March 2012
10 posts
"Episode markers," by Seth Godin →
sethgodin.typepad.com
http://bit.ly/GL0geU — “Episode markers,” by Seth Godin:
Our lives are lived in compartments, like panels in a cartoon strip.
Where you sit and when you leave and how you walked in—they are all markers, ways we space things out. Walking into the doctor’s office or the principal’s office or the parole office are physical acts that change our psyche.
Don’t underestimate the power of having a customer walk into the dressing room or on stage or to the cash register.
Don’t forget that as soon as your audience walked into the conference room, they changed.
One way to change the story, then, is to change the markers. To move people from one spot to another when you want them to change their attitude (inside the movie theatre is very different from the popcorn-sales counter in the lobby).
I’m serious. Get up and move. Start fresh.
Restraint
It’s a relief to know that I don’t have to write everything that is in me, all at once. A single essay does not need to exhaust its topic, nor does a chapter, or even a book. There is boldness in restraint.
“writing is finally sitting alone in a room and wrenching it out of yourself”
—http://amzn.to/FQ0VIK
“Let’s say it’s not a team but a band. Who’s on drums & keeping the beat? Who’s on lead guitar? Who’s singing the tune? Where are the gaps in the music?” -@BoxOfCrayons’ Great #Work Provocations”
—http://bit.ly/zm8MG3
“One of the first tips I learned from my writing mentor Marsha Marks, is to read my stuff out loud. I read my essays to the dog or, if he is unavailable, to the walls. When an essay sounds good enough, sometimes, I call Marsha and read it to her over the phone. As she listens, the good, the bad, and the boring are all revealed. Speaking the words out loud brings the work as a whole into sharper focus.”
—Learning to Write: Sound Check
Really great tip
Voice →
bit.ly
I love when @KeithJennings writes about our voices as creators. Today, his piece reminded me to embrace improvement, rather than wincing when I look back and see how much worse I was. It can be discouraging, somewhat ironically, to have improved a lot, because I notice how much I didn’t even see previously that needed improvement then — but wait! that is not the point!
Growth is part of your voice, Keith says: “Our voice is not a piece of us. It is the unique mixture of many pieces within us revealed as a collective – a portfolio.” You’re not failing to find some entity known as your “voice”; you’re developing it all along. As for the imperfections in your past creations, “The rough edges and inconsistencies in our current work push us to iron them out in future works. Today’s failures birth tomorrow’s successes.”
So the point isn’t static perfection, it’s GROWTH. #SighofRelief : )
Progress, in harmony, via @MAEband and Seth Godin
I just listened to @MAEband’s “Home” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SzFToGdkyo) while reading Seth Godin’s blog post “Ashamed to not know” (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/03/ashamed-to-not-know.html). The hope for the future and exciting buildup in both made a beautiful harmony. A multisensory aesthetic experience indeed (http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae)!
Childhood Joys and Wonder →
bit.ly
I wrote an essay about an afternoon with my family as a boy. It’s now on baaaaa.com.
