What I’m Writing in 2022

 

Each year end I give some thought to what I’d like to focus on writing in the coming year, and what I want to accomplish on the business end of my writing enterprise.

Inevitably, I get sidetracked along the way and don’t go 100% through with my “New Year’s Resolutions”.

And 2022 may end up no different than any other year. In the end, I suppose none of this matters. I’m retired. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that my writing is a hobby. I don’t need to make money from my pen. Sure, it would be nice. But it’s not a necessity.

Which means it’s all fun. :) And if I’m not having fun, I ain’t gonna be doing it.

Nevertheless, it’s good to plot a course even if along the way you decide to deviate at some point. So, for 2022, I’ve specified a few high priority items I want to accomplish.

Screenplays

For quite some time I’ve wanted to try my hand at screenplays. Probably because I’ve had a long standing interest in drama. After all, my first “publishing credit” was way back in high school when my 11th grade drama class produced for the school a play I’d written. Quite a neat experience that was!

Therefore, the major focus of my writing in 2022 will be screenplays.

I’ll still write shorter fiction for my mailing list folk. So if you’re interested in that, sign up for my mailing list. You’ll get a freebie if you do. You’ll also get news about my screenplay adventure, and all the other things I’m writing.

A New Series

I like the occult detective genre. A blend of mystery and the macabre. The two genres I most like to read.

Sometime in 2022 I intend to introduce an occult detective series. The stories will begin as screenplays, and then I will write the books from the screenplays. The ol’ two birds with one stone idea.

Audio Books

A couple years ago I bought an excellent DIY audiobook course from Derek Doepker. The course is just what I was looking for.

I bought the equipment, and now all I need to do is carve out time and start recording. There is, of course, editing, and all the other stuff that goes with producing a “book”.

The guesstimate for the first few audiobooks is around 6+ hours for every finished hour of the recording. That will come down in time as I get more experience. Or so I’m told. :)

And with 30+ books in my oeuvre, I have plenty of material to record. Which will keep me out of mischief for a very long time.

Move My Blog to YouTube

This one is iffy. I’ve put it on my list for 2022, but it’s at the bottom of my top tier of projects.

I don’t intend anything fancy. No vlog, at least as vlogs are popularly conceived of these days. No high tech YouTube Channel; mostly because I don’t have the know-how. Nor do I know anyone who has the know-how.

I envision the project to start off as a verbal form of my blog. If it takes off, then I can get more high tech. “Take off” really means making money from it.

Mostly, I’m contemplating doing this to save wear and tear on my hands and still produce blog-type content.

We’ll see how it goes.

Wrap-Up

So those are my major plans for the new year. I will, in addition, continue to build up my mailing list as I search for my 1,000 True Fans. I know they’re out there. Wish me luck!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, I wish you a fabulous new year!

The Meaning of Christmas

 

Let me begin by saying, Christmas means different things to different people. So, I suppose, I should have titled this post: The Meaning of Christmas to Me. And you, my dear reader, are completely free to agree or disagree with my thoughts.

At base, Christmas is a Christian holy day that celebrates the birth of the Christ; the one who came to take away the sins of the world.

However, in this largely post-Christian era, Christmas has essentially become a secular holiday devoted to exchanging gifts and having a feast with family and friends.

For myself, even though I no longer believe there was a historical Jesus, I try to steer a middle way between the religious and the secular.

Now you may ask, how the heck can I do that? Isn’t it one or the other? Especially if I don’t even believe there was a Jesus?

For me, the answer is simple. The Christmas story expresses a hope. A hope that humanity can transcend its desire for self-destruction. That we humans can, in fact, become a species that values the other above self. That we can learn to practice the Golden Rule in our thoughts and in our actions. That we can learn to value peace over war, love over hate, freedom over slavery.

Stoicism is my life philosophy of choice. In particular, the Stoicism espoused by Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Seneca’s Stoicism was pragmatic, not dogmatic. And that put him at odds with Stoics in his own day, and it puts him at odds with many of the Neo-Stoics of today.

For me, Seneca is a philosopher for the 21st century. Even though he lived two millennia ago, he could have just as easily lived today.

“All truth is mine,” he wrote to his friend Lucilius. Seneca was not a dogmatician. His Stoicism fit the practical needs of the Romans of his day, and it fits the needs of those of us who live in the first world of today. The times haven’t changed all that much.

With Seneca, I say, ALL TRUTH IS MINE. I basically follow the Stoic way, but deviate where I need to do so in order to follow the truth (more accurately, what is truth for me).

As a result, I can rejoice in the hope of the Christmas season without being a Christian, or believing that Jesus existed.

Because the truth is — everyone hopes the meaning of Christmas becomes a reality. That weapons of war are turned into tools of peace. That we all turn the other cheek, rather than get offended and strike back. That we forgive others, as we ourselves wish to be forgiven. And that we do to others, as we want them to do to us.

Christmas is our wish to transcend ourselves and become Human 2.0. And who, at heart, doesn’t want to become a better person? Merry Christmas!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy living!

The Ad Free Experience

 

For several years now my nephew has touted the virtues of ad blockers. I didn’t pay much attention, because I didn’t find the ads all that annoying, and felt they were easy to ignore. After all I grew up in the commercial TV era of the 50s and 60s where commercials were just part of the TV viewing experience. Or we viewed them like an intermission: a time to get up and get a snack. Streaming has totally altered our viewing experience, making us, I think, less tolerant of ads.

However, within the last year I’ve noticed that when I conduct a search on Amazon half the page is filled with ads instead of search results. Which is especially annoying when half the ads don’t even relate to the product I’m searching for.

Google is almost as bad. YouTube is becoming impossible: ads you can’t skip and ads peppered throughout the video. 

Then there are the websites where there are so many ads and pop-ups I can’t even find the content that I was searching for. Add to that all those annoying EU privacy content banners, and I’d rather stay off the Internet than put up with all that.

Everyone’s desire to make a buck, or protect me from myself, was ruining my content searching and entertainment experience.

Having reached the end of my rope the other day, I looked at reviews of ad blockers for my Safari browser. There are several good ones out there, and after reading what they could and couldn’t do I decided to plunk down 2 bucks and buy the Wipr app.

Then my nephew started telling me about the Brave browser. It sounded intriguing, so I downloaded it (it’s free) and have been giving it a try.

My initial impression is that it works fairly well. With the Brave browser, and using DuckDuckGo as the search engine, I have an ad free search experience of the Internet. On YouTube I see no ads. On Amazon, most of the ads have vanished. I have run across sites where Brave did not filter out those annoying little videos that sites are now hosting, or filter out pop-ups. Brave also doesn’t seem to get rid of those annoying EU cookie notifications. 

Thus far I’d have to say that Brave has done a decent job and has made a dent in the annoying ad problem. I’ll give the browser a B-.

What I definitely don’t like about Brave is that it is apparently built from the Chrome browser, because it has the same look and feel as Chrome — and I hate Chrome. And that is a major downside to the browser for me.

Being the dedicated Safari user that I am, I may end up spending the two bucks to get Wipr. That way I can use my Safari browser, and be ad free. Because Wipr is supposedly merciless when it comes to ad elimination.

In the meantime, I have switched from Google to DuckDuckGo as my search engine on Safari. That has helped a little bit with cutting out ads on general Internet searches.

I don’t know why it took me so long to finally make the decision to go ad free. But now that I have I am once again enjoying YouTube and searching for items of interest on the Internet and Amazon. And who knows? With Wipr I might reach a totally ad free experience. That, of course, remains to be seen.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy ad-free searching!