Posts Tagged: essays

Jenifer Hanen is Creating Art & Writing at Patreon!

Posted by & filed under art + photography, writing + blogs.

Greetings Lovely folk of the Internet!

The past two years have been very fruitful creatively for me, I have been quietly writing fiction stories and working on a film photo project, as well as my working on my mobile and DSLR photography. The writing and film projects take time and money to complete.

It is time for me to bring my work out of Google Docs files and the black hole of Lightroom on my computer and share them in a more substantial way with folks who wish to help support my writing and art making endeavors. By support, I mean a community of folk who are excited to read, view, comment on, and receive photos, stories, essays, and be the first to hear about new works in progress.

Would you like to participate in a community that supports my creative endeavors with a monthly photo and story, as well as a weekly link round up? If so, come join me at Patreon by make a pledge.

The various tiers of monthly pledges will range from thank you and here is a weekly round up of links to Patreon-only Monthly photos and stories all the way to a Monthly mailed Photo Card (real printed photos from the film project) to a Yearly signed Photo and|or Story Book. I will also be making and sharing my photos and writing at this blog and other social media sites with a weekly round up of links of my work and other interesting links here at Patreon.

The monies from the pledges will be going to help fund the writing and photography.

Thank you for joining me in this creative endeavor. You rock!

Jenifer Hanen, aka Ms. Jen

Become my patron at Patreon

The Slow Web Movement

Posted by & filed under tech + web dev, writing + blogs.

Rebecca Blood wrote on “The Slow Web” today:

The Slow Web would be more like a book, retaining many of the elements of the Popular Web, but unhurried, re-considered, additive. Research would no longer be restricted to rapid responders. Conclusions would be intentionally postponed until sufficiently noodled-with. Writers could budget sufficient dream-time before setting pixel to page. Fresh thinking would no longer have to happen in real time.

Go read her article and the cinema post that inspired it.
I am only occasionally interested in blog posts, be it writing them or reading them, that are apart of the hyper-fast web, what has happened right now – usually if it about an earthquake that just happened or a revolution (like Iran last June). I particularly dislike the echo chamber of tech/mobile blog posts that happen within 30 minutes of a press release or a keynote from a company executive.
((yawn))
But blog posts that are written after one has considered the subject, looked at various sides, actually held the device in one’s hand, mused on events & filtered them through experience, thought about the repercussions, and then write an informed opinion piece – now that is good slow web.

Best Time: Early, Mid, or Late Bird?

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, writing + blogs.

When I was very young I was a serious early bird, popping up each day around 5:30am and going to bed by 8pm. My best hours of energy and alertful-ness was between 5:30am and 10am. As I aged into teen-twenties-hood, my body clock flipped where my best hours were in the evening and I struggled to wake up any time before 8am, even for school.
Now as an adult, I find that I like to go to bed around midnight and I wake up, depending on the light & the situation, between 6:30am and 9am. When I wake up, I am usually up and peppy. Sometimes I wake up wanting to sing, and I do.
Over the years, my energy levels have somehow melded between my childhood early bird and my teen-twenties late bird. In the last few years, I have lots of energy and concentration from 7am to noon and then again 5pm to 9/10pm. Even more interesting, to me, is that I do my best writing in the mornings and my best designing/coding in the evenings. Afternoons are a bit of a loss for any task of concentration other than talking and reading.
When I was writing my masters thesis, I did my draft writing in the mornings, my further research/reading in the afternoon, and my rewriting in the evening, with insertions of 15-30 minute procrastination/fun breaks at odd times.
I have a list of things that I want to write “longish”, thoughtful blog posts about, but I keep telling myself that I can’t blog until I have finished my allotted work for the day/evening. If I let myself blog when I am most “on” for writing, I feel guilty, as if I am cheating a client or myself or some schoolmarm in the sky. If I do like I have done for the last week and wait until after 10pm to blog, I know I have a whole *real* post in me, but I can’t concentrate long enough to do anything other than vaguely think of the title of the topic and certainly I have not been able to write about it.
I can write about writing late at night. I can write about funny stuff or what happened that day. But if I want to write about, flesh out, and make a good argument for an idea or larger essay, well that is morning work.
I need to get over my blogging vs. real work guilt complex and start allowing myself two hours every morning or at least four mornings a week to write out all the big ideas in my head. Starting tomorrow. Maybe Sunday…