It’s always good to start your Friday off with a bang. The following post is brought to you by a true texting typo, courtesy of my ever optimistic husband…
HAPPY WEEKEND, EVERYONE!
Posted in Blogging, Funny, Laugh, Non-Fiction, Our Moments, Relationships, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Writers, tagged Funny, Laugh, Sex on March 28, 2014| 8 Comments »
It’s always good to start your Friday off with a bang. The following post is brought to you by a true texting typo, courtesy of my ever optimistic husband…
HAPPY WEEKEND, EVERYONE!
Posted in Blogging, Creative Writing, Inspiration, Life, Non-Fiction, Our Moments, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Writers, Writing, tagged Bullies, Contests, Ellen, Singing on March 27, 2014| 14 Comments »
Can I just say that I love Ellen? I rarely catch her because I don’t have the luxury of sitting around to watch daytime television but, while I was in the massage chair getting my toenails polished yesterday, ahem, Ellen happened to be on.
She was visiting with Mark Whalberg and Taylor Kitsch, discussing their movie Lone Survivor. The two actors were reliving the training they endured to pull off a convincingly realistic Navy Seal facade.
During the interview, Ellen proceeds to give credit to the Seals, by recounting a story of a hike she took the day after seeing the movie. She tells of how she developed a blister on her foot while walking, but felt she had to trudge on because of all the selfless work the Seals do. And as a result, she managed to push through it.
The humor was there, but it was clear she was serious. Their nobility and valor had inspired her to realize she was capable of completing the hike despite a little pain.
Only Ellen can get away with equating something as trivial as a blister with the work of Navy Seals and not be offensive.
Now, believe me when I tell you that all I ever do is clean, work and write, but the other night, while my daughter and I sat on the couch, listening to the pouring rain, eating bon bons and talking about how I was about to start the laundry, we happened to come across the movie One Chance.
It’s about a bloke from South Whales who loved to sing. Maybe you’ve also happened upon it while couch surfing, popping bon bons and counting raindrops.
It turns out the movie did not get good reviews, but you may or may not know, I’m a sucker for singing and an eternally easy mark for an optimistic underdog so I handcuffed my daughter to a Mars bar and…we watched.
Paul Potts endured a lifetime of physical and mental abuse from neighborhood bullies, not to mention an unsupportive father. He withstood personal and potentially dream-dashing dogging from Pavarotti himself, plus extreme health and financial challenges, but, like Ellen and the Navy Seals, he kept on climbing.
Paul went on to win Britain’s Got Talent in 2007 and is now a successful multimillionaire.
Yesterday marked my second wordpress anniversary and the start of my blogging in general, so I wanted to celebrate with a taste of inspiration. It’s easy to let things get under our skin, stop us from chasing what it is we want most…our passions, our dreams and our quests.
But when that happens, we need to remember we’re no different than Ellen, Paul and the Navy Seals.
Listen, I got a paper cut on my tongue yesterday, but no way was that stopping me from posting today!
We know we’re also equipped with tenacity, training and a voice. We’re just waiting for the world to know it too.
Posted in Blogging, Creative Writing, Inspiration, Life, Non-Fiction, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Writers, Writing, tagged belief, Commitment, Confidence, Dedication on March 6, 2014| 23 Comments »
Yesterday, I came across a quote that said there is no such thing as writer’s block. It claims that what hinders us is instead fear, procrastination, perfectionism and laziness. And not just laziness, but pure laziness.
I’m interested to know what you think?
Peeking from behind slightly parted curtains, I sheepishly declare that whether you throw exploding tomatoes or rub browning mashed banana in my face, I’m just going to have duck down and simultaneously stand (difficult to do) united with Thrasher.
There’s many a time I sit down full of serious hope and intention with absolutely no idea what’s to come of it. But that’s the thing – if I let my vacant brain off the hook – if I never sat down just because I had nothing, nothing would ever emerge.
Nothing.
Ever.
Of course there’s fear. Very different from the fear that you’ll awake to an unwelcome stranger in the middle of the night or that you’re going to run out of gas going through a high-traffic tunnel. It’s the fear that you’re choosing to play the fool, that someone will laugh, find your work a shabby replica or perhaps worse, all too authentic.
No writer, with any living acquaintance, wants to pen dark, risqué or just plain screwed up and have people believe that that’s what’s really thought or felt by them.
You see no one, other than another writer, can truly understand a writer’s thought process. It’s that what if that’s been so over-exposed. And, I almost hate to bring it up again, but in the end, that is what it’s all about. That little catalytic question that brings a writer to a thought where they, before deciding to write it all down, pray no one ever finds out they conjured it up.
I think this may be the true meaning of irony.
Procrastination. Well damn, that’s an easy one. Hmm, should I tackle the crap that I know I can get done successfully, or should I sit down and type for hours, hoping that I get at least one half decent sentence out of it? Should I make sure my family has food and clean clothes, or should I while the hours away writing something that no one may ever read? Should I show anyone what has turned out to be definite drivel? No? Okay, what do I say I’ve been doing for the past six hours instead of making sure the kids were picked up and the bills were paid then?
Enough said on that.
Perfectionism. I have countless closets, nooks, crannies, projects and plans that remain untackled due to a silent and highly unrecognized, misunderstood affliction called perfectionism. I literally have to talk myself into starting something that I know I only have twenty to thirty minutes to work on. I, to my core, feel that I should not start a project that I don’t have to time to see through, not only to completion, but to painstaking precision. I will literally allow a stain to stay on my floor for a week because I don’t have the time to get down on my hands and knees and scrub the entire wood surface (which includes a kitchen, dining room, hallway, living room and front hall) rather than just swiftly wiping up the singular mark that lies right in front of the kitchen sink. So, you can imagine my dilemma, not having a solid six months to sit down and write an entire novel without stopping.
Perfectionism is show-stopping.
Laziness. This is the one and only point I’m iffy on. Actually, a little more than iffy. This one irks me. Speaking for myself, and any other writer I’ve ever interacted with, whatever the task or tribulation at hand, we’d love to toss it aside to write. Which I guess, could be deemed a different kind of lazy, but that’s not what Thrasher is talking about here. He’s referring to writers who are lazy about writing.
I believe, if you feel in any way, like you couldn’t be bothered to write, then you’re not a writer. A true writer should be thinking about their next opportunity to write any time their eyes are open and they are breathing. There. I said it.
It’s up to us. No one is cheering us on to be what might be viewed as a sedentary slop. Not a soul is saying, Hey, sit on down. Chill with your laptop. We get it. You’re writing. In reality, many are biting their tongues on words like aloof, rude, lazy and antisocial.
We may not yet be Khaled Hosseini, Stephen King or Danielle Steel, but if we don’t stand up and sit down, we never will be.