Casey's Just Sayin'

It's time again for another hiatus from the universe of social networks. This time around this includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and caseyfreeland.com. The easiest way for me to do that is to remove all the corresponding apps from my iPhone and iPad. I'll be doing that some time this afternoon. For the few who don't know and the many who don't really care, I unplug for about sixty days every year. Why? Generally, it's to remember that life is life and social networking is not life. Specifically it's to Write! Last year when I unplugged I wrote 62,000 words. That's significant. Unfortunately, I've hardly written anything since. This site, caseyfreeland.com, has been essentially ignored. I've posted six times in ten months, including a review of what I learned last time around, a review of the new Blogsy app I'm currently using, a whine about how I had stopped writing (seriously), a short-story I wrote after seeing a doctored ...

I know I've posted this story before, but I'm sure many of you haven't read it. After my little quip about golf vs. lawn care I thought it deserved another go. The old man didn't hear his wife when she opened the front door, barely handling the two bags of groceries in her arms as she dipped inside and kicked the door shut, scuttling to the kitchen. She never let the clerks use plastic bags at the store because the straps cut into her hands. He didn't notice her as she put away the soup cans, milk carton, chicken breasts, eggs, rice and the rest. Even though he sat less than five feet from her at the kitchen table, his attention was fully drawn out the small kitchen window. “George!” she finally yelled, which came out as a harsh screech like a child's cough. He didn't turn but grumbled and batted at the back of his head as if a fly were buzzing about. “You're being rude.” “Lady, you need to shut your trap,” he grumbled, still looking out the window. “I ...

This place always makes me calm down and look inward. I think as writers our environment often dictates how much we write and maybe even the quality of the work we do. If we are surrounded by chaos, noise, clutter, demands of our time, responsibilities to own, duties to honor, rules to follow, we might say that there is no room for writing, no room in our minds to create anything worth reading. We might say that. I know I have. I fantasize about being out there, completely isolated, riding the wave of my own creativity to see what works of art, what masterpieces materialize. We might say that. I do say that. But that doesn't make it true. For me, it's justification for the apparent unwillingness at the time to work hard to get what I want. I say "at the time" because I'm not always so quick to make excuses. I once wrote the majority of a novel lying on my stomach in our long hallway in the front of my child's door. Why? Because said child had a couple of ...

For a child, I imagine the worst thing about a monster in the house is the deep silence under stuffy confines of a big blanket, powerless, waiting for something sharp or something slimy to grab a toe until sleep overcomes fear. For an adult though, for me in particular, the worst thing is that I can’t tell anyone without coming off as a complete nut bag, a future roommate of Miss Maclaine herself. It has occurred to me that at some point I did unwittingly purchase a ticket on the Looney Tunes express. No one would blame me, I’m sure. Dennis has been gone now for almost a year, the anniversary of his disappearance less than a week away. Considering his mystery, my new little visitor fits right in to a mentally fabricated reality. Besides, whom would I tell? I could call one of the kids, but what would they do about it? Craig would listen or at least let me speak. But then I could almost hear the platitudes, could almost write his script as he threw out his momisms about getting o...

As often happens when I have a strong run of words (30,000 in November) I bail almost completely in the subsequent weeks. That has been the case for Mighty Quinn. The book is about 2/3 done and I have come to a complete halt. It makes me wonder if binge writing such as NANOWRIMO is good for my productivity. Maybe slow and steady really does win the race. Isn't he cute? But I'm not a turtle kind of guy. I type fast, I think fast, I work fast, I golf fast, I... do other things fast. I want to write my novels fast as well. But the faster I go the uglier my prose become. My mind has to sort of devolve to get into my writing brain. Maybe I need to start some sort of meditation routine before I start slapping those little keys. Isn't he cute? Regardless, these words do not write themselves. I'm very excited that Scrivener is developing an iPad app for their phenomenal writing software. But this is no excuse. Holidays? No excuse. New job? Well, maybe a little excuse. But rea...

I thought it'd be fun to do a review of this new app, using this new app. It's called Blogsy and it cost $4.99. I didn't really need another blogging app. I'm an impulsive guy. Here's my Dad. He was also an impulsive guy. Blogpress seemed to be working just fine. But Blogsy claimed much easier use of links, formatting and media usage and Blogpress can, at times, be chunky, especially in the links category. So I thought I'd give it a try. Starting with the photos. As you can see above I was able to get a pic of my dad on this post. I had to upload it to a photo account so it could link to the pic, but this is fairly easy thanks to the symbols on the right. This is a little buggy, but within a couple of minutes I took this screenshot and had it uploaded to Flickr and then inserted in the post. I imagine it'll get better as I use it more. Let's consider the YouTube... This is a video of my boy playing the piano for his Auntie. I'm very proud! If you can...

I am returning to the faceblogoforumtweetbook world this weekend. It's been just shy of two months and it's time to reconnect. Here's what I learned while on hiatus: 1) My job is not who I am. I decided to resign from my position and leave the organization where I have worked for ten years. I start my new job on Monday and couldn't be happier. 2) Best steak in town is not the best steak in town. It is an empirical fact and I can only surmise that the emotional attachment to said best-steak-in-town causes one's taste buds to lie to one's brain. Still, the company was fantastic. 3) The leaf will fall, and fall, and fall. No matter how diligent I think I am, no matter how many times I fill the green bins with leaves off the front yard, there are always more. Yes, I'm going out there again after this post. 4) Words can be written. No, I didn't finish my first draft of Mighty Quinn. Yes, I did write. In fact, I doubled my words. I'm at about 62,000 right ...