{"id":59,"date":"2004-11-08T12:39:58","date_gmt":"2004-11-08T18:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2004\/11\/08\/cutting-myself\/"},"modified":"2008-02-11T23:31:46","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T05:31:46","slug":"cutting-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/11\/cutting-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting myself"},"content":{"rendered":"
Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock<\/font><\/h6>\n

Monday, Nov. 8, 2004:<\/font><\/strong><\/font> I may see a trend in this Brick business, a hierarchy. When I work for pay, or at least print publication, I not only think hard about clarity of thought in the writing but how to frame the published writing to maximize its appeal to the reader. Often this involves humor, forms of humor: parody, satire, mini-short stories, fake plays or just deft turns of phrase that might be called witty, to make serious comments palatable.<\/font><\/p>\n

At the other extreme is my longhand journal, whose current incarnation began in 1998 (meaning 1-7 entries a week). The Morning Pages (yes, originally inspired by Julia Cameron), range from first drafts of columns pretty enough perhaps to be published by my standards (see graf above), to more often recording of dreams, grocery lists and things-to-do-today lists.<\/font><\/p>\n

In between is this Brick business for my fewer than 14 readers (“Art is not art if only 14 people know about it.” — Joni Mitchell). They’re basically journal entries I don’t think will embarrass me if people I know read them. They rarely, though, begin as Morning Pages, but I think of a separate issue while doing the Pages that would be a good Brick. About half the Bricks are revised once, and the other half just spell-checked; this comes from column-writing, where I have the confidence that my standard of just not being embarrassed by myself has been met.<\/font><\/p>\n

What these Bricks rarely are, though, are funny. I generally want them to be but seem unable to make myself invest the time to that end. Humor takes concentration and time; the incentive of ego or renumeration helps.<\/font><\/p>\n

One thing that I’ve learned about my own published columns and essays is that in the first draft, the best opening sentence is around three grafs from the top, and that those first grafs can be successfully dropped (I learned this from Frank Fellone of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette). For Bricks, I leave them in. I kind-of like my 12 or 13 readers to know my compulsion for frozen pizza, and a graf or two off-topic is only a few seconds of their time. -30-<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Monday, Nov. 8, 2004: I may see a trend in this Brick business, a hierarchy. When I work for pay, or at least print publication, I not only think hard about clarity of thought in the writing but how to frame the published writing to maximize its appeal to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical-difficulties"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/06\/bricks-are-mud\/","url_meta":{"origin":59,"position":0},"title":"Bricks are mud","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Bricks are mud (tech diff) Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday 9 June 2004. These Bricks, are not coming out as I planned. I intended humor and brevity, not to mention frequency. What they are appears to be like most other blogs. Is the form dictating the message? I'll continue\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":327,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/06\/dave-barry-but-seriously\/","url_meta":{"origin":59,"position":1},"title":"Dave Barry, But Seriously","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"PHILADELPHIA -- Amazing speakers addressed the opening morning of the 31st annual conference of the National Conference of Christians and Columnists, er, National Conference for Columnists and Justice, er, National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Time, and the potential for flagging interest (mine or readers?), prevents a full transcription of today's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philadelphia Phreedom"","block_context":{"text":"Philadelphia Phreedom","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/philadelphia-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"With endless good humor, Dave poses with everyone.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/daveben.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":269,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/02\/paving-the-road-to-heaven\/","url_meta":{"origin":59,"position":2},"title":"Paving the Road to Heaven","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The recently late Art Buchwald said something to the effect of that writing political humor meant he never ran out of ideas, he had five or six every morning (when I find that quote I'll revise this). The even-more recently late Molly Ivins said something like she thanked the good\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2898,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/07\/paneling-for-the-benchley-den\/","url_meta":{"origin":59,"position":3},"title":"Paneling for the Benchley Den","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This column also was published in the July 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Once again, an NSNC columnist conference astounded its audience with information and fun. The June 23-26 session in Detroit catered to would-be and published book writers, gave fresh tips to free-lancers (and in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "I'm Your Vehicle, Detroit"","block_context":{"text":"I'm Your Vehicle, Detroit","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/detroit-2011\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/08\/being-baited\/","url_meta":{"origin":59,"position":4},"title":"Being baited","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2004. Newspapers are suffering because they've lost both anger and humor, Jimmy Breslin said in a Poynter interview in late July. My slight spin would be that we're trying too hard to be nice. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette colleague Jennifer Hansen wrote a few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":165,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/03\/vonnegut-back-on-top\/","url_meta":{"origin":59,"position":5},"title":"Vonnegut back on top","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock Today's title is A Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005, Seven Stories Press. I got through this volume's 146 pages in only a part of an evening. I read the sections willy-nilly, and I didn't care (quite unlike my habit). It didn't matter,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}