Personal Log: Rick Clogston

Just some random thoughts and observations on being a member of Frontier Fleet.

First, there would seem to be certain things that one must be to be here.
A trek fan.
A writer, or at least someone who's interested in writing.
Creative, in general. There seem to be a lot of musicians, or at least people who are interested in quite a wide variety of music.

It also seems that most FF folk are into just about everything Sci-Fi. In this, I lag behind the rest. I've checked out Stargate, Babylon 5, and many others, and they don't do much for me. I'm into Trek, Star Wars, Farscape, and have read quite a bit that most of you would probably consider old stuff. Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, and so on. I also like a lot of stuff that isn't even remotely Sci-Fi. I just like quality, in pretty much any form.

One reason I like FF is that I am somewhat a student of the craft of writing. I write poetry, music, fiction of various types, and used to be a journalist. I've never made any real money doing any of them, but I enjoy them just the same. If anything, doing these things for free gives me the freedom to follow my muse with no inhibitions. Just let my freak flag flap in the breeze, and make it to my day job on time.

Here comes the minutiae part. I have noticed some stylistic differences in the posts that I'm curious about. I should point out that I learned typing back in the days of automatic-printout mechanical word processors. Or, manual typewriters, to you history buffs. I learned a system called Touch-Typing, back when we put a sheet of paper in a machine, touched a button, and a letter appeared that could not be erased without considerable labor.

Anyway, there were certain things we were taught to do that have become habit for me. Like, for instance, the practice of always leaving two spaces after a period or other sentence-ending punctuation. Thusly. Not one, like this. Sorry. I notice things like that. Also, we of this school put spaces between the dots . . . when leaving a pause...in the middle of a sentence.

Now, please understand, this is not meant as criticism, but merely observation. One shared out of curiosity. I understand that most of you out there are Europeans, and a generation younger than myself. I am wondering if it is common to learn a system of typing nowadays, or if you all just learned by what my old teachers used to call the search-and-destroy method. When you sit down at the keyboard, do you put the fingers of your left hand on asdf, and of your right on jkl;?

If I might be so bold, I think that doing things like leaving those extra spaces makes a post easier to read. It's easier to find the breaks between sentences, and where things in quotes begin and end. "Like if your character were saying something, then thinking something, then talking again." When I respond to posts, I edit what I get in this manner to make it easier to follow. But, again, that's my opinion only.

One other observation I would like to make is that it has been my privilege to read some truly excellent writing. I'm not going to name names here, not at this time anyway, but I think you know who you are. I would also be curious to know who among the FF crowd writes for a living.

One favor I would like to ask anyone who is interested. Feel free to contact me with construcive criticism. I appreciate it, and usually act on it, and am most interested in the story coming together well. I have been known to do this with a few of you, and again, you know who you are. In a nutshell, if I suck, I want to stop. Help me. After all, as we say in my band, the song is the boss.

Well, that's enough of this, uh, stuff for now. Back to life. Of course, re-read and edit before posting.