Tag Archives: writing

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Maybe it really does take this long…


It’s closing in on resolution time, an activity I’ve participated in before, but admittedly with the same zeal I reserved for trying to master parallel parking. But this year is going to be different – I’m going to make a resolution and document my progress for ill or will.

Oh there are ever so many topics I could throw on a list ranging from the crowd favorite of losing twenty pounds, to having my hair professionally done instead of going with whatever shade is in the Walgreen’s discount bin, to vowing to eat 25% less things that include the ingredient of cheez. All of these things would be a good start, but I think I want to tackle the broad based resolution to just try to be less miserable.

Yeah, I’m miserable. On the surface I shouldn’t be miserable – I’m engaged to a man I love, who loves me. My kid is doing great and has found a loving, supportive partner. I have a little girl in my life that I love and helping raise. I have steady employment. My finances are rickety but not in a dire state. My health is relatively good. Yeah, but for some reason I sit here at fifty less sure of myself than I was when I was nineteen. I am determined to unravel whatever knotted necklace chain has wedged itself in my brain.

I’ve done a lot of soul searching in the past couple of months, and have come to the conclusion that this is probably a product of grief. When that clanged into my head it made so much sense that I can’t ignore it, though it seems strange to me that grief could stretch out in such a profound way for this long. I harken from a long line of family invested in the principle of “if you think it hurts today, just wait until tomorrow,” I guess my tomorrow was just a super long day away. So that has left me at the corner of letting myself off too easy and giving myself a break. Which curb should I tiptoe on? I worry about beating myself up in the same measure that I worry that I’m a horrible person. Reflectively I’m pretty sure I’m not too horrible, I do take care of a lot of people and I don’t feel like I take from anyone too badly – but in the past few years I have let people down. Four years ago I felt like my life caught on fire, I suppose as I fled the building as the flames licked at my feet, that some things were going to get lost, or at least singed. What’s put me in a state is I don’t think I could have done things differently. I did, and am doing the best that I know how to right now. Maybe I just need to learn stuff, so that’s what I’m going to do, learn stuff. And then tell you about it. Oh, I can feel your excitement.

If you’ve gone through something similar, please let me know. If you have a suggestion of what I should investigate, please let me know. All advice will be appreciated.

[BTW: I have also made the promise to myself to try to start doing the things that make me happy. One is photography, so I’ll be posting some photos from time to time. The other is writing. Mom started “writing” (yes, that’s in quotes. Mom’s writing tends to be partial words scribbled on napkins and church bulletins that she hands to me and requests that I “fluff that out”) in a group that uses writing prompts. I’ve written a bunch of junk using this prompt generator. It’s fun. I’ve never published a story written from this exercise, but I’m going to force myself to do so now (lucky you). I will warn you that what you’ve clicked on is Autobiofictional. It’s the least I can do.]

Written by

Trying to figure out how to start over when I’m missing a few game pieces.

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5 Reasons You Should Already Be Keeping a Journal


Starting Today…..

I’m a huge believer in keeping a regular journal. Whether thats for personal thoughts or for merely recording business decisions and plans you’re making for the future. The act of simply capturing your thoughts down on “paper” can have a amazing impact on your life. Still not convinced? Keep on reading…..

  1. Communication  — Regular writing can dramatically improve your communication skills. As much as we may have been sold a future of video conferencing and hoverbikes, the truth is people have stuck doggedly to the written word. Dont believe me? Try, effectively, getting your point across in 140 characters or less without practice.
  2. Perspective  — Keeping a regular record of your thoughts and logic behind decisions is a powerful tool in building your business. We all know that leadership can be a lonely existence, you can take great comfort in reading how you overcame adversity in the past. Sometimes just the realization that you’ve been here before, is all it takes to get you over the finishing line.
  3. Reflection — Writing has the potential to introduce a natural buffer, before taking action. Think of how many times you’ve sent an email in anger only to regret it moments later. Writing to yourself gives you time to reflect and potential prevent taking regretful action. You can always press send in the morning, after a good proof read.
  4. Habit forming  — Writing on daily basis forces you to create a new positive habit. The ability to form new habits and establish new routines is a key ingredient of living a healthier more productive life. People generally fail at eating more healthily or exercising regularly, because they lack the ability to introduce a new habit / routine into their existing lifestyle. Writing by its very nature creates a record of how well your new habit is being established.
  5. Zen….like  — Writing is an amazing way to get to really know yourself. Talking to yourself in the third person can be a great form of self therapy. You quickly begin to recognise patterns in your moods. How you feel during times of the day, and even seasons, when your decision making abilities can be compromised. Understanding the way you think and behave in given situations allows you to manage yourself more effectively.

You’ve got time!

I’ve lost count of how many people tell me they just don’t have time to spend on writing. Its simply not true. Today, with the tools available to us, we have the ability to write whenever the mood takes us. Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different apps that can really help get you started. I’m happy to share my experiences and advice, just fire your questions to @jamesketchell

If you found value in this article, it would mean a lot to me if you hit the recommend button!

Further Reading

How To Feel Good Whenever You Wish To

 — Secrets To Turn Yourself Into A Happiness Machine Revealed

Written by

#Entrepreneur #Restless #Technologist #Traveler #Husband #Father of Twins #Racer #Storyteller, #SaaS #Cloud #Founder #CEO @Serchen & @KetchellDigital

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What Not to Do Every Day

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A Recipe for Better Ideas

There’s prevailing notion that in order to make it as an artist or creative person, you have to keep working and working and working.

Practice makes perfect. Nothing good comes easy. Persistence overcomes resistance. Ten-thousand hours!

Right.

While I agree with the idea that overnight success is largely a myth, that doesn’t mean that one should spend their hours just toiling away. If you curled a dumbbell with improper form day after day, no matter how many times you did it, your bicep wouldn’t grow.

Repetition obviously has value, but art, music, TV/film, design, writing, technology… these are industries of ideas. When you break them all down into their simplest components, that’s what they’re built on. Creative projects built on terrible ideas are like a million dumbbell curls done with bad form. They’re useless!

And yet so much creative advice deals with the production of the work— keep curling that dumbbell!— not the ideation upon which its founded. Take writing, for example. Everywhere you look you see writing challenges.

One thousand words a day! Five-hundred words a day! Two-thousand words a day!

These challenges teach you to produce, but they don’t teach you to think about anything. They’re just telling you to fill a page with words. Maybe that’s good practice, for potentially getting better at the technical part of writing, but what purpose does it serve if you have nothing to write about? You’re just spinning your wheels. You need something to inform your work. How are you going to get that if you’re just sitting in front of a computer?

You have to live in order to create. You have to walk the earth and see, touch, feel and experience as many things as possible, then take that back and let it find its way into whatever it is you’re creating. Otherwise you’re just like everyone else. Boring.

The most interesting stories are waiting to be told. The most beautiful art is waiting to be made. The most incredible songs are waiting to be written.

That stuff will never come to you by just sitting down and methodically plugging away every day. They’ll only come to you by getting out there and living.

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If you like this please click “recommend” below!

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? EMAIL ME: paulcantor@gmail.com

Written by

music producer | writer and editor for AOL, MTV, Vice, Billboard, Village Voice, Complex, Vibe, XXL, … etc.

Published December 27, 2013
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Don’t Be a Writer


You’ll be naked. Not in the literal sense, where a body can be perfected and angles can be utilized and lighting can negate imperfections. It won’t be your legs or ass or chest or stomach on display for strangers to judge and criticize, want or hate. No, it’ll be the thoughts that tremble in buried synapses and cower behind popular opinions. Your soul will be penned behind syllables, dotted with insecurities and crossed with a faltering personality. You’ll be spread open on paper and inspected on computer screens and judged by those who sit comfortably on thrones of anonymity.

You’ll be labeled. You’ll have subjected a population to the woven fibers of your existence and they will inevitably need to know exactly what it is you are. You must be easily definable and properly marked and quickly recognizable, fitting perfectly in their filing cabinet of understanding. If you write about rape, you’ll be a feminist. If you write about shades of lipstick, you’ll be a weak traditionalist. If you write about a woman’s flaws, you’ll be a misogynist. If you write about a horrible experience on a city bus, you’ll be a privileged bitch.
You’ll be poor. You’ll be published with no pay and write poetry on empty pockets and seek comments instead of checks. You’ll wash your hair with hand soap when you can’t afford shampoo, work three jobs to continue living in a matchbox apartment and live on more sodium-infused microwavables than believed humanly possible.
You’ll sell clothes for bills and presents for rent and pride for a seemingly unreachable dream.
You’ll be terrifying. Not in a way that sends children under beds or brings covers up to petrified faces. No, it’s your grasp of the English language that will be threatening. Ex-boyfriends will tremble at the thought of what you may or may not type and ex-best friends will cringe when their reflection is found in the final sentences of your recollection. Romantic interests will be hesitant and family members will be uneasy; and strangers will be weary.
When you’ve built a platform from pages of a tattered past, the ones who glued it all together will fear their own exposure.
You’ll be trapped. Fleeting sentences and rhythmic lines will swirl around a never-ending cognition so fluid; you’ll spend the majority of your existence chasing after it. You’ll live your life one firing thought after the other, racing to the nearest computer or digging for the closest pen in the feeble hope it will all be captured perfectly.
You’ll be a slave to the metaphors and similes and alliterations that breathe life into the creative fingertips that formed them.

However, if you insist. If you believe yourself capable of surviving public nudity and blind judgment. If petrified loved ones and a disordered mind do not deter you. Write. Write endlessly and limitlessly and without fear. Write on a stained table napkin or a sealed love letter or a tattered picture. Just write. Do not bind your thoughts to your veins or trap descriptions behind your ribs. There are countless reasons to forgo the delicate pain of being a writer, yet infinitely more reasons to ignore them.

Written by

Marketing Director. Columnist for @nqontheb. Freelance Writer for Hush Magazine Thought Catalog & The Seattle Times. Sports Enthusiast. Whiskey-Drinking Pro.

Published November 12, 2013
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Write Something That Ain’t Worth A Damn

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You know what’s worse than writing something that isn’t worth a damn? Not writing.

I can accept that the desire to write comes and goes. I can accept that the well of stories that a person has needs to refill from time to time. I know that on occasion my fucked up psyche doesn’t have something to bleed onto the page. (I also know the rule of three when illustrating a point. It’s a trick I’ve picked up from preacher stereotypes.) You know what I can’t accept though? I can’t accept when I stop myself from writing because I don’t think a piece is going anywhere. Well, actually, I can, and do accept it. That doesn’t make it right though.

I’m mostly talking to myself, what else do writers do? Oh, right, they write. So… maybe I just don’t publish things. That’s a cop-out too though. There’s so very little at stake when publishing online these days. Who’s going to cast a disapproving eye? Mom? If Mom is the kind of Mom who would cast a disaproving eye at something you post online then she’s the kind of Mom would would cast a disapproving eye at anything you do, forget about comitting a few words to the aether for all the world to see.

I wish we all had great stories to write all the time. I wish there was an emotional impact to what we write, everytime we write. I wish I could remember that thing about the rule of three when illustrating points. You know what? Sometimes we’re going to write crap. We’re going to give in and push through a top ten list of link bait. Sometimes we’re going to wallow in self-pity, and sometimes; sometimes it rains.

You know what? You shouldn’t listen to me. I shouldn’t listen to me. People write crap. People write a whole lot of crap. It’s okay. That’s how we get better. That’s how we stop writing crap. We get that out of our system. It’s an Authorian Enema. Expel the crap so that the good stuff, the ripped and bleeding bits can fall on the paper. Hell, sometimes there may even be flowerly and rainbow bits that come out. I’d like to think so anyway. The world has enough ripped and bleeding people. We could use a few more top ten lists about why your cat is the best cat in the world.

So you know what, that guy that said ‘Write Something Worth A Damn?’ Fuck him. Just Write. It doesn’t mater if it’s good, bad, or horrible. Just write. Pen to paper, fingers to keys, hell — dictate it to Siri if you have to. Words need to come out. There’s a pressure to words that none of us should try to resist. You know what a writer is? A writer is someone who isn’t so hung up on ‘writing something worth a damn’ that they let that idea stop them. A writer is someone who puts the words on the page, no matter how crappy those words are. A writer… is someone who has internalized the rule of three and uses it to great effect.

Written by

Rollin’ though life in a stuck Transformer with The World’s Most Existential Beagle.

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Read, Write too…

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Bamurange in Writers on Writing

 

I love reading, in a moderate kind of way, I’m not a total bookworm, but there are some books and articles online worth a read. Some will have you searching for more of their work or similar styles. Somehow, you’re engulfed and captivated because there are words that describe some of your feelings and thoughts.

Nothing Feels Good
Nothing Feels Good (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every time I read, it feels like meeting someone for the first time, the further you read, the more you get curious. In this way, whether you are aware of it or not, there’s a particular impact the content is having on you.You find certain quotes imprinted on your mind that you can’t wait to share] with your friends. Some sentences relieve because all of a sudden it feels like you’ve found an answer to a question you’ve been asking yourself for a very long time.

I believe that reading drives one to sit down and try to write their own stories,helping keep memories, discovering more about who they really are and what they are capable of. Setting goals and accomplishing them.Remember to share. Written material is priceless, especially now that we have the luxury of the internet platform, only being a link away.Read and write, you’ll find answers to most things you always wonder about.

Share too!

Read more  – > https://medium.com/writers-on-writing/f530a4dcc91f

 

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What I’ve Learnt Writing for 30 Days


Words don’t come easy

I am happy to announce that I succeeded in my “write for 30 days on Medium” challenge. 30 days in a row I was forcing myself to write, about anything, any length. Below are the things I’ve learnt.

Learnt to be more honest. Nobody really cares what I do, how many problems I have or how cool I am. My writings aren’t impressive and I should stop pretending someone I am not. People care only about themselves, so if I write honestly, if I provide value, people appreciate authenticity because it is about them improving and learning something, not about me.

Just do it. Instantly. Having this challenge every day in my head led me to doing more things instantly. If I got an idea I write it down, using notes app, email, anything works. If I wait I lose my brilliant thoughts. They never come back.

OMG speaking too much to myself can you hear it too? I seriously started talking to myself, much more than ever before, I discuss things with myself, ask for an opinion and so on. Do you think I should leave this paragraph here? Yes. That’s myself talking again…

Discipline helps fighting laziness. Having in mind that I will need to produce a post everyday helps me to plan my days and weeks so I can allocate some time everyday for writing. If I am going out on Friday I need to write in the morning or late afternoon, otherwise I’ll fail. I rescheduled my meetings, pushed back some client work just because I had to write. No more laziness, discipline forced to get stuff done.

“If you wish to be a writer, write.” — Epictetus

Magic doesn’t happen. Writing for 30 days won’t do any magic. It will become a little easier but not very much. You won’t become a writer in 30 days. Your mindset won’t change radically, to be honest I think I still produce s*it as I did at the beginning of this challenge.

It’s not about reaching the goal, it’s about building the habit. I want to repeat myself again, I took this challenge not to write awesome stuff, I took this challenge to get used to writing and one day hopefully start writing awesome stuff and become great. I took this challenge publicly so I can feel some pressure and responsibility.

“Life is a journey, not a destination.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

source read more – > https://medium.com/to-inspire/497fdf5072e0

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Am I Write?


Writing oneself into awakening

 

 

Coming to terms with being a writer has been surprisingly difficult. I should introduce myself: The most important thing to know about me is that I have “a massive inferiority complex.” I have extinguished many an idea before the flame ignited the wick.

 

That and I have fancied myself since childhood a writer of fiction. I have created umpteen plots in both in our less than perfect present and various dystopic futures no better than our current reality but none have I allowed myself the freedom to fully explore. Yet.

 

I’ve stood in my own way fearing that my characters are too specific. But how can that be? Is each individual person not unique? I believe I may have feared that my audience may read my characters as I intended and perhaps I was uncomfortable with the vulnerability of speaking plainly if semi-disguised in the voice of another.

 

Writer Wordart
Writer Wordart (Photo credit: MarkGregory007)

 

I have thought myself a failure to become this thing I have imagined of myself since Kindergarten when I wrote my first story about a squirrel and a tree (which I also illustrated!). But—I recently had a revelation that was somewhat embarassing for a professed lover of words: I have been down on myself for not being a ‘writer’ when in actuality it’s a novelist that I am not; AND, I am okay with that.

 

My thoughts I have been chronicling for over ten years in a dozen plus Moleskines, various online blogs, emails and letters.

 

I write! I’m a writer!

 

…privately.

 

Is that sufficient in the modern age of instant access, instant sharing? Is that enough for me? I’m afraid it isn’t. Least of all for my ego. For someone who fears inadequacy I have the most painful desire for validation that can come only via public comparison.

 

read more -> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/bcee2db163fe

 

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Pay For The Writing You Read


As I try to become a writer I pause to think about how I consume and pay for the writing I enjoy

 

Man thinking on a train journey.
Man thinking on a train journey. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I pay for the media I consume, especially what I don’t pay, and while I have thought about all media in general, I’m especially thinking about the writing I read, and I think about it even more often, and more deeply, as I learn about how writers get paid today and when I wonder how I too, might get paid as a writer.

 

I remember in college one time at a party having a discussion about the ethics of pirating music online. One woman said it was the same as stealing and in response I conjured my techie and hacker ethos, something which used to be very central to me: I pointed out that copying or downloading music files from someone wasn’t the same as stealing something physical like a car, because if I copy files, the person I copied them from still has their copy but if I steal someone’s car, they no longer have a car. My roommate who had previously expressed an interest in becoming a lawyer appreciated this point. It was a not so subtle distinction that the woman’s moral self-righteousness didn’t allow for and it compelled me at the time and still compels me to this day.

 

But today as I look around at how the digital world has seemingly muddied the waters in discerning the value of creative output – with physical copies no longer required for the transfer of written words, or music, or video – I wonder how I ever let the idea that I wasn’t stealing something provide comfort to me in enjoying something without reciprocating monetarily, or in any way whatsoever. I provided no money, I provided no thanks, I just consumed and moved on.

 

read more -> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/d4184f91ab0c

 

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Why writing is the best job in the world


An elevator pitch to the unconverted

Elevator Pitch: Per Schorling (Geveko ITS)
Elevator Pitch: Per Schorling (Geveko ITS) (Photo credit: Citymart.com)

 

Writing is the fucking best.

Seriously, if you’re underworked, overpaid, and generally satisfied with the direction your life has taken, then you’re doing it wrong.

It’s time to wake up, snort the coffee grounds, go back to sleep, get up around 3pm and eat baked cheese snacks for breakfast, achiever.

As a writer, abstract concepts such as work and happiness will no longer be a concern. You’ll be able to wallow in the fetid pool of your own neuroses as long as you like, all from the comfort of your own bed.

Burdened under the weight of your ample self-confidence? Not any more, fuck face! With writing, aggravating conditions such as confidence and esteem are a thing of the past.

Fed up with showering twice a day? Or more than once a week? More importantly — are you fed up of wearing pants? As long as the question isn’t ‘money’, writing is the answer, person.

Read more -> https://medium.com/writers-on-writing/c8b43d3e7cdb

 

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