Monday, March 18, 2013

PIC & TALE #1: SPEEDING CITY BUS

Introducing Pic & Tale

Ever heard of Very Short Stories? It's one of the must-follow Twitter accounts regardless of interests. (Okay, they do fall a bit on the macabre side of things hence the Edgar Allen Poe profile picture.) Basically it's Tweet-sized (the sanctioned 140 characters) fiction! They are conjured by Sean Hill and he even has a book with some 300 of them. Well, the idea of a story that could be that short really inspired me and so I thought I'd try my hand at it but introduce a new element to the table: iPhone pictures! Similar to the iPhone Memories, another type of post I do, these are pictures that I take and then infuse my words into for a new whole. The difference is that iPhone Memories are more snapshots of people, times and places of my life while Pic & Tale (that's what I'm calling it) will be primarily short bursts of creativity. I will likely first post them via Instagram as I did with this first one but will get around to publishing it here on the blog. I'd love to see some Pic & Tale entries of your own or, if you feel so inclined, you write a short story to match the picture. The only rule? Three sentences* or less.

* No run-ons! C'mon!

Speeding City Bus



As Martin stumbled off the curb he finally recalled the landscape of her face... He looked up. The realization hit him like a speeding city bus.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG

I was chatting with my oldest sister the other day. I talk with her at least weekly. She's back in Utah. She was at her computer working on her blog which she updates fairly often enough. Enough so that her family and friends know what's going on in her family's life week to week and month to month. My other sister is the same way. These women manage to both be full-time mothers (of multiple delinquents no less) and adequate bloggers, among many other things. It's admirable.

It must have been our mother and her scrap-booking over the years (recently she has also turned to a form of blogging) that planted this seed in the three of us. We each have a desire to document the going-ons in our lives. Some people write journals or diaries (some people just have diarrhea), others blog, others simply tell Facebook and Twitter their every move or perhaps just occasionally check in, some do all of these things, and then others prefer to not share with the world what is going on in their lives. My father falls in this last camp. Social networking? Not for him. Blog or website? Forget about it. Journal keeping? Well, he's sure his wife mentions him enough and that will suffice. Record-keeping (of which blogging is one of myriad forms) just isn't a desire for everybody. In my father's defense, I will mention that he has written a self-published tome of his own consisting of stories and experiences from his life. (Mother did so too, I made mention of this in my first post on The Tome of J.S. Lewis.) They presented these bound pages to their children on Christmas of 2010. I need to locate those again as I did not read them all. Not sure where they are in this still fresh post-move to Los Angeles.

Nancy had a blog and photography website before I even met her, but she started Our Perfect Bubble shortly after we had tied the note and drove ourselves and our belongings to the West Coast. Over there she has documented some our married life thus far, from the foods she has made to the day-dates we've gone on. Fashion and film are other interests of hers and she's thrown posts primarily about those into the mix. Her large and plentiful-pixeled pictures really are a highlight over there.

So my sister asks of me what's up with my blog, meaning this one. I had one blimey post on the first day of the year and not a single one since! Yeah, that tends to be how I roll. (This is the modern day equivalent of writing in your journal once in a blue moon and ending each entry with a resolve to make it a daily practice... You either know what I'm saying or you don't. It's telling that I did that when I was younger and now I do this.) It's not for lack of desire. There's always something I want to share. It's because of that tendency that I've never been bored in my life. I blog a lot, just not about my life. Though, that's not entirely true. If you know me you might know that I publish much opinion over at The Film Tome. Thoughts on film, that's what's up. Still, nearly every review offers a glimpse into my life. Some even consist of anecdotes regarding the circumstance in which I saw a given film or my preconceived notions about it (before I saw it). Film is such a significant part of my life that I think sometimes what I'm writing over there is an equivalent to what someone else would be focusing on in their personal life. Still, it isn't all my life.

I have several blogs (not counting Our Perfect Bubble which I have contributed to). Besides this one and The Film Tome I have one called All Manner of Posts which is actually what The Film Tome originally stemmed from. I have one called Euphrates which is primarily for my poetry - haven't done one on there September of 2011! As a cousin to The Film Tome I started The Video Game Tome but have since stopped posting on there with the created joint-effort of These Things We Call Video Games. It's all so unnecessarily cluttered and so here's what I've decided to do:

The Film Tome, since it is very much it's own beast by this point, and These Things We Call Video Games, since it is a group project, will remain unchanged. You will ever find links to both at the top bar of this blog under "Film" and "Video Games" respectively. Any time I am writing about either of those two topics it will be posted on those two sites. Everything else? It will be posted here on The Tome of J.S. Lewis. I will be using other categories (i.e. My Life) for easy sorting and filtering and keep the Blog Archive available as a sidebar on the left. While All Manner of Posts and the like will not be immediately deleted from existence I will refrain from posting thereon. Posts about random news stories, thoughts on monkeys, so on and so forth will all be published here now. Expect me to further flesh out the top bar with the best overall topic selections. I may have to have a "Random" topic available, eh?


I wonder if I have blogged about my first-world blogging problems more than anybody else in the world...

To blog or not to blog?

I choose to blog; I'm just trying to make it better and easier for myself and those who care to hear about it.

Peace out.