Thomas W.P. Slatin

It’s really hard to believe, but in the weirdest and most random of places, you can find old relics from the past such as these, that are still somewhat intact.  I found these trains along US-209 in Kingston, New York, and I decided to get a closer view.  (View The Flickr Photo Set)

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It’s official!  I now have my own business doing writing, photography, and website design!
Click Here For Details

(Thanks Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce)

The cover story in February’s The Writer Magazine talks about the advantages and disadvantages of writing online vs. traditional print writing.

I’m not going to go over the article, but the realization I came to is that in an effort to preserve my writing and keep things fair, I’m going to add everything written in the book to the website, and everything from the website will be included in the book.  This way, you can still read the book online if you can’t afford or do not wish to purchase a copy of the book, and if you do decide to purchase the book, a copy will always be available online, just in case.

The trouble with traditional printing is that there are a lot of costs involved, and being a small-time writer, it would not make much sense for me to invest a lot of time, effort, and money into a book that might sell just enough copies for me to make back my initial investment.

When the book is published, you will be given the opportunity to buy books from an on-demand printer, and possibly from other online retailers, according to my advertising and promotional budget.

Expect to see the book out sometime this year. 

A new mapping feature has been added to the website.  When you want to see the post location, click Map Article Location.  This link will take you to the Map page with a bubble pointing to the exact location.

Please note that the Map Article Location link will only appear when you are browsing the article when it is complete with comments and/or the comment box.

By the way, the image was rendered from the post about the Abandoned Industrial Washing Machine In Winter.  The Map Article Location link takes you here, accordingly.

There are times in my life when I wish I could send a message to all of those people, that for whatever reason, that I seem to have lost touch with.  If I could send such a message, I would let them know how they had an impact on my life, regardless of how small and insignificant, that in essence, caused me to end up being who I am today.

But who am I really?  And if these people who had even the most insignificant impact upon my life remembered me by name, would they even recognise the person I am today?

The notion that some day I might get in contact with someone I haven’t seen or heard from in decades is what inspires me to write.  It’s the dream that some day, my writing might one day impact someones life just enough to have made a difference in who and where they are today.

Through the years of keeping a website, I’ve changed servers, software, and hosting plans, yet one single trend that has never changed is that I get two distinct responses from my readers.

About half of my readers place me upon a high pedestial and begin to compare the writing of others with the likes of mine.  They tell me (in comments as well as emails) that the content of my writing is brilliant, and that I should keep doing what I’m doing because it’s just fantastic.

The other half of my readers tell me that my writing is horrible.  So completely intolerable that they read more and more, just to find fault with it.  They claim that I somehow wasted my writing abilities on stupidity, in some ways, my writing is about topics that nobody cares about.  I’ve had people tell me that I’m an idiot, a loser, and (get this one), an Internet abuser.

Perhaps I’m just too alternative, both in my thought process and life choices, and somehow even, my writing.  Let’s face it.  I’m a one-of-a-kind writer who prefers to not be categorized, labeled, stereotyped, or bound to a single style of writing.  My writing is a free-spirited reflection of who I am, and it is in a state of constant evolution, just like me.

But just like every endeavor, there is a process which must take place in order for you to accomplish what you originally set out to do.  In other words, behind every piece of writing is a writer, through whatever steps were necessary, wrote the words that came together to form the piece.  It’s a creative literary mash-up of sorts.

One of the most discouraging notions came to me recently from a reader who falls into the category of someone who loves to hate my writing.  They presented me with a quandary; if you haven’t published a single book yet, how can you call yourself a successful writer?  A successful writer is someone who has published [x number] of books.

And to this I state my answer as the following, in the form of a situation that is hypothetical at best.  If all writers were on a ladder with the successful writers above us, why must we always look up?  Is it wrong of us to every so often look down and see the rungs where we once stood as beginning writers?  Instead of getting depressed because we’re not at the proverbial top, or the most successful writer, shouldn’t we instead draw inspiration upon how far we’ve come?

When it comes to writing, money is the cancer of my intellect.  It is not the reason why I write; for the same reason that money can’t buy happiness, if writing doesn’t make you happy, perhaps you shouldn’t be making yourself miserable trying to make money off of your writing.

While waiting for someone at a local hospital emergency room (for 8+ hours, I might add), I decided to boot up my laptop and get some “work” done.  Notice that I put the word work in quotes to note that I mean this figuratively.

With my laptop, and subsequent access to the Internet (thank you, Wi-Fi God!), I took a nerd test to see just how nerdy I really am.  Angie claims to have always been attraced to me due to my nerdyness, so when I got the above results back, it was little or no surprise to me that I really am nerdy.

The book I’m writing (very slowly) will likely be on-sale in 2008.  While nothing is finalized, as it stands right now, 90% of the content from this website will be included in the book.  Therefore, if anyone that has been reading this site for any legnthy amount of time is interested in wrting a testimonial to the quality of the book, please submit a comment.

Of course, I have to make a living somehow, so there will be a ton of content in the book that has never been released before, ever.  But because I’m really nice, I’m going to leak a little bit of content every so often to the website as soon as folks start buying my book.

For those of you who don’t know, a testimonial is a blurb that goes on the back cover of a book that attests to the quality of the books content.  Please note that any comments posted here become property of TomSlatin.com, and of course, me, Thomas Slatin.  Therefore, any comments might appear on the back cover of the book.  You will be given full credit according to what you have written your name to be in the comment.

Any questions?  Ask them as a comment also.

Thomas

Finger Eleven released a song recently entitled One Thing back in June of this year.  Whenever I hear it on the radio it makes me think, what would I want so much that I’d be willing to trade everything I own just to have?  If I were able to trade everything for just one thing, what would it be, and would it even be worth it?

Ask anybody what they would be willing to trade everything for.  Ask them to think deeper if they reply quickly, or reply simply with something stupid such as fame, or money.

(Thanks Finger Eleven!)

What’s your one thing?  Reply as a comment…