Hello, friends. I thought it might be nice to share with you the next thousand-word submission for the online group. I won’t bury the blog under weekly submissions for the writing project, but I have a feeling it will crop up occasionally. Enjoy!
Hello, friends! I just finished a book by an author who is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, Mr. Brandon Sanderson. I’m just about done with a review of his book Elantris, which was a pleasure to read. This post, however, doesn’t have to do with that book. Apparently, Mr. Sanderson is teaching a class in creative writing this semester, videos of which are being posted online. The site that is posting these videos also started an online writing group, which I requested to join and was subsequently invited to. This group plans to shadow the class as best it can, working on the semester’s assignment: 50,000 words. (That’s about 200 standard pages, if I’m not mistaken.) The people in the group are all wonderfully creative and eager to give feedback, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this all goes. Even if I don’t get to 50,000 words,
Per my last entry, I scoped out the scene and after much effort, managed to acquire myself a Nokia Lumia 900. It was difficult to come by, and I ended up using it for about a week. While I enjoyed it immensely, some things didn’t work out and I ended up returning it. What follows is a letter to the Lumia.
I just finished reading Steve Jobs. My feelings on the story of his life were unexpected, and where I stand now on the philosophy of Apple’s products is most assuredly not where I was expecting to be after finishing the biography. As a book, the story reads quickly, remains exciting throughout and is, honestly, pretty riveting. I hadn’t known much about him (aside from the basics everyone knew,) and reading about him was fascinating, inspiring and educational for many reasons. “How novel,” I thought to myself at first, “that I’m reading the Steve Jobs biography on an iPad.” It seemed an appropriate way to achieve total immersion with the story. I found myself immersed indeed. Steve Jobs’ life is a fascinating tale of an adoptee caught in between the world of silicon valley in bloom and the hippie idealism that many believe ultimately resulted in his death. I wasn’t surprised by
I suppose I’ve always wanted to go skydiving, but never went out of my way to arrange it. It seemed like the kind of thing that would be difficult to forget. Turns out I was right about that; since I’ve gone I’ve been able to talk about little else, though more often than not I find it hard to accurately describe the experience. It’s just too difficult to express the complete experience. I will, however, attempt to do so in today’s edition of the Warbler. The great thing about tandem skydiving (and 99% of the reason I was able to feel calm about the process beforehand) is just that: it is tandem. Because of this our job as first-time jumpers is limited to simply enjoying the experience. A trained individual whose profession is to safely jump out of planes with people that are way, way more frightened than you are. That’s what I
I’ve been reading a bit. Not as much as I’d like, sure, but definitely no small amount. Some of the things I read recently blew my mind, some others not so much, but c’est la vie. What a wonderful life I live, that I get to read my to my heart’s content. I’m still reading a few books, but having just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I felt I couldn’t wait any longer and jot down my thoughts so that you, dear friend, might read them. So, without further fluff or embellished warbling I present to you, dear reader, my thoughts on these four books. Wildwood It comes as no secret to many of you that I have something of a passion for The Decemberists, accompanied by a voracious thirst for any gleanings from the delightful mind of Mr. Colin Meloy. Naturally, when I’d heard that
Friends, I have not forgotten you! I have several warblings planned for the near(ish) future, but I must finish the books I aim to review before reviewing them, foolish as it may seem. I took some 1500 photos while in Israel on Birthright, most of which didn’t make the album I uploaded to flickr today. There are 394 of them online; I hope you enjoy them. Please view the album here.
It shouldn’t surprise you, dear reader, to learn that I enjoy writing. One of the reasons this blog exists is to begin sharing what I write with my friends and family. A natural response to that sentence would be, I suppose: “Haven’t you been doing that already, Elan?” The answer is yes, of course, but I’m referring to experiments in fiction. Several of my friends write, with professional aspirations or for pleasure, and I happen to believe they are quite talented. One of these individuals, Tony, introduced me to a writing exercise called “Captcha Quickies,” in which you load a Captcha of two words and write something–anything–to do with it. I’ve found this to be an excellent exercise. I’ve only done a few of them, but the ones I’ve done have lead to an in-progress comic book script (working with Dan, my old roommate), another in-progress short story, and several
Hopefully, friend, the last posts were to your liking. This one will be slightly different, as the experience of traveling alone in Israel was fairly different from being taken around from place to place in a bus. Both experiences were completely valid and wonderful in their own ways. A sizable group from the birthright trip extended their trips, most of us planning to head straight for Tel-Aviv, so a pile of us got on the train at Ben-Gurion and headed to the city. I was getting fairly sick by this point (some food poisoning I believe, but I’ll spare you the details) so I spent the next couple of days in a hostel, trying to sleep off the sickness. Once I was up for it, I bid my fellow birthrighters adieu and took the train north, where I intended to spend the next 3 days in my old village, visiting
On a cross country flight At the end of an international journey At my eleven o’clock In a Deere Tractor hat Vest designed to hold spare ammo One of those neck-bound sensitive document holders Watched the O’Reilly factor Pulling out exclusively non-apple gadgets Tap-tap-tapping away at photos of Blond haired blue eyed children We enter California from the west Promptly pulling out your radiation meter Snapping photos at 2.6 2.4 0.9 0.2 (January 6th 2012, 12:14 am EST, flying over california)
The Warbler began as an experiment; a means for cataloging the books I enjoyed, and why. As I started reading roughly one book every week, I noticed myself losing track of what I read, when I read it, and how I felt about it. So I started writing reviews. That was in 2011, and with the exception of a few extended breaks, The Warbler is still going strong.