January 2018 – Page 3 – Word Inventions

Procrastination takes over…

dog as life coach mailing label

dog lives for the day mailing labels

Seems I’m getting a little text-fatigued lately.

At least that’s my piddly excuse for engaging in a short detour into the world of semi-useful graphics.

I figured creating these mailing labels for a colleague’s upcoming birthday was just the ticket. Jon Acuff, in his book Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done, which, no, I still haven’t finished, would label this little departure from more important projects, a ‘noble objective’.

[It just hit me…this post isn’t exactly a solid endorsement for his book, is it?]

Then again, it may just be a plaintive cry for help from someone who just can’t [or doesn’t want to] stay focused, because this book really is the real deal. It’s like he knows me. [I take that back. If he really knew me, he’d probably shake his head and see me as a lost cause.] Whatever the case, I like the book and I am learning, if not immediately applying, a lot.

A Day in the Life…kind of.

hourglass day in the life

So I went to my inbox and there sat my assignment for the day.

That obsessive JG had left more work for me: Take your readers through a day in your life.

I started to nod off just thinking of the topic, but I knew if I didn’t get this done, I wouldn’t get that bonus check awaiting me. [Luckily, a previous assignment nudged us to lie to our readers so there may well be some carryover here. I have retained Siri as my official timekeeper. Such a loyal and efficient assistant. She told me I had surpassed my time allotment. I plowed through, though, as that just means a bigger cash bonus at the end of January.]

So, let’s get on with it. [I just noticed that’s the second time I started a sentence with ‘so’. The madness has to stop.]

First of all, I watched no football yesterday, thanks to this writing challenge. Oh, sure it’s not like I wrote all day, but I have to blame someone and the faceless JG might as well take the blame.

I used part of my morning finishing my highly-acclaimed project piece from the day before–a classic Q and A with some of my most avid readers–Ward, June, and The Beav from Mayfield, Colorado. I set them straight on some of the ills of the National Basketball Association. I’m certain my pithy answers made their day just that much more memorable.

I baked a pumpkin [Okay, okay, it was sunshine squash] quick bread with a molasses, brown sugar, and cinnamon swirl and had to hurry through the follow-up photos and notes, as Cook’s Illustrated was hounding me for any and all documentation of the venture. These imaginary editors can be such divas…

I posted the experience on my wordinventions.blog site. [And yes, I am using a .blog address and yes, that suggests I am a lowly hack, but hey! I’m powering down an overly rich quick bread with coffee and you’re not!]

Next, I opened the local newspaper to an interesting article about the community college’s graduation ceremony of June 17. Full page, nice photos of grads, really special. Made unspecial, however, by the fact that it is now six months after the event. This proved one thing: My detractors, enemies, rivals, and other assorted scoundrels with nothing better to do have teamed up to tease at my last remaining shred of sanity.

I can just hear these lowlifes: “Let’s make him wonder if he’s in some kind of time warp and maybe he’ll just drift away to either six months prior or six months ahead.”

“Yeah, boss! That’s a good idea, boss. What’s a time warp?”

Yes, my day was shaken a bit. I reached for the quick bread and broke off a hunk. [Note to readers: always eat your cakes and quick breads in hunks. Check any utensils at the door. It tastes 3.4 times better.]

With sanity restored, I launched into some vital Web research: I need a coffee grinder that doesn’t result in a layer of black dust strewn across the kitchen counter. Vital, I tell you. Seems Krups might be my answer. And no, don’t accuse me of product placement.

It was time for errands around town. Still fraught with anxiety over my coffee grinder issues, I needed a shot of calm and equanimity. [And yes, I need to work on verbal redundancy and…here I go again,… superfluousness. Honest, folks, that is the first time in my life I have ever used that word. Thrilled that dictionary.com is letting it slide.]

Anyway, for faith-restoring dose of goodness, I headed to a U.S. Postal Service subsidiary at, where else but a swimming pool and barbecue supply store. Yes, you read that right. We’re a quaint town, we are.

And sure enough, plopped on the floor was Max, Golden Retriever and resident one-dog greeting committee/customer relations wizard. [Not his real name. He prefers a lower social media profile.]

Energized by some good-natured tailwags and wrist licks, I headed for Office Depot to look into creating dog-themed address labels for a colleague.

Mission accomplished: I printed out about a hundred with a photo of a Yellow Lab–50 with the words, “Can I have a dog as my life coach?’ and 50 with a quote from Robert Falcon Scott: ‘The dog lives for the day, the hour, even the moment.’

We later met friends for dinner at Laughing Planet. Felt good to team with D and C to contribute to the place’s claim of ‘laughter’. My wife and I did the usual mid-meal plate switch, as she wanted a taste of the Santa Fe Bowl and I was ready for some of the Highway to Kale she usually orders.

We four teamed up to solve pretty much every woe of the world, except for this writing challenge’s damnable creator who will, no doubt, have another assignment awaiting me in my inbox tomorrow.

I should be writing. Instead…a quick bread.

CHOCOLATE CHIP KABOCHA BREAD

http://dishingupthedirt.com/recipes/chocolate-chip-kabocha-bread-recipes/

The moist center is from the ‘swirl’ ingredients.

3/4 cup chocolate chips
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup

But I skipped the chocolate chips in the swirl and added some molasses. [My wife is having the lawyer draw up the divorce papers as I write this.] I also added dried cranberries.

Notes:

The bread looks a little flat. Rationalization: I like ‘dense’. She suggested that I use more leavener. I actually [this time] followed the recipe and added the suggested amount of baking powder. I wonder if I added too much–Bridget Lancaster of American’s Test Kitchen once warned against overdoing it because the result might be a welcome rise…followed by an unwelcome slump. Shrug. Hand me another piece of the bread. The coffee’s ready.
Amazing how much post-baking cleanup can be accomplished when you set the timer for five minutes.
Siri loves a good countdown.

Prevarication takes over…

pinocchio type

For today’s 500 words, the creator of the challenge has demanded—demanded, I tell you,—that we dabble in the practice of lying.

Not the malicious hostility-based type of lying, mind you, but let’s just go with not just stretching the truth, but flat out snapping it so it comes back and takes out an eye.

As the creator of the Internet, I can only say, this is wrong and I really have no choice but to personally expunge all record of this person’s involvement in the field of writing, blogging, and living in Tennessee.

Okay, so, back to the truth.

I’m going to answer a few questions from my readers’ mailbag. No wait, it’s my mailbag, but with questions from my millions of readers.

June from Midvale, Colorado asks: What do you not like about the National Basketball Association?

Well, June, it’s like this.

NBA players are allowed an exorbitant number of fouls, thus enabling on-court-assault-and-battery. [Not to worry, fans. This will be taken care of when I finally give in to the resounding demand for me to take over as the NBA commissioner.]. Worse than the customary bloodletting on the hardwood, though, is it slows down and chops up the game and really, what appeals to me is what’s most important, right readers? Uhhh, readers? Don’t leave yet!

And then, there are the timeouts. Too many, especially when you count the TV timeouts that open the floodgates for commercials suggesting that I have either ED or the cardiopulmonary shortcoming du jour.

Let me just say, “Geeeeeeezzz! Let the players play! And let the fans actually think they’re watching a game that consists of more than dribble up court, ref calls a foul, ref confides in other ref and watches the mugging on replay, player enters concussion protocol, player [once steered back to the correct foul line] is deemed okay, misses the basket [but hits teammate in forehead], makes the second, the other team calls timeout so the ball is advanced to half-court. Or something like that.

Ward from Midvale, Colorado asks: Come on, the NBA game isn’t that bad, is it?

Well, Ward, one word: Yes it is that bad. But what really gripes me is, out of one side of their mouth, they [choose your own ‘they’] remind us all that pro sports is ‘just entertainment’, but on the other side of their mouth, they put on their ‘dribble, foul, free throws, timeout, rinse and repeat’ rendition, which is NOT entertainment. And then there’s what they say out of the third side of their mouth, which is A. unprintable B. fodder for another, much-anticipated Q. and A. from my billions of readers.

But have no fear. When I become commissioner, I’ll be limiting the players to four fouls. However, I will allow the coaches four fouls, but they A. will not lead to stoppage of play. B. must be committed on their own players for rudeness to fans, stupid plays on the court, and/or over-exultation after a slam-dunk. In many cases, I will even allow an extra, double-top-secret foul called, “Hyper Flagrant” to be committed at their discretion on a player who, in my judgment, deserves it.

The Beav from Midvale, Colorado asks: But what if the fans at the NBA game are excessively rude? Isn’t that possible?

WULL-GEE BEAV, that is possible, and even probable, because so many of these people feel so entitled that they think they can spew racial slurs and demeaning epithets at these millionaires who are just trying to earn a living and max out their daily allotment of NBA fouls. In the case of fan stupidity, I’ve set up a black-ops league of mixed martial artists who, clad with semi-assuming Kevlar vests to accompany their Batman masks, will patrol the stands and swarm to the first hint of spectator unruliness. A few kindly senior citizens with Dick Tracy watches [without batteries] will be sprinkled among the fans to provide additional ‘surveillance’.

There, Beav, I’m glad we had this talk.

Thanks for checking in, readers. In my next installment, I’ll be covering my concerns about the National Football League. Stay tuned.

More entries to my January writing challenge can be tolerated here:
http://jrmays.com/index.php/500-word-challenge/

Play takes over…

Another tip from 201 Ways to Arouse Your Creativity.

[My apologies to those who read this when I accidentally posted it on Thursday night.

Sometimes, I’m such a techno-shlub.]

Alison Motluk on New Scientist suggests:

“Be more playful. Horsing around may be better in the long run than hunkering down.”

Horsing around…sounds good to me.

So it was back to toying with some video, audio, and text.

Writers Horoscope January 12: Finally, something in your wheelhouse…

dog-1601041_1280

For today’s 500-word challenge, I’ve been asked to teach something to my thousands [okay, millions] of readers.
Let’s go with procrastination. [Note: I did only a light edit, which is, of course, completely counter to what we polished procrastinators usually do—pore and writhe in agony over word choice, missing commas [most readers wouldn’t notice, but by God, you will…]
First off, start your day with email. You would be surprised how fluent and outright wordy and, even insightful, you become with your emails when you have some more pressing creative pursuit knocking on your conscious or your subconscious. You start noticing quirks in your respondents’ writing style and yucking it up over them. You even suggest some possible fixes, almost as if you know what you’re talking about. Of course, knowing what you’re talking about is secondary to creating the aura of intelligence, experience, and wisdom. The main thing is this: You HAVE to avoid the other work that is calling out for your attention. No matter that you have built your points and premises on a firm foundation of ignorance. Just keep writing.

Okay, so your hands are about to fall off from your feverish keyboarding.

Take a break. Make sure it involves removing yourself from any temptation to listen to your nearly bound and gagged muse. I would suggest cleaning the garage. But tread lightly, bucko, because you might run across boxes of notebooks filled with half-spun tales, expertly written, that might make you think you actually have the talent to get something published. ‘Half-spun’ is the operative term here, by the way. You would risk being engulfed by guilt over never finishing anything and let’s face it, do you really want to risk all that time and energy on a project that probably won’t dig its way out of a slush pile, digital or otherwise?

So, still in the garage, I would say that grabbing a broom and clearing away cobwebs from the rafters would pretty much remove you from the dangers of the ‘creative life’.

Okay, thank god the garage is web-free [mostly]. It’s time for coffee. Now where is that Bialetti pseudo-espresso maker you hadn’t thought about until just now? It’s gotta be underneath the cast-iron skillet which, hey, you could really go for some biscuits to accompany that coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could probably just throw those biscuits together in nothing flat, but Wednesday’s food section writer [what a hack—someone who actually finishes and publishes] spouted about the appeal of sourdough biscuits and now seems about the right time to throw together a little starter. Quite an appropriate term—starter. No one ever asks, though, if there is such a thing as sourdough finisher.

Well, that little detour did nothing to satisfy the need for an accompaniment to your coffee, now did it?

And geez, that one way-up-high cobweb is still haunting you. Okay, this is simple. You’re going to defrost some of that four-month-old vanilla brandied bundt cake while you venture back to the garage and pull out the ladder to vanquish that ever-threatening cobweb.

Yep, you have everything under control. A cleaner garage, some fresh coffee a brewin’, updated correspondence, and a room temperature piece of cake.
Life is good.
And the caffeine will no doubt fire you up for round two of the day’s creative effort.
But, wait, wasn’t that your phone’s notification chime?

Writers Horoscope January 11: You’re wilting under self-imposed pressures…

deadline2

Since when did your writing become so onerous?

This writer takes a step back and gets a grip.

Quote: “There was neither the time, nor the energy, to think much about writing.
And I’m fine with it.”

“You Need To Practice Being Your Future Self,” demands Fox Business.
Future self? Oh, enough already. We need more articles about how to scale down and pace ourselves more calmly today, because life is a marathon instead of a sprint.”

So, writers, even though there’s been plenty of talk about goals here, perhaps the ultimate goal is deceleration. [I just love it when I contradict myself.]

The latest from January’s 500-word challenge:

An imagined interview with author of ‘Finish’, Jon Acuff

Writers Horoscope January 9: You find another tool of the trade…

Writing…of course, it’s your creative vehicle.

Use it for your analytical and organizational self as well.

http://bulletjournal.com/blog/

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

The latest from January’s 500-word challenge: Lists galore.

Writers Horoscope January 8: They mean well…

But these people who know better sometimes can leave us a bit unsettled when it comes to your writing life.

Hiding Places vs. Show Your Work

gumby confusion

An update on January’s 500-word writing challenge

Writers Horoscope January 7: Conspirators everywhere…

My wife [how dare she?!] ordered the mug below for me for Christmas! It totally undermines my desire to be productive! And I love it.

Below is the rest of Day 4 of the 500-Words-a-Day Challenge. [In the spirit of Jeff’s free writing’ prescription, I laid low when it came to editing…]

***

Jeff Goins suggests we give free writing a try. No editing.

Amen to that.

So, still on the theme of finishing, or not finishing, in my case, well, there are so many traps out there.

So yes, there are traps around every corner, underneath every strewn magazine, on top of every to-do list you’ve ever created for yourself [and promptly ignored, until the next day, at which point you’re feeling really lousy about how little you accomplished.

On the upside, I’m working on developing some habits that will help me follow through and finish.

Starting with this:

And this:

[Time out to appeal to the ‘word count judiciary’. If a picture is worth a thousand words, did I just crank out 2000+ words?]

Okay, I’m back. I’m thinking that ‘pausing’ to transfer and upload photos is hardly in the spirit of free writing and I’m really hoping that Jeff Goins doesn’t have some irritable virtual assistant turning me in on this blatant writerly transgression.

So, the point of the dull boring [can you tell I’m padding my word total again? Nothing cheats word counts like redundancy. Unless you spend words talking about redundancy, which I just did…and continue to do…god, I love free writing.]

Again…the point of the photos—I could have stopped my forward momentum toward my laptop. Instead of picking up that shirt and doing those dishes, I moved back to the laptop. They would still be there after this 500 word catharsis. In the past, it was way too easy to take that ‘responsible spouse’ detour. And now, I’m putting that off in the interest of getting more important stuff done. Really, they’ll be there 20 minutes from now.

***

And now it’s time to take Jon Acuff to task. Couldn’t wait to do this. “If you want it done, make it fun.” That’s one of the mainstay themes in his book. I’m right on board with that, but as I pound away at this project on a less than fun, laptop of the Windows 10/Lenovo ilk, with its annoying notifications, weekly updates and erratic cursor appearances and temperamental trackpad, well, talk about not wanting to reach for it to get stuff done. [Word padding alert–Yes, yes, yes, I can work with the settings and turn that stuff off, but even that is an annoying process and yes, I did just do so after the third notification interruption during this session.]

But enough about me being a technoweenie, let’s blame Jon Acuff for the ‘make it fun’ distraction. “If you want it done, make it fun.” So–and please don’t tell my wife–I’m seriously thinking of picking up a MacBook. No matter that I’ve used the ‘I’ll get more work done!’ argument more than a few times before. I honestly think I will get more done. And I’ll be appealing to all three [if I’m lucky] of you who A. read this B. actually agree with my ‘get more done with a Mac’ assertion.

Now that I think of it, if and when I do order that MacBook, I might just have to send the bill to Jon. Or Jeff Goins, for that matter. I mean, really, they’re the reasons I’m in this ‘500 words a day and most likely about following through and finishing’ mess after all.

Geez, I’m feelin’ good. I finished today’s post and I’ve been heaving blame away from me and toward unsuspecting folks who are ‘just trying to help’. Hah, see if they try that again.

An update on my 31-day, 500 word writing challenge.