writing – Page 2 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 31, 2019

Hello, Darkness, my old friend (Dog Ear)

’ve got a trip to make this weekend, a flight across the country to San Diego to run prototype operations at the La Mesa club, a sprawling layout with dozens of guys that work twelve hour shifts to completely model the workings of an actual railroad (here, between Mojave and Bakersfield in the 1950s) all the way down to the terminology and carbon paper. It’s a fun time travel game where you’ll stand around doing nothing (the railroad way) and grab food on the run. And why am I noting this on my writing blog? Did I select the wrong […]

November 7, 2019

Ailments (DOG EAR)

s you can see HERE and HERE and even HERE, I attended a huge model train operations session in San Diego. Had a lot of fun (and felt pretty good that people refer to me as “the writer guy”). I even sat on a siding for a few hours, chatting with my helper crew about literature and favorite books. However, writing (and the idiosyncrasies of such) always give me pause for thought. And I was really thinking about it when my butt started to burn. See, ops are about long hours on your feet, of climbing stairs and crawling under […]

November 14, 2019

Stacking up (DOG EAR)

eople told me that after I retired, I’d end up with less time than ever before. Gotta say they were right. In one week, I will have had three cabbie jobs, taking people to medical appointments. Cycling, well, that’s down to one thirty-mile ride and maybe some afternoon scratch. Had a train show all last weekend. And I’ve got the paperwork for my model railroad I’m developing. And the cleaning of same. So, yes, busy busy. My writing output on the web is nil. Readers have been asking, but what can I tell them? And looking over, right now at […]

January 30, 2020

Noticed (DOG EAR)

don’t get a lot of money from this site. My references to other books get pretty much nothing (every month, Amazon mechanically tells me that, a nice confidence builder). So why do I have 1,472 entries on this site? Well, for one, it is still nice to get my own thoughts and interests out there. Look at the success of Facebook and Twitter. But it runs deeper than that. Yes, I might be a lone voice mewing into the night. Sure. And I can’t tell in WordPress (unlike Joomla) how many hits I’m getting. But I do remember I’d get […]

March 26, 2020

Writing Dirty, Staying Clean (DOG EAR)

kay, you vanillas – please try to stick with this until the end of the piece. So we’re in the middle of a pandemic, one that a lot of people (especially young people) don’t take seriously. Lots of parties, trips to theme parks, all that. I’ve posted numerous things on Facebook on the importance of distancing but it hit me – outside of my nieces and a couple of young guys who don’t like me anymore I don’t think there are many people under twenty-five in my FB friends. So either you already know it or you’re not going to […]

April 9, 2020

Fyre Thoughts (DOG EAR)

unkering down for the third week of quarantine and making scans of Hulu for just about anything watchable. Found something called Fyre Fraud which looked curious. It’s a documentary about a total failed (and pretty fraudulent) concert that dumped thousands of Millennials on some desert island in the Bahamas. Good flick. Yes, I’m old enough that I didn’t know anything about this – totally off my radar. But what was really interesting was how the Fyre organizers (and their legion of support staff, social organizers, investment opportunists and social gadflies) did this. I’ve had my brush with fame and self-promotion. […]

May 21, 2020

DNF (DOG EAR)

ave writing advice this week in, of all places, the Squiffy forum (Squiffy is an easy-to-use text adventure game maker). Since I’ve been messing for squiffy for years, I’ve gotten to be a SME on site and I usually provide answers. But the other day, I happened to glance at the general forum where you can post damn near anything. Someone had written a story about his uncle and was asking for critiques. The story was slow. It didn’t get anywhere quickly. It didn’t hold my interest. I couldn’t get more than a few paragraphs. And so I wrote the […]

June 11, 2020

Insomnia (DOG EAR)

don’t know if this is the classic definition of insomnia. I just know it’s before 6am and I’m up. I’d planned to post something else out of my prep-stash but looking out the windows into the dark morning, I thought I’d cover this topic instead. Are you a writer? Do you find yourself up way too early in the morning, tired yet active? I think I know where my case came from. For the last twenty years of working, I’d have to get up and pretty much hit the ground running. Commuting in by bike, I didn’t have time to […]

June 25, 2020

Blessed Creativity (DOG EAR)

howed up a little early for a dentist checkup the other morning. Was the only one in the waiting room and the TV was on mute (and I wasn’t going to disturb it). They were running a little late so I sat quietly for twenty/thirty minutes while they got to where they could see me. When the nurse came out, she said she hadn’t thought I was even there, I was so quiet. And on top of things, I’d forgotten my book. I was thinking. Unlike that kid the other day at the hair cutters (the one who stood and […]

August 6, 2020

Lead Time (DOG EAR)

know this is going to happen. Saturday after next is the deadline for the Journal Box, the model train newsletter I put out for the Southeast Region of the National Model Railroad Association. Just like all the ones I’ve done before, I’ll post out calls for articles and nobody will respond. I’ll get one or two, but not enough filler for 16 pages. And then, the day of the 15th, everything will come flooding in. Usually critical information will come in the day after deadline (with stern instructions to me to make room for this late piece). Always the same. […]