“The Playground Of Writing…”

I guess I was wrong – in a way.

I wrote in a previous post that “writing was the easy part.” Well, it IS easy to write, and I encourage everyone to do it; but writing a book isn’t that easy. And if that book happens to be fiction, it’s even harder.

To me, non-fiction is kind of a “gimme” if you are writing about what happened in your OWN life.

Now, on the other hand, if you’re writing something historical that relates to someone other than you, well, that takes a lot of research and fact-checking. I mean, you don’t know what was in another person’s mind, and maybe you weren’t there; those things need to be put together accurately . . . and RIGHT.

But, back to Fiction.

Fiction is the great playground of writing. You get the sublime opportunity to create people who never existed, living in worlds that may be foreign to all that we know. You could just go crazy with it . . . but you can’t.

No matter what planet, or the past, or the future, that you set your story in, you still must have people with personalities, and goals, and greater themes to which the average reader can somehow relate. That’s not so easy.

And lets not forget . . . what you write must pull readers along; they have to be invested enough in the character and plot to want to keep turning pages. “What’s going to happen next?” When you write, write around THAT question. If it excites YOU to find out, you’re on the right track.

Creating a world, and the people to fill it . . . that’s fiction. The beauty of it is that you are not constrained in any way by time, location, or even form – you can make what you want. The only caveat . . . you better have an interesting story to tell. It doesn’t matter if it is on Mars, or on Earth during a time that never existed, or two solar systems away.

Interesting, flawed characters, and a story that makes the reader want to turn the page. That’s what makes a best-seller. After all, we’re all “flawed” in our own way, and we can relate to those sorts of characters.

Sit down and write – it will do your soul good.

Many blessings To All…

LOTD

“It’s Like This…”

Image via Wikipedia

This isn’t my shortest post ever, but it’s in the running. Here goes…

You see, it’s like this:

If you are emotionally and/or mentally attached to a desire that is in opposition to the reality of the present moment, you will experience unhappiness.

That’s it. That’s what all of the talk about “living in the now,” etc., really means. Don’t sweat what COULD be, just practice accepting what IS with a smile and good grace. That’s how “happy,” or at the very least, content, arrives.

Would you like to have some happy and content? Apply the above.

Don’t stop your faith in your dreams, just keep it all in context.

Many Blessings To All…

 

“Tell A Good Story, And Grammar Be Damned…”

Image via Wikipedia

I throw this out to anyone who may be curious as to the process of writing. Every author is different, I’m sure, and this is just the way that I feel about it.

Writing is the easy part. Yes, that sounds a bit unlikely but, for me, its true. The hard part is EDITING. EDITING is when you have to sit down with your heart’s creation and cut it to ribbons. If you’re smart, you’ll cut it to the bone.

Believe me, it’s easier on your soul if you cut it up than if you let a publisher do it. You have to be ruthless about it; killing superfluous hyperbole and over-used adjectives that any reader of average intelligence can supply on their own.

And as to style . . . forget about it, (notice that I began this sentence with a conjunction – an act that is generally considered a no-no). MY style often begins sentences with a conjunction, because I write much in the same way that I speak. My writing is, shall we say, conversational.

And that’s not all, (there it is again). When I write, I dive in to the deep end of the pool. For example, I am in the process of writing my second book – this one fiction.

Conventional wisdom regarding writing would encourage me to set up a plot, have an idea of the characters, and know how the book was going to end. In other words, go into it with at least a general grasp of the beginning, middle, and end. Well, I failed that, too.

I don’t have a damn clue how the story is going to end. I write in a chronological style – everything unfolds in order, chapter-to-chapter; I’m as surprised as anyone as to what unfolds, and I don’t know how it is going to end.

What I DO know is that if I keep going, layer upon layer, it will have a beginning, middle, and end . . . and come to a valid and satisfying resolution.

As far as I am concerned, when it comes to writing, rules are meant to be broken. Tell a good story, and grammar be damned.

So, if you’re thinking about writing, but somehow think that you can’t – get over it. An interesting story trumps every rule in the book. Get started!

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD

 

“They’re Usually Quite Lovely…”

Image via Wikipedia

A beautifully landscaped design, I must admit.

I happened to notice it on a road trip today. What a lawn! Perfectly landscaped, with nice rows of flowers, and the driveway entrance was flanked by impressive stone pillars.

It would be an awesome place to live…but it was abandoned; it was a cemetery [not the one pictured, though]

The energy that had occupied the bodies that were placed there weren’t enjoying it – those energies were gone – on to their next destination. This beautiful place was created by living bodies, for living bodies, to come and be sad. Seems kind of odd when you look at it that way.

To me, there isn’t anything scary about cemeteries; they’re usually quite lovely. It is more disturbing to me to imagine how many unfulfilled, untried dreams were buried when these folks had to move on.

Each one of us will end up…well…at the “end.” Some may be cremated, some buried, some placed in a mausoleum vault – the final resting place of your form isn’t really relevant in the larger scheme of things because, as I wrote earlier, you won’t be there. You’ll have new things to do, new places to go, and won’t be coming around to make sure the grass has been mowed at the house where you used to live.

What I would love for each one of us to do, starting right now, is to begin the process of “leaving it all on the table.” Retire the weak excuses, and go after every dream that you have with gusto.

Courage; that’s what it takes – but courage is rewarded with peace-of-mind. Don’t leave those glorious and precious, God-breathed inspirations untried.

Wouldn’t it be great on that day when people gather around the remnants of your form, if they could say, “You know what? He/She totally went for it, with a smile and a word of encouragement for everyone that crossed his/her path;” and walk away inspired by your life instead of saddened by your departure?

That’s the way to depart this form…right in the middle of chasing big dreams, and bringing them to pass. Can you think of anything more fun? I can’t!

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD

“NOT Walking Like An Egyptian…”

Image via Wikipedia

Remember that song, from the ’80′s “Walk Like An Egyptian?.”

It was written and recorded by an all-girl group by the name of “The Bangles.” It was a huge hit for them. Tonight, I’m not walking like an Egyptian, or any other nationality; unless “crippled up” is a nation.

My lower back went into severe spasms as I was leaning over to read the comics in today’s paper at about 5:00pm this evening, (which weren’t even that funny).

I have medication for spasms, and I took it hours ago – it has done nothing to help me. Generally, I’m not one to speak of my pains. After all, pain and I hold hands every day, to varying degrees, and making a fuss about it only serves to make the people who care about you feel badly…because they can’t help you. So, if I bother to mention my pain, then you can be sure that on a scale of one to ten, it’s probably pushing eleven. I have years of practice dealing with pain, and a higher tolerance to it than most; I was trained that way by Uncle Sam a long time ago, and still live that way today.

So, all of what you have just read is a highly unusual release of information that I traditionally keep to myself. It has no other purpose than to serve as a totally unrelated intro into the progress of my new book.

Yes, in what is a minor miracle, I am well into the third chapter already, and that includes going backwards and “fleshing out” the first two chapters. And you know what else…it’s good.

I say that it is good because I can read it, MYSELF, the writer, and be as intrigued as to what is coming next as a first-time reader. Why? Because I have no idea what is coming – it is as new and as fascinating to me as it would be to a total stranger who was reading it for the first time. To me, that is a good sign..as I am my own, harshest critic.

Hopefully, my lower back will return to normal by the morning. PTSD has a way of causing irritability on a good day – add in the back spasms, and it is difficult for me to be civil.

Such is life.

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD

“Torpedoes, Pizzas And Such…”

Image via Wikipedia

Tom Monaghan founded Domino’s Pizza back in 1960.

Maybe you don’t like that brand of pizza – at the very least, you probably know someone who doesn’t. What does that mean? Not much, because as Tom Monaghan pointed out:

“You always get negative reactions. If you worry about that, you would never do anything.”

The point is that you will ALWAYS get some negative reactions to new ideas, or to your own, personal way of doing things. It didn’t dissuade Mr. Monaghan, who sold his company around fourteen or fifteen years ago for an estimated one billion dollars, (yes, that’s billion, with a “b”).

He has gone on to give away millions in philanthropic endeavors, often related in some way to his devout Catholicism, which also spurs a fair amount of negative reactions, (like most religions), which spills over onto Mr. Monaghan because of his support. None of that has stopped him from helping a lot of people with what he has earned or caused him to change what he believes.

This is a very simple message, really: forget about pleasing everybody, because you can’t. If you waited for everyone to agree with you, “you would never do anything.”

You only need one person to start, and that’s YOU, and YOUR idea, and YOUR passion and drive. With that in place, you will find that your audience will begin to discover you, and that beautiful energy will spread into greater-and-greater success. Of course, if your passion is illegal or unethical . . . well, I don’t think I need to go there; stick with integrity.

When it comes to those inevitable, “negative reactions,” live your life guided by the words of the late, great Admiral Farragut: “Damn the torpedoes!” Keep moving forward, and don’t allow a few bad reactions to dissuade you from your course. Doing so, you can be sure of reaching your destination.

Many Blessings To All…

“That Earth-Shattering PLOP…”

Image via Wikipedia

Adversity tends to be heavy, and all of us have had to face our portion of it from time-to-time. That is by design, as adversity is the real proving ground for achieving spiritual growth and wisdom; we don’t get much of either when things are sailing along smoothly.

When it comes, though, it can quickly capsize your boat if you haven’t taken these words from Horace to heart. He wrote:

“In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.”

If you can imagine it, picture your brain as a big apothecary scale that determines the “emotional weight” of your experiences and thoughts. There you are, cruising along with your scale, (brain), for the most part on an even keel…balanced. Then along comes adversity, which is a lot like lead in that its weight seems to far exceed what one might expect in relation to its size.

PLOP! There it goes, landing on the negative side of your balanced scale and mercilessly flinging all of the positives on the other side all over the place. You become fixated on this dark lump of “bad,” which makes it even heavier. Forget about balance, now there’s an elephant in the room!

It is the “weight” that we assign to adversity that determines how much it affects our life, and the only way to get through it is to find a way to counter-balance it. That can be pretty tough to do when your head is spinning. Where are you going to find enough of what you consider to be “good” to balance the scale when there is so much weight to offset? Truth? You probably won’t, leaving you with no choice but to wait around and let time level things out. But there is a better approach; you can determine the weight of experiences BEFORE you have them.

Begin the practice, ahead of time, of deciding that there is no adversity that has enough weight to tip your “even mind.” Come to understanding, NOW, that adversity will come, but that it is one of the Divine’s primary tools to move you along to higher and higher planes of existence.

Once you have reached that place through prayer, faith and meditation, adversity will automatically be weighted less when it arrives. Instead of that earth-shattering PLOP on the scale, you get a distracting “tinkle” . . . and that is much easier to counter-balance and overcome.

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD

 

“Yesterday’s Pitches…”

Image via Wikipedia

Frank Ferrante is an interesting character.

At a time when he was torn with various addictions and losing hope, Creation nudged him into a unique opportunity to get clean and to turn his life around, AND have a documentary made of his journey [You can find out more at www.mayibefrankmovie.com]

People like Mr. Ferrante – those who have successfully weathered some of life’s greatest extremes – tend to be sources of a lot of wisdom. Take the following quote, for example, that he shared with Ode Magazine‘s Josey Duncan:

“I have to rejuvenate my spiritual connection every day – you don’t just arrive, it’s a daily practice. You can’t win today’s game on yesterday’s pitches.”

This statement offers ample evidence that he’s figured a few things out along the way that a lot of folks have yet to grasp. In this case, it is the simple truth that your spiritual connection must be maintained in a daily basis in order to thrive.

There are a large percentage of people who attend their chosen house of worship one day a week, then lay aside matters of the Spirit for the other six days, i.e. trying to win “today’s game on yesterday’s pitches. That’s a sure path to a losing season.

Morning prayer is truly a form of rejuvenation, a freshening of your intimate connection with the Infinite – that great mystery that holds everything together. And this daily exercise doesn’t need to be an overwrought, draw out treatise on sin and forgiveness, either. In fact, there is no need to view this as a “religious” exercise at all; it is simply a way to engage your Spirit, like pouring a cup of esoteric energy to awaken your higher Consciousness. The idea is to SHOW UP: to let Creation know that you are ready to be guided, and to remind yourself of the Divinity that resides within and around you.

Starting each day with this type of prayer is simple, powerful, and rejuvenating, and allows you the great advantage of starting each game with a fresh arsenal of pitches.

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD

“Never Despair…”

Image via Wikipedia

Very few leaders, (if any), in the history of this country have dealt with more adversity than George Washington.

Faced with the prospect of leading a war for Independence against a well-trained and well-led army, he had little to work with.

His “troops,” at least at the outset, were untrained, undisciplined, ill-equipped when they were equipped at all, and the Congress and the people expected them to perform miracles.

The Revolutionary War lasted eight and a half years. That is a lot longer than most people today are aware that it did, and a lot longer than the people of the time expected that it would. And there were more setbacks than victories for the new “Americans.”

Undaunted during those setbacks, George Washington is quoted as having said:

“We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before, and it has changed for the better; so I trust it will again.”

Then, of course, Mr. Washington had the honor of being the first President of the United States, which surrounded him with an assortment of rancorous characters that makes one wonder how we ever made it.

But, through it all, George Washington managed to keep his poise and inspire his peers to be greater than they thought they could be.

The beauty and importance of the twenty-three words that I have quoted is in the simple, assumptive faith that they so powerfully embody.

This was a man who had faced extreme adversity and immense pressures, and rather than give these difficulties prominence, he chose to characterize them as “compromising situations,” trusting that it would “change for the better.”

Whatever you may be facing, or may face in the future, let his words light your path. You’ve been in bad spots before, and you made it. Do not despair; trust that you will again.

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD

“You Have To Believe…”

Image via Wikipedia

That’s really the bottom line…you have to believe.

I don’t know what it is that you dream to do, and it doesn’t really matter. One thing that I DO know, whatever it is, there will be resistance – maybe from a lot of people.

There will be those who say that you will fail, or that you are crazy, and there may well be long periods of time when those who you trusted won’t even return your phone calls.

That hurts. That can be crushingly discouraging. That can mess with your mind and cause you to doubt yourself, and think maybe you should throw in the towel. DON’T!

It is YOUR dream, YOUR idea, YOUR purpose, YOUR God-given flame, placed with care by he Infinite within YOUR heart. You have but one task – to weather the storm and see it through, all the way to the completion of your vision.

Do you enjoy regret? I’m guessing that you don’t; so eliminate the possibility of experiencing it by following through with your dreams and visions. What is it that you think that you are here for? To assume the shape of what someone else wants you to be, and to be shoved into whatever space they choose?

Hell no. We have machines for that. You have the very breath and inspiration of the Infinite that is All That Is within you. You have to BELIEVE.

Yes, you make adjustments, you learn, but NEVER stop moving forward. DO NOT STOP until you have completed that what you have started.

As an author and writer, I think of a book when I write this. I don’t care if you stink as a writer; what I care about is that if you start a book or a story, that you have a beginning, a middle, and an end – that you finish it.

The wold is full of “wannabe’s; full of grand ideas that they never see through to the end. How many unfinished novels are gathering dust in boxes and drawers across the world? The number would astound you.

You have to BELIEVE. Whatever it is, see it through – ALL THE WAY. This leaves no place for regrets, and grants you a high probability of uncommon success.

Many Blessings To All…

LOTD