Everyday Junglist
Bio
Practicing mage of the natural sciences (Ph.D. micro/mol bio), Thought middle manager, Everyday Junglist, Boulderer, Cat lover, No tie shoelace user, Humorist, Argan oil aficionado. Occasional LinkedIn & Facebook user
Stories (562/0)
Why I Stayed In My Run of the Mill Science Job and Wrote This Article
Why I Left My Big Fancy Tech Job and Wrote a Book Several years ago, I was sitting in the audience at a big science conference learning about some new approach for detecting foodborne pathogens. The speaker gave a really nice presentation and I found the entire talk fascinating. The whole conference was filled with wonderful discussions, new technologies, and I had a really great three days.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
Morning People Are Lying to You
Author's preface: I published a verson of this story a while back but it did not get many views or much attention. In that way, it was exactly like every other article I publish here. However, it is different from most of my other stories in two important ways. One, I remembered writing it for some reason, and, two, I decided to reserrect and republish it now for another reason I can't remember. The majority of my works I completely blank on about two seconds after I publish them, and though I do republish things often, I generally remember why I am republishing them, whereas in this case I do not. Thus, I was correct in my initial assertion that this story does differ from most of my other stories in two ways. Hopefully you can see exactly how I came to that conclusion. Just in case not I will walk you through it. So, "remembered writing it" is one way it differs from most of my other stories, since as I described above, I generally do not remember writing them, and that is obvious and clear. However the next sentence actually implies two additional ways this story differs from most of my other stories, the fact that I chose to "republish" it and the fact that I could not remember the reason I chose to republish it now. But, remember I said there were two ways it differed, not three, what gives? Recall that I also mentioned that I do republish things often and thus it could not be considered a way that this story differs from most of my previous stories. Subtract out that one way from the three initially posited ways and you end up with two ways. Case closed. I love it when a plan comes together. And oh yeah, morning people irritate the fire out of me, but guess what, I am one of them. And everyone asks me where all the self loathing comes from. lol!
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Humans
When Everyone is a Writer
You are not likely to find many who would disagree with an argument suggesting that the overall quality of writing on this website, and others like it, is as good or better than it has ever been. While the quality of writing may be at or near its peak, the quality of reading seems to be at or near an all time low. By this I do not mean the number of people reading, or the number of page views, or whatever happens to be the stat du jour used by the businesspeople running these sites to measure their popularity and therefore their financial value. Those are quantitative measures, what I am talking about is a purely qualitative one. The quality I am referring to is the quality of reading.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
Writing Excuses: I Suck at Writing
Author's preface: The below article is a satirical take on an article I read many years ago, and which I cannot currently find to link here (sorry). That article was titled Writing Excuses: I'm Too Tired to Write (or something close to that) and was a serious look at one writers struggle to motivate themselves to write. It took aim at one of the more common excuses people use to get out of doing anything, being too tired. I thought it would be funny to turn that idea on its head and into one of my favorite things to write about, how bad I suck at writing. lol!
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
Writing from the Original Position Behind the Veil of Ignorance
I have been thinking and writing about writing a lot these days. Mostly it has been in response to other articles I have come across which suggest various ways you can become a more popular or successful writer. As is my usual m.o., I have taken some of these articles to task with satirical replies that attempt to illustrate with humor just how ridiculous such advice typically is. An example of one of the satirical pieces and one with a (slightly) more serious tone are linked below to give you a sense.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
A Personal Opinion on the Power of Redundancy to Lift Up Your Writing and Deliver a Better End Product
Author's preface: A few years back Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer published an article in which he suggested a list of redundant words which he said we should "delete" from our writing. I took that as a challenge and prepared a short essay using as many of these words as I could squeeze in. Below is the final result of that effort.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
There is a Price to Be Paid For “Dumbing Down” Your Writing to Appeal to the “Average” Reader
There seems to be some consensus, at least on across the blogosphere, that in order to appeal to the so called “average reader” and maximize readership it is necessary to “dumb down” one’s writings. In the past I have come down very hard against this idea. In particular I take issue with the idea of grade level writing, or trying to keep one’s style and grammar and vocabulary choices at or below a certain arbitrary grade level, sixth and eighth grade seem to be the most common options. The idea being that people are generally not all that smart, not that patient, and will quickly click away from anything that challenges their intellect or in which they encounter unusual words they are not familiar with. Basically anything that makes them to think too much or forces them to come to terms with their own ignorance. Recently a writing colleague on a different site responded to my insistence that I would never dumb down my writing by asking a very simple question, would it hurt to do so? She went on to explain that as a non native speaker of English it is even more difficult for her than for most to keep up with “higher level” writing and she lamented that it was very frustrating having to constantly “go up and get a dictionary” to look up words that she did not know. I will admit the non native speaker was not the stereotype of the person I had in my head when imagining these so called ordinary joe’s and jane’s, and her points had some validity. They certainly forced me to stop and think about my position, and ultimately caused me to write this piece. For that I am eminently thankful to her and her question.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
Eight Rules for Publishing Articles That No One Will Ever Notice
I get almost no views here on Vocal (and, until I got suspended for the second time, I got almost no views on my previous internet publishing home, Medium). On Vocal I have had just 74 reads in the past 30 days. I’ve been writing for close to seven years, one to three stories most days. It’s pretty exciting to think about how much time I have wasted.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
Writing Articles That People Want to Read is Not My Objective
I call your attention to two articles out of many millions that are available online purporting to give you the secret for success in writing on internet based web publishing sites or social platforms (linked below).
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
So You Think You Want to Write Humor and Satire?
Author's prepreface: I published this on Vocal two years ago, and on Medium before that, but thought I would resurrect it yet again with just a few changes for Vocal's new Writing community. Hopefully it will get at least a few more views there then it has anywhere else. I happen to think it is quite funny.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
The Reason I Will Never Make any Money Writing
Author's preface: Hopefully now fully approved. lol! If you are anything like me (trust me, you are not), then you suck at writing. That said, just because you suck at something doesn’t mean you can’t make shit tons of cash by doing it. Look at this very website (Vocal.media). There are a few truly great writers who regularly contribute, some pretty darn good ones, a few more OK ones, a shit ton of average or below average ones, and the remaining who probably make up just over 51% of the writing population here, the terrible, horrible, downright craptastic ones. Oh, and then there’s me. I will leave it to the reader to decide where I fit in on that sliding scale of trainwreckage, but that is really beside the point. The point is that there are a boatload of writers in that 51% who are making gobs and gobs of cash by writing. Yep, you read that correctly, you don’t have to be one of the greats, or average, or any good at all, to fulfill your dreams of endless bags of cocaine and supermodel blowjobs by the gross, through writing. Female dreams and your own dreams may differ slightly from mine of course. And, no, btw, that is not my dream in case you were wondering. I was just trying to be funny, and failing terribly, as is my typical style, and a pretty good example of just how bad I suck at writing.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Writers
A Warning About Warning
Warning by Jenny Joseph was written in 1961 and, unlike its main character, has not aged well. It's vision of rebellion which features wearing non-matching clothes and trampling flowers in your neighbors garden is so anodyne as to be offensive considering what was happening in the counterculture of the time.
By Everyday Junglist9 months ago in Critique