers had published everything that he wrote. He told me no, that they published everything that he ever submitted to them, which was only about 1% of everything he ever wrote.

It seems the writing business is just as much hard work as any other. The callous settles on your brains though, instead of your hands. But, the work is all about the same as that of the hired field hand, and the pay, even more meager. I've worked as a farm hand in the fields. Its hard, back breaking, but honest labor. At the end of the day, you know you've done a days work. It gives you character and personal dignity. I've never submitted my personal dignity to the challenges of pulling something so personal as my written work product and submitting it to a publisher for probabal rejection. That either takes guts or arrogance; maybe a healthy dose of both? Perhaps some Carolina writers who have, can tell us what the slow stream of rejection is like.

I would prefer to experience the joys of an acceptance and offer letter for myself. Yes, I know that New Orleans Snowballs served up on a Carolina Beach sidewalk stand a better chance of surviving the summer than of my getting an acceptanc/offer, ever; probably stands a better chance than that of my ever finishing a submission. But hey, we all like to read and dream. Some of us like to write and dream. The secret is, its not because we necessarily like to, but are driven to. If you are Southern and live beneath the Carolina moon, then you know some things about being driven. Yes, I would say you do. You also know some things about dreams. Yes we do don't we. We like good news and good dreams. Its really good when they are the same. Its just one of the passionate hopes we live for, beneath the Carolina moon.

Dread