A smattering

My busy schedule should be subsiding soon and I'm looking forward to getting back to a more regular blogging schedule in addition to more structured writing time. Yikes. Seems like the calendar just jumped up and swallowed me for a while there.

A couple of things for today...

First, I want to point you to Kelly Fineman. Kelly, besides being an all around lovely person, has a really freaking cool blog. She works really hard* to write smart, educational posts that are sort of like mini-classes. Only not boring. :) She's declared June to be Shakespeare month over at her place and, being a fan of The Bard myself, I've had a great time reading all of her insightful information on his work. Go check it out! Did I mention there are contests...?

I thought I'd leave you with this quote to ponder:

"We are monumentally distracted by a pervasive technological culture that appears to have a life of its own, one that insists on our full attention, continually seducing us and pulling us away from the opportunity to experience directly the true meaning of our own lives."
--Al Gore

I thought about how true this is and the cost it has on our relationships and our personal and spiritual** growth, which is unsettling in itself and certainly worth considering. However, the reason I bring it up here is that I also spent some time thinking about what this truth means for us as writers.

We write about life and, whether we portray it exactly as it happens around us or package it in an alternate world, we're siphoning from life's experiences to make the stories come alive. The more indirectly we experience our own lives--to Mr. Gore's point--the thinner those experiences are going to be and the cheaper the stories are going to feel.

Take a few minutes to think about this yourself. Read this post on the Deadline Dames if you haven't already. Consider scheduling a little more time each day that is technology free. :)

*Either that, or she's a genius. Maybe both?
**I don't mean religious here, but rather emotional and soulful -- the growth of the you who you are.