Words and Spaces
Writing — the words and the spaces between — has its place as therapy and confessional.
Posts
2011-12-19
Nearly a year and a half ago I managed to hit the biological reverse lottery and wind up with a medical condition called *chronic *non-bacterial prostatitis. The diagnosis took about four months, eight doctors, countless nurses, and over a half a dozen tests. On top of all of that, even though it wasn’t going to kill me or cause any major harm, it hurt more than anything I’ve ever experienced. Pain assumed a whole new role in my life, and my days revolved around how bad I hurt at any given time.
2011-12-12
RMS Titanic* has always been an interest of mine; when I was in 7th grade I read Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember and was fascinated by the story of this “unsinkable” ship that had met it’s end during it’s maiden voyage. When I was a teenager, Bob Ballard discovered her final resting place, and it seemed like virtually overnight the market was flooded with books on the*Titanic. *I probably read most, if not all of them. Of these books, my favorite was Her Name, Titanic by Charles Pellegrino.
2011-12-05
For a over seven years now I’ve been trying to participate in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month “competition”. For the first six of those years, I failed miserably. There are all sorts of reasons, or depending on your perspective, excuses as to why I failed but the failure is in and of itself the bottom line. Thankfully, in 2011 that all turned around and I was able to bang out a little over 50,000 words in November. Yes, I wrote a novel. Which is really cool and all, but there was one little problem. It’s not very good; it reads like a guy who writes essays and technical papers who decided to write fiction and maybe read one too many book on how to accomplish that.
2011-11-21
Last week we passed the 6th anniversary of my Grandfather’s death; in what I assume to be a typical feature of all families, this occasion was marked by my various relatives launching into different variations of the “has it really been that long?” conversation. My Grandfather lived to the age of 90 years old, which was something that seemed to fill him with amazement. On one of the last occasions that I spoke with him he responded to my birthday wishes by simply saying “Ninety years!” with a smile and a sigh.
2011-11-14