Tag: blogger

Writing Addiction: Part 2

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Are YOU addicted to writing?

• Symptom #2: Writers Block Frightens you

As it happens, you’re actually thinking about writing. Your tummy feels nervous with excitement and your thoughts scatter ideas across your mind like Webster’s online dictionary. Now, everything is scatter brains and racing blood and completely unorganized but you do know that something’s there. Or at least you think you know. And then it happens. A title. A headline. A poem. A short story. A blog post. Wait? Which is it? You don’t know! Nonetheless, a theme, a topic, a spark of interest squeezes through the ziggly lines in your mind and makes it to the front. Your heart is beating loudly as you scramble for pieces of paper and an ink pen before throwing open the laptop. Yes, home sweet home! There they are: the letters you’ve been looking for! Here you are. You pick up that pen and notepad, that cell phone, that tablet, you wait patiently at the keyboard of the laptop. This is all so exciting! And then it happens. Silence. Nothing comes.

Not a word. You wait. And you continue to wait for an explanation. You stare angrily at the page and beat your fingers against the keys. You search for those ideas over and over again to try to convince yourself you have something. You close your eyes tight praying for a line, just a line! But nothing comes. And then alas, you close the program, shut down the computer, or simply throw the notebook at the wall. Yes, the whole thing. You crumble the paper into a ball, you throw that too before wiping away the tears. No, you’re not crying, you’ve just been at the computer too long and your eyes are all watery and tired as if you’ve done some work. That angers you. You got nothing done and you go to bed angry. This is when writers block has truly set in. Your husband / wife comes in, “Bae, what’s wrong?” You throw them a scowl. “What?” You snap back with attitude. “How dare he / she ask me what’s wrong!” You are out of control. Frightened. Scared. You need air. A relief. A pill. Do they have prescriptions for this?

The Message

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Social Media has become a glossed-over, cloudy place. It is filled with fake personas and instant celebrities. People post pictures of their cash and checks on Instagram, for instance, and weigh their worth against the backdrop of numbers and likes. Instead of focusing on the message, we have focused instead on the screen and have invested not in the voice but in the marketing and promotional schemes of so-called professionals who get rich off the backs of those of us who are too lazy to be ourselves.

Research is all fine and good, but what it boils down to is a balance between research, advice, and your overall message, and the people who care about what you have to say. If you rely too much on research and professional input, you may just miss the message.

People hear the word “message” and think religion or politics. This is not always so. If you have a voice, which we all do, then you have a message. We can define a message as:

“A communication containing some information, news, advice, request, or the like, sent by messenger, telephone, email, or other means.”

When someone writes a book, they are sending a message out into the world. It doesn’t really matter what the book is about; every book has a message because every book has a voice. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the online aspect of writing that we forget how important the message is. It is not the marketing plans that will bring readers to you. At least not in the beginning. In the beginning, it’s not a strategy, it’s truth. It’s your message. It’s your voice. Do you have one?

“Focus on what makes you different, what makes you unique. Being true to yourself is a cliche for a reason — it works. People don’t want to connect with something fake. They want to feel understood and heard, and the only way you do that is honestly and authentically. The last thing you want is to showcase to the world a shadow of your true self.” – Curiouser Editor

What do you want to say to the world? Why does it matter? Why is it different than what the previous person has already said? The sky is blue. Why is the sky blue? Why is it important for us to know that the sky is blue? Is the sky blue?

People who agree with you will flock to you because you sing in a key similar to their own. They are the people who actually want to read your books and who will, in turn, support your work. The only way to do this, as Curiouser Editing has stated, is to showcase your real self in your writing, but not just in your writing, in your overall social media presence in general.

Writing Addiction: Part 1

I once heard that “if you wake up in the morning and all you can think about is writing, then you’re a writer” (ok so that was actually Sister Act 2, but I did say this is what I HEARD).

picAre YOU addicted to writing?

Are you SURE about that?

• Symptom #1: You Take Your Computer to The Movies

Now that is what I call OCD for writing, except this isn’t literal (I take that back, for some it just might be). With the technology these days, trees must be rejoicing from bark not shed for pencils….uh oh, I feel a poem coming on, but I’d stick to the topic here. Don’t wanna get stoned or nothing…you guys are tough.

So instead of walking around pen stuck to pad like we used to, there’s no way I’m gonna miss the opportunity to write a good story because of bad memory. So bye-bye eraser and hello backspace! From mini computers, Mac Books, Tablets, Notebooks, Lenovo’s, and even cell phones, all are getting in on the action. While many are not literally “taking their pcs to the movies”, today’s techno-nerds are practically glued to the cell phone. No matter where you turn you will not escape the hype; everyone has their fingers stuck to text messages and their eyes in one location: down. Every ten minutes we are scanning our fingers across tiny screens, updating social media post, scratching our heads for the next idea, and rolling our eyeballs at the slightest interruption. We spend hours researching, reading, revising, proofreading, and oh? That thing called eating? Not until this sentence is finished. Actually, this chapter. “Is that coffee?” We’ll take it!

Does this sound like you? If your husband/wife finds him/herself competing with you and the notepad on your smartphone, or you can’t stay away from the power switch and alphabet keys long enough to look up, I must say, you’re definitely showing signs of an addiction. Hey, c’mon now, don’t look at me like that. You do know the first step is admitting it….don’t you?

Our Deepest Fear

…is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

This is just an excerpt of the entire quote and its so deep to me. It’s not our failures or inabilities that stop us from going that extra mile. For many of us, its what we can do, our strengths, our gifts, and that light deep down inside of us that frighten us most.

SUNDAY’S THOUGHT OF THE DAY WITH POSIWORLD

Gentleness. Humility. Compassion. Freedom.

posiworld's avatarPOSIWORLD'S BLOG

“We need women who are so strong that they can be gentle, so educated that they can be humble, so fierce that they can be compassionate, so passionate that they can be rational, and so disciplined that they can be free,” 

-Kavita N. Ramdas

Posiworld’s thoughts: We need men like this too

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Separation From Blogging

The sun had not completely set on my first night away before I was flooded with post and story ideas. And by the time the sky was overspread with blackness and poured into my bedroom, I’d written two poems already. To what do I owe this sudden flood of inspiration? I suppose it’s because a relaxed mind is a creative mind, or so they say. But in my reflection, I’ve had a lot of time to think and have come to the conclusion that there is some truth to that saying; separation from the online scene does tend to resurrect a kind of motivation lost during the constant interaction online. Personally, the desire to force a thought on top white paper seems to ring too loudly when I want to write, or rather feel I have to as opposed to when I’m just living life. The anxious stroke of the pen, or the thrashing keyboard always comes in that moment when you’re consciously aware that you must scribble something into existence. You thus search desperately for something to spark a flame, something to satisfy this urge but pushing always pulls away. The more you push a thought, try as you must to force a post, the more ideas slip from your fingers like liquid desperation.

It is at this point that the mind needs to be set aside for a while. To separate, to relax, and to calm from the influx of emails, WordPress Readers, and advice on how we should transfer our thoughts on to the page or rather, the screen. This tends to, for me, bring to life a sudden rush of creativity. Where thoughts have been left to grow and to mature before hitting the spotlight. To give my thoughts a chance to breathe and to exist, all neatly wrapped and stored into this place inaccessible among the crowd but dancing in a place called solitude. Even this post for instance,  came easy, smooth and without effort. There was no question or debate or concern about what it would be like. It just existed and I let it be. Just a coming forth of thoughts I’d written down while sitting on my bed and yet not at all there. Somewhere uninterrupted by the perspective of others, whose words do tend to spark great creativity, but whose birth is not as beautiful as the new born torn from my own flesh. Words that come untainted and unscathed by opinion. Nothing but pure inspiration come from my own head, smack down in the midst of the quite.

Black Slaves, Native Masters

“I got Indian in my family.”

Is something I hear often among the black community. Even in my own family, my mom talks of how her dad was 100% Cherokee Indian and how our family were cow slaughters which explains my maiden last name which is Hereford, a kind of cow.

Black Slaves, Native Masters

However, while many black families are proud to proclaim their Native Heritage, what is rarely passed around our dinner tables is an important fact in American History. This fact being that even the 5 Civilized Indian Tribes held slaves. A lot of black people jump at the chance to proclaim the above statement because oppressed people typically wants to identify with other oppressed people but the truth is stranger than fiction. Native Americans were oppressed by Europeans but they both had black slaves. In fact, Native Americans knew the layout of the land better than anyone else and it was they who taught the Europeans how to track and to capture slaves. (This is why in last weeks Underground Episode the little boy asked the black slave, “You used to live with the Indians didn’t you? And you taught my daddy how to track.” He used to live with the Indians because he was their slave same as he is the slave to the little boys father. Underground is a very well written TV show).

“Though the harsh treatment of enslaved Africans largely paled in comparison to that of white slaveholders, Blacks still were treated as an underclass among Native Americas. The Five Civilized Tribes even established slave codes that protected owners’ property rights and restricted the rights of Blacks.”

(Barbara-Shae Jackson, The Atlanta Black Star)

What’s deep about my family history is this:

Cherokee is one of the tribes who took part in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (along with Chickasaw and others). In addition, the term “Cow-Boy” is also derivative of slavery. The slave boys who handled the cows were called cow boys. So when you watch Quentin Tarantino’s Django the content is actually not out of context far as the cow boy theme is concerned and my maiden name is potentially much more deep than we know.