Update: Quest for Story and WRiTE Club

Hi!  Just wanted to give an update that I WILL be finishing the last two posts in my ten-part Quest For Story series, and that part Nine should be up in the next day or two.

But in the meantime, I'd like to once again plug WRiTE Club 2012 over on DL Hammons blog and encourage you to visit, read, enjoy, and vote.

DL started this contest between anonymous 500-word writing samples way back at the end of July, and it's been going ever since.  There were originally over 70 contestants who were whittled down to 36 preliminary-round winners, 18 first-round winners, and now just TEN contestants remain (9 winners and a wildcard).  These five bouts are running this week and for this round, the writers have submitted NEW 500-word entries, and it is really interesting to see the new pieces:

Bout one was Monday (HERE), bout two was yesterday (HERE), and bout three is up today (HERE).  And then you can pop into DL's Blog tomorrow and Friday to see the next two bouts -- voting on all of them ends Sunday at Noon.

This round will result in five winners and another wildcard (the highest vote-getter among the non-winners), and they will go head-to-head in three bouts next week.

Then, the week of 11/25 will see those three winners and another wildcard go through two bouts where the two finalists will be chosen.

The final winner will be selected from those two by a panel of professional agents, editors, and other writers.

If you have not been participating, I encourage you to do so -- the entries are great, and through these next few rounds where wildcard winners are chosen, every vote carries a lot of weight.

Come and join the fun!  Just click HERE!

Resurrection Blogfest: I Am Not Unique

Welcome to the Resurrection Blogfest 2012, sponsored by Mina Lobo at Some Dark Romantic!  This is Mina's first blogfest and I'm happy to take part!

The specifics for this are pretty simple: Resurrect a blog post you created during your first year of blogging.

So, revived from 3/30/2011, just a short while after I first started blogging, I give you the post below -- discovering I am not unique.  

I hope you enjoy this blast from the past.  Be sure to see Mina's Linky-List to visit all the bloggers taking part in this blogfest!

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Thoughts at Large: I Am Not Unique 

(Slightly updated -- originally posted 3/30/2011)

After setting up this blog and working with it for a couple of months, I've confirmed something I had suspected for a while: 

I am not unique.

Not in the "Hey-I-started-a-blog" way, or even the "I'm-an-aspiring-writer" sense -- those I already knew.  There are a multitude of blogs out there, and you can't kick over any Internet rock without a horde of wannabe-writers swarming out.

No, I mean in the way that a kid christened "John Smith" encounters very early in his life: 

What the Hell are all these other people doing with my name?!?

I grew up in a small town, and while I can remember a few other kids named 'Chris,' there weren't very many people named 'Fries,' and I was definitely the only 'Chris Fries' that I knew of. 

A one-of-a-kind. 

But now, after doing some research to see if anyone who knew my name but not my blog address could find this place, I've realized there are many other people named 'Chris Fries' out there.  A whole slew of them:

• There's a guy who does professional voice-over production (HERE).  Looks like he does some pretty cool work, and he has a very impressive resume and client list.  But he has a picture of french fries on his page, and a "you want fries with that?" blurb, so I wonder if he pronounces our last name as "Fry-es" instead of "Freeze," like my family always did (the old-country German way, evidently).

• There's a guy in Washington, DC who has his own blogspot blog (HERE) that he evidently regularly maintained for a couple of years, although it hasn't been updated since last May.  Not sure if that's because he just decided to quit blogging or because something happened to him.  Either one is a sobering thought about the potential longevity of this blog...

• There's a guy in Cincinnati who does real estate, although it looks like his domain name ('www.chrisfries.net') may have expired.  You can see the real estate site under the 'cached' entry in the Google search, but the live URL takes you to a 'domain available' blurb.

• There are twenty-five other profiles for 'Chris Fries' or 'Christopher Fries' on Linked-In (HERE) besides the one I created and never completed.  Looks like I'm not even the only 'Chris Fries' who's an Engineer.

• And I found at least thirty 'Chris Fries' pages on Facebook, and I know there are probably a ton of others, including all the versions of 'Christopher Fries'.  But I don't have my own Facebook account, so it won't show me the full list unless I create one.  No thanks.  Not today...

Wow.

In some ways it's a little disappointing -- we all want to know that we're unique and special individuals, and it's a bit disheartening to realize I'm not as unique as I once thought. 

But still -- overall, it doesn't really bother me that much.  I know that what makes me special and unique is much more than just my name.  Every 'John Smith' had to learn that early in life, and it's probably a little easier for me to process at age 50 than it would have been at age 5.  So, despite being just one in a herd of people named 'Chris Fries,' I am still a totally unique person (and you can ask my wife -- she'll tell you just how frustratingly unique and quirky I can be).

Plus, in some ways it's kind of cool.  All these other 'Chris Fries'es and I may be related through some twists and turns of our family trees, and so having a sense of being connected to a larger, extended family is sort of nice. 

And I can't help but think that if we ever combined into a unified collective, we could probably conquer the world...

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Thanks for stopping by and taking part in this Resurrection Blogfest!  Remember to go HERE to see more resurrected blog posts!

Breaking Free from the Spider's Web

(Photo by Chris J. Fries - 2012: Spider)

Wow!!!  Look at how long it's been since I posted here...

I REALLY have to apologize for neglecting this blog.  Life and work schedule just completely swallowed me up the last several weeks, enmeshing me in a spidery web of gotta-dos that completely engulfed me and held me captive.

And even worse than being an absent blogger, I accomplished almost no writing at all.  It's a bit late to go over them in a dedicated post, but suffice it to say that my September writing goals basically went up in flames.  But the good news is that I'm not behind on any of my October goals -- simply because I never had the time to sit down and put any together.  Aspire to nothing and you'll achieve it every time,  LOL!

About the only writing-related task I was able to (barely) stay on top of was to keep up with the voting on DL Hammond's WRiTE Club 2012 contest.  When the times force me to have to choose, I tend to focus on commitments I made to other people more so than those I made to myself, and I'd vowed to Don to take part in the contest.  Plus, while DL is an old and very good friend that I'm honored to support, I also entered the contest, so I also have a bit of a selfish reason for staying involved.  But I won't discuss my entry until the contest is over, so that's all I'm going to say about that, other than I do encourage you to visit DL's blog and take part in the fun. The prelims finish with just one more bout, and then the 36 prelim winners will go at it head-to-head in the next round beginning Monday -- spread out over three blogs: DL's, Julie Dao's, and Tiana Smith's. 

But, I think that while life will still continue to be a bit hectic, I think I've managed to break free of the web, at least some. I think I'll at least be able to once again be more of an active blogger moving forward.  I hope.

Still, if you ever visit here and don't see me comment or update very often, please know that I do very much appreciate your visit and always welcome your comments and input.  Or if you're one of the many fellow bloggers whose blogs I try to visit and enjoy, please don't take my absence from commenting on your blog as a sign that I no longer care -- I do.  I simply wish I had more hours in the day, and more days in the week...

So, let's see:...What else?  Oh --  I had been running my "Quest for Story" series, and while it's taken much, MUCH longer than I had planned to finish it, I do plan to do so.  There are just two posts left, after all, so I'm hoping to have them up here very soon.

Well, I think that's it for now.  Gotta keep moving lest I get snared again...  ;^)

Thanks!

Chris