ALEX NOBLE - WRITING JOURNAL-2015

The New Diary - Tristine Rainer

 

 

The New Diary is about a completely modern concept of journal writing. It has little to do with the rigid daily calendar diary you may have kept as a child or the factual travelogue you wrote to recall the Grand Canyon. Instead, it is a tool for tapping the full power of your inner resources.

The New Diary is as much for those who already keep a journal as it is for those who have never kept one. It does not tell you the "right" way to keep a diary; rather, it offers numerous possibilities for using the diary to achieve your own purposes. It is a place for you to clarify goals, visualize the future, and focus your engergies; a means of freeing your intuition and imagination; a workbook for exploring your dreams, your past, and your present life.

It is for everyone seeking concrete methods for dealing with personal problems. It is for women and men interested in achieving self-reliance and inner liberation, for artists and writers seeking new techniques for overcoming blocks to creativity.

 

MoreThan Singing, More Than Speaking - With Jocelyn Rasmussen

 

 

www.morethansinging.com

 

MORE THAN SINGING, LLC is committed to creating a world where:

• People have affordable access to tools and information to help them realize and develop the power and beauty of their voices.

• People feel comfortable to sing which supports self-esteem, expression and harmonious community.

• Singing, recognized as a complement to wellness and growth, is utilized to improve concentration, imagination, productivity and emotional balance in diverse settings.


W H Y   I S   I T   M O R E
T H A N   S I N G I N G  ?

Jocelyn hears more than singing in the human voice. She hears the beauty of a life speaking its truth and passions, the resolution of a human spirit in word and song.

 

See Biographical Information About Jocelyn, Below:

 

 

Alex Noble - Writing Secrets: What to Do When Your Muse Leaves Town

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 You want to write. You intend to write. You almost wrote something yesterday, but… You know you have worlds to say. But all you can do is stare at the blank page. 

Stare, stare, stare. You feel stuck, empty, useless, unworthy, ridiculous, a pretender in the world of ideas. You feel shame, guilt, despair.

Nothing comes.  If feels as though your Muse has left town for Mozambique, with no forwarding address and her cell phone number is no longer in service. What to do?  There is a name for it, and your condition is called “Writer’s Block.”

The good news is that there is a cure.

How to Write a Memoir - William Zinsser

 

 

Be yourself, speak freely, and think small

By William Zinsser

 

One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.” Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own—and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age—do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore. “What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to America?” “Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest where my mother grew up?”

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into. That record can take many shapes. It can be a formal memoir—a careful act of literary construction. Or it can be an informal family history, written to tell your children and your grandchildren about the family they were born into. It can be the oral history that you extract by tape recorder from a parent or a grandparent too old or too sick to do any writing. Or it can be anything else you want it to be: some hybrid mixture of history and reminiscence. Whatever it is, it’s an important kind of writing. Too often memories die with their owner, and too often time surprises us by running out.

 

Epiphanies

 

Here are two definitions of "epiphany":

1.

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

2.

a literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

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Assignment:  Read the excerpts below from Richard Wright's novel, "Black Boy," from an article by Chet Raymo.  Let these moments liberate your memory and imagination to create some of your own epiphanies in your journal.  These can stand on their own, or be woven into a poem or short, short story. Write Now! GO!

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"There Was..."
by Chet Raymo

"Richard Wright's classic 1945 memoir "Black Boy" recounts his childhood in the racially charged South of the 1920s. It is a heartbreaking tale of poverty, hunger, prejudice- and triumph against all odds. Several times in the book, Wright breaks the traditional narrative to list, litany-like, remembered epiphanies:

    'There was the delight I caught in seeing long straight rows of red and green vegetables stretching away in the sun to the bright horizon.'

    'There was the faint, cool kiss of sensuality when dew came on to my cheeks and shins as I ran down the wet green garden paths in the early morning.'

    'There was the tantalizing melancholy in the tingling scent of burning hickory wood.'

"I Want You To Want Me" - Interactive Art Installation - MOMA

 

Make Your Own Beautiful Book - Print on Demand!

 

A Book Published by Blurb: See Blurb Bookstore

 

Full Information at: www.blurb.com

With Blurb, you’ll find all the tools you need to make your own photo book, whether you’re making a personalized wedding album, cookbook, baby book, travel photo book, or fundraising book.

Count on bookstore-quality printing and binding, and a range of choices from Hardcover photobooks to Softcover paperbacks in an array of trim sizes. Use any of our free online bookmaking tools to create your own book.

Learn how to publish a book and much more with our free how-to tips and tutorials or watch our two-minute BookSmart video and see how easy it is to make a coffee table photo book. Be sure to register and subscribe to Blurb emails to get the news first on Blurb events and promo code coupon offers.

 

 

Digital Photo Journals and eBooks: Try Mixbook!

What is Mixbook?

Mixbook is the easy and fun way to make completely customizable photo books, cards, and calendars on the web – for free. With Mixbook, you aren’t limited to static pre-designed templates – our powerful design software gives you the freedom to lay out and design your creations to your heart’s content. We’ve dedicated ourselves to bringing you the best experience in creating photo products so that you can make keepsakes that truly reflect your vision. With Mixbook, you can truly Make It Yours™.

Full Information at the MixBook site: www.mixbook.com

Read What Educators are Saying About Mixbook

Want to Write Children's Books?

 

 

Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.

 Winnie The Pooh

 

The Institute for Children's Literature

For more than 40 years, the Institute of Children’s Literature has offered the premiere writing course to adults interested in learning how to write and be published for children and teens.  The hallmark of our course is one-on-one personalized instruction from an impressive faculty of active professional writers and experienced editors.  College Credits are available for our course.  Instruction is conveniently available everywhere via the traditional home study method – with lessons exchanged through the mail or via the Internet.

 

This site offers information on our course, Writing for Children and Teenagers, on our teaching methods, and on our faculty of professional writers and editors. The objective of our course and instructors is to train you to create manuscripts for today’s publishing market.  Please go to the Short Story or to the Full Story for details on our course and how you can benefit from it.

For fun, you may want to go immediately to "Our Instructors". We're very proud of our instructors because they are all established writers or editors. They've been there; they know how it's done; and one of them would be your teacher and mentor all the way through the course. Check them out.

 

Ira Glass on Storytelling

 

 

What Would You Take to a Desert Island? (New Yorker)

 

Assignment:  When asked what he would take to a desert island, Playwrite George Bernard Shaw replied: "Seven blank books."  The article below details what a number of folks would take to their island, and is entertaining as well as informative.  This is a most useful thought exercise, and makes for a useful journal entry, as one realizes how one's chosen items may change over time.  So here we go: What would YOU take to a desert island, using, if you wish, the specifications set out in the article below? Write Now!  GO!

 

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Seven Decades of Desert Island Discs

Posted by Judith Thurman

January 30, 2012

 

 

Yesterday morning, as dawn was breaking in Manhattan, and Londoners were enjoying a late Sunday breakfast, I tuned in to BBC Radio 4 to hear the seventieth-anniversary broadcast of “Desert Island Discs,” an hour-long, live interview show that first aired on January 29, 1942.

      For seven decades, “Desert Island Discs” has been introduced by the same theme song, “By the Sleeping Lagoon,” composed in 1930, by Eric Coats, and every week a new “castaway” of distinction is asked to name the eight tracks of music, one luxury item, and one book that he or she would choose to be marooned with. (One also gets the Bible, or its equivalent, and the complete works of Shakespeare.) There are only two longer-running shows in radio history: a British program of religious music, and “The Grand Old Opry.”

 

The Blossoming of Creation - Visionary Artist Leigh McCloskey (TEDx Talk)

 

 

 

 

An artist must always strive towards what he does not know.

On a certain level IDEA gives rise to a form or vessel within which to explore its creative potential. This form can be a sound, a symbol or a universe depending on the strength of the idea. This is the basis of my work as a painter and as a creator of forms.

The creative force behind my art transcends any definition I apply to explain it. Art cannot be explained so as to compress it into obeying the intellect. It can only be draped with meaning for the sake of economy. If a painting is good it will not remain static or secure for long.

Any appearance of solidity or stability is a mental composition made up of an infinite number of bits of information. Without conscious work to try and continually push the parameters of thought and form awareness becomes congealed. Awareness is based upon ideas which in and of themselves possess a force or will to expand and grow. When this force is too quickly inhibited by the intellect or a prevailing belief system it dies leaving only a sense of the structure which the idea possessed, but not its living insight which would have continued to lead to new awareness.

 Leigh McCloskey

www.leighmccloskey.com

 

WE ARE NOT BORN INTO TIME WE ARE BORN INTO CREATION

WE ARE EACH A PHOENIX A UNIQUE BLOSSOM OF CREATION

WHOLE-HOLY-HOLOGRAPHIC

EACH OF US WEAR THE ROBES OF OUR SACRED DNA

AND LIFE IS OUR INHERITANCE FROM THE ANCESTORS

LET US BE WORTHY OF THEM

AND THIS GREAT, DIFFICULT AND NOBLE ADVENTURE IN CONSCIOUSNESS, ART

AND MEANING CALLED BEING HUMAN.

 

The Web's Secret Stories - Jonathan Harris (TED Talk)

 

 

Please, please, please watch this!  It is wondrous. It will cheer you up!!!

Assignment:  Enjoy this inspiring TED Talk by Jonathan Harris, on his remarkable project, "We Feel Fine."  In your journal, write a short entry in terms of how you are feeling right at this moment.  This is a good bit of Soul Yoga to do regularly. 

The Local-Global Flip or "The Lanier Effect" (Edge)

 

 

A Conversation with Computer Visionary Jaron Lanier [8.29.11]

 

Source:  http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip

"If you aspire to use computer network power to become a global force through shaping the world instead of acting as a local player in an unfathomably large environment, when you make that global flip, you can no longer play the game of advantaging the design of the world to yourself and expect it to be sustainable. The great difficulty of becoming powerful and getting close to a computer network is: Can people learn to forego the temptations, the heroin-like rewards of being able to reform the world to your own advantage in order to instead make something sustainable?"

 

"I strongly urge you to read this truly epic interview with Jaron Lanier at Edge. ... It's an extraordinary interview, packed with insight and often grimly funny." Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon.com

"Fascinating conversation with Jaron Lanier, influential computer scientist. On economics of the Internet – implications of networked technology, destruction of middle class and dark side of new media". — Writing Worth Reading, The Browser.com

 

What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation ? (Edge)

"The World's Smartest Website."

— John Naughton, The Observer 

Scientists' greatest pleasure comes from theories that derive the solution to some deep puzzle from a small set of simple principles in a surprising way. These explanations are called "beautiful" or "elegant". Historical examples are Kepler's explanation of complex planetary motions as simple ellipses, Bohr's explanation of the periodic table of the elements in terms of electron shells, and Watson and Crick's double helix. Einstein famously said that he did not need experimental confirmation of his general theory of relativity because it "was so beautiful it had to be true."

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT,
OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?

Since this question is about explanation, answers may embrace scientific thinking in the broadest sense: as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, including other fields of inquiry such as philosophy, mathematics, economics, history, political theory, literary theory, or the human spirit. The only requirement is that some simple and non-obvious idea explain some diverse and complicated set of phenomena.

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and George Dyson for their ongoing advice and support.]

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Andrei Linde

Father of "Eternal Chaotic Inflation"; Professor of Physics, Stanford University

Excerpt: To summarize, the inflationary multiverse consists of myriads of 'universes' with all possible laws of physics and mathematics operating in each of them. We can only live in those universes where the laws of physics allow our existence, which requires making reliable predictions. In other words, mathematicians and physicists can only live in those universes which are comprehensible and where the laws of mathematics are efficient.

One can easily dismiss everything that I just said as a wild speculation. It seems very intriguing, however, that in the context of the new cosmological paradigm, which was developed during the last 30 years, we might be able, for the first time, to approach one of the most complicated and mysterious problems which bothered some of the best scientists of the 20th century.

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Why Is Our World Comprehensible?

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." This is one of the most famous quotes from Albert Einstein. "The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle." Similarly, Eugene Wigner said that the unreasonable efficiency of mathematics is "a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Thus we have a problem that may seem too metaphysical to be addressed in a meaningful way: Why do we live in a comprehensible universe with certain rules, which can be efficiently used for predicting our future?

One could always respond that God created the universe and made it simple enough so that we can comprehend it. This would match the words about a miracle and an undeserved gift. But shall we give up so easily? Let us consider several other questions of a similar type. Why is our universe so large? Why parallel lines do not intersect? Why different parts of the universe look so similar? For a long time such questions looked too metaphysical to be considered seriously. Now we know that inflationary cosmology provides a possible answer to all of these questions. Let us see whether it might help us again.

Write & Share Your Life Stories!

 

Writing Assignment:  From the life-history questions below, choose one and write a short vignette focused on this subject.  Over time, using these questions, you can create a collection which can grow into a full memoir.  Or, you may wish to just create stand-alone life stories in your journal.  Write Now! GO!

Consider: Choose events to write about from your life as it is happening right now - small life stories which can eventually become part of  a memoir.

The questions below are from  Write My Memoirs, a site dedicated to supporting writers who wish to create an autobiography.

Read more at:  http://www.writemymemoirs.com/index/about_us.html

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How many people lived in your family home when you were a child? Did your extended family – grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins -- live under the same roof, or very near by?

SMASH Books - Another Way to Keep a Journal!

 

 

Check out a whole lot of SMASHBook Stories at:

 

http://www.smashstoriesblog.com/

 

Read a SMASHBook story from Charlotte in France:

 

Advice to New Writers from Po Bronson

 

Full Biography and other information about Po's books and articles at:

http://www.pobronson.com

 

Excerpt:

Find a few good role models. You only need a few, maybe only one. Let them inspire you. Art reacts to art. All good books are a work of art that is a creative reaction to other art.

Always tell a story. It grounds the reader in a shared experience.

Understand voice. Write the same sentence ten different ways by imitating the writing voices of ten different writers. 

Practice plots. Understand different ways to tell the same story – the difference between hiding a surprise and foreshadowing it, for instance. Starting a story in the middle versus its natural beginning, et cetera. Learn what creates suspense, forward lean, keeps the pages turning.

Journalism first or fiction first? (Grad school in Journalism or Grad school in Creative Writing?) There is no way to answer this. This is an artificial question. It reveals a thirst, a hope, that the journey can be shortened, that there is a shortcut. It can’t. Journalism (facts) or fiction (style)? Both. Both. Both. In no particular order.

Don’t be a snob. It’s good for people to read, so whatever they read, no matter what it is, be glad they're reading.  

No matter what your style or genre or form, even if it's journalism, read John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction" very carefully and try some of the exercises. Realize that once you command these skills, you can break every rule he teaches, but these are the basic skills.

Work on your weaknesses. Find out what you’re hiding from.

Stop looking for shortcuts.

CowBird: A Small Community of Storytellers

 

“Of all our truest hopes and desires for our work is that, what we find, we ourselves never knew. It came as a shock. It came as a surprise. It was new. We could never have known what we were going to do before we did it, and in that sense, we discover too. Here is what I’ve got to say to you: there are things in your life you will see; there are stories you will hear; if you don’t write them down, if you don’t make the picture, they won’t get seen, they won’t get told.”

Emmet Gowin

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What is Cowbird?

Cowbird is a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web.

Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today. Sagas are themes and events that touch millions of live and shape the human story.

Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.

What can I use Cowbird to do?

KIDS! Pacha's Pajamas - A Story Written by Nature, A Dream to Change the World

 

 

"Hero" From the Auditions for Pacha's Pajamas,

A Story Written by Nature

 

Visit the Website:  http://www.pachaspajamas.com

 

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Pacha Starts to Dream …

 

Pacha’s Pajamas is a story whose time has come. One night, the plants and animals on Pacha’s new pajamas come alive to share their own stories. Eventually, Nature takes the stage at a global music festival where the critters come together to bring balance to the planet.  

What is the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment?

 

What is GATE - The Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment?

 

GATE is an evolving community of creative, business and technical professionals in entertainment, media, and the arts, who realize the vital and expanding role media and entertainment play in creating our lives, and who aspire to consciously transform those domains for the benefit of all.

GATE is a nonprofit 501c(6) membership trade association providing valuable and relevant knowledge, resources and services to a wide range of professionals in the media, entertainment and arts industries, to aid in their personal transformation and to help them create and distribute content that expresses their transformational worldview.

 

Intel's New ULTRABOOK: Portable Magic for Writers

 

 

 

Get the Tech Chef’s Dish on Ultrabook™

Finally, technology catches up with your expectations

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ultrabook/ultrabook-tech-chef-video.html

 

Life with Ultrabook™