Friday Morning FYI – 5/13/2016

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

This morning, I had something to say about first impressions and marketing and standing out, but then I did something I’ve never done: I sprayed myself with ketchup from a ketchup pack. Hearing the story of how I’d opened it, forgotten I’d done that when I put it down to talk to someone, and then became an ad for one of those detergent pens, a coworker informed me it was Friday the 13th. While I don’t suffer from Paraskevidekatriaphobia (try to pronounce that, I dare you), it leads us to this week’s superstitious FYI (we’ll get to my original topic next week):

It’s Friday the 13th. Be happy if you make it through the day without getting ketchup on your shirt, or, you know, being burned at the stake.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 5/6/2016

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

Last week, I wrote about a barista who asked if I was a writer. After that brief conversation, I returned to my coffee and WIP. About an hour and several hundred new words later, I heard the following, in that same barista’s voice, from the direction of the espresso machine:

I hadn’t played live in a while, but it’s like coming home after a long vacation. Everything looks a little different even though it’s not, and it takes you a little while to get back into everything. Once you do, it’s like you never left.”

You’re d@mn right I wrote that down, and yes, I plan to use it. That’s this week’s FYI:

Writers should always have their ears open to the profound/insightful/asinine things said around them. Why? Because there are voices other than our own, spoken from experiences beyond ours, by people more complex than any we might invent. To not take from those voices (including other writers) would be like ignoring an unclaimed pile of gold because you were on your way to pan for your own.

Aaron Sorkin summarizes it for us:

Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright. - Aaron Sorkin

Um… or was it TS Eliot?

Mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal. - T. S. Eliot

Oh balls. Did Eliot steal that quote from Oscar Wilde?

Talent borrows, genius steals! - Oscar Wilde

See what I did there?

I’m not talking about full-on plagiarism, of course. Word for word, sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph copy -> paste is wrong on every level. But when you hear something that clicks, you’d be a fool to not jot it down.

And yes, I fully expect someone to steal those words, just as I stole them. Good on those who do 🙂

 

 Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 4/29/2016

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

“Are you a writer?” I was asked last Sunday, just before ordering my typical Americano. It came from one of the two guys behind the counter: the one making the coffees, not the one taking customer orders.

“Yes,” I said. “Does it show?”

The barista, who later introduced himself as Josh, smiled and shrugged. “Some people come in and open their laptops, and then type a little and talk to their friends and go on their phones and keep ordering things. And I’m like, how much are you getting done, you know? But you come in and order and then you just lock in and type and type. It’s cool.”

He wasn’t wrong. When I get in a groove, nothing around me matters and the words just cascade onto the page. In a good session, two thousand words over four or five hours is not unusual. *puts on his ‘support local businesses’ hat* That’s a two drink session, minimum, by the way (and probably a pastry, even though I’m not supposed to eat those), which often ends not because I’m out of words but because my hands are shaking from the caffeine and sugar.

Anyway, the whole exchange was fun and shed some light on something I hadn’t considered about writing in public (and anything we do, really). That’s this week’s FYI:

We all present ourselves to the world in both conscious and subconscious ways every day. The conscious is what you choose to wear, your haircut, the kind of bag you carry, etc. The subconscious, though, is far more important; the things you do naturally, like body language, work ethic, and purpose can inspire those around you. Doing your thing sends out waves others see and feel, whether we realize/intend that or not. What are you projecting? Is it how you want to be seen?

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 4/22/2016

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

I was working on my WIP earlier in the week and hit a snag. My MC was to confront someone with whom she has a heavy history, but a problem I hadn’t anticipated manifested. See, she was all set to speak very plainly, reflecting on their previous conflict to address the crisis at hand, but others were present who didn’t know who she is. That impacted what she could say and how, and blew-up the dynamic and result I’d planned – a result needed to move the story forward. Now, stuff like this happens all the time when writing, but this was the most impactful issue I’ve encountered (I’m a rabid outliner and that’s where I usually find this stuff, before the writing starts). I could have removed the other folks, but the scene was in an interrogation room in an FBI office, so they were observing from behind a two-way mirror. I could have moved the scene, but the guy with whom my MC needed to talk was in custody. I could have had him not-in custody, but that would have sent a shockwave of changes one hundred and fifty pages back through the book. None of those options were viable, so I decided to go with it, giving my MC a hurdle to overcome. Yay conflict! That’s the focus of this week’s FYI:

Someone much smarter than me once said, “Life imitates art.” In the same way a story you’re crafting can go in directions you didn’t anticipate, life often won’t go according to plan. You can either fight against it, trying to force something into an unnatural shape, or go with it, seeing what happens.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 4/15/2016

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

I didn’t learn anything this week. Well, nothing deep to put here, anyway. I know that sounds absurd to the, ‘Learn something new every day,’ crowd (of which I’m an adjunct member), but I’m OK with it (and absurdity in general, but that’s another story). That’s this week’s FYI:

Those of us interested in growth can put a lot of pressure on ourselves, which can occasionally result in feeling down or unaccomplished (I’m looking at you, writers-who-missed-their-word-count). It makes sense. Humans by nature are seekers, and seekers need to discover. But sometimes the best thing you can do is cut out the noise and just be. Lessons will always be there to be had, you can self-examine tomorrow as well as you could today, and that chapter will get written.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}