It’s an old story and one I’m reading a lot these days. Several people recently have gone off Facebook in part or in whole for reasons that have mostly to do with the hatred and inanity of what passes for commentary.

For my part, it’s more a matter of how much time it takes up. I don’t drink much or take drugs, but I’m pretty sure FB is my addiction and I’m keen for it to take up less of my life.

And really, what do I do over there? I share posts other people write or goofy images other people create. And lists of the tunes that I’ve listened to whilst I run. I can do that over here, too, but am required, perhaps, to write something cogent about the matters rather than just say, read this thing I just read. It’s cool.

And don’t get me started about the massive amounts of click bait.

Occasionally I write something of my own, but I’m not nearly as prolific as I would like to be – FB makes things much easier than LiveJournal ever did. I’d like for my online presence to be much more about the writing skills I actually possess. These have been mostly geared to writing about music for my nieces, and not nearly enough fiction, though that’s what I really enjoy writing when I sit down to do it.

While on holiday recently, I started writing stories that may end up being the introduction to a novel. Note please that I have bits of perhaps a dozen unfinished novels in my files, so I don’t have high hopes. Yet. Usually I write the first bits by hand and run into contradictions and inconsistencies which I iron out once I put the notes into an editable format. And then I fiddle around with them for a bit and eventually get bored and start writing something else.

Well, I’m mostly done transcribing and should really get down to business with it, especially as my writing group will be meeting shortly. (I’m currently well amused with HanxWriter and am doing much of my Facebook blues. with it and copying into other files so that I can do something useful with the texts, as it only exports to PDF. I’m using it even as I write this. I like the old typewriter sounds and the output is pretty cool.)

It used to be that I accompanied my blog posts with a notation of the music played during the writing. This evening it was Pat Metheny’s Tap: Book of Angels Vol. 20. (Book of Angels is a series of compositions by John Zorn recorded by a number of different artists. Metheny’s is sublime.)