However, if you prefer someone who’s a bit more locked in…
Take a look at this post from daily writing tips.com
Or…be your own writing coach.
Tag: Writing
I should be writing. Instead, a new app.
Above is a screenshot from the thisissand app, billed as an app that merges art, creativity, and relaxation. Hey, if the creators can justify my procrastination for me, I’m all for it.
Plus, the price was right.
If you’re in the mood to kill 40+ seconds, here is a short demo.
I should be writing. Instead, poring over the newspaper…
Yes, I owe it to the local citizenry that I stay informed on the vital issues of the day.
Fellow writers, be on the lookout for similar social chaos. You never know what lurks around the corner…of your local Ace Hardware.
I should be writing. Instead, I’m driving…
and—ssshhhh–writing at the same time.
Don’t worry. No fatalities…though running that highway cop onto the median wasn’t my finest moment.
And then there was the burrito cart guy who…well, anyway, yes, making a drive up north and a notebook is on my lap and I’ve gotten pretty good at writing without looking. It’s almost as if I look forward to slowed traffic so I can decipher a few items where the pen [or the mind] went a bit astray.
Some mid-trip observations:
1. The reach-for-popcorn instinct is irrepressible.
2. The reach-for-popcorn instinct while driving and writing is dangerous, especially for those humans with only two hands.
3. Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity by Josh Linkner is worth repeated readings/listenings.
4. James Taylor’s Christmas Album–pretty nice August road trip listening, actually.
It came along for the ride during a hurried toss of CDs into the travel bag.
Favorites:
Here Comes the Sun He teams with YoYo Ma for this version.
Dogs and writing…of course.
Just posted my first story on Medium.com.
“Finish Your Words and Then You Can Feed Me!”
Rants and Riffs Installment #11: Kickstarting my daily words
I try to get in 500 words in the morning, but even if I only generate that first hundred, that’s usually all the momentum I need to finish the additional 400 later on.
Also, because I can forget a topic I want to address, I have lately found myself jotting them down at the top of my page, almost as if they’re agenda items…bullet points and everything. Pretty sad, isn’t it?
Not writing? Stop the fingerpointing.
My last post dealt with blaming others for my not writing.
Hey, whatever gets me generating text…»
But on a more serious note, I ran across Steven Kotler, who has a popular course called Flow for Writers.
So I looked further into the topic and ran across this informative interview. Compare your strategies to his.
https://www.writingroutines.com/steven-kotler/
Highlights:
Do you listen to music when you write, or do you prefer silence, or something else on in the background?
“…70 percent of the time I will listen to music with headphones so it’s right up in my ear. I will usually make one or two playlists for a book and I will listen to the same playlist over and over and over again…if I find a playlist that I kicked into a flow state with really early on in my process and was very successful I will keep using it because it will keep driving that flow.”
When you’re staring at the screen at 4:00 AM, do you just start clicking away? What’s going through your head at that initial moment?
“Even if the day before was a terrible writing day, I am so fired up to go at it again. I can be an absolutely miserable writer sometimes, but I wake up every day so fired up to do this.”
And finally, to put me to shame with all my finger pointing…
“When I wrote West of Jesus I had spent three years in bed with Lyme disease and I needed to tell that story to open the book, but I thought, ‘I spent three years in bed with Lyme but who cares? Compared to getting cancer or losing a limb, so what?’”
***
What’s your favorite music to carry you through your writing sessions?
What do you do to help you get into ‘flow’?
Not writing? I’ll blame anybody.
I directed one of my morning pages blaming others for my not writing.
Sooo satisfying…
For starters, I blamed Hilary Mantel, who said,
“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, 
, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.” [The Guardian, 25 February 2010]
One small segment of her message seemed to resonate…
I repeat…all her fault.
And I blame Trader Joe’s who is selling organic strawberries for $2.50 a pound. Let’s face it, most of those gorgeous ones in the supermarket have very little flavor and considering they are one of the dirty dozen, well, that doesn’t help in the ‘appeal’ category.
But back to my relentless search for scapegoats…let’s see…yes! Sam Merritt’s to blame for serving up this winning recipe for strawberry cream cheese pie.
My only complaint: “Return to refrigerator and allow to set at least 4 hours (preferably overnight) before slicing and serving.”
Okay, in what world do people actually wait that long?
Rants and Riffs: Installment #7–Bobbleheads, dandelions, and…and…attention span
Bobblehead dolls…please. 40,000 of them on a given night at a major league ballpark.
And often to commemorate a player of marginal ability. [Not daring to use names here.]
If those petroleum-based cluttermeisters even make it home, they’re headed straight to the closet and/or the landfill.
Question 1: What is the half-life of a bobblehead doll of a shortstop who batted .234 lifetime? 450-800 years
Question 2: What does the guy’s batting average have to do with degradation of plastic?
Answer: Nothing. Nothing at all.
Topic: Dandelions. Fellow gardeners…or at least, those of us doing mindless grunt work with hoe and shovel…don’t you think dandelions simply mock us?
The big ones—”Neaner, neaner, neeeeaner! You’re oblivious and I’m huuuuge!”
The small ones—”We’re baaaaack!”
Topic: Clear sign of a vanishing attention span—my lawn mowing has regressed to ‘forward-and-back-in-one-5′ x 5′ square at a time’. Anything beyond that, all bets are off.
Hey, we’re all in this together [whatever ‘this’ is]. Any frustrations niggling at you? Share them below.
Rants and Riffs: Installment #6
First of all, doubt your dominance over nature? Git yerself a weedwhacker.
2. Allergy season. Anyone suffer so much that the only practical way to deal with the messy symptoms is to hook a roll of paper towels to your belt?
Still on hay fever…nose-blowin’ guys with the cool 5 o’clock stubble: the inevitable remaining tissue-flivvle…not a good look.
3. Car rental agencies…love to give you a car with a partially-filled tank. They know darn well you’re:
-
too busy [or not math-fluent enough] to estimate how much is needed to return that midsize at the required level.
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going to forget you started with a partial tank
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therefore going to fill well beyond the required level.
