My moviemaking skills are crude indeed, but sometimes it’s a stimulating creative change to move your mediums around. I’d seen on Derek Halpern’s blog that he was soliciting videos from his audience on the subject of their business needs. Derek’s focus has some overlap with Dan Pink’s and perhaps Dan Areily’s work in motivation and behavior. But Derek’s work—combining research in motivational psychology directed toward growing an online audience and growing sales of your products—is interesting on its own. And his half-manic personality probably helps win converts to his causes.

Derek’s video contest guidelines were to reveal in 60 seconds what the creator might hope to gain from his expertise. He’s going to choose a few winners to join him at a two-day workshop in Seattle (with CreativeLIVE) using tools to expand online business. I thought the metaphor of the empty chair was a good one to suggest that I wanted to use an improved online presence to drive more clients, and seeking counsel on how that presence could be shaped to a more focused audience.

I doubt if my purple plea will notch me a win, but I had jolly fun in quickly putting together the idea and the video. The satisfying part is to play—here in working with video and voice—somewhat far afield of my normal comforts. I want to push those kind of far-field buttons (though with more deliberation than my effort here) in the future, and see if I can trigger any high-voltage sparks.

I love to write travel pieces, from tales based on exotic sojourns to tiny islands far, far away, to “wow, look what’s right in my backyard” articles. One of the travel article forms is the service piece, which is distinguished from the storytelling article by having a “news you can use” angle, often specifying a destination’s particular sights to be seen, restaurants, lodging prices and hours and locales for all.

Such a piece is my “Five Places for Getting to the Soul of Whiskey” article, published in the San Francisco Chronicle. (One does like good service when it comes to whiskey.) I’m mentioning the Chronicle article in this lineup because the Chronicle travel section presents another angle of article-writing math: they only accept pieces on spec. That means that they don’t assign articles as a result of your crafted query: they take a look at completed pieces, and then say yea or nay.

Which is my long-winded way of saying that I recently wrote another travel piece on spec for the Chronicle: “Five Bay Area Places to Get Killer Chocolate.” Even though I’d seen they’d done a chocolate roundup early last year, I thought mine was distinctive enough to re-whet the editor’s chocolate appetite. My mistake: writing on spec is always chancy (way more time involved than writing a query), and chancier still in this venue, because the Chronicle’s “Five Places” structure doesn’t easily lend itself to rewrite for another publication’s slant. So when the Chron editor said, “thanks but no thanks,” I pondered this article’s fate.

It’s often worth it to pursue rewriting or re-purposing articles—I’ve had articles reprinted in whole, or their rewritten variants published a number of times—but I decided to let this one go. But I had to give it some kind of a home, so let’s allow its velvety chocolate soul to rest here.

Five Bay Area Places to Get Killer Chocolate

Chocolate has morphed from a bitter beverage in Mayan shamanic circles to a sweeter infusion that delighted Europe’s elite to a connoisseur’s candy laced with chipotle and cognac. And it recently broke through the anti-fat, anti-sugar, anti-pleasure nutritional naysayers to now be thought of as a stroke suppressant, cholesterol cutter, diabetes deterrent and all-around good soul. Not a bad resume for a humble bean.
Whatever form the confection takes, there’s a simple reason that enthusiasts can’t seem to get enough: the stuff’s good—really good. Whether you like to slurp, gobble or even flip your chocolate with a spatula, the Bay Area has some choice offerings for the chocoholic.

Big Sur Bakery, Big Sur
The chocolate cake here is deep as a mystery, a buttery, luscious darkness that will have you tonguing the plate and longing for more. Pair it with the bracing espresso and swoon. (And it’s not always available—scarcity sharpens desire.)
47540 Highway 1, (831) 667-0520

Richard Donnelly Chocolates, Santa Cruz
When I lived on a tiny Micronesian island, I cried in pain because the Chinese and Japanese chocolate there was so bad. When a friend sent Richard Donnelly’s Brownie Mix, I wept for joy. These brownies are the chewy, dense, essential core of chocolate. Music for the mouth, with a lingering finish.
1509 Mission Street, (888) 685-1871

Vosges Chocolate, Bay Area Locations
I know, I know—bacon is the new black. We see it in cocktails, mayonnaise, even toothpaste. But Bacon Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix—delicious! Buttermilk pancake mix studded with hickory-smoked bacon enshrouded in sea-salted milk chocolate. You’ll flip the cakes and flip your lid.
Andronico’s, various Bay Area locations

Bittersweet Cafe, Oakland
A place that calls itself “The Chocolate Cafe” better deliver the goods. They have over 150 bars from all over the world and great coffee too, but what really sets them apart are their “drinking chocolates,” which come in three deadly and deep flavors. Whether you go for them hot or cold, these slurpables will coat your mouth in chocolate heaven.
5427 College Avenue, (510) 654-7159

CocoaBella, San Francisco
They dub themselves a “chocolate lifestyle shop,” and indeed the digs are nice. But they could be vending out of a broom closet and still have a steady customer stream, because they have the best chocolates selection around. All the good stuff from Belgium, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Canada and the United States. What’s really fun is to build your own custom box online. What’s more fun is when the box arrives.
2102 Union Street, (415) 931-6213

And these are just for ordering lunch

One morning this past week, I had a writing project open on my screen, while looking at a Twitter stream, and also listening (well, my ears took in noise) to a webinar, which was going to end on the hour, and be followed by another webinar. Oh, the humanity! Now the webinar material wasn’t just mindless prattle; it was sound information on building a bigger blogging audience, and the one that followed also offered insightful information on revising a novel. And I’d seen some great tweeted links to intriguing topical news and the amusing oddments of humanity in the tweeted flow.

But the whole of it, the tapestry of electronic screeching tires, colored balloons, half-cooked flotsam—I sensed that the inner nutrient levels were low. Trying to look more than two tweets ahead, I know this is unsustainable behavior, on a spiritual as well as logical level.

But just to add to the feeling of this cascade described above—the “is that a mouse running up my leg before I’m going to make an important speech while someone in the audience is having electroshock administered”—while I was webinaring and tweeting and reading and wobbling, I opened this email from Jonathan Fields. His post squints at this collected connectivity, and the accompanying potential of disconnect that can come from it.

The Sunday Picnic Basket of the Web

The Net indeed can seem like the largest Sunday picnic basket of all, with juicy treats shared among smiling friends and extended family, and perhaps I’m biting the keyboard that feeds me by saying “no mas, no mas,” but sheesh, I’m concerned that I’m turning into one of those mice that hits the lever to drop the cocaine, and the lever taps are happening more frequently.

There have been a few recently published studies that suggest (as Fields alludes to) that our heavy use of the Internet and its popcornings of this and now this, but this too! is reshaping our abilities to have deep, concentrated focus on a subject—indeed attenuating our abilities to focus at all.

Computer Narcosis, Internet Brain and Gosh, Where Did the Time Go?

As I commented on the Fields piece, I also fear potential neurological re-shapings, that perhaps will suppress the ability to absorb in any reflective way long-form information, in favor of the slot-machine, bells-lit flavor-packs of brain candy we can access all day long now. Undoubtedly some brains are more susceptible to this than others. Since I’ve peppered mine with enough bourbon so it has more divots than most public golf courses, I might have to be more wary than most. (And our War of Warcraft army recruits might be lost already, but we’ll need them to man the expanding air force of drones that will soon be used to both kill terrorists and to perhaps shoot the fingers off of people texting while driving.)

Me, after musing on the Fields post (at the very moment I was being buffeted by the cluster bombs of divided electronic attentions), I vowed to no longer do these data-crams. It might be the bourbon that’s trenched my memory, but it feels like I’m getting so little retained value anyway from all the podcasts, webinars, PDFs and tweets that concurrently flood my bloodshot eyeballs.

When I ask, does all this stuff, despite its twinkly appeal, make me any happier? Smarter? Better?

No.

The Net and its wonders have been an immeasurable boon to my work, but that horrible sucking sound of my soul draining away has to be listened to as well. Of course I’m still going to be there typing away, but not while opening the curtains on all sides to every passing circus. One thing at a time. Breathe. Balance. (And maybe just a bit more coffee.)

Margaret Atwood talking about Fanado on YouTube

Because I don’t waste enough time already searching for videos of cats quoting Milton on YouTube, I decided to mess around a bit more with Twitter the past couple of weeks. Under the rationalized pretext that it might open up some more channels for my copywriting business (and because I thought someone might tweet about a cat riding a unicycle on YouTube), I started tweeting more than the thin, desultory wing-flappings I’d shot out over the past year. You know, about important stuff, like the fact that you can now get an espresso machine in your car.

I also started following more people, other than the ones named things like IPostCatsTypingOnYouTube. I guess I don’t get out much, but it surprised me that there are prominent writers on Twitter, and some of them tweet their fool writerly heads off. Somewhere in the ether, I saw a tweet from Margaret Atwood, so I started following her (@margaretatwood). I knew that Margaret Atwood was hip to tech because I’d read about her LongPen work years ago. But I was amazed to see how much she tweets, and how casual and fun she can be in her stream.

I am talking about Margaret Atwood, author of Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, Cat’s Eye—all works that I marveled at for the sureness and scope of the writing, the power of the imagination, the glint of the language. I think Atwood is one of the best fiction writers alive, a giant in the field, and to see her merrily tweeting—she sent many funny tweets from the recent Comic-Con—boggled my mind. I suppose I think the literary mandarins are levitating on silk pillows in a Patagonian opium den, not furiously pounding their iPhones. Who knew?

Seth, Let’s Do Lunch
I did have some inkling, when I emailed Seth Godin a while back, and he quickly replied, that many of the titans are actual human beings. I am a member of Seth’s Triiibes network, and indeed I had a Triiibes-related question, but that a guy like Seth, who undoubtedly gets emails by the bushels, takes the time to answer some nebbish’s question struck me. I’ve emailed other cybersphere celebrities, like Chris Brogan, and received back cordial replies as well. Atwood even retweeted a tweet of mine expressing interest in her Fanado project that interactively links artists, creators and fans. You might kick a buck in to that Indiegogo project of hers if you dig what she’s putting out there.

So, this obviously isn’t an invitation to go badger your writing idols on Twitter or by email. It’s more of a reminder that we live in interesting times. I’m going to check and see if Mark Twain has a Twitter account so I can get some cigar recommendations.

Margaret, Seth, know of any good cat videos?

What’s sadder than a writer sitting at a quiet cyberspace crossroads, squirming and gesticulating at the rare clicking visitor, in front of a sandwich sign that says “Will Pick Grubs Off Your Pet Monkey for Your Reading Attention?” Easy: one who tries to directlybuy his readers’ attentions with a transparent pandering offer. Thus, I invite you to don your favorite pantyhose mask, conceal your true identity, and blacken your conscience—and then read.

No, no, this isn’t about reading just any old thing, all those National Enquirers you’ve got piled up bedside and the latest issue of Zombie Sex Kitten Sits on Game of Thrones and Contemplates Twilight—no, this is about reading something of mine. That’s where the corruption comes in: if you download, for .99, my remarkably juicy (yet 100% organic) novel of hitchhiking madness and tingling love triangles, and are the first to write an Amazon review for the dang thing, I will send you, in an unmarked brown paper wrapper, a $25 iTunes gift card. (And this card hasn’t even been used yet.)

You ask, how desperate can a writer get? Well, I was actually going to come to your house and make you read the book straight through, without any beer on hand. But I thought this would leave a smaller carbon footprint. Anyway, if you cheat and don’t actually read the book, but just go post a review, I will identify to the world that you are one of Satan’s minions, and you will be cast into the Lake of Fire. (Sorry, but once a Catholic, always a Catholic.)

Thus, you must read, and you must act the Amazonian forthwith. And even I am not so corrupt that I’d ask you to give me a good review—tell it as you read it. And if you see that one of your dirty competitors has beat you to the Tunes, well, you could always post a review anyway. For the children. For those few brave souls who have already read and reviewed, you’re out of luck, but I will autograph your forearm next time we meet. Here’s the delicate little item at Amazon, and here it is for B&N’s Nook. For those who crave paper, this ain’t your baby.

And please don’t tell my mother.