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.

 

NON-PROFITS: Effective Frontline Fundraising

 

 

Jeffrey Stauch is no slouch when it comes to asking people for money—and he shares how he gets it done in his new title, "Effective Frontline Fundraising," recently published by Apress.

Stauch got his start by canvassing for political groups on the streets of Boston and quickly progressed to his current position as a prime fundraiser for a prestigious New England College. “Asking for $5—and getting it—takes about as much skill and guts as asking for $1 million,” said Stauch. “The principles are the same. And anyone can learn them.”

 

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.

Overcoming Peanut Butter

 

 

Assignment: Think about a compulsive behavior you would like to get rid of, and note this in your journal.  What do you think you can do to start getting rid of this habit? Write Now! GO!

 

Why not just stop it?

Watch Comedian Bob Newhart in this classic video, below...

 

 

 

 

Think About: Your Choices

 

Assignment: Make a list of the three most important choices you can make right now to add more joy to your life.  On a blank journal page, (use one page for each choice you have selected) write down three headings: PLUS, MINUS & INTERESTING.  Fill in as many thoughts that come to you for each category, and be honest.  Almost always, it is the items in the INTERESTING column which will be the most determinative of the choice you make.  Write Now!  GO!  And make the choice!

 

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Dr. Shad Helmstetter on Choices

1 “No one else can ever make your choices for you. Your choices are yours alone. They are as much a part of you as every breath you will take, every moment of your life.”

2 “You may think that in life, a lot of things happen to you along the way. The truth is, in life, you happen to a lot of things along the way.”

3 “Choosing to live your life by your own choice is the greatest freedom you will ever have.”

4 “It is only when you exercise your right to choose that you can also exercise your right to change.”

More About Choices:

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?

The Most Difficult Game on Earth - Bill Harvey

Excerpt:  Happiness cannot remain up the trail somewhere, an elusive thing we are working toward. Not good. Outdated idea. Time for the new idea. Happiness now. In every now. Now. And now. And now. Happiness all the time, internally controlled, internally generated, by an act of will. Infernally difficult but we cannot abandon this game as we possibly always have before. Now is the time to face it — fight it — and win. And keep winning. Because the game is not won once, but continuously. That’s what makes it so hard.

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From Bill Harvey's Blog:  www.mindmagicprogram.com

Last week we published here the Human Effectiveness Institute’s “highly incomplete checklist” of things to do each day in 2012 to define and meet your goals for the year. One could write a book on each item in that list. For starters, here’s a drill-down on one item in the list that in a way underpins all the other items on the list.

Item III.1 on the list describes why you should be enjoying the moment and provides ways to get yourself into that headspace. Ironically, this is the most difficult game on Earth.

In some version of this universe, it is natural to be in that state all the time, i.e. happy doing whatever you are doing at the moment, or not doing anything but just being there. Why not be happy? If it’s what you’re doing that is blocking happiness, do something else. Why were you doing it in the first place if it didn’t make you happy?

The ego is what gets in the way. The ego is the be-all and end-all of unhappiness. You can choose happiness or at least neutrality in any moment no matter what is being inflicted upon you against your will, to pick an extreme case. If you’re being waterboarded, okay, neutrality is probably the best you can hope for. But such an extreme case illustrates that by an act of will and focus we can indeed choose our mental emotional state. All of us can. There have been times when we’ve all had an opportunity to prove that to ourselves. Nonetheless, it’s the most difficult game on Earth.

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.

Change Your Words, Change Your World, Shape Your Future

 

Journal Assignment:  Make list of 10 words which are holding you back from greater happiness and success.  For each word, change it to a dynamic, positive word.  Review this list often, and see how much better you feel when you use the transformed words!  Try it!  Write Now!

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From Joel Osteen:

It's Time to Use Our Words to Declare Good Things

I once read an article about doctors who incorporated "talk therapy" to treat patients suffering with depression. Instead of medicating the problem, the doctors instructed the patients to start making positive declarations over their lives, saying such things as: "I have a bright future. People like to be around me. Good things are in store."

 

BOOKS: Finding Your Way in a Wild New World - Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want

 

From Martha Beck:

My new book was released December 27, 2011, giving you something to read during Mayan end of days. How convenient! Actually, I don’t think we’re all going to be riding out on chariots of fire. But I do think many people are finding the world an increasing baffling and sometimes frightening place. I also think that ancient human traditions often offer solutions to this sort of turbulence. In Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, I teach you how to become a “wayfinder,” able to surf the ever-changing tides of your life rather than feeling swept away by the tsunami of change we’re all experiencing.

Advance praise for Finding Your Way in a Wild New World:

“Martha Beck is the wisest, most generous and gifted of spiritual leaders. Her book will show you how to gently unlock your potential for deep transformation, so that you can explore uncharted territory and come home to your true, purposeful, and unafraid self. Thank you, Dr. Beck.”

Website: http://www.marthabeck.com

 

–Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., author of The Dance of Anger and Marriage Rules.

Website: http://www.marthabeck.com

 

Need to Disconnect? Here's How

Logging Off: The Power of Disconnection

Martha Beck

For more wisdom, visit Martha Beck's website:

www.marthabeck.com

 

Assignment for Journaling:  Read Martha Beck's  tips for disconnecting, below, and then create your own list of ways you can create peace and healing space for yourself. GO!

 

My thesis: The great English writer E.M. Forster may have valued connection above all else, but for us 21st-century folks—with our jam-packed contact lists, e-mail from intimates and strangers, texts and phone messages left by friends, colleagues, passing acquaintances, and the occasional deranged stalker—disconnection is as necessary as connection for creating a healthy, happy life. When we force ourselves to connect against our heart’s desires, we create false, resentful relationships; when we disconnect from the people who deplete us, we set them free to find their tribes while we find ours. I planned to illustrate these thoughts with snippets of Greek philosophy, and perhaps even the poetry of Robert Frost. 

But it has just occurred to me that this refined approach is not how I actually disconnect—and I need to disconnect a lot. Overconnection is my major occupational hazard. My job is all about soulfully linking with others, and this is truly as much fun as I’ve ever had with my clothes on, but after doing this with many people for many hours, I often feel as if I’ve watched ten great movies back-to-back: dazed, frazzled, longing for silent solitude. I’m not up to gracious separation; I need quick-and-dirty ways to save my sanity, right now.

So I’ve listed some of my favorite disconnection strategies below, in the hope that you might find them useful. Please remember that this advice is not for the E.M. Forsters of the world but for those of us who are already connected up the wazoo.

Martha Beck’s Favorite Disconnection Techniques

How to Accomplish Your 2012 Goals

From Bill Harvey at:  www.mindmagicprogram.com

A highly incomplete checklist

The year has just started and already you are creatively adapting to the unexpected, steering around unexpected resistances, and still feeling cocky about taking the hill you’ve assigned yourself for this year. Good.

This cursory reminder list of methods is passed along to keep handy if and when you run up against a boulder that frustrates you, casting a dim light over achievability of the year’s target. The list can also be used proactively even during times of smooth sailing to notch the game up a bit.

I.  Creativity

1. Doodle a schematic of the situation and its players. These could be business or personal relationships that you are navigating. Engaging spatial mind centers in the right brain is a prime directive in terms of overcoming the bias of the time i.e. Acceleritis.
   1. What would be the ideal “win” for each player in the diagram? Getting down to the human motivational level immediately is a typical mensch method. This engages your own feelings, rebalancing you out of leftbrain dominance.
   2. What action might each player take in the situation, and how would other players react? “Consequence thinking” engages the prefrontal lobes. The more your brain is fully engaged the closer you get to Holosentience.
   3. Have you left anyone out of the diagram so far? Who?
   4. What would be the ideal outcome of the depicted situation from the standpoint of a hypothetical Universal Consciousness?
   5. (See more below)

How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes!

Great advice from Jim Estill at Copyblogger: 

www.copyblogger.com

I don’t really want to spend more than 20 minutes a day on writing articles. And I spent no more than 20 minutes to write this article.

I realize this is writing blasphemy. Content is king, and all of that. But when I have a daily schedule to post on and a business to run, I don’t have time to spend hours polishing every single blog post or writing 2,000-word articles.

Writing quickly doesn’t mean compromising on writing well, though. I’ve got seven tips to get you in and out of that composition box in twenty minutes – without sacrificing quality.

Hemingway's Top 5 Tips for Writing Well

 

 

Many business people faced with the task of writing for marketing purposes are quick to say:

Hey, I’m no Hemingway!

But really, who better than Hemingway to emulate? Rather than embracing the flowery prose of the literati, he chose to eschew obfuscation at every turn and write simply and clearly.

So let’s see what Ernest can teach us about effective writing.

1. Use short sentences.

Hemingway was famous for a terse minimalist style of writing that dispensed with flowery adjectives and got straight to the point. In short, Hemingway wrote with simple genius.

Perhaps his finest demonstration of short sentence prowess was when he was challenged to tell an entire story in only 6 words:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

 

Writers on Writing: From Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird (Essential Reading!)

 

 

“Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won’t do any of those things; you’ll never get in that way.”

“E.L. Doctorow once said that “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, life, I have ever heard.

TIPS: One Word At a Time

 

 

 

Alex Noble:  Even to sit quietly in front of an open journal, with pen or pencil in hand, and experience that sacred space of stillness and listening, can open new worlds in consciousness if you are fully present. . This is one of the reasons I love Haiku poetry, where we capture a moment of current reality and document it in focused awareness.  A journal entry might be just one word, or two. The point is to connect with your Muse, your Inner Thinker and Writer.  Just one word, if it is the right word, can shift your perception and your life.  So know that this time of consecrated stillness is not empty. It holds your whole life, all your dreams, all your experience, all your innate magic.  Start small. One word a day. And then see where that word leads you. Surprise yourself! 

If you are writing a story, start with just a few sentences that summarize your plot and answer the classic question: "Who wants to do what and why can't they?" Then, write a full paragraph. Then, half a page. Then, a one page summary.  Annie Lamott tells this story:

I also remember a story that I know I’ve told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on bird written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

 

 

 

Digital Storytelling for Non-Profits: 8 Tips (Tech Soup)

 

 

 

 

 

Advice on planning, building, and promoting digital stories

By: Brian Satterfield

(Note that these principles apply to all storytelling, not exclusively to non-profits. However, as many of us are involved with non-profit groups, this is priceless information for making the organization come to life through good storytelling. You can use these tips to draft a story for your favorite non-profit in your journal.)

As a nonprofit, one of the ways you raise funds and attract attention to your cause is through the art of storytelling. Whether you recount the history of your organization to a donor, the life of someone you've helped in a grant proposal, or the challenges you face in a letter to supporters, storytelling is an everyday aspect of nonprofit life.

A well-told story can bring an invaluable sense of immediacy to your cause, especially important when you have just minutes (or even seconds) to capture the attention of your audience. Yet whereas nonprofits' storytelling arsenal was once largely limited to the traditional mechanisms of writing or speaking, new, affordable multimedia tools are making it possible to tell your story digitally, combining the power of images, narration, music, and text to engage and inspire others to action.

Digital Storytelling - A New Way to Tell Your Stories

 

Source:  http://www.storycenter.org

 

digital story (dig·i·tal sto·ry)
A short, first person video-narrative created by combining recorded voice, still and moving images, and music or other sounds.

digital storyteller (dig·i·tal sto·ry·tell·er)
Anyone who has a desire to document life experience, ideas, or feelings through the use of story and digital media. Usually someone with little to no prior experience in the realm of video production but time to spend a few days attending a workshop and developing a story with creative support and technical assistance from compassionate, highly experienced facilitators.

Turning Weaknesses Into Strength

"You cannot run away from weakness;
you must some time fight it out or perish;
and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Why not commit to turning chronic weaknesses into strengths this coming year, and, as stated in the quotation above, "Why not now and where you stand?"

Write Now!

Identify three weaknesses that you are ready to turn into strengths and note these in your journal. Review often, and make notes on your progress. Use your journal to reflect on how these weaknesses hold you back from optimal performance, and design a plan for what you need to do to transform them into assets. GO!

Tip:

Paste a copy of your journal entry on your refrigerator door, mirror, or put a sticky post on your computer screen.

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. The cure takes willingness, awareness, serious martial-arts level self-discipline, and a heartfelt desire to give the gift of your words to humanity, to God, and even, if you can think this big, to the whole Universe.