WELCOME!
Come in. I'm glad you're here. I hope you didn't have too much trouble getting here. Have some tea and a cookie. Stay awhile.
I'm going to make a confession upfront. Let's just get it out of the way. I am what is termed in the business, a generalist.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
It means that I have a broad range of interests.
It means that I like to write about different things.
It means that I like Rocky Road ice cream, not just vanilla.
It means that I like to engage fully with the world.
It means that if an issue concerns me, I'm going to talk about it.
There, that's my confession; it wasn't so bad. I think I'll be okay.
At the start of each episode of his television anthology show, Ray Bradbury enters his writer's space while the camera pans through the beautiful clutter of objects, paraphernalia, ephemera, stacks of books, etc. in his office; his voice then projects over the scene as he talks about all this stuff, and we hear him saying, "I'll never starve here. I just look around, find what I need and begin."
Ray Bradbury's room is my mind; I've experienced so much that's a part of me, I can't choose just one or two things to concentrate on. I have to look at the whole panoply of possibilities. I don't know about anybody else but that's just the way I play.
Writers are supposed to find a 'niche', which is well and good, but if I had to concentrate on one or two things to the detriment of all the other wonderful conceptualizations floating around my interior galaxy, I would, I expect, go a little mad. Besides, I'm more than a little tired of all those silly words like 'niche' and 'platform'. I'm not knocking it, perse, but writing is about connecting with others naturally, anyway; after all, we don't write the stuff we write for our pet goldfish. I don't think they care, as content as they are with the content in their goldfish worlds. The point is we write to entertain, and inform each other, which means that we can certainly find each other despite the spins we author types put on our wordsmithing efforts.
Don't get me wrong. I have a few pet interests that I come back to time and again. For example, I love all of the arts; I love writing about the arts, creative endeavors, what others are doing to advance the arts, etc. and I also have a soft spot in my heart for the plight of not-for-profits, special associations, cause focused organizations that might need the services of a poor, very, very, very, hungry writer at reasonable fees. I'm interested in the environment, the state of our society, the world in general, how we live together, how we treat each other--in other words, activism. Furthermore, I'm interested in education, what's wrong with it, where it's going, where it should go, self-education, etc.
Whatever the case may be, I want my writing to mean something, to make some kind of measurable difference, whether that is writing to fulfill some educational goal, or helping to expand our perspectives on whatever moves us, drives us, and impels us to go farther, to be better, to make the changes we need to make, and yes, we can do better, we can do more, and there is definitely a whole lot of housecleaning to be done, (sic).
I AM A WRITER, and I'm here to exercise some major verbosity. Let the verb slinging begin.
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