#FridayFlash, NaNo and Writing About Writing

It's funny how things go.  When I first started writing there was no way I'd show my stuff to people. I also knew there would be a long way until I could muster the courage to do so. Although, I knew that nowadays writing doesn't have to be a strictly lonely activity, so I signed up for Twitter and started talking to like minded people. 

This is when I first learned about #FridayFlash. Oh boy, how badly I wanted to be a part of it!  But I was still shy, so I watched, read and learned. 

On May 2010 I finally gathered my wits and wrote my first flash fiction, Zombie Walk.  The response was so great that it even got published on an e-zine, Flashes in the Dark, and it inspired me to run a contest Zombie Luv, which was so very funny and a great success! Recently, to my surprise, it was accepted in the anthology The Best of Friday Flash vol. 2, or as we affectionately call it, BOFF #2. (I strongly suggest you follow the links and buy the thing. The stories there are... Wow!)

After that first push I got a little bolder. I wrote weekly stories and made great friends in the #FridayFlash community. I even joined WeSeWrimo (Web Serial Writing Month) and NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month), and got some great writing experience from it. 

WeSeWrimo I "won" kind of easily, since you're the one setting your own goals. I was very modest and made the best of it. NaNoWrimo is something different altogether. You have to write 50K words in a month, and if you have never tried something like that, let me tell you this is no easy task. NaNo flunked very early on, but I wasn't too upset about it. 

A few months later life got the better of me and I stopped writing. It took me over a year to put it together so I could even consider the writing venture again. No matter, in due time I got back and I do write a few stories now and then, and even, *cough, cough* poems. O.o (Not showing those publicly, sorry! :P) 

Ironically enough, now that I write much less than I used to, I find myself writing about writing. Back when I started Randomities (this blog you're reading, if you're new here ;) I set a goal of sharing only my stories and other random stuff. What I least wanted was to write about writing, because I thought that such meta-writing was for the likes of Stephen King, not people like me. 

Well, life got the better of me again! Recently I was humbled and honored to be invited to join the #FF staff as a contributing correspondent. I hope I'll be up to the challenge! You can make your own mind about it by reading my first article: "NaNo madness this year? Thanks, but no thanks".

So, if you're curious to know why my NaNo experience flunked, and more importantly, why I'm totally okay with it, follow the link above. I hope you'll find it somehow useful. ;) While you're at it, I suggest you browse through the Friday Flash website. It's full of information and links to uncountable wondrous stories. Have fun! 

Something Good: Rescue Doggies

Someone shared this gorgeous and well produced 2-minute video on Twitter, which made me feel great, so besides RTing it I'm sharing it with you. *smiles*

Now, have you noticed the message at the very end?


If not all, most of you know that I'm a dog person. In fact, I have not one but two rescue dogs (that are my inspiration for the #FridayFlash Writer's Pets Contest).


My dogs are lovely. They got even lovelier (if that's possible :P) after I came in contact with Cesar Milan's teachings. Have you ever heard about the show The Dog Whisperer?


If you haven't and you have a dog, you're considering getting one, you simply like dogs, of even if you're afraid of them, I suggest you take a peek. The man is amazing! What he did for me and my lovelies just through his show is incredible, and what he does for the most troublesome dogs I've ever seen... Ohhhh! 


"What does he have to do with the video, besides the obvious fact that there's a dog featuring in it?" you ask.


Well, Cesar has many campaigns to promote rescue dogs adoption, but this one called my attention the most: To Hell and Back - The Story of Micheal Vick's Pitbulls


Let me ask you something: when you think of pitbulls, is aggressiveness the first image that comes to mind? If your answer is "yes", you're not alone. But you know, this is not necessarily true. When people say that dogs are just like their owners, they're more right than you imagine. But not because their natures are the same, but because it's in dogs nature to make themselves what their masters want in order to please them.  


So, if you care to see things under different perspectives, check out that article about pitbulls. 


And to add to my opinion about human-dog relationship, check out this other article about non-verbal communication between humans and dogs: Beyond Words: Human-Animal Interaction. It's mind-boggling!


Now, after seeing the movie and reading the articles, tell me you don't want to adopt a rescue. Impossible! You might even consider getting a lovable and submissive pitbull like Cesar's rehabilitated ones, eh? ;P (Well, not unless you're a cat person, in which case you're forgiven, heh.)


Oh, if you ever decide to adopt a rescue dog (or any dog for that matter), will you let me know? :)


Psst, check out Cesar's tips for getting a new dog. ;)

Spotlight Time! Kristin Neff

The Spotlight Time series was created to showcase people's work I feel deserve a special attention. The book  Self-compassion - Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, by Kristin Neff, certainly falls into that category. See why.

*

I've come across this book through a newspaper article named Down With Self-Esteem? At first, I was intrigued but suspicious, but as I read, all suspicion vanished. In her book, the article explains, Kristin Neff, PhD makes a good point of differencing self-esteem from self-compassion. 


The former is based on narcissism and excessive competitiveness, which lead people to feel constantly unsatisfied with themselves, their egos frequently hurt. Their behavior and life stile consequently reflect these feelings, as well as their interaction with others. The latter means accepting that we are all human thus fallible, not only in theory but in practice. 


My reaction to this general idea was the same you're probably having: "Okay, that's a nice thought, but how the heck do I do that?" 


First of all it's important to mention that Kristin doesn't say that we shouldn't have any self-esteem, but that there shouldn't be a reason for us to like ourselves. The moment we question that, we start comparing ourselves to others and things go downhill. We should care for ourselves no matter how many mistakes we make, how fat we are, how better we'd like to be. This is where self-compassion comes in. 


Self-compassion doesn't mean to settle with less than we'd like. Of course we should strive to be better people, to have good things and to feel good about our bodies, but we shouldn't compare ourselves and "our things" to others('s). Self compassion means not judging ourselves when we make mistakes, means being gentle with ourselves when we're in pain, caring for ourselves instead of punishing ourselves for not being (or looking) as successful as our neighbor. 


So how do we do all that? We start by paying attention to how critic we are about ourselves. If you're scratching your head now, you can test your self-compassion level on Kristin's website. Look how coherent are the criteria:

• Self-Kindness
• Self-Judgement
• Common Humanity
• Isolation
• Mindfulness
• Over-Identification
• Overall Score

After having a first "self-criticism x-ray" I suggest you take a look at her website, where you'll find lots of information on how to start treating yourself better (and others by consequence). Then we can all read her book and put this beautiful thinking in practice.


Don't you think we could make good use of this self-compassion thing in our writing as well?

Random Cool Things #10 - Water

Lately, randomities hasn't been as random as it used to be. There has been mostly stories, book reviews and a lot of knigh-posts, which are all great! But today I'd like to present you something different I stumbled upon on, err.. StumbleUpon. :P


So, check out this video of water caught at 700 FPS. Amazing:

Team Ghost - High Hopes from 16ar on Vimeo.

Earth B-Day

Picture credit

This Friday, April 22, is going to be Earth Day. Earth is around 4 billion 600 million years old. We know it's not going to be actually Earth's birthday, but let's pretend it is? Let's also pretend Earth is a bit younger, say, 46 years old. 


'Til she was a 7-year-old kid, she was a mystery. We know almost nothing about her at that tim. They say these first years are the most important to the formation of the personality, so it's a bit scary knowing nothing about such a close friend, eh?


Earth grew into an adolescent and a young gorgeous woman without we knowing much about her either. Our knowledge about her starts when she was already a delicate and mature 42-years-old. 


Dinosaurs came over when she was already 45, and mammals arrived only eight months ago. Half a week ago some monkeys that looked more or less like a man evolved into men that looked like monkeys. 


Three days ago, she had her last glacial era (that encompassed the whole planet), and the modern man as we know came over in the last four hours. Just an hour ago man discovered agriculture and established himself in fixed locations.


Industrial Revolution happened a minute ago, and in the last sixty seconds man managed to transform the paradise that Earth is in a dumpster. Man has multiplied and spread out like a plague, causing the extinction of more than 500 species, and has devastated our kind lady in search for fossil fuel and minerals. 


Like a child that sees only himself and is unable of measuring the consequences of his actions, man has made inviable many other life forms and is now affecting the whole environment, causing problems to his own survival. 


Only a few seconds ago, part of mankind has become aware that the most serious problem man has to solve is to reestablish harmony with nature.(*)

Picture credit

Whew, thank god we're not too late! 


So, what do we do? 


Nah, I'm not lecturing about all the green actions you can take to move towards that goal. It would be nice, though, if you gave it a thought.


In the mean time, check out a few websites that talk about the issue:

•  Earth Day Network, where you'll find what you can do, and the events in the US.

• Green News.info, where you'll find all kinds of news in Italian, and Earth Days events in Italy.

• Cesar's Way, where you'll find what you can do with your dog for Earth Day. Being a huge dog lover, I should tell you that you'll find loads of useful information on this website. It's definitely worth a closer look. 

Happy Earth Day!


(*) This analogy is not mine. I took it and free-translated from an official paper on safe driving and citizen awareness raising. 

Neil Gaiman Needs Help with "The Price"

Picture Credits

I'm sure you know who Neil Gaiman is. You don't? Sinner! Just kidding, heh. He's the award winning author who wrote one of the best comic books ever made, Sandman, and several fantastic(al) books, which latest are Coraline -- that was made into a spooky animation -- and The Graveyard Book, which won the Newberry Medal. He's also my favorite writer. (As if you hadn't guessed it by now, heh.)


You see, Gaiman also wrote a short story called The Price that you can hear here, narrated by him, for free. The story is so good that Christopher Salmon wants to make it into a 3D animation. 


If you care about my opinion, I love Gaiman's comics and novels, but I'm not as affectioned to his short stories. Every author has a weak point, right? However, The Price is fantastic! It's gripping, chilling and surprising. Curiously enough, I though it'd make a great animation when I read it. 

Check out this video, which I hope will tick your curiosity, if I haven't yet. ;)

"So why all this?" you ask. 

Well, if you saw the video you know what we need to do. If not, I'll summarize it for you. ;) 

To make the project into the real thing, they need to raise $ 150,000. 3D animation are expensive, eh? They're almost half under way, but there are only ten days to go, so your help is most needed! 

Check out the widget on the sidebar to see the progress. So far, more than a thousand people are backing the initiative! Now go and do some good. :) 

p.s.: Here's the movie's website. Pretty! 

Random Cool Things #9 - Pixels

Tetris rules! haha

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Caricato da onemoreprod. - Animazioni e video artistici

I hope this levels up the mood in here, after the latest dark twist of the troll serial. ;)

Zombie Luv Contest Closed for Submissions + Poll

Edited to add: Except for the list of entries and the gratefulness for the people quoted here (check them out!) the dates and voting system have changed. For more information click here.

That's it folks! The winner will be announced on July 15th, so stay tunned! ;)

We had 37 entries to the contest, so I think I can call it a success? heh

Thank you everyone for your awesome entries, for all the tweets and shout outs, and for your hilarious zombie-talk.

A special thanks for these people who kindly helped spreading the word about the contest in their own special way:

>> Jodi McArthur, of Fiction Author Jodi McArthur, for her awesome blog post.

>> Joanna Penn, of The Creative Penn, for a most generous tweet.

>> M. Jones, of Zombie Romance webzine, for her enthusiasm and shout out about the contest.

>> Jon M. Strother, of Mad Utopia, for sharing the news to the awesome #FridayFlash community.

>> Anne Tyler Lord, of Don't Fence Me In, for featuring the contest on her weekly writing news, the Coffee Klatch.

>> Roland D. Yeomans, of Writing in the Crosshairs, for being such a gentleman and spreading the word about the contest on his blog. Roland, I forgot your twitter name! *head on desk* Please tell me on the comments (or elsewhere) so I can add a link? :)

>> Chris Allinotte , of The Leaky Pencil, for his hilarious zombie adds.

>> Jemi Fraser, of Just Jemi, for her kindness on twitter.

>> Jason Warden, of Experimental Muse, and Shane Benavides, of I Amuse Me, for being such good sports. :)

Soo, I had much fun, but it's time to get me and Randomities back to life.

"What? You can't undo death!" you say.

Of course I can't!

However, since I know some very powerful wizards -- who you'll get to know on the zombie dragon series ;) -- I've asked them to work on a potion or spell to help out on my condition. These guys are good!

I took the potion just after midnight GMT (as per instructions) and after some weird stuff happened all my limbs are perfectly attached again and I can actually breathe! Hurra! heh

See how Randomities got its looks back? The wizards said that unzombifying Randomities was much easier than making my concotion. *grinz*

Now that I'm alive again and I can think better, it's time to get to work on judging the entries.

Hey, why don't you help me out?

I've mentioned that there'd be an honorable mention published here at Randomities, right? Tell me which is your favorite entry and influence the judges opinion on the honorable mention!

Since I really want to know your opinion, the pool will be up until July 14th, midnight EST. There are so many good stories that you can vote for more than one entry. ;)

Here's the list of entries. Happy reading! ;D

-- Forever, by Angie Capozello

-- At the End, by AJ Brown

-- Island Nights, by Laura Eno

-- Love After Death, by Joanie Rich

-- Romeo and Juliet are Dead, by Tony Noland

-- Heartless, by Monica Marier

-- And Then There Were None, by Emma Newman

-- Three Steps, by Tomara Armstrong

-- Scent of a Zombie, by KeMari

-- Love is Just Another Weakness, by Mia Hayson

-- Dead Flames, by Angel Zapata

-- Lloranda, by David A. Hernandez

-- Advantages, by Rebecca Thompson

-- Burning Zombie, by Erin Cole

-- Yes, by Casper Wood

-- Light, After All, by Mark Antony Crittenden

-- Cooties, by Donald Conrad

-- Rose, by Delia

-- Undead Love, by David G. Shrock

-- Gonna Fucking Do Ourselves In, by Lee Hughes

-- Chained Love, by Eric J. Krause

-- A Small Misunderstanding, by Gracie Motley

-- Benching a Wolf, by Cathy Olliffe

-- Tainted Love, by Melissa L. Webb

-- For the Love of Mike!, by Sam Adamson

-- Something Not Hunger, by Matt Merritt

-- The Tell-tale Beat, by Nishida C.

-- Til Death Do Us Part, by Stefanie Howerton

-- All-consuming Passion, by Barti Ddu

-- The Lovely Tale of Toothgroan, by Nathan Dean

-- The Balad of Nate and Carla, by David D. Sharp

-- Chick-Chick-BLAM: A Headshot Love Story, by Gabriel Gadfly

-- Leaving Gary, by Jason Beymer

-- Marrying the Dead, by Lexx Clarke

-- Charcoal Muse, by h.lee

-- Dead, Long Dead, by Tim King

-- The Forgotten Thing, by C. Dominique Gibson

Oil Spill - Take Action

You have heard about the accident that leaded to the largest oil spill in American history, right?

You have heard about the horrific consequences for the environment, right?

You can track its growth here. I'm in awe of the extent of its taint.

Here you can read about National Geographic photographer Joe Sartore's experience when visiting the site. (Thank you Debra, for the thought provoking link!)

These are the US government initiatives to contain the disaster.

What can we do to help?

Phyl Good wrote a post in her bookish blog that pushed the start button of an engine in my head. There are people, good people, taking action to contain or remedy its impact.

All illustrations you see in this post were taken from the Ripple Project blog. This is an incredible initiative by illustrator Kelly Light to raise funds to help animal victims of the oil spill. Each drawing is a card that can be purchased by only $10; all income goes straight to two non-profits: The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and The International Bird Rescue Research Center.

You can take action by purchasing something beautiful.

"I can't draw", you say, "and I'm short on cash." Well, I'm on the same page, but you can help in other ways.

For instance, Jim Bronyaur has an awesome project that demands no disbursement from you. All you have to do is read and comment on a given list of blogs and websites. He will donate $10 to each 50 comments in the sites of the list.

One of the included links is a fantastical story (literally) that takes place in the post-Katrina New Orleans: Devil's Blood.

He is also recording an album which income will go to the same goal. You'll be able to download it from his website. Watch his blog for further news!

You can take action by supporting other actions.

You can spread the word, like I'm doing. You can be inventive.

We live in a oil-based society, so, even if only indirectly, we're all responsible for the problems risen from the extraction, processing and usage of its by-products.

Be responsible. Take action.

Note: Here are the links for the illustrations featured in this post, by order of appearance. The name of the illustration leads to its post on the Ripple Project Blog, and the illustrator names lead to their website (when available). Visit them, show your support. This is also a good and inexpensive way of taking action!

>> We Will Emerge, by Danielle Gaudet

>> Swiss Ripple, by Jart Studio Gallery

>> Etegami Set: Moon Jellies, by Deborah Davidson

>> Hope for New Life, by Karen Erasmus

>> Sea Life, by Amalia Hillmann

>> All the Seas Were Ink, by Kathleen Jennings

>> Save Them, by Ginger Nielson

Randomities Is Carbon Neutral

If a website has around 15K visits a month, the energy consumed by the visitor's computers is equivalent to 3,6Kg (or 8lb) of carbon dioxide emission a year.

One tree absorbs 11lb per year.

Easy math, eh? ;)

Randomities hasn't reached yet this kind of traffic, but no matter. I'd rather make up for at least one website that hasn't joined this movement. ;)

"What the heck are you talking about?" you ask.

It's simple: these guys are willing to plant a tree for each website or blog that joins in, for free, in order to restore Plumas National Forest in North California, which was almost destroyed by a great fire caused by lightning back in 2007.

I'm sure you've heard or read about it?

So, I'm extremely proud to announce that Randomities is Carbon Neutral. *hurra!* ;D

If you got interested in participating -- I hope you did! -- go to this page, where you'll find the simple and easy instructions.

And please don't forget to stop by Jemi Fraser's blog: Just Jemi. She's the awesome blogger who pointed me to this fundamental initiative.

Let's do some good people! :)

Note: The hand holding a tree is from the Carbon Neutral Project's website, and the satellite image is from Nasa's Earth Observatory. All technical information on CO2 absorption by trees also come from the project's website.

Random Cool Things #4 - Kazuki Takamatsu

This is the work of the astounding Japanese painter Kazuki Takamatsu.

Believe it or not, his artwork is produced with acrylic and gouache. So, if you need further confirmation, no, it's not 3D computer made illustration. Crazy, eh?

His themes range from beautifully psychedelic, as seen above, to a curiously disturbing social criticism,

reaching the peculiar Japanese sensuality.

Yes, you did not misunderstand it. They do have a thing about panties. ;)

Different cultures, different mind sets, eh?

What I didn't quite understand is his fixation with lamps. You can see more of his work here, or on his website, Distanfeerism.

If you get the lamp thing, would you come back here and tell me? I'm rather curious, heh.

Note: He changes periodically the artwork showcased in his website, so I'd advise you visiting him often. ;)