Here’s my week in a nutshell – add to it my coverage of Greener Gadgets in NYC on Friday – and you’ll understand why I’ve been looking so harried.

Hope to see you at one or all of these events!

Monday…  Skeptics

Tuesday… BU Career Fair and Networking

Wednesday…

Pechaku Boston 8

Webinar on Social Media for Business

Storytelling at MassArt

Harpoon Brewery Tweet-up ($25)

Thursday

#SMB12 at Ryles Jazz Club

Eat-up at WBUR Boston

Forrester Research Tweet-up

What are you doing this week? Please share in the comments.

Keep reading.

Buzz This Post

© Jeff Cutler™ for Jeff Cutler™ - columns, essays and opinions, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #smb12, @pistachio, Boston, social media

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Mine’s short, but I refuse to refer to it as an ADD or ADHD situation as I believe those are mythical conditions created by a lazy physician and parent base. We’ll explore that opinion in another column…if I have enough where-with-all to remember.

My contention today is that it’s time to simplify. Everything. As soon as possible. There are certainly external factors forcing my hand in this decision, not the least of which are family illnesses, the cohabitation situation at my mansion and my completely frantic workload.

I take the blame for these items – except the health issues – because I’ve spent the last month working on my first novel. I finished it and have been quietly gloating the past few days. But now it’s time to get to work.

In order of importance, I must…

Write blog entries for the majority of my neglected 14 blogs;

Organize the Grampys.org site so that we can take registrations online and put up fantastic auctions;

Edit the aforementioned novel. I expect it will go through two rounds before I’m even ready to share it with my yet-to-be-named agent*;

Write a feature article for Gatehouse on holiday entertainment gift options – CDs, DVDs, and other gifts;

Finish my meeting schedule for vendor interactions while at CES in January;

Get fitted for a suit for sitboaf’s wedding;

Shop for holiday gifts – Channukah and Christmas;

Find and gobble some pumpkin pie (as nobody thought to bring any to Thanksgiving.

If you have suggestions for any of these tasks, *or are an agent looking for a literary novel – the fictional memoir of a boy whose life was shaped by the influence of his seven sisters, please contact me in the comments here.

If you’re an editor still looking for a reporter on the floor of CES in Las Vegas in January, let’s talk. My dance card is pretty full now, but I might be able to assist you before or after the event with research I’ve already completed or planned meetings.

Talk to you all soon. Head down now, gotta work.

Keep reading!

ILLUSTRATING my complete lack of attention span…the main reason I wrote this was because I have just been looking at the plethora of bookmarks and links to other sites in each of my browsers. I’m headed to clean those up – BEFORE ANY OF THE OTHER TASKS. Wow. Talk about ADD – or don’t!

Buzz This Post

© Jeff Cutler™ for Jeff Cutler™ - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #ces09, Jeff Cutler, journalism, nanowrimo, reporter, SPJ

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I can’t put into words – maybe because I’ve used so many in the past three weeks – how great this feels and how energizing this task has been.

Thanks for your support and I welcome anyone to tackle this challenge next year.

Now I’m off to put some content – not the novel, just content that’s been sitting in the back of my mind – onto the 14 blogs I had chugging alone happily until the novel took over my fingers.

Keep reading!

Buzz This Post

© Jeff Cutler™ for Jeff Cutler™ - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fiction, Jeff Cutler, memoir, nanowrimo, novel, seven sisters

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

The exercise was part of the NaNoWriMo event coming up in less than 15 days. That’s right, National Novel-writing Month is November.

Part of my anxiety – aside from the actual word-count issue – is topic. I’m a font of silly ideas, smart commentary and unique introspective conversation starters. But that’s where it ends.

The stuff I usually write are concise and powerful 600-775 word diatribes. How can I hope to create characters, plot, description and wild action in chunks of 650 words? Further, how will I paste the whole thing together well enough to entice a major agent or publisher to take a flyer on my project?

It can’t be that hard, can it?

I mean, at every Tweet-up, cocktail party, family gathering and trip to the dentist, people bludgeon me with their ideas for books once they learn that I’m a professional writer.

Sure, I get paid to write and have done so since the days of green screens and mimeograph machines. But that doesn’t mean I’m a modern-day literary Midas.

Just look back over this rant and count the number of times I’ve used a hyphenated descriptor. That’s amateur hour, but you must concede me the errors in style as I’m trying to pound out the characters.

Nimble fingers are necessary. Just like a toy boat will tangle your tongue, you should try writing alliteration always. Or don’t.

How many words is that? 900? Not even?

C’mon. I’m going to have to do twice this amount AND make it tell a story. I think what I need is some acid. Or at least a lucid dream.

Thank god it’s Friday and I won’t have to think about this heinous challenge until Monday when I’ll be limbering up my fingers again.

What?

NaNoWriMo requires you to write EVERY day of the week? That means my trip to NYC mid-month will include some frantic banging of the keys.

And TurkeyDay will make me look like Mike Felger in a previous life. Anti-social wanker with his laptop at every family event. But it’s for the greater good.

And whatever I end up with next month better be good. And it better be greater than this collection of words.

Every day.

All month long.

Until I reach 50,000 words.

Yikes.

Keep reading…I’ll keep typing.

*Leave your thoughts on NaNoWriMo in the comments. And let me know if you’d like me to dump my daily words right here on the blog. It will give you a chance to see the novel as it travels along a path from concept to abysmal reality.

Buzz This Post

© Jeff Cutler™ for Jeff Cutler™ - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Felger, Fiction, Jeff Cutler, nanowrimo, november, procrastinate, sham, writing contest

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Instead, I’m going to remind you that today is National Punctuation Day and there are three fun writing and punctuation sites you should visit.

These are…

English Fail

Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Apostrophe Abuse

Spend some time with these sites on regular basis and you’ll be amazed that some people can even open a can of peanut butter to feed themselves.

[EDIT] One reader contacted me after reading this post to ask me why I was so down on people who can’t write. I told him that it’s not solely that people can’t write…it’s that these very same people see themselves as fantastic writers. That’s akin to me saying I can paint masterpieces because I can open a can of paint or wield a brush. It’s like anyone saying the Indy 500 should be an easy race to drive in because it’s all left-hand turns.

As an example, go to this site and see an example of someone who believes she is an excellent writer. Then come back here and leave some comments. I’m anxious to hear what you think.

Keep reading!

Buzz This Post

© Jeff Cutler™ for Jeff Cutler™ - columns, essays and opinions, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: annoyances, bad writing, creatives, designers, idiots, journalists, Writers

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh