I’m a failure!… And I love it! (video)
It’s easy to analyze my creative ventures and come to the conclusion that they are failures. 😩 And it used to be easy for me to conclude that I was failure as well. 😭 But I’m not a failure… I was just looking at the wrong numbers. 📉📈 I love what I’m up to… ❤️️ And here’s a video where I talk it all through… 😜
A steaming pile of new features for Neurotic Stix Pro!
I’m not sure how many of y’all know that I have a mobile app in the iOS App Store, but I do. It’s called Neurotic Stix Pro and it’s even more neurotic now because I added a bunch of features to the latest update. 🎉🎉🎉 The app lets you create quirky, twitchy, digital stickers with your own captions using more than 40 different templates… Now it has more stickers, more colors, more options, and many other neurotic things. It’s free to try, but I charge a few bucks for the full version. It’s mostly a labor of love, though I also wouldn’t complain if I made a bit more money on this laborious love. 👩🎨❤️ Here are the kinds of things you can easily create with the app 👇👇👇
The Spectrum of Metafiction (Interview in Bomb Magazine)
Wendy J. Fox, author of the fabulous short story collection WHAT IF WE WERE SOMEWHERE ELSE interviewed me for Bomb Magazine. We talked about tech lingo, parenting, metafiction, emoji vs. emoticons, writing about a writer as a way to write, and a bunch of other fun and crooked topics.
the blog experience
I've been thinking about blogging. Not about blogging today, but just what it felt like to blog a bloggy blog post fifteen years ago. Until 2009, I had a blog on blogger.com and it was magical, just how easy it was to put words down in a post. Not quite a journal entry, and not quite journalism, but just this informal way to tell your story. Putting out these breadcrumbs for people to follow, to learn more about you, and whatever you were obsessed with that week. And then, the next week (or the next day, or the next month), you could continue along that trail with another post. You didn't have to think about any fancy website stuff or submitting your crazy consciousness for publication on some magazine's website. It felt so fresh and free.
Y'all know by now that I don't blog regularly anymore. I average about one post every two months, and typically I'm just using the post to point to some other video or project. I don't know when or why those chatty blog posts stopped for me. And in the meantime, blogging has become a less cool thing to do. Maybe because social media has filled that need. But I never got comfortable posting the same kind of content on social media. Social media feels so chaotic and noisy — and everybody's voices are all smashed together. The blog was my own stage to tell my own story in my own way. And then I could happily go visit your blog and listen to your unique voice on your unique stage.
I miss the blog experience.
the blog post that is boringly about this blog
If you're not reading this blog post right now then my migration from WordPress to Squarespace has failed. Oh, wait, I think I'm doing this backwards. I should've warned you earlier. Oh, wait, I actually shouldn't have warned you at all, because I know for a fact that you're reading this right now. What I should have done was warn the people who were left behind! …I'm clearly not doing this blog thing right.
non-gamer becomes gamer and then tries to explain games to non-gamers (video)
So I've gotten into playing video games. Nothing too hardcore — I mean, I haven't lost my day job and I'm still successfully married and I'm not all that good at the games I play. But I love playing games on my Nintendo Switch. And I want to talk through the delight I've felt from playing some of my favorite games in my favorite genres… This is coming from someone who previously looked down on gaming as a waste of time. Well, to hell with that. Playing a great video game has been an unexpected joy in my life these past few years… at a time when there have been a lot of not-too-damn-joyful things going on. So, yeah, here's the video where I try to explain that in more detail with some game footage. (Sorry about the video footage of me in the shower… At least it's censored!)
a multi-creative in the attic (video)
I've always struggled with being monogamous when it comes to my creative outlets. I've been writing for most of my adult life, but I also dabble with YouTube videos and making apps and making music (sort of) and various other activities. I used to focus on the downsides to working on so many different pursuits (and there are plenty of downsides!), but this video is about me accepting (and maybe kinda sorta embracing) this quality. (I also do about 12 seconds of research and find out that there's already a name for this quality. But since I don't like the name, I made up a new name…)
Writing a Novel When You're Too Busy to Write a Novel (video)
In a blog post about my forthcoming novel, I claimed that I'd pull together a video about writing the novel. Well, here it is. It's under five minutes, but it still required 1060 bad drawings, some background music that I created on my iPad, and one video of me sitting on the toilet. Oy!
Announcing Neurotic Stix Pro
...Today (or maybe yesterday) I'm releasing Neurotic Stix Pro, which is a fully-fleshed-out app that lets you write your own captions on animated stickers. You just don't know what it's like to apologize to someone properly until you've tried to apologize with a poorly-drawn-poorly-animated sticker using your own pathetic words! You can send them from the included Messages sticker pack, or even share them from the app to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email or however you prefer to apologize to people. The neurotic possibilities are endless! 😱🌪
How I Use Tech to Write (video)
For the past few years, I've wanted to make a video about my writing process when I'm working on a book-sized project. My process is a zig-zaggy combination of scribbling and typing and listening. I particularly love writing on an iPad because you have a few different ways to interact with it (stylus + keyboard + voice + weeping under the desk), and I also find it a less distracting tool than an old-school computer. The problem with my first few fAiLeD attempts at making this video was that I overly focused on exactly what tech and which apps I used... It's just too easy to get caught up in buying the trendy app of the month with the hopes that it'll save you from the difficulty of writing. (Nothing will save you. Writing sucks!) And my main goal was really to focus on how and why I use the tools that I use. (But I also didn't want to totally ignore the apps that I find valuable, because they are lovingly built and they are fabulous to use.) So... hopefully this short video gives you a feel for my approach without getting too lost in the technical weeds...
Say the Thing: A pretty dumb text-to-speech app
Hi! I mistakenly made an app amidst all my problems. It's free. If you use an iPad or iPhone for writing and you like having the computer read what you write, then grab this app. Learn more about my app and my problems with this blog post...
Breath of the Wild Game Review (video)
I don't know about you but in the middle of all the heavy stuff going on in the world, I've needed to make a little time and space just to escape. I'm reading and watching more fantasy and sci-fi. But my obsession this month is all about a video game: Breath of the Wild. I haven't been a gamer in about 30 years (!!!) but I got hooked into this world. So much so that I now have trouble telling anecdotes in real life without mentioning my exploration in the land of Hyrule. To rationalize all the time that I've wasted this month, I made a video about my obsession with this game...
Get your free neurotic stickers while supplies last!
OK. That part about the limited supply is a lie. But the free part is true. For now. Let me sum up: I just released an app called Neurotic Stix for iPhones and iPads. This app contains over 25 twitchy, animated, neurotic stickers to express how you feel when you're not feeling so good about yourself. Right now, they're free! Click "Read on" to find out more... at least you'll stop thinking about the dumpster fire of this US election cycle for five seconds.
Why Scrivener? (video)
So I made this short video called "Why Scrivener?"... Why did I make Why Scrivener? I've been tutoring people on how to use Scrivener for many years now. I find that it is effective to first show people what it can do and make sure that it addresses something they are struggling with. As much as I love Scrivener, it's not the right tool for every writer or for every writing project. I run through this shpiel enough times in an average month that I thought I'd make a short video where I make the case for Scrivener (and get to say some dirty words in the process). Let me know what you think!
the best writing machine that (almost) fits in your pants
As is my tendency, let me start out with the bad: the new iPhone 6 Plus is big and awkward and confusing to get around with. Living with this thing is weird and requires me to walk around in shame with a dreaded man purse. Even so, I am keeping this damn thing. It is the best mobile device I've ever used for writing... [WARNING: LONG IPHONE REVIEW AHEAD!!!]
Creative Sprints (failvid-17)
In this Failed Writer video, I talk about how I chip away at my creative projects. I'm definitely no model for success — every week I consider dumping my novel — but I still manage to keep doing creative projects every week. So here is my tactic, sort of...
Taking Risks (failvid-15)
The idea of taking a risk has been on my mind lately. In particular, I've been thinking about those risks people take that don't necessarily end with a fabulous success story. So here's a video about it.
Closed for retooling + Is this video funny?
This post is an update about my audio+video projects. It also contains a nearly amusing video...
What's a podcast app and why should I give a shit?
There's an enormous disparity between my geek friends and my literary friends when it comes to how they listen to podcasts. While my geek friends argue over the subtle quirks between their seven favorite podcast apps (aka podcatcher, aka podcast client), quite a few of my literary friends don't know what the hell a podcast app is. And when they do listen to a podcast episode, they do it by going to a website from a browser on their computer and clicking play. I want to change this. Not the part about us geeks arguing over trivial features – no one can stop that, it’s a force of nature – but I want stop this method of playing podcast episodes from the browser...