An Afternoon Chuckle

Usually I can make these videos and other posts somehow relate to the writing life, but I’d really have to stretch pretty thin to make that work today.  Still, I thought this was pretty darn funny, even if it does have a laugh track.

Oh, Literature. How I’ve Missed You!

For some reason, it didn’t quite register when my husband pointed the camera at me as I opened my birthday gift a week and a half ago, that there was something truly special secreted under the purple flowered wrapping paper I’d bought during a school fundraising drive several years ago. It turns out that he wanted to capture the look on my face as I opened the package to find my biggest (current) materialistic dream had been fulfilled.

He bought me a Kindle. And I am in love. Um, with him. Yeah, that’s what I meant.

Here’s the not-so-flattering picture he got, by the way:

As someone who gave up the love of reading as life got more and more hectic and then a baby was thrown into the equation, I fondled my new electronic device with mixed emotions. Of course, I was elated by the gadget…and the fact that my darling husband had actually heard something I’d said in the past six months. But, there was the fear that I wouldn’t use it enough. That it would be a waste of money.

Fortunately, I’m already about 90% done with my first novel (Alice Sebold’s Almost Moon) and already have a wish list in mind. Next will be The Timetraveler’s Wife, and then is Wicked. (I’m telling you, I am really far behind in pop culture reading.)

But, I’m not content with my piddly little list of “must reads.” I am insatiable at the moment. That’s why I’m asking you to offer suggestions for my wish list. What should I read, and why? Tell me about your favorite fiction. What classics make the world a better place by their mere existence? Fill me in on industry books I should be reading. What authors will blow my mind? What’s the best nonfiction book I’ve been missing out on for these last several years?

Go crazy, people. I’m hoping to have a list of 100 “must-read” books that lets me know my husband will get his money’s worth out of this purchase.

We All Want It That Way

Yesterday I talked a bit about why it’s so great not to have an office job.  Then I saw this video, and I’m thinking it wouldn’t be all bad.  This totally made me smile, even if I do have this song stuck in my head now.

27 Writing Quotes, 1 for Every Occaision (ish)

A quick and dirty list of some of my favourite writing quotes for you to use in any article, post, diatribe, speech, dedication, mantra or bellow to the heavens. Hope you enjoy and feel free to add your own in the comments!

Ambition
1. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C.S. Lewis

The Aging Writer
2. With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
James Thurber

3. If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
Kingsley Amis

4. I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.
Jeffrey Bernard.

Research
5. Get the facts first. You can distort them later.
Mark Twain

Honing
6. The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
Mark Twain

7. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury

8. Every writer I know has trouble writing.
Joseph Heller quotes

Deadlines
9. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
Douglas Adams

10. Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
Paul Theroux

Procrastination
11. For a moment, nothing happened.Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
Douglas Adams

12. The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
Agatha Christie

13. Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance
Dan Greenburg

Getting It Right
14. A good novel tells us the truth about it’s hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

15. The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.
Richard Harding Davis

16. The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy

The Truth about Writing
17. A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.
William Faulkner

18. Let’s face it, writing is hell.
William Styron

20. For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Ernest Hemingway

21. I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.
Peter De Vries

22. The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly quotes

Criticism
23. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker

Getting Paid
24. The free-lance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley

25. The large print giveth, but the small print taketh away.
Tom Waits

Companions
26. A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.
Barbara Holland

27. A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.
P. L. Travers

Double Ds

Below you will find several sets of letters. If you add the same letter to both the beginning and the end of the group, you will have formed a real word. For example, _REA_ would become “DREAD” when a D is placed at the beginning and the end. Put your answers in the comments without peeking at what other people have written.

1. _ubia_
2. _hrea_
3. _he_
4. _are_

The Flow!

OK, that’s enough putting it off, we have to sit down and get on with it.

However, now that I have explored what it is to have ambition, be inspired and then become a procrastinator, where do we go?

Where can we go?

Productivity isn’t something that you switch on and off as a writer, you have to achieve the zen like state of ‘Flow’. We’ve all experienced it, that feeling that you may never finish typing because the words aren’t just flowing out of you they are somehow jumping out before you barely think of them. It’s that glorious feeling that you are blissfully slightly out of control but, like a poker winning streak, you shouldn’t mess with it, you should just go with it. Officially, Flow is the operative mental state in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing with an energised focus, complete involvement and feeling of complete success in the process of the activity. It was discovered by a guy defined Csíkszentmihályi and he identified  nine factors that accompanies the experience of flow:

1. Clear goals – clear attainable goals allow our crazy, wild expectations to become tangible, something to aspire to. The smaller the goals within a wider context, the easier it will be to view progress against your big dream.
2. Concentration – see my previous posts about distractions! It’s not hard to be 100% focused but there are steps to take to be able to maintain concentration to be able to slip in your creative trance.
3. According to our massively monickered friend, within the feeling of flow a loss of self-consciousness leads to the feeling of the merging of action and awareness. Think of it like being the Bruce Lee of writing and waving your fingers at the empty screen before writing.
4. You may experience a distorted sense of time like when you sit down, effectively black out and come around to see a couple of thousand words and a empty wine glass. Or bottle, but that would perhaps explain the black-out.
5. After briefly flicking through your newly filled pages, you will find that it’s mostly good stuff. The total immersion you experience you to connect to the words that you’re writing and allow it to bring out your best.
6. You will also surprise yourself by writing some of your best stuff. Stuff that you probably didn’t even realise that was in you. It may start to sound like some sort of religious experience and I suppose it is if you worship words!
7. Although a great deal of the process of this feeling may feel like you are out of control, you are actually very much so. It is all within you in the first place, this is just a method of controlling your output. Like putting your volume up to 11.
8. The actual feeling of performing the act of creating is intrinsically rewarding, so the flow become self fulfilling like a your own solar panel. The more you work, the more you want.
9. Once you have become become absorbed in your activity, and your focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, there is an action awareness merging that effectively turns you into a writing superhero. I suggest you have a superhero word such as, “Flame On” to really get the full effect.

So there you have it, that is ‘The Flow’, my take on a serious, psychological topic with my own little twist on it. So, get to it; “FLAME ON”!

PS Sorry I haven’t posted recently, I’ve been a bit ill, better now though!

Double Ds

Below you will find several sets of letters. If you add the same letter to both the beginning and the end of the group, you will have formed a real word. For example, _REA_ would become “DREAD” when a D is placed at the beginning and the end. Put your answer in the comments without looking at what other people have said.

1. _quat_
2. _ero_
3. _inimalis_
4. _ro_

Stars!

Each phrase is a clue about a particular person. You will find that two (sometimes more) letters have been replaced in the clue by stars. The missing letters will be used to begin each word of the answer. For example, if the clue was “Talksho* H*st,” you would figure out that it is a talkshow host with the initials “O.W.” (Oprah Winfrey)

1. *urrealistic *rawer: __________
2. low*r cas* poetry s*ribe: _________
3. Comman*er, Freela*ce Writing Jobs: __________
4. Jeop*rdy! Know-I*-All: __________

Leave your answers in the comments. How many can you get without looking them up?

Stars!

So, I have a new game for us to try out here at the Other Stuff blog today. I call it stars because it uses asterisks, and because it usually deals with famous people. Here’s how it works:

Each phrase is a clue about a particular person. You will find that two (sometimes more) letters have been replaced in the clue by stars. The missing letters will be used to begin each word of the answer. For example, if the clue was “Talksho* H*st,” you would figure out that it is a talkshow host with the initials “O.W.” (Oprah Winfrey)

As always, leave your answers in the comments, and don’t peek at the others before you post your own. Honor system and all that…

1. Nineteen Ei*hty F*ur: __________
2. *aVinci Code *estseller: __________
3. The Hand*aid’s T*le: __________
4. Cre*tor of The Lovely Bone*: __________

Double Ds 2

It seems like you’re enjoying the idea of word games here on the Other Stuff blog. Sweet! Let’s try another round of Double Ds.

Below you will find several sets of letters. If you add the same letter to both the beginning and the end of the group, you will have formed a real word. For example, _REA_ would become “DREAD” when a D is placed at the beginning and the end.

1. _eve_
2. _ar_
3. _atc_
4. _atastrophi_

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