Which is kinda true. I mean, think about it. The interface is stupid simple; it reminds me of the laminated menus at Denny’s after an evening out at the bars. You don’t even need to know how to pronounce what you’re ordering – just point at the pictures.  Users are allowed to design their personal Tumblrs to look like anything they want, even if what they want is a Myspace circa 2005 aesthetic.

And the idea of “creating content for your blog” on Tumblr has been boiled down to the button on every post which says “reblog.”

And there’s porn on Tumblr. Like, a lot of naked people. Some of it may just be artsy photo stills, the rest are somewhat clever gifs. All of which is avoidable so long as you keep a close eye on the other Tumblr blogs you happen to follow.

Actually being able to see what content is good

However, Tumblr is far more than just another startup looking to expand the English language by opting out of vowels. There is a world of really cool, amazing stuff on Tumblr. I happen to follow hundreds of blogs through Not Quite Hippie’s Tumblr and many follow back. It’s a wonderful way to find new ideas, links, videos, and information to keep the world of sustainable content moving.

More than half of the traffic to NotQuiteHippie.com each month is driven through Tumblr – that’s more than I get from Twitter and Facebook combined. Not to mention that my bounce rates are particularly low on Tumblr traffic, and the new users camp out on the blog forever. It is all thanks to the Re-Blog function. If I post a link to the blog, and the world of Tumblr deems it interesting enough, it takes off on a wildfire of reblogging. One of my followers reblogs, then their followers see it and reblog to their own followers and so on. Through this platform, anything can go viral.

From what I’ve been able to tell, Google has yet to provide a unique index for each time the link is reblogged. For now, all of the links I’ve posted that I have been reblogged hundreds of time still show up as a big, fat “1″ on my Google webmaster tools. Most likely? It is that every blog on Tumblr is on a subdomain rather than a directory (Tumblr: http://your blog.tumblr.com opposed to http://tumblr.com/yourblog).

But, yeah, there’s still a lot of porn out there too. But I thought Google loved porn?

I’ve got a Tumblr for all the cool, somewhat juvenile stuff I find.

And I’ve got a Tumblr for Not Quite Hippie.

Do you Tumbl? What’s been your experience? Are you worth following?

Also, I really loved last night’s Ignite. It’ was great. I loved meeting all sorts of new people and hearing that folks enjoyed my presentation (although I can’t remember a single thing about it). What’s that? Yes, I pushed my book coming out this month: https://www.facebook.com/songsaboutwhiskey

Nay, because I am dealing with the e-publishing myself I have run into technical difficulties. Stuff about coding, some weird legal snafu, and timelines that I did not anticipate.  Barnes & Noble just likes to take two weeks to do things. You know, because they can.

Growing pains, beginners luck. Definitely won’t be doing that again.

“Instant” publishing, my ass.

Songs About Whiskey will be available later this month – October 2011 – on all the e-reader formats I originally promised. Keep up to date by subscribing to the Facebook page or by keeping an eye on this here blog.

For now, as consolation, I have uploaded one of the stories featured in the collection on to Scribd. You can read it here, at Scribd, or download it to your reader as a PDF.

The Christian thing to do

The 10th Ignite Denver happens to coincide with the Great American Beer Festival. Result? The theme is rather boozy. IN addition to my speaking about something beer-related, the lineup will feature presentations from brew masters! Nifty!

However, as of the writing of this blog, my slides are not completed. My idea is not yet set in stone even though I have to present the hell out of it in exactly one week.  Technically, the first draft is due today. Can’t say I didn’t see this coming.

I presented at Ignite Denver 9 as well. Remember the paper towel thing? Yeah, neither do I. Thank goodness someone recorded it:

I suppose I will just have to play off my strengths. The spark submitted was “Why all bloggers need to drink, or need to drink more.” And after scribbling down half a note-book’s worth of ideas, I think I might be able to pull it off.  Although, at this point, my slides include images of Stephanie Meyers, mythic eagles, and references to buttsex (note those commas – I do not have a slide of Stephanie Meyers getting it in the tail-end from a mythic eagle).

At this point, I think tickets are still for sale. $5 gets you in the door. $10 gets you in the door and as much craft beer as you stuff in your belly. Not in the area? Ignites are usually streamed live. I’ll post the link on my twitter feed as soon as it is available.

What my blog probably looks like most evenings

Blogs die. They go to sleep and chances are they are never updated again. Hosting fees are neglected, domains lapse, 404s appear and indexes fail.

They die. Usually, it’s for the best.

Other times, their keeper just gets really frustrated with the blog.

The blog here at Eat At Dave’s didn’t so much die as it got shoved into a closet with a gag stuffed in it’s mouth.

It’s there, I know I can take it out whenever I want, I just didn’t want it to make too much noise.

Here’s the confession: I’m a pretty horrible freelance writer.  I can write from one end of the day to the other, I’ll make words look the way you want them to, I’ll tell you a story and send you off with a smile. I’ll rattle off words on this highly un-ergonomic keyboard until my hands shatter (usually, my right goes before my left).

But when it comes to keeping the books, tracking the expenses, marketing, making myself look good, and grabbing new business. . . yeah, yikes.

Other professionals in similar fields have advised I keep an “industry blog.” A “niche site.” A blog pertaining to my profession.

A writer who writes about writing is far different than a designer who writes about design, or a mechanic who writes about fixing things. There is something about trying to manifest the medium within the medium that I just can’t wrap my head around. Furthermore, how do you blog about writing? Or being a writer? Can I really stand outside myself enough to effectively write about a medium?

Then again, keeping Not Quite Hippie has been a lot of fun over the past few months, and I certainly plan on keeping it alive for the foreseeable future. Sometimes, though, I just need to write about something else. You know?

I mean, I’ll give you a niche blog, sure. But I’m not certain most of you will fit.

I’m in the market of being David Pennington. I don’t think that’ll make for a very beneficial read.

But, if you insist. . .

Here it comes, my blog is coming out of the closet I stuffed it into (yes, I went there. Allow me to stake claim on the joke). I’ll let it parade around every now and again, air its dirty laundry, tell you a joke or two until I get in a fight with it again. With this post, the blog resurfaces some decadent reads from the archives. If you’re new here, feel free to check them out:

• In Defense of Books
• I Killed My Reader
• The Power of Organic Thinking

Songs about Whiskey is the first fiction release from Denver-based writer, D.T. Pennington. The collection includes five short stories about characters in conflict with the landscape of their realities.

Songs About Whiskey is available exclusively for e-readers. Visit the Nook or Kindle store to download. Don’t have an e-reader? Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer free reader applications for download on just about every conceivable mobile platform.

Like Songs About Whiskey on Facebook.

For the most part, I’m ok with that.  The book is their idea, their research, their thoughts.  I enter the picture when they aren’t quite sure how to organize their own words into a way that would impact other people.  Everyone who has the desire to put words to the page usually wants to affect their audience on an emotional level.  They want to change people. Attempting such a feat can be rather difficult if what you have written makes little sense at all.

I started up Write You A Story as a way to hopefully attract every day people who don’t feel they have a grand statement to make and help them realize that their own lives are grand enough to share with others.  I believe that every life experience is worth telling. In the grand scheme of things, we all have something to learn from everyone else.  All I want to do is help people get their story onto a platform where it can do the best kind of damage.

So imagine the client’s surprise when the first thing I ask them to do is write something for me. Every last one of them looks at me funny and says, “Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?”  If the clients are serious, they’ll scribble out a few bullet points. If they aren’t, I never hear from them again.

I started taking this approach to helping others tell their story after one of my more notorious clients.  This man refused to write anything, and with good reason.  After dropping out of high school he travelled the world for 20 years with his band. He made a lot of money. He appeared in several television shows and, eventually, adult films.  The man had a story to tell, I knew it.  My biggest challenge was convincing him of what that story needed to be.

He wanted his book to be “Why I am such a motherfucking bad ass.”  He’s not the first I have been approached to write this kind of story.  But these kinds of stories don’t sell, people don’t like to read them, and the title may as well read, “800 Reasons You Can Consider Me A Huge Douche.” There was a story underneath, the one people needed to hear, which portrayed him as the jilted romantic who is just trying to do the best in this world while managing to have the best life possible.  However, being human, he didn’t want this vulnerable side exposed and the project ultimately dropped.

While I was working with him, however, we rarely exchanged written words.  He insisted on calling me between the hours of 2 and 5 in the morning (“Just be up,” he’d say. Although sometimes he’d never call at all. Now I know how some of my exes feel). During our conversations he would go into half baked philosophies and then try to outline the entire book in his head.  Each chapter he imagined drew out a whole new atlas of ground to cover.  I’d feverishly scribble notes in my hot office, trying to stay awake and not lose track of anything that this lunatic was rambling about.  After our call ended I would fall asleep, sometimes in my chair, and when I came too I would be greeted with the daylight horror of my exhausted handwriting blasted across mountains of tattered paper.

Over a few hours I would type up the notes, trying to remember why I wrote down certain things, imagining the man’s voice in my head.  Then I would send him the careful outline via email and retire to my bed for a few hours.  The next morning, at 2AM he would call and be ready to work on the book even though he hadn’t even checked his email that day.  Everything would start over.  After the first week I called the agent and told her that it was damn near impossible to work with this guy on this level.  She told me to keep at it, because it would be an easy-selling book.  I’m sure the book would have been a fine sell, it’s the story that would have been a disaster.

As far as I saw it, every night he called me without reading the notes from the previous night was a waste of everyone’s time. Mine, his, the publisher’s. If I charged hourly, I could have done it until the end of time. But I wasn’t, so the project eventually had to retire.

This client wanted the book to be about everything and in a weird, nihilistic way, it was about absolutely nothing at all.  It was about why he was so great.

Ever since I’ve asked all my clients, no matter how small, to write down the bare minimum of what they wanted covered.  Writing it down requires a sense of commitment.  You think about the words you put to the page a lot more than the ones you speak aloud.  Some people hate writing so much that they would rather not waste time with a single unnecessary character. That’s when I know what they want to have told to the world.

Then, I start building their story.

There is, of course, some back and forth.  I send drafts and they write back emails with their notes and ideas. Sometimes they call and refer to certain passages as being shit, others gold, all of it taken in stride and changed to something they can swallow a little easier.

Don’t let me write my story for you. Allow me to write it with you.

I have ALWAYS had a problem with bookshelves. When I moved into my first post-college apartment years ago (as in – the first place I didn’t have to share with anyone!) I bought a fifty dollar, assemble-it-yourself bookshelf from Target.  It was 75 inches tall, had five shelves, and took about four hours to put together.

Once it was upright I piled all of my books upon it in a perfect order. I then turned around. 30 seconds later, after a horrendous crash, my books were scattered in with a pile of splintered wood and torn particle board.

I never bothered to replace the bookshelf. For the next several years my books were haphazardously stacked around the apartments I lived in, sometimes favoring a shelf that was already installed in the place. Then, after a while, I had to thin the herd. I just had too many stinking books. Every move I had a difficult time convincing friends that they should help lift the books again.

So now, every time I move, I make a point to get rid of about half my books. This is a task that is getting increasingly harder. I have been getting better about not buying books, I use the library more and I have a Kindle which I acquire the “I’ll only ever read it once” books on. However, this means there are books which have survived the thinning time and time again.  Books I’ll never get rid of.

I look at the books I’m getting rid of this time. It’s about what I ususally get rid of: books I acquired only to work on a certain project with. Research books, books bore through with notes and sticky tabs. Books that I didn’t touch once the project was finished. These books are leaving me, and I’m OK with it because I rarely keep more than a professional relationship with a lot of these books.

As for the books I’ll never get rid of: the reference books. All of the style manuals, the not-so-style manuals, a few short story collections, a few biographies. I’ve got books the author was kind enough to autograph for me.  I also have a lot of books about Denver history (I live in Denver, and it’s damn intersting to know what happened under your feet decades ago).

Do you also have a problem collecting books?  What are the kinds of books you’ll never get rid of?

Better TSA the hell outta this!

I never had a hard time with spelling tests in school.  In fact, it was the one thing I was good at. However, English is my first language and it is universally known that English is probably one of the hardest languages to learn because it makes the least sense.  There are words I can’t spell.  Even to this day, writing them out hundreds of times I just can’t get the order of letters right the first time through. Maybe my fingers think a few seconds faster than my brain and the next thing I know I am looking at a squiggly red line.  I’m thinking beyond the accidental typing of “teh” and “nkow.”  The words I most have trouble with? Well, read on.

Burrito – You know, that thing that is wrapped in a tortilla (also another word I have trouble with). Beans and chicken and peppers. Maybe some rice. Definitely some salsa. No idea why I can’t spell this one. I probably eat three a week.

Other ways I spell it: buritto

I remember being in an elementary school that forbid the use of pens before the fourth grade. We first learned how to hold a writing instrument with big, thick crayons. Then pencils. Then we had to stay with pencils, carefully practicing the strokes of our penmanship, erasing when needed, until we could graduate to the more permanent, but not always more accurate, state of ink.

I never learned calligraphy in those days even though it was an older school that still used those desks that had the hole which inkpots were kept in. I never learned to use a quill, or even knew that ink was kept in pots. All of that came much later in life and I had to learn it on my own. We learned how to write in manuscript, how to write in cursive. But once those courses were done we were all left to develop a hybrid that would become known as script.

Computers were still scarce in those days. A few federally funded Macintoshes that frequently erupted in I/O errors showed up in the corners of classrooms. We dreaded when a teacher asked for a “rewrite” on a paper because it usually meant starting from scratch and handwriting those five pages all over again in a halfway legible format. With pens. It wasn’t a matter of opening a document, making a few changes, and reprinting a new draft. Writing was something to be labored with.

Then typing became a semester long course that was all about accuracy and speed. Learning how to type on those same Macintoshes with green cursors. asdf jkl; But eventually the skills learned there winded down to a boorish style of typing where my left hand dominates the top of the keyboard, and my right hand takes care of the bottom.

Career – like: that thing that people attribute their whole lives towards, make money at, and generally love doing. Or, to move in an uncontrolled manner.  I find it really odd that this word is used in such polar opposites.

I find it really odd, and subliminally disturbing, that I can’t figure out how to spell this one.

How I sometimes spell it: carer, carrer,

I read stories now about teachers who are moving to ban pens and pencils all together from the classroom. It’s a horrifying thought. Sure, a lot of our communication is now done through a keyboard or a touchscreen. Entire conversations exist via SMS. A scarier thought? These teachers aren’t moving for this band to keep up with the times, they are wanting the ban for all the kids who are using pens and pencils as weapons.  Sure, everyone who went to grammar school eventually fashioned catapults and tribuchets from pencils and rubber bands.  Sure, maybe someone developed a bruise or lost an eye.  But banning them outright?  Sounds almost unjust.  We did do some writing with those tools as well!

It’s like that “Pen is mightier than the sword” thought. But, you know, not. If the teachers were really smart, they would teach the power of words, how the pen can be a weapon of a different sort.

But I suppose they would just want to ban words as well.

Is the day upon us when pens and notebooks and journals are a mere novelty item?

Is the day upon us? Will handwriting and penmanship be taught as a supplementary class to those who are studying lost, dead languages and arts like Greek and Hebrew? Oy vey!

Why do they need pens and pencils? Every other student has a laptop, or an ipad, in class. Entire industries are gaining tons of funding to revolutionize the way we learn. Using the social aspects of the internet. Kids don’t even need to know how to think anymore, they just need to know how to search for what they need.

The predictive text knows what I wnt to say within two or three characters. The squiggly red line under the word says I’m wrong. Or, if I’m not wrong, I haven’t written something that the program can accept.

Sandwich – Again, I eat several a week, and I can’t seem to get this right.

How I sometimes spell it: sandwhich, sanwhich

I worry about what we loose when we loose our ability to write by hand.  The pure physiology of writing goes to make us that much smarter. To take a pen to the page and figure out what we can present to the rest of the world. Words that become buildings, worlds, characters. Drawings of our mind.

The ability express ourselves in the way that only a stroke of a pen can offer. Beyond the capability of fonts and italics and colors. To read something handwritten is to not only take in the thoughts of another, but to subconsciously examine the pen strokes to see what that person was feeling.  Think about what you feel when a handwritten letter shows up in your mailbox.  Or how you feel when you receive a tangible invitation rather than a soulless notification on your Facebook page.

Handwriting, penmanship, these are the most basic of what connect us. Just imagine all of the lost context of what is in the dance of the pen.  It still means something, what does it mean to you?

Rarely do I find a movie that can engage me.  That can make me lean forward in my seat and be completely involved in what is happening on the screen.  Most of what comes through my queue is watched because I didn’t feel like doing anything else that day.  That is not the case for It Might Get Loud.  In fact, this is one of the few movies that I have watched at least once a week since I discovered it six months ago. With every new viewing is a new lesson gleaned from the subjects.  While it doesn’t hurt being a total fan boy of the subject matter, this is a movie that is about finding the creative spirit and using it to make something fantastic.

At the most basic assessment, It Might Get Loud is a documentary about three electric guitar players: Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White.  The trio have gathered in a room for a day to discuss what the instrument means to them, the idiosyncrasies they’ve discovered over the years, and what they think they could teach to the other players.  Director Davis Guggenheim couples this footage with personal and professional histories of each of the players in order to develop a complete image of the egos behind the music.

After the tenth or so viewing, I started to approach this movie not as a guitar player, but as a writer, and a completely new dialog was opened up between myself and the movie.  While they never once talked about writing, this is one of those movies that writers can appreciate.

No matter what the instrument, it will only be as good as the person who is using it. While the three musicians can speak of commercial success stemming from very different backgrounds, they are also three great studies in the development of a creative mind. What could we then learn if we took a step back and replaced “Musician” and “writer” with the far more general “artist”?

No amount of technology can save you.

“Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth. I’m sure it doesn’t do anything for creativity. Sure, it makes it easier and you can get home sooner. But it doesn’t make you a more creative person. That’s the disease we have to fight in any creative field – ease of use.”

I don’t think it was a mistake that both Jack White and The Edge were selected to appear in this movie. White, the youngest of the trio, presents himself as being very old-timey. From his clothing to his guitar, everything looks well worn and manufactured in a different century.

The Edge, on the other hand, shows up to the event with nothing short of a million dollars of electronics.

White frequently refers to making music with instruments that aren’t perfect, stage setups that are inaccurate, and notes that half of the fun is in how imperfect music can be. Edge, on the other hand, has a team of technicians that works with him to make sure every show goes off without a hitch.

As a result, White tends to come off with more authenticity. Stringing together chords that always sound just a little bit off. Starkly contrasting to the Edge’s two note progressions which develop a lot of their sound only after going through a heavy, heavy amount of processing.

I’ve always been a believer that a writer wont need a computer to do what they do. Sure, somewhere in the publication and distribution process it is a huge help. But in the beginning stages of formulating ideas and developing form, nothing beats a pen and paper.

Unless, of course, technology is your medium.

While Edge may not have anything to write home about in terms of musical ingenuity, he does spend an awful lot of time fiddling with those electronics. As a result, every record, every song has a completely unique tone to it. The tuning of all of his amplifiers, effects and pedals in itself is an artform.

What matters? Authenticity.

“Because of the amplification and the tactility, you can hear the characteristics of each player. People try to stretch the limits, come up with new techniques. . .and the player’s personality tends to come through.”

Produce Exactly what your Heart is telling you to. Even if no one else responds to it. It’s the difference between being an artist and being a sell out. Jimmy Page did a lot of weird things in his time with the Yardbirds. While these songs are only familiar to the most die hard of fans and they will never be detrimental to his canon, they still affected every piece of music he wrote and performed after it.

Writers should have the same outlets at their disposal. If the only thing you write is long fiction, or copy for websites, or sales pitches – soon enough everything will start sounding the same. But being able to write from a variety of standpoints allows your brain to develop a unique voice which will only go to help you in the future.

Boring lives make for boring stories

“If you don’t have a struggle in you or around you, then you have to make one up.”

There is a reason they call it “drama” – it’s because we need the plot, we need painful things to happen to us, to our characters, to the world around the lot of us. If we don’t feel the agony and the ecstasy of life, then how the hell can we be expected to put it on paper?

Know what you’re getting into

“Pick a fight with it. And win the fight.”

No one said this was easy. In fact, when it comes too easily you can pretty much assume that something is wrong. Or, you’ve won.

Positive closing thoughts

“You always worry about being satisfied. It’s like when you’re satisfied you just die.”

Above all – you can’t fake this. NO matter how expensive of a guitar or how highly processed an amplifier is – if you can’t play, you can’t play.

Same goes for writing. But no one ever said you can’t learn.

In fact, some of the best writing you will ever produce is while you are learning. At the same time, so will the worst.

The Foundation of Great Ideas

Computers are everywhere. If you want to exist in this word, then you better have a friggin computer. For writers, comptuers have made it worlds easier to edit and format their thoughts. Rewriting has never been easier. What used to have to be typed over again and again with a typewriter can now be saved, cut, copied, and pasted with nothing more than a few keystrokes. Publication is almost instant, consumption is practically immediate.

However, we seem to forget that there is a bigger, more powerful and spontaneous machine always at work between our ears. I know a great many writers who spend hours every day stuck in front of a computer screen, watching the black cursor blinking back at them on an otherwise empty page. Knowing that if they could just get started, to see the words form, moving from left to right, forming paragraphs, they could finish the damn project!

Yet, they are stuck. Is it because they don’t have good ideas? Rarely. I like to think of it as they don’t consider the fact that their brain may not want to move from left to right in Times New Roman font. This is why I so often suggest picking up a pen. Your brain is organic, the keyboard is not.

Your brain creates ideas by putting together a few bits of information it has stored up. The ideas that are produced are often so raw they aren’t usable. It does this a billion times a day, usually without your knowledge. When we do see it, it is because we are dreaming. The raw ideas manifest themselves as weird dreams.

Have you ever woken up and thought, “Geeze, what a boring dream that was?” Probably not, and it should go to show how raw your ideas initially are.

In this technological age the power of the pen and a piece of paper is vastly underrated. The pen works as an extension of the hand. It isn’t restricted to margins or fonts and misspellings wont be attacked by a squiggly red line. With a pen there are no rules, no expectations, no standards. It is a direct link from the misty haze of your brain to characters and symbols that seem more familiar. Ink allows more organic thinking.

What is lost in the ages of typing and retyping drafts on a typewriter? How about a study of the words you’re putting down? The same idea goes for ink – a study of words.

By first writing out the raw ideas in a free-form and fluid method, you will be able to create a better map of the ideas at work. Seeing the words on the page, being able to cross things out and draw arrows, circle, hi-light, flip the page over and write all over the back allows your brain to process and reprocess these ideas. The idea that once felt like a random hallucination starts to become more tangible, more real, and are one step closer to being presentable. Conclusions are found, arguments are more precise, connections are better drawn.

Grab a pen, find one you like, and keep a pad of paper around. You might even surprise yourself.