Serial Stories

I often have a difficult time just sitting down and writing, specifically when it comes to writing any sort of short story, it truly baffles me. Stories float around in my head, bending and warping, and they just sort of sit there. I don't really touch them. Occasionally I may pick one out and start to write it but once I've started the act of writing, the story goes away and I can no longer think on it.

This poses a real big problem for me. I want to write novels that people cherish and enjoy reading but I am wholly unable to focus on something quite so lengthy. This blog is really a place for me to experiment with my writing style and try to find things that work for me. I'm quite able to write personal thoughts down without any effort and on occasion I can write down small editorial-esque type pieces. I am proud of my writing, I feel that it is strong, well written and concise, but I need more practice with fiction.

I've devised a plan that will hopefully alleviate the issue of forcing stories out of my head by working on them more slowly and over a long period of time. Very much the same thing that Charles Dickens did with many of his novels. Though I don't have a particular public outlet, other than here, for any sort of exposure. I am hoping though, that regardless of whether anyone reads my stories, this method will allow me to work on a singular piece until it's completion.

Depending on how my day turns out I may kick things off tonight with a fresh story that started brewing in my head this morning. It's a bit of a departure for me in terms of subject, but then again I do like to float around with different ideas until one makes sense to me.

My Thoughts on Online Identity

I don't know exactly what it was that got me thinking on the subject, doesn't take a lot to get me started though, but I've been going over different ideas for online identity in my mind all day.

It today's times where a person's life can tentatively be lived out on the internet, there is a need to build not only an online presence but a persistent online identity as well. The two concepts straddle a very fine line but I do feel there are distinguishable features between them.

An online identity is a core, an absolute finite representation of one's self in the ever evolving world of the internet. It represents who you are, whom you associate with and what you do.

Whereas an online presence, while also encompassing aforementioned online identity, goes beyond who you are. An online presence is you and what you create, a sphere of new-media and social cliques that at one point would have been unattainable by most.

Essentially your identity is the guy backstage rehearsing his lines and your presence is both you and the character you are playing. (Bad metaphor?)

So far, I haven't found one really great resource for actually creating such an identity online, there are great ways to create a presence. You can blog, you can create YouTube videos, take photos, Tweets and Wall Posts on Facebook; but where does your identity actually reside online?

I've been working on my presence for years, I have thousands of blog posts buried in the depths of the internet, multiple thousands of Tweets from the past 2 years, photos and artwork scattered about the likes of Flickr, TwitPic and DeviantArt but where am I? I suppose with so many little pieces of me spewed about that if one were to gather it all up you could maybe define some sense of who I am but it just won't be quite the same.

I don't know if there will ever be a definite answer to such an issue as this, as little as an issue it may seem to be, right now. I do predict that online identity and the self will become a greater topic of discussion in the coming future. One day people may truly live online. For now, well, we'll just have to keep embarrassing ourselves, putting potential employment opportunities at risk, degrading our sense of self worth, living in pseudo-anonymity while exposing our secrets to the world, playing white-knight, trolling...etc...etc...etc