Writing For Others

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Meditations

“…I began learning that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

I think this is an especially important idea for writers. While the motivation to write might stem from a personal passion, good writing must connect with others. I’m almost convinced that 90 percent of the writers who fail do not understand this concept. As an author, your manuscript is not about you. It’s about how it connects with your readers. If you want to write flowery prose for yourself, go and buy a diary.

Probably the best advice you’ll ever hear

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Meditations

From Ben Corman, yet another guy from Rudius Media that I’ve begun reading.

Don’t be afraid to suck. Building a new media presence, writing a novel, starting a business, learning to juggle — you don’t develop any of these skills without actually doing them. And when you first start anything, unless you’re some sort of savant, you’re going to suck. That’s not the worst thing that can happen.

The novel I’m writing right now? Total shit. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing it. You only improve by doing, and doing implies from start to finish. The hope is that the next novel is a bit better, and the next one a bit better than that. Then, in a few years, maybe I’ll have something people actually want to read. But I’ve got to earn it first.

What’s more important than doing what you want to do?

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Writing

Motivation is a volatile resource. It can come in abundance at times, and it seems like you’ll never slow down. Yet just as quickly it can turn into a drought, and you wonder: “What’s the point?” I’m sitting here, 40 minutes before my scheduled daily writing time, wondering what the hell is the point of writing today. It’s just going to go into my vault anyway, where no one will really see it.

It’s easy to get stuck in this rut. But if I don’t write today, I could easily get caught in a cycle of shame and not write for a couple of weeks. What good would that do me? Yes, this novel won’t see any public attention, and that might take away from my motivation. If I don’t finish it, though, then when am I going to finish something? Can I honestly think that one day I’ll miraculously finish a novel ready for Simon & Schuster when I haven’t ever completed one in the past?

To finish what you start is one of the most important lessons anyone can learn about life. Even if the ultimate results will be fruitless, it’s still worth it to finish something out, especially when it’s a skill-building exercise like writing. Yeah, maybe you should cut your losses on that new entrepreneurial venture. That’s just the Dip. But when it comes to a writing venture, if you’re not going to finish your work, you’re better off not having started it in the first place.

This is something which I’m not sure is personal to me, or is more of a universal human condition. When I start something up, I have all the energy in the world. With this book, I’d always go well over the time I allotted every day for it, spending hours and hours writing the narrative and performing the necessary research. Some days were better than others, but even on bad days I was adding 1,500 words to the manuscript. Now that I’m nearly a month into the composition, though, I’ve begun to lose steam. What’s worse is that I’m at a critical stage in the book, where the protagonist begins to fall from grace, to be saved by the deuteragonist. I should be as chipper as the day I started writing. Alas…

When times like this come about, I try to refocus my thoughts on my overall mission. That can help bring me out of a slump. Then I think of what I’d be doing if I wasn’t writing. Probably just sitting in front of the computer, slouched in my chair, reloading websites until new comments appear. Then, after getting mad at the comment for being “stupid,” I’d fire off one of my own, likely stupider than the original. All it amounts to me is me being a crank.

Clearly, there is nothing better I could be doing than writing. The blank page might be scary, but it’s not insurmountable. Even if what I write today is total crap, I know I can go back and make the necessary changes. Plus, I’m always way too hard on myself initially. When I go back and read some of the fiction I’ve written, I’m sometimes surprised. It might not be literary brilliance, but it’s not the drivel I imagined it as at the time I wrote it.

Honesty Box: Objective journalism

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Blogging and New Media

I feel like I link Holiday here a bit too often, and planned to cut back a bit. I’ve done this a bit in all of my writing projects. That is, find a source or two that I relate to, and kind of regurgitate their material. It’s part of the training wheels. The above-linked post, though, fits perfectly into today’s subject. It’s called the Honesty Box, and it’s basically a place where we can point out our shortcomings. Newspapers have corrections that no one pays attention to. So, to take a different approach, the Honesty Box for this blog will be front and center, right alongside the rest of the content.

“What would be objective journalism? One paragraph, maybe two, stating the who, what, when, and where aspect of the story.”
- from “Changing the way we read the news,” June 27, 2008

After musing about this over the weekend, another flaw has become apparent. While the “why” accounts for a large portion of the slant on any news item, there is another one of the five Ws that contributes largely to bias. The “what.”

Here’s the hypothetical. Two people get into a fight. That’s a simple enough what, right? Except it tells us little about the truth. In order to understand the fight, we must understand first what happened. There’s that W. The problem is that eyewitness accounts can, and likely will, vary from person to person. One witness might say that Bob insulted Will’s mother, which led Will to shove Bob, which led to Bob slugging will in the nose. Another account might have Will wielding a small knife, and Bob knocking him out in self defense. Surely, Will and Bob themselves are going to differ in their accounts.

The point is that the “what” can be as bad as the “why.” Yet both can contribute to our understanding of the story. We would feel more connected to the story if we knew that Will had an affair with Bob’s wife. That’s part of the “why” of this hypothetical fight. Not as many people would pay attention to the story of a fight if they didn’t know why it took place.

So those five Ws, all five of ‘em, plus the H, are important to news reporting. However, what I think I’ve displayed here, and what plenty of people smarter than me understand, is that finding the “objective truth” is a fruitless endeavor. Yes, there are many instances where the facts are clear cut, where we can say: “These people were involved in such and such an incident, which took place at X location at Y time, and happened because of blah blah blah.” Yet the majority of what you see in the paper isn’t this clear. The “what” is open to many interpretations, of which only one, maybe two, is given lip service in the paper.

If the “what” and the “why” of a story are open to interpretation in most cases, then why does the mainstream media still purport objectivity? Narrative isn’t bad, unless you believe it’s the objective truth. While I’m sure most people see through that nowadays, it doesn’t stop major news outlets from trying to swing the news their way. While I’m not thankful for the number of jobs lost in the industry, I am thankful that poor strategy is now facing the penalty.

Changing the way we read the news

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Blogging and New Media

The Internet has changed the way we receive and digest the news, right? I hear that a lot, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that news is pretty much business as usually, only on a wider scale. The difference is in the dissemination, but really, how much do we benefit from this?

Two weeks ago, I talked about trimming down RSS feeds in order to curb superfluous information. I think I was on the right track, seeing as my RSS list has completely changed since then. It contains zero feeds that update more than once daily. Most of them don’t even update that frequently.

Why such a drastic cut? Simply, because there are far better ways to get information than by subscribing to, say, a political blog that shares ten or fifteen stories a day. That’s the old model, really. It’s on a larger scale, since we can now cull a number of sources and view them in once place. But is that really expanding our horizons?

Timely news is distracting

The immediacy of the Web can be a boon in some regards. We can communicate quicker than ever, allowing for an unprecedented level of collaboration. Projects can move quicker, and people can gain more control over their lives by telecommuting rather than wasting hours in traffic every day, and wasting countless further hours on the Internet during the workday. It also brings access to massive amounts of information with a few clicks and a well-defined search string.

On the negative end is the instantaneous news dissemination. Of course, having a vehicle with which to deliver truly breaking news is invaluable. The problem is that we’re also disseminating lesser news stories, and even non-news stories with just as much immediacy. Earl Nightingale’s observation of the human mind plays a close parallel. Just as the human mind is mostly used for small, insignificant things rather than big, important things, so the Internet is used for smaller bits of news that don’t help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

For an example, we need to look no further than the Democratic primary election period. Every day, writers filed news sites with stories on the primary. We heard narrative on top of narrative. –Obama has an insurmountable lead. Hillary leads the popular vote. If this was winner-take-all, Hillary would be winning. The actions of Obama’s preacher makes him an unfit candidate.– And that’s just the surface. Now, how many of these stories are of any significance now? Not even Jeremiah Wright, who some people found so abhorrent that he was said to have ruined Obama’s campaign, plays a role in our daily lives any more. It all turned out to be overblown rhetoric.

Allowing time for the muse

I prefer to read accounts of the news a few days after it occurs. By that, I don’t mean going back and reading posts from days previous. I mean finding sources that are taking a deeper look at the news after the fact. This way, I know the writer has taken the time to read the news himself, filter out the junk (which is most of it), and come up with a reasoned opinion. Even better if it’s partisan slanted. It makes me want to go find what the other side is saying.

The problem with getting news from sources like The Atlantic bloggers is that the writers have little time to digest and muse on a topic. Posts go up at least every hour, so there’s a constant pressure to find something discussion worthy, add a pithy comment or two, and post on it. I hate to pile it on with them, but to me they’re becoming a culprit in the new media game. There is certainly such thing as too much information.

The good news is that many of the pieces they link to — that is, when they’re not linking to their cronies’ equally impulsive posts — are well-thought-out views. I feel much better, though, clicking over to one of their blogs at the end of the day and browsing through for interesting links. That way, my RSS reader contains what I know I want to read, and my bookmarks serve as jumping off points for finding material I might want to read.

Cutting out the unnecessary

Since I’ve cut down on my timely reading, I’ve begun to wonder if there is any real value in it. If there is such thing as too much information, then trying to digest the daily news must be a symptom of it. However, maybe it’s not the information itself that causes overload. Perhaps it’s the narrative fallacy at work, saturating us with far too much valueless information. We’d be far better off digesting pure facts.

This is why I never understood the mainstream media. They purport to be objective, which we know is an impossible claim. The only way to be objective is to state only facts, and that simply isn’t interesting material, at least in the minds of editors and publishers across the country. Instead, they create narratives, which feed readers’ supposed hunger. We seek stories which connect events. Journalistic narrative sates that hunger. But at the same time, it precludes any overtures of objectivity.

Part of the reason I’ve clung to new media is that the participants generally know their place within the media realm. Others report, bloggers decide. True, some are more self-important than others, but you’re going to find that in any medium. The overall point is that bloggers understand that they are biased, and few even try to veil it. Readers flock to these sources because they’re getting genuine opinion. All the better if it’s well-reasoned and not posted in a timely manner.

Separating the “why”

What would be objective journalism? One paragraph, maybe two, stating the who, what, when, and where aspect of the story. The “how” might be included, but only if the facts are indisputble. The “why” would be completely eschewed. Leave the why for a few days later, when we have had a chance to process the information and see how it connects, if at all, with other factual accounts.

A section of related facts would work well here. Then again, because humans would be doing the editing, there would be a natural progression towards fabricating reasons for related facts, in order to create a new wave of narrative. Still, it is far better than a 750-word news account which gives us all the vital information in the first two paragraphs, followed by a superficial connection of related matters.

(The worst thing in that model, incidentally, is that there’s usually a relevant bit of information buried within the narrative.)

How many people would read such a publication? Too few would be my guess. It seems that people are far more interested in the slant on stories than the facts. Which is why the mainstream media is doing such a terrible job and is in such disarray. People want that searing opinion, and they’re proving it by flocking to blogs, the epitome of bias. It would help, though, if the mainstream media could make the distinction between fact and opinion.

How to achieve anything

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Personal Development

The genre of “self-help” has always bugged the crap out of me. Why? Who knows. It’s at least partly because there are so many books like the unreadable Wake Up! You’re Alive that it puts a stain on the entire genre. Yet, we can learn plenty from the self-help section if we choose our texts wisely.

The man who set me on the right path can be found almost exclusively in the self-help section of your local bookstore: Earl Nightingale. You might see programs of his like Lead The Field in business, but it all has the underlying theme of self-help. Or, rather, self growth. That’s what we’re all going for, isn’t it? To grow as people into something greater than we are now.

Nightingale’s ideas are also espoused by Viktor Franlk in his psychology/self-help tome Man’s Search for Meaning. Together, they lay the foundation for anyone looking to remove themselves from their current station in life and achieve the goals of their dreams.

The message, in short, is that we need a clear idea of where we want to end up. Frankl relates that his experience in concentration camps revealed to him that prisoners with visions and hopes for the future survived at a far greater rate than the norm, which was about one in 28. Nightingale tell us that we become what we think about, citing thinkers throughout history who came up with the idea time and time again.

While both men reveal a powerful aspect of the human potential, they leave their message as that. Create a goal, and think about it all the time. Nightingale goes so far as to say, on Side B of The Strangest Secret, to not do anything other than think about your goal; the rest will fall into place. Unfortunately, the world does not work that way. We can get on the right path by thinking about our goals, hopes, and dreams, and we can use these thoughts to help guide us back there if we fall astray. However, thinking alone will not push us along the path.

This is where Steven Pressfield becomes critical. Surely, many people had conceived of the idea of Resistance before he wrote The War of Art. But he put it into such concise terms that it resonates with nearly everyone who reads the book. The pull quote on the cover of the version I own, “a kick in the ass,” absolutely nails it.

When we combine the works of Nightingale, Frankl, and Pressfield (among many others, of course), it becomes apparent that we must not only hold a vision of our future, but that we must do everything in our power to achieve it. Turning Pro, Pressfield calls it, and it boils down to doing your shit, and doing it well. Like a pro. You can see this theme woven throughout the writings of Tucker Max, Ryan Holiday, and Ian Claudius. It’s really no wonder that they’re getting ahead in life.

Don’t get me wrong, though; you don’t have to do what they do in order to get head. You don’t have to be a writer, a promoter, a producer, or whatever the hell it is Ryan Holiday does, to get ahead. Each person’s meaning, and therefore each person’s hopes and dreams and goals, are personal to him or herself. We can, however, observe a few powerful and universal laws which they espouse.

Know this: If you can conceive of an ideal, implement a plan to achieve that ideal, and spend all of your waking energy pursuing it, I can’t see you failing in the long term. There will be plenty of obstacles and small failures along the way. Some of the obstacles might seem insurmountable, and some of the failures might seem ultimate. But it is our ability to forget impossibilities and put failures behind us that define our journey through life.

I know I’ll hit plenty along the way, just like the next guy. And that’s pretty much why I’m here. To talk about forces holding us back, to cast them aside in the name of achieving anything.

Don’t like it? Change the world

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Meditations

There comes a point in every young man’s and woman’s life when we see that the system is broken. Things simply aren’t as they should be. Most of us start centering conversations around these topics of injustice. Some start blogs. The really ambitious make a career out of talking about it. Yet, when viewing the world from a macro level, none of the above are doing much to alter the grand scheme.

The Internet has given space to anyone who has an opinion. If you sift through the lard, you’re bound to find some wonderful ideas which would improve our country and our world. So why are few, if any, of them implemented? Because for every good idea, there is, more often than not, a counter idea which is just as valid. It goes further than that, too.

A few years ago, I looked deeply into becoming a copywriter. While that never panned out, I did learn a number of invaluable lessons. First and foremost, as it applies here, people tend not to listen to reason and logic when making a decision. You don’t sell someone a guitar because it has a maple neck and a Floyd Rose tremolo system. You sell them the guitar based on your — being the salesman — ability to make them picture themselves with the guitar. You can list all the factual reasons you want why this person should want that guitar. But if you fail to inspire their imagination, you’ve lost the sale.

The idea, then, is to help people imagine what life would be like if your ideas were implemented. Of course, if it were that simple — I actually don’t know what would happen if it were that simple. One might, with a fine imagination and a finer grasp on the English language, inspire people by showing them life as it could be. The problem there is that someone else with an equally fine imagination and an even finer grasp of the English language is likely inspiring people with a counterpoint. Which is great. It is free speech the way it was intended.

Even if you’re able to paint a picture of life under your ideals, and are further able to back up that portrait with facts and logic, the world still likely won’t change. There’s a bureaucracy between your ideas and their implementation. As we know from the Iron Law of Bureaucracy, it’s no simple task passing measures through one. The bureaucracy is far too concerned with advancing its own interests to do what it was conceived to do. So we’re left with words on a page.

How do we change the world, then? The only way I can think of is through art. In order for people to really pick up on an idea, they have to make the connection themselves. Someone so inclined could talk about the benefits of a single-payer healthcare system from every conceivable angle. She could paint a brilliant portrait of America under a single-payer system. She might find many followers by doing this, and these may be outspoken people who will further her message. Yet still change is not likely. There are simply too many people who prefer the status quo.

With art, though, we are afforded as much subtlety as we see fit. We can create something that demonstrates our worldview, rather than disseminating it. We can talk about one thing while really talking about another, as they say good poets do. This allows the observer to make the connection for him or herself. Only then can you inspire true change in people. If you lay it out for them, you might convince them on one level, but the change will not transform their being.

Art moves. Art has gravitas. Art is life. Use it for good.

Exposing bias in judging art

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Reviews

We all have our own biases. Art touches us in different ways and elicits varied emotional responses. So why do we think that music reviewers, or any art reviewers for that matter, can somehow be objective? Don’t the reviewers have their own biases that play into the review? Of course they do, no matter how they try to feign objectivity.

More to the point, why would we want a so-called objective review of art? It seems to me that an effective reviewer would be up front about his biases, and try to conduct his review through that lens. And if you decide that your music/painting/photography/writing views don’t match up with the reviewer’s, you can move along to someone else who might share a worldview.

I plan to do art reviews on the site from time to time, and I plan to put my biases right out there for everyone to see. I’m going to do mostly literature and music, so let’s start off with the latter. The best place to pick out my musical biases is to examine what’s on my iPod. It’s a 30 gigger, and I’m at the point where I have to remove something every time I add. So this is pretty representative of my taste in music.

First 100 songs on random (comments when warranted):
Note: After running this, I realized that a number of my very favorite bands did not make the list. They include Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Queen, Boston, Gorillaz, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Thin Lizzy, Weezer, Tom Waits, Muse, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Grand Funk, and AC/DC. Wow. That’s quite a list in addition to the 100…

Read the rest of this entry »

No excuses that I know

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Personal Development

Chances are that you’ve already excused yourself from an important task today. I know I have. When I make an excuse for not doing something — usually to the tune of, “I don’t have to do that now” — I tend to feel shame afterwards. This would be great if shame acted as a motivator. Instead, it acts as the complete opposite. Shame breeds shame, which leads to us creating more excuses for ourselves. Eventually, it can land you in the gutter.

The typical cycle of shame

Let’s take a hybrid scenario, part real, part fabricated to emphasize the point. I set aside time to write every day, usually around 4 p.m. This way, I can get my day’s work done without blacking out an hour where I have no contact with the outside world. It also helps, because 4 is also do-able on weekends. If I’m going out at night, I won’t leave until after then, and if I’m running around in the morning, I’m typically back by then. So 4:00 works, even if I have to slide it a bit some days.

I’ve been keeping the chain in tact for 15 days, and I want nothing more than to break my record of 20. Ideally, I’d never break it. I’d write every day, like it was the best habit I’ve ever had. But Resistance, as Steven Pressfield would say, keeps rearing its head. And so I miss a day.

Naturally, I start to feel bad about missing that day. While I should be thinking about how I’m going to sit down at 4:00 tomorrow to do my work, I’m just feeling bad for myself. And when 4:00 draws near the next day, I remember how easy it was to skip yesterday. I don’t feel as bad about skipping the second day. It becomes incrementally easier every day. Eventually, the whole project is marooned.

Finding your own way out

Everyone is going to have his or her own way of getting out of the cycle, but we can all take heed of a few concepts that give us a better perspective of the situation. Often, just realizing your priorities can jump start your motivation.

The main idea is to distinguish between urgent and important tasks. There are some things that simply must be taken care of immediately. That makes them urgent, though not necessarily important. There are some things you should do every day. They may be important, but because they’re not urgent they’re easier to skip. And so we lose sight of our priorities.

I’ve always been told to draw four boxes and label them Important Not Urgent, Important Urgent, Not Important Urgent, Not Important Not Urgent. Then, figure out which task fits in which box, and voila! Do your Important Not Urgent tasks first, or else make sure they’re scheduled and stuck to.

Typically, those are your top priorities, because they involve work and practice. They further typically do not offer immediate gratification, so your mind is more apt to relegate them to a lesser importance. This is what makes them so easy to skip.

I’ve prioritized. Now what?

No one can really tell you what to do at this stage. Once you’ve set your priorities, figuring out how to act on them is all up to you. For some people, the very act of getting their priorities straight will give them that kick in the ass. Others might like to listen to motivational audio programs, like The Strangest Secret. Journalling is another good way to work up a tank of motivation. Each one of us is going to do something different to light our own fires.

Chances are, some day down the line, your fire will wane and those excuses to not do what’s important will start to look pretty tempting. This is when a little push of willpower could do wonders. The second an excuse is about to take hold of you and prevent you from continuing to work towards your goals, go back and start from the beginning. Reset your priorities. And then go back to that point of motivation. Hell, you could even experiment with new forms of motivation.

Staying conscious

In the end, all you can do is to remain aware of your thoughts. Recognize when you’re making excuses, and get yourself back to the correct frame of mind. And most importantly, realize that when you’re making excuses, you’re substituting an unimportant task for an important one. No one ever got anywhere doing that.

I know it deep down, too

Published by Joseph P. | Filed under Meditations

Over at The Imp, I have a rant of sorts up, which was inspired by The Grapes of Wrath. I remember loving the book in high school. That and To Kill A Mockingbird were actually the only two books I read sophomore year that I actually finished. And yet, I majored in English in college. Go figure.

Anyway, there’s a passage towards the beginning, from Jim Casy, a former preacher. He’s spent some time alone, and he’s been thinking a lot about life and what it means. It seems to me that he’s got a decent grasp on the matter.

“I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the Holy Sperit–the human sperit–the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a sudden–I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.”

I’m sure I didn’t fully understand what Casy was saying back then. But not only do I understand now, I’ve come to a similar conclusion myself. It seems that so much emphasis has been placed on religion that it has become counter productive. That isn’t to say that one shouldn’t find a relationship with God. Spirituality is important. But I’d rather maintain my faith in the human mind.