Keeping On A Positive Path

Introduction

I often see things or behavior that grates on me in the Facebook groups and think "I should write about that or call that out" but then realize that it just makes me a bit whiney and as bad as the people that I would be calling out.

When there is bad behavior or ignorance of etiquette in the group that I help administer, The Vocal Social Society, I deal with it by communicating with the protagonist and removing any offensive content.

While I have pointed out issues with Vocal in the past, and have just submitted ten of my Vocal articles to be considered for the Vocal Resources, that is the nearest I intend to come to putting issues into a Vocal stories, unless it is to advise people how to deal with certain issues.

I really do one people to come into my stories and articles knowing that they will find a positive or useful article.

So Keeping On A Positive Path

My more technical articles are how-tos and guides so should not have a negative side. At worst they will detail a bad situation but will come along with a solution to that situation. Mostly they are full of advice on how to improve your creations and make your life easier.

Then I write some fiction. The problem with any fiction is that generally, it needs some jeopardy to make it interesting, though I have managed one or two stories without jeopardy. I think stories for children can be created without jeopardy but I am not really a children's writer.

You can write dark stories without depressing the reader, and all my stories may induce shock but never depression, and sometimes they are funny. I do love making people smile. This is an example of a fun positive one.

But I can do dark stories but these are drifting into the realms of Poe and Lovecraft, but when the reader finishes, maybe I want them to be a little disturbed but never morose or depressed. This is one of my excursions into those realms.

As you can see I do enter a lot of the Vocal Challenges and they are usually an excellent prompt to stimulate my creativity. One or two miss, and a few mean I can only do a single entry but they are a definite useful way of getting your creative juices flowing.

And then there is poetry. Mine is usually either a villanelle (my favorite because I am such a lazy writer) or a sonnet, although I do utilize many other forms and always love for my poetry to look good as well as sound good. I include emojis to split up the verses which attracts the eye of the reader. Also, I try to include an appropriate piece of music that the user can play as they read my words.

Sometimes I write the poem in Google Docs so that I can apply things like fonts, colors, and justification and then include a screenshot in the Vocal publication. I only once tried to use the Vocal Editor to create a visual form, but that was a heck of a lot of work but you can see it here.

In my most read Top Story I used a Centre Justified Screenshot to display the poem in the way that I wanted.

Most of my poems are meant to lift the spirits of the users such as the one below.

There are a few experimental ones and a few that I use to purge bad feelings but I love returning to the positive ones.

Some are meant to help those coping with grief such as this, but I hope this helps the reader.

Conclusion

So these are just a few of the ways I try and always make my creations a positive experience for my audience.

The music is "Can't You See" by The Marshall Tucker Band which is a beautiful piece that I love