The missing blog…

I stayed up late last night and wrote a fun, fantastic blog, then dreamed about a blogging seminar, woke up in a panic and rushed to take it down.

Blog Rule Number 1: Keep them short: 250 – 300 words.
My personal opinion is that it’s difficult to develop an interesting article, and make an educational, philosophical, spiritual or humorous point in so few words – but I’m a writer. I like to start with a theme, go what appears to be wildly off course, and then bring my reader back to where we started making a purposeful point.
Two phrases pop into my head when I tell stories – although the source is only one person and I should get over it. But maybe they apply in the blogging world.

A) Your stories are too long. B) You are too hard to follow. And from others: “Your humor is a bit dark” or the “I don’t get it” look.

Yet writing classes say “Don’t spell everything out. Trust your reader to be intelligent!”

As I write I find this to be a bit dull. So why write it? Because there may be a lesson in it for other business owners.

Ultimately the decision came down to the fact that what I say personally can affect me professionally.

Rule #2: Once something gets on the web it is difficult to impossible to pull it back.

Rule #3: Humor does not always translate well in the written form or across cultures (in the widest sense of the word).

So what I thought was hilarious at 3 am before going to bed was potentially not as funny to those reading it at 8 am at work. (Nah! It was really good and the five of you who got to read it are lucky.)

I’ll cut the missing blog into manageable sizes in future posts – with backdating - including the meat of the story, but leaving out the ‘random acts of thinking’. (329 words – not bad…for me)

by Heather J. Kirk

Quotable: "my job is to make people uncomfortable"

Heather J. Kirk is currently listening to A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I'd say this book is one of those "alternative styles" and jumps from person to person, year to year. It's hard to follow sometimes, but trust that eventually the charaters show up again and it all ties together. As with all experimental work - some is a bit strange. But there are several chapters that are uproariously funny! And it is dark humor, my favorite kind.

Here's a quote I chose (sounds a bit like me...):

12-year-old Alison: “‘I want to know every bad thing you’ve done,’ I say, ‘including dangerous and embarrassing.’ ‘You can’t,’ Mom says. I stare at her until she looks away. What I suddenly understand: My job is to make people uncomfortable. I will do it all my life. My mother, Sasha Blake, is my first victim.

It can be found at Audible.com