Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Writer's Notebook: Creative Blogs

It's been a busy Fall for me and I've been enjoying the transition from the summer here in southeastern Massachusetts.  I got back from a trip last weekend and discovered, much to my surprise and delight, that my friend Pat Bertram, author of Bertram's Blog, had been nominated for a Kreativ Blogger award for her blog AND passed the nomination for that same award and recognition to this blog.  

The award looks like this:  

I'm very pleased to be nominated for this award and it's much more meaningful when it comes from Pat, a blogger and writer who has done a remarkable job in the blogosphere and other social media in leading discussions about writing in a way that builds community among writers and helps us all get better at what we do.  

About six months ago, I recast this blog to focus primarily about writing and travel, with occasional forays into other areas such as personal technology and music.  I still find it hard to make the time to post regularly, but I'll continue to post when I've got thoughts, pictures or other cool discoveries to share.  So, to Pat Bertram and Bertram's Blog, thank you very much.  

Now for the fun part -- passing on the nomination to three other deserving recipients. My stint in the blogosphere has included lots of interaction with both the community of fiction writers and with my many colleagues in the telecommunications industry.  I blog on matters related to Voice over IP for the Dialogic Corporate Blog and like the split of keeping my business blogging mostly separate from this more personally focused blog. 

So what do I like in a blog?  I like people who are innovative and use their diverse backgrounds and expertise to comment on topics in multiple areas, bringing new insights from these connections.  

With that in mind, I'd like to nominate the following blogs for the Kreativ Blogger award:  

Fractals of Change - written by Tom Evslin - I've known Tom since we worked together on fax standards in the early Nineties and he's had a fascinating career and so-called retirement in the time since.  After leaving his post as CEO of Voice over IP startup ITXC, Tom launched his blog.  He comments on a broad range of topics ranging from the high tech world to public policy.  Like me, he is also a writer and self-published a novel a couple of years ago.  His is a fine blog that I enjoy even when his busy real life reduces the number of posts.  

Communications - written by Brough Turner - I've known Brough over ten years and he has typically brought keen insight and a unique slant to whatever catches his eye.  This past year, we've worked together at Dialogic, and it has been fun to be able to talk without the constraint of being competitors in the workplace.  In his blog, he tracks topics such as the pace of broadband development throughout the world and the social implications as people from third world countries suddenly have tools that connect them with the rest of the world.    

Coming full circle, the third blog I'd like to recognize is from a writer that I've gotten to know over the past two years from our online writing group on Gather.com.  The blog is The Paper Tiger, by Other Lisa aka Lisa Brackmann.  Lisa blogs about writing, her cats, life in Venice, California and, most of all, about her many visits to mainland China.  Lisa is a fine writer and her first novel Rock Paper Tiger, set in China, is due out next spring.  In her blog, we get a current view about what's happening in China for real people in places such as bars, restaurants, museums and so on.  It's not political so much as chronicle.  Lisa offers fascinating glimpses from a western perspective into an often hidden country. 

So, I hope my readers will take a moment to check out these blogs and see if you like what you read.  Please let me know what you think or if there are other blogs you think are a good fit for the creative blog criteria I outlined.  Until the next time  . . .

Writer's Notebook: On Creative Writing Courses and Writing for Publication

This weekend, the New York Times published a provocative article about creative writing classes written by Charles McGrath, formerly editor of the Times Book Review.   The article ruminates about the cultural change which has resulted in an explosion of creative writing courses.  The article's title, The Ponzi Workshop, succinctly captures McGrath's concerns in a colorful sound bite. 

I think the article is worth reading, but it gave me pause, and encouraged me to review the steps on my own meandering path toward being a writer.   McGrath's article talks about the profusion of creative writing programs in universities; fifty-two degree-granting writing programs in 1975 had grown to more than three hundred by the year 2004.  My own path to writing was quite different.  

My original interest in writing started as a reader.  I read voraciously through my childhood and that pattern continued in high school when a friend introduced me to science fiction.  I also had a teacher in my junior year who encouraged me to try my hand in early writing activities such as writing a journal.  

In college, I majored in Engineering at Rensselaer, but my interest in writing came in handy when it came time to write up various projects in subjects like management and production engineering, where I developed a reputation for being able to put words together effectively and get good grades on the finished products.  

After Rensselaer, I had a couple of years before my business career kicked off in earnest, giving me a chance to catch up on my reading.  This was the time when I read books like "The Brothers Karamozov" Mailer's "The Deer Park," and Tom Robbins's "Another Roadside Attraction," in addition to a steady diet of SF.  Writers like Mailer and Samuel R. Delany had encouraged would-be writers to write in a journal in their own articles on writing, so that is when I began to chronicle my own intellectual journey that way.  

I got busy in my information technology career after that, but always found time on weekends or over vacations to write about my experiences in a series of wirebound notebooks.   About two years into my career, I decided to take a creative writing course at WestConn, the local college.  Over twelve weeks, fifteen of us gathered, participated in writing exercises and shared the results with each other.  I took the occasion to finish my first science fiction short story, a 3000 word effort called "The Games." A fellow classmate, a woman near seventy, complimented me on the story and told me I was lucky to have a well developed fantasy life, unlike many of the men she had known who had no life beyond their careers when they retired.  I was in my mid-twenties at the time and I mentally filed away her comment for future reference.  

I continued my journal activities and branched out into other creative outlets such as songwriting, but I put my dreams of being a published writer on hold while trying to figure out the rest of my life, including what I wanted to do in the day job that consumed most of my time.  I also began to travel  extensively, both for business and on vacations, giving me a chance to get to places like Europe for the first time.  Everywhere I went, I'd take my pen along and write about my experiences. 

In 1986, I bought my first personal computer, an 8086-based model from AT&T, purchased the WordPerfect word processing program and decided to work on writing for publication.   Fortuitously, Westconn introduced a much more sophisticated writing course, called "Writing and the Path to Publication," taught by published writer Joan Gozzi.  Over the course of several months, Joan worked with us both on writing and the business side.  We learned about researching writing markets, understanding target markets and writing query letters.  During the course, I decided that I'd like to write articles on business topics that interested me. 

I did some research on the writer's markets for business and developed a concept for an article that would combine my experiences in business planning with personal reading that I'd been doing on the differences between the right and left sides of the brain.  I outlined the article, started to write it and prepared a query letter for a publication called Manage.  Rather to my surprise, the editor at Manage, said he'd take a look at it.  That meant I actually had to finish the article.  I wrote it up, did a couple of edits and then had Joan look it over.  She offered a few edits and then it was ready to go.  

I sent it in and a couple of months later, a letter and a check arrived in the mail.  In early 1988, the article was published and I had my first professional writing credit. Needless to say, I was very excited about all of this, but surprised that the road to publication had gone so smoothly.  I now knew I could write at a professional level, at least in the realm of business non-fiction, which buoyed my spirits and made me yearn to do more.    

That's how I got started as a writer, but I still had ambitions to write fiction.  I'll say more about that in another post.