Habits for Success: the meme

I’m going to take a one post break from the “Look Like a Pro” series to participate in the “Habits for Daily Success” meme. Carson Brackney, the copywriter extraordinaire over at Content Done Better has tagged me with the latest meme: “List the top 5 to 10 things you do almost every day that help you to be successful. They can be anything at all, but they have to be things you do at least 4 or 5 times every week.”

Well, I honestly don’t know just how successful I really am… I’m a very fledgling rookie in the freelance writing field. I’m still in school, and making progress a lot more slowly than I would like. I may not have what others consider to be success, but I still consider myself to be reasonably successful.

I don’t necessarily think that success is simply defined as a simple end point. Being done eating a burger isn’t necessarily the point of a burger. The point is that you love every delicious, greasy moment of eating it. Eventually you do finish it, but being done with a burger is nowhere near as wonderful as eating one. I’d know, I’ve eaten plenty.

I’d have to say then that habit numero uno is my mindset. I’m successful because of how I define my success. I’m married to my best friend, the girl of my dreams. My studies, my hobbies, my work and my passions all intersect in my writing. I spend every day doing what I love. I have a home, food to eat, and friends and family. My success depends largely on recognizing the successes I have already attained and enjoy. As a result, I’m a happy man. If happiness isn’t success, what is?

If we continue on defining success as daily happiness, we come to my next habit, which also isn’t necessarily writing related. The second habit has to be my overall lifestyle. I lead a life that conforms to certain standards of decency and conduct. My religious/spiritual life is an active and vibrant one. While I am far from perfect, I do my best to live according to the knowledge I have. At the end of the day, even though I make mistakes, I’m able to sleep peacefully.

While these first two habits might not sound all that related to success with writing business, they are. If you can’t learn be happy now, no amount of money, recognition, or expertise will satisfy you. You may achieve some visible measure of external success, but inside you’ll feel like a failure.

On to things more relevant to the writing profession:

I feed my mind constantly. The mind works according to the old computer programming maxim – “Garbage in, garbage out.” Along the same lines, if little goes in, little can come out. I’m a voracious reader, with a love for new ideas. I seek out new perspectives and experiences. As a result, I’ve got ideas coming out of my ears.

I write daily. Everything I’ve ever read on the subject tells me that good writing is the product of regular, daily writing. As a writer, words are the clay you sculpt with, the tools you work with. The more practiced and familiar you are with your tools and materials, the better you’ll be at your craft. To quote a couple writing heroes of mine:

“Runners don’t say, ‘Oh, I ran yesterday. I’m limber.’ Each day they warm up and stretch.” – Natalie Goldberg

“Set up a daily writing schedule. That is the best advice I can offer any aspiring writer. If nothing else, the schedule will make you think of yourself as a writer. … After a few months of sticking to your schedule, you should be rewarded with an astonishing improvement in your writing.” – Patrick McManus

I set goals, and pursue them. Am I happy with what I have now? Absolutely. If things never changed, I could be happy for the rest of my life. The only problem is that things always change. Growth and change are inescapable, but not uncontrollable. If my life must change, it might as well be for the better and according to my own plan. I have educational and career goals. Though I love the apartment my wife and I are in, we’d like a house with a yard. I’d like a better workspace, with nicer equipment. I’d love to get published in certain magazines. I would love to be wealthy, influential, famous or whatever else. I don’t know where my life will ultimately end up, but I do know that anything worthwhile tends to be the result of patient hard work.

Finally, I study others. I try to adopt the things that work best, and discard what doesn’t. I’m not too sure that I’m necessarily any good at that, but I’m making progress. I’m a little bit better today than I was yesterday, and that’s good enough for me.

I’m passing this along to…
Kristen King, at ::inkthinker::
http://www.inkthinker.blogspot.com/
Andy Humphrey at The Struggling Writer
http://struggling-writer.blogspot.com/
Mridu Khullar at her blog
http://www.mridukhullar.com/journal/

Writing Quote: Gore Vidal

The brain that

doesn't feed itself,

eats itself.

Gore Vidal

Sources: Quote, Picture

Blog turns to Book Deal!

Sometimes, I just love the Internet. (Actually, that's most of the time.) One of my favorite things to watch of late has been how the occasional "new media" player (be it a blogger, YouTuber, whatever) will occasionally show such creativity that "old media" picks it up.

The best example, of late? One of my favorite blogs, Indexed, has been offered a book deal, with Penguin's Viking Studio. For about seven months, Jessica Hagy has been doodling absurd little diagrams that explore and explain the relationships between all sorts of things, like the correlation between money and nihilistic fashion trends, or the futility of New years resolutions. In a surprisingly insightful manner, these doodles on index cards poke fun at fashion, politics, television and every other area of culture and human nature.

This site is a hoot, and I'm looking forward to the book.

Total Writing Improvement

All writing involves three elements. Whether it’s scribbling in your journal, landing a byline in a major magazine, or writing for a TV show, these three elements are present and inescapable.

Thought

All writing begins with thought. Words and sentences only have value because they represent ideas and concepts and do so in a way that many people understand. Without those ideas and concepts, language is meaningless. What we actually create and sell, as writers, are thoughts.

Words and Language

Now, in order for those thoughts to be accessible or intelligible to anyone else, they need to be translated from raw thought into some form that others can understand. Communication of thought is the sole purpose of language. As said before, the value of words lie in the thoughts they convey to others.

Media and Technology

Finally, once we’ve figured out the words that represent our thoughts, we must record them in some way. Cave men painted on walls, the Egyptians wrote on papyrus, we use computers. Whatever the technology used, regardless of the medium that conveys the message, it isn’t writing until it’s written. Media and technology are the form and means used to record the thoughts we originally had.

The Bottom Line

We all want to write well. Many want to also write more, and thus earn more money. Both quality and quantity can be improved by focusing on improving how we use and work with each of these three portions of the whole writing process. By improving our initial thought processes, we improve both the crafting and marketing of our writing. By fine tuning our use of language, we are better able to write clearly and reach audiences effectively. By training ourselves in media and technology, we become more skilled with the tools we use in our art.

The 6 Best Board Games for Brainstorming

Looking for a fun way to brainstorm? Are you lost in aggravation from a bad case of the block? Play a game! But not just any game – try one (or all) of these excellent Brainstorming Games. These games are designed to tickle your mind, to tease your intellect and to tap in to your brainpower.

Scrabble

The classic word game, Scrabble challenges you to find words using a limited number of letters and spaces. Maybe you'll play a whole game, jotting down ideas as you go, or maybe you'll just have some fun shuffling the tiles around to form words and phrases. In either case, this game will help you use words you didn't even know you knew.

Boggle

Boggle is a crazy game that could be called "Scrabble in a box". Shake the letter dice and then watch them as they settle to find as many words as you can!

Apples to Apples

The great game of finding the ultimate non-sequiter is also the best party game you'll ever find. Match any one of your crazy nouns (like Britney Spears, Poker, Fuzz, Nintendo, and Lava Lamps) and choose the one that best matches a randomly selected adjective (like Classy). If you've got the best match, you win the round. (My pick would have to be Fuzz.)What Apples to Apples does best, however, is force you to find connections between seemingly disparate concepts. For the freelancer, that's an essential skill.

Balderdash

As one Amazon commenter puts it, Balderdash "combines wordsmithing and bluffing" - can you think of a better pair of skills for the freelance writer? Neither can I.

Scattergories

This may very well be the big mother of all brainstorming games. Why? Because all you do in this game is brainstorm! You're given a list of categories, you roll a mondo-alphabet-die to select a letter, and then it becomes a race against the clock to fill each category with an entry that starts with that letter.

It may just be the best game ever.

Cranium

With four categories challenging your trivia knowledge, vocabulary, artistic abilities and performing talents, Cranium is a great game to play when you're looking to stretch your creative muscles beyond the realm of the written word.

How many great ideas have YOU lost?

You never know quite when an idea will pop into your mind, do you? Surely I’m not the only one that finds inspiration in the shower, am I? (Actually, I believe the shower was a favorite of Stan Freberg.) At any given moment, whether I’m pounding out a rough draft, researching a topic or just doing a bit of “mind grazing”, I may have an idea that strikes. Maybe it’s something I read that strikes my fancy. Maybe it’s a tangent I wish I had the time to explore. Maybe it’s just a fun word that I like.

The fact is that you need a place to record these thoughts and experiences. Chances are high that you’ve lost a lot of great ideas simply for lack of scrap paper. How many times have you jotted down a name and phone number on the back of an old receipt? Just how many of those stray scraps of paper actually get used later? If you’re at all like me, the end up going through the wash the next time you do laundry, and you’re stuck with a little wad that used to be paper.

How to solve this problem? My dad always told me that if you have a weakness, use a system to compensate for it. If you have trouble remembering where you put your keys, then give them a specific place where you always put them. During the day, they’re in my left hip pocket. Once I walk in the door, they go in a small basket on the desk that’s by the door. If they’re not in the basket, they’re in my pocket. See? The system provides a simple solution.

My system for capturing important information and ideas is equally simple. If I’m away from the computer, I have my hPDA with me at all times, allowing me to jot it down then and there. I use a Mead Index Keeper, and I can quickly file away any index cards or scraps of paper I might need to save. This way, these clippings and musings have a designated place and are always accessible.

When I’m at the computer, I’m able to remove an entire step from this process by having a similar document there on the desk top. I have it labeled “Open Jotter”, because that’s exactly what it is, a running document that I can jot notes into. Cool bit of info? Jot it down. Any insights, factoids or flashes of brilliance are jotted down, in whatever order they happen to come in.

At the end of the day (if I remember, sometimes it’s the end of the week…) I go over everything and refile it as needed. Contact information goes in one place. Blog post ideas go another place. Large chunks of fitfully typed ramblings go into a folder all their own.

The two most important points are these:
1. There is a designated place for all of these stray thoughts.
2. This place is always immediately accessible.

Thus, I’m able to get stuff out of my head and recorded in some way, and I can do so with minimum hassle. This allows my mind to focus on the tasks at hand without trying to keep track of everything else all the time. Like my keys, I don’t need to remember where I set them down last, I already know that if they’re not in my pocket, they’re in the basket on my desk. Likewise, I never have to scramble to record a thought; I just whip out my handy Hipster or go straight to the Open Jotter.

How do you corral your thoughts?

5 Ways to Beat Writer's Block

Writer's Block - that frozen up, blank minded state, very similar to a sneeze that won't quite sneeze, in which a writer cannot write. It's real, and we all deal with it sometimes. So, to help my fellow writers get the words flowing again, here are five ways to prime the pump and get back to work.

.

.

1. Say 'Bollocks' to the Block!

Honestly, don't even call it writer's block. Don't obsess over it, just get back to work. Most 'Block' is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You hit a rough patch and you call it writer's block. In the process, you give a shape and a name to something that otherwise might not even be a problem.

.

.

2. Take a short break

And I do mean short - try ten minutes, or fifteen. Do something different, whether it's munching on a healthy snack, jogging to the mailbox, dancing like a crazy person to the first song you get on the radio, whatever. Make this a complete break from your routine, not a part of it. The routine is just that - routine. While order and routine are great for dry productivity, they're anathema to creativity. Creativity doesn't require constant chaos, but it does require a sense of freedom and flexibility.

.

.

3. Stop trying to write

This doesn't mean that you decide "Hmmm, the words aren't flowing - let's go to Disneyland!" Instead, shift your focus to another writing-related task. Try brainstorming for a few minutes. Look up a new market online. Straighten up your desk. Set aside the blank page for a moment, but keep working. If you can't be productive, be constructive.

.

.

4. Review and Jot

Review your notes, and while doing so, jot down anything that comes to mind, even if it's just single words. Doodle in the margins. Sketch diagrams that relate to the topic. Write down any questions that pop up. The idea is to get your synapses firing again in relation to your work.

.

.

5. Write Through

Lurking in the shadows of Writer's Block, there is often an unrealistic expectation. Maybe it's the desire to write something brilliant, when mediocre is all you can manage at the moment. Maybe it's an unrealistic deadline (self imposed or otherwise). Maybe you've got some unrelated idea that's been gnawing at the back of your mind for three days, but you won't listen to it, because you're trying to focus. Whatever it is, write it. Don't even consider this a draft, that'll come later. Just write whatever's on your mind.