JamesSavik

Ah hummm... I always notice the wabbit. Although... I have been lost in Icaria this week. :smt054

Blue: to the story. I agree Blue. I'm really pleased that Oz has signed on to our round-robin.

Ah- you can't go wrong Graeme. I've been hooked on New Brother myself for a long time and hang on every chapter. There so much good stuff on this site it's unreal. I like Dude's new Pick of the Week section. I'm currently reading Tristan's Redemption and enjoying the heck out of it. Great idea Dude! I have to avoid Sequoyah though. Everytime I start one of his books, I'm worthless till I'm done.

Urrr... i think you need deweywriters online spelling checker for the phonics impaired like me.

I'm not all that sure about posting this one - it went in a direction I wasn't planning to go. The words, though, they wanted to be said, and who am I to refuse them? Those Muses are really something aren't they? I just wish they would leave me alone at 3am BUT if that's my regular stop on their route, who am I to complain.

If you use Word, as many people do, it has a rather good spelling and grammer checker. Is that cheating? If so, I'm guilty. I'm a reasonably good story teller but a.. wretched speller. :oops: I REALLY don't think so. Unless you were told specifically NOT to get help with your paper. I've looked over dozens of papers and pointed out glitches for students that asked.

Nice DJ! When I read it, I could hear the words being sung to music. That rarely happens for me but it is the mark of a good poem.

I'm really sorry that I can't read everybody at once. The Scrolls has finally made it up the list and I'm hooked! I can see this is going to be one of those stories I check on everday. Wish I'd find an angel in my yard. I'd treat him lots better than the lout from chapter 1. ;-)

the best part of camping, well maybe besides for the way food taste cooked over a fire, is... well, you've read my stories :-D

How Can I Make It Better? Lately I think that we?ve all seen more strife, contentiousness and hard feelings than is absolutely necessary. While I don?t know all of the details of what has transpired, I do know that some good people have had their feelings hurt. While this is always regrettable, when a community reaches a certain critical mass, it?s almost inevitable. It?s just unreasonable to expect hundreds of egos and intellects to walk in lock step. I don?t think that we would want it that way. That would be pretty boring. This community is a valuable resource and I considers many of you friends. I appreciate and respect all of you; some I even have a genuine affection for. It concerns me when there is stress and conflict. Especially when good people are hurt and it could just as easily have been avoided. I ask a question that I hope each of us will ask ourselves: How can I make it better? I do not speak for the site or anyone else. I can only answer this question for myself in my own way. This is how I will respond. I will treat each person here with respect. I don?t care where you are from or how old you are. I value you all and respect your opinions and perspectives. Hell, I?m from Mississippi. I?m not too fancy to listen to anyone! I might even learn something. I will put principals before personalities. That principal is that we are all valued and respected members of our community, each equal with our own value and worth. I will do nothing to harm the community. As much as many of us despise Reagen, one of his smartest moves ever was his 11th Commandment: thou shall not speak ill of fellow republicans. There is power in unity and wisdom in learning from our adversary?s tactics. If I am wrong about something, I will promptly admit it and set it right as best I can. Pride is a good thing but vanity is a nuisance. I will be civil in all of my discourse and never post in anger. Perhaps some things have happened that can not be undone. I don?t know but I doubt it. I?m an optimist and believe that people of good will can work things out. I challenge us all to be those persons of good will. Work things out. We are all worth it. Peace, James

Will my presence and ideas be welcome or merely tolerated? Welcome- each and every time Codey!

Lucky Harry!

Is the Dude a trackball user? I have been the Jedi of trackballs since the 80s Arcade days of Missile Command and Atari Football. At least with the Logitech trackball, ya pay all your quarters up front. RE: the site layout and all, I'm easy to please. I know a work in progress when I see one.

So that's where the catty criticism has been coming from. I'll just send some Tender Vittles with my next submission and get on their good side. :D

ROFLMAO- Good to see you Rainbow, thanks for bringing a good laugh with you!

I agree. Anybody want to join me mountian biking down the Natchez Trace? Dogwood and redbud are in bloom and it's magnificent.

Speaking completely for myself, what the critics don't understand is that I write for ME and no one else. If others like it or get something out of it, then it's a happy bonus. I know from the feedback that I've been getting, some people are enjoying and relating to my tales. I too notice a generational divide in our community and urge all parties to cease fire and think this through. Division only serves to weaken us all.

Somebody has been working hard. Looks good. Whose office might that be?

Why did I immediatly think of Nick Nolte? http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/nolte1.html

blueI've noticed something odd about recent fic by several authors: Why is it we, as gay writers, editors, and readers, often have negative themes in gay fic? Why can't the gay guy be happy and well adjusted and be the hero, and help out someone else, some other gay guy or some friendly straight guy...whoever? [/i] This is a question worthy of its own thread. From my perspective it's because gay life in much of the US is a meat grinder that chews people up and leaves them damaged in all kinds of ways or even destroyed. Hated, spit on, outcasts that have been beaten and bashed and seen their dreams turn to ashes over and over aren't likely to write tales of shiney happy people. Why can't the gay guy be happy and well ajusted and be the hero? As much as some of us have been s**t on from very early in our lives, our mere survival is in itself heroic. What is a hero after all? Someone that faces adversity and triumphs or at least stands his ground? To me it's someone who refuses to quit and refuses to lose regardless of the odds. The "gay hero" doesn't have to be well balanced. He doesn't have to be rich, drive a Porsche, date porn stars or be on the cover of GQ. He has to have guts and grit and that's what it takes. Someday, and I hope for that day, we may get past that but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

you moved me to *tears*

Monday- bang, banging, banged my head against monitor. Ideas? Plenty. How do I execute them? Not that way. Makes my characters look like truck-stop sluts. That will not do. Alpha version to the digital crapper. Tuesday- do something else. Uploaded new pix to my photography blog. Wrote an album review. http://jamessavik.zoto.com/ Worked in the garden. Thought about Brian Edwards and what made him tick. Wednesday- try again. More crap. Doesn't look right. No sir. I don't like it. Beta goes swirling down the crap trap. Thursday- Oh my God! Sequoyah is awesome! I haven't fallen off in a hole this deep since I found Drake's board or Driver's. I was supposed to be doing something. Is Luke going to live? Is Matt going to tell him how he feels. Never mind, I'm busy. 4:00pm Ack! Chapter 19! Store run, time to call out the big guns- carton of camel filters in the hard pack, 2 X 2 liter mountian dews and LARGE bag of peanut M&Ms. hunker down for the seige. By midnight the corner has been turned. Friday, am- DOH! Try, try, try! Argh! I know what I want to do but jeez getting it out right ain't working. Wretched, bloody muses! Why do you keep such strange hours! Why can't you show up during normal business hours and leave me alone in the middle of the night? %$^@*%*! Friday, 2:30am- draft emailed to editor. Brain rotting. So high on mountian dew, nicotien and choclate that I'll be up this time tomorrow. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo bouncing off walls per Daffy. I'm resolved to start earlier on Chapter 20. Yeah, right! Only if I lose the bookmark to Sequoyah's page. A Special Place my eye. That's literary crack!

BTW- never underestimate the power of the right snack. Give me a 20 oz mountian dew and a big bag of peanut M&Ms and I can get on an all night roll.

Dude- you just had major surgery. That's enough to throw even a throughbred off his feed. I write something else. If I'm having trouble with my primary project, I'll write a poem or a short story. That how the Cool Green Sea and Jeff came about plus the vast majority of my mediocre poetry. I should be embarrassed that it sits besides RusticMonks and your work but it's fun and sometimes I even turn a phrase. If you THINK you've got writer's block, then you DO. It's purely psycological. It's NEVER about being out of ideas. Every writer has more ideas than he's got time for. It is all about execution and "getting off the ball" to borrow an expression from football. One problem that many writers have is that once they've written something very good, that becomes the yardstick by which they judge all of their work and their newer stuff doesn't seem to measure up. Everything get tossed in the trash, aborted before it has a chance. You've got to be patient with both the process and the product. ================== Rent a DVD. Go out with Champ. Have some fun. Don't even think about it. The muses will return in their own good time. The worse thing you can do is give yourself a self-feeding complex over it: I am blocked, therefore I am blocked. The trick is getting outside that little box and thinking about something, anything else than the rut you are stuck in.

I wouldn't try to do more than two at once and even that is pushing it. However, sometimes I need a break from the "main effort". I let the brain out to play and cough up a short story or poem and get back to work. Don't want to write myself into a rut. BTW- nice job on NB Chp. 13.