Trying to get back into the swing of things, writing-wise

-
Hi, there, Constant Readers. It's Monday, November 24, 2014, and right now the temperature in Miami is 86 degrees Fahrenheit under mostly clear skies. The humidity levels are tolerable, but the heat index outside is 96 degrees. Much too summery for my taste; if it wasn't for all the pre-Black Friday ads online and elsewhere, I'd have forgotten that Thanksgiving is this coming Thursday.

I apologize for not being a Constant Writer, folks. I haven't been tending to my blog as much I should, but the complications of being a caregiver to a sick parent, trying to find online revenue streams to replace Epinions and Yahoo Voices (a.k.a. Associated Content), the stresses of managing my household finances, and a host of other issues have made a hash of my plans for "A Certain Point of View."  It's hard for me to find a good balance between my personal and working lives, especially when both inevitably overlap.

I've been fairly busy over at Examiner, where I'm the Miami DVD & Blu-ray Examiner. I have been writing at Examiner for a bit over a year now, although right now my output has been, well, modest (to put it kindly).

As of today, my stats at Examiner look like this:

 Article Page Views for November: 16,922
Articles Promoted (by AXS or Examiner): 3
Articles Produced: 108
Articles Produced Over the Past 30 Days: 13

 I had hoped to "produce" No. 14 today. Around noon today, I logged on to Examiner, set up a rough draft (with placeholder text from an existing review in Epinions), added a photo and video, then saved the draft for "later."  My plan was to take care of stuff I had to deal with before my older half-sibling came over to help with Mom, then do an all-new review on Google Docs to replace the "placeholder" stuff I'd saved earlier.

It's now later....five hours later, and I have not been able to start on the review of "Star Trek Nemesis."  Oh, yes, I could publish what I have now at Examiner, but that review is not up to my writing standards. It's readable, yes, but only up to a point, and the stylistic differences between the Epinions version and the other reviews I've posted in November would be...um...jarring.

Photo Credit: Pixabay
I still have time (and energy) to get all the preliminary stuff I do now for my Examiner reviews, including the credits I add to the beginning, the list of extra features for the "Star Trek Nemesis" Blu-ray, and the specs section.  If I do that, I'll be able to concentrate on rewriting the review and thus submit it faster tomorrow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's 'It'?

-
Image
How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year 1958, which is where parts of  11/22/63 
Read more

Talking About Tom Clancy's 'Ryanverse': Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat?

-
Image
Harrison Ford starred in two Jack Ryan films. © 1992 Paramount Pictures On Quora, member Maya Lachman asks: Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat? My reply: If you’re talking about Tom Clancy’s iconic character John Patrick Ryan, Sr., he is depicted in the novels as being Republican, especially in most of the books that follow 1991’s  The Sum of All Fears. In the early Jack Ryan novels ( The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Cardinal, Clear and Present Danger,  and  The Sum of All Fears ), Ryan works his way up the ranks in the Central Intelligence Agency, starting out as a recently-recruited analyst and rising all the way to Deputy Director (Intelligence), or DDI. During his time at CIA, Ryan doesn’t have much to say about politics (except in the context of U.S.-Soviet relations, in which case he is obviously a Cold War Republican), but his pre-CIA resume includes a stint as a Marine Corps lieutenant, a successful stockbroker who, despite
Read more

Movie Review: 'PT-109'

-
Image
In June of 1963, five months before the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Warner Bros. released director Leslie Martinson’s  PT-109 , an adaptation of Robert J. Donovan’s non-fiction book  PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II.   Starring Cliff Robertson ( Charly, Spider-Man ) as Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy and co-starring Ty Hardin, James Gregory, Robert Culp, Robert Blake, Norman Fell and even an uncredited George Takei (Hikaru Sulu of  Star Trek: The Original Series ), the film is a fairly accurate depiction of JFK’s naval service in the South Pacific as the commander of a motor torpedo boat given the Navy pennant number PT-109 (the PT standing for the Navy ship designator “Patrol Torpedo”).  Although Hollywood had made movies in which former Presidents (either living or dead) were depicted, producer Bryan Foy, under the direct guidance of Warner Bros.' head of production Jack Warner (who, in turn, was influenced by Joseph P. Kennedy, a f
Read more