Writing Everyday Exercise - Remembering Smells

WRITING EXERCISE -

Remembered smells. What’s your earliest memory? How old were you? Try to remember the smells around that memory. Describe it and why you remember it.

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Here's another exercise that will get your mind working overtime. Try to describe something intangible that's subjective to each person. Then recall it from your past.

They do say that the olfactory memory humans are capable of is the strongest, most reliable connection to past memories when there's a smell attached to it.

If I ask you to remember your grandmother's house on a random Saturday afternoon from your childhood, chances are you recall the smell. The very distinct association with that memory.

Have fun with it.

Time to turn the page.

I'm still here...

Still here. Still writing. However a newborn and 5 year old in the home with an exploding career workload makes the writing very, very difficult. It pains me to say that especially when I focused and completed the 50,000 word National Novel Writing Month challenge in November. But that was pre-birth.

I am working on getting my stuff over on Wattpad. I feel that of all the writing sites that one seems to be the most promising and productive when it comes to feedback from readers. I put a bunch of stories out there but pulled them all off after I studied the art of story editing and realized that things could use more work.

I am beginning to see that I am not a very good writer but a great planner and editor. Writing is just filler.

1,000 words a day is the goal and if I focus and I know exactly what I want to paint with words I can get 1,000 words out in about an hour. If I only have 30 minutes, 500 words. Etc... You don't need to get the 1,000 words in one sitting.

As a computer programmer of very large, complex systems writing a few good lines of code a day, in the bank of tens of thousands, can go down as a very productive day. Writing is no different.

I see this now.

Manifestos To Help You Stay Motivated and Focused

With the start of any journey you need to know which direction you are going. But, as with most journeys, there are obstacles, challenges, and distractions along the way and everyone needs a little motivation to stay the course. It's easy to jump off and revert back to the simple ways. Who said life was easy? Aside from writing everyday, regardless what your own journey is, everyone I think should read every day as well. 

Read. Read. Read. 

A newspaper, magazine article, short story, a few chapters in a book, the process of consuming information through reading is beneficial through and through. Each sentence consumed adds to your mental growth, your wisdom, and to your creative juices. The mind is the most powerful thing in nature, why waste it?

Aside from books I have found recently that manifestos that other people have written to motivate themselves and others are very, very good. Each one has their own voice, own focus, and own message to help you in whatever challenges you are trying to overcome. Staying true to Geek To Author I will be sharing all these resources I found helpful in my journey. This list will grow by leaps and bounds as I expand my craft.

I hope that you can find one or two words of encouragement that helps you to take those extra steps.

Manifestos

• Wrecked For The Ordinary by Jeff Goins
• Writer's Manifesto  by Jeff Goins
• 279 Days To Overnight Success by Chris Guillebeau
• A Brief Guide To World Domination by Chris Guillebeau
• Focus Manifesto by Lee Babauta 
• The Zero Hour Work Week by Jonathan Mead 
• Impossible: The Manifesto by Joel Runyon

Time to turn the page...

Inspiration Through Reading - The War of Art

No matter how good you are everyone needs motivation. They are not hundreds of thousands of books, articles and websites dedicated to writer's block for no reason. Every fire needs fuel. I find mine through books, especially books written by people who have lived through it. I kept seeing The War of Art by Steven Pressfield keep popping up on people's reading lists so I thought I'd check it out.

I bought it from Barnes and Noble for my Nook, I am not a fan of Amazon's business practices and choose not to support them, Nooks all the way. Anyway, this book is not what I expected. It's far better and goes beyond just simple positive phrases to make you feel good. For me as I read this I felt truly motivated.

The style of Pressfield's writing will not be for everyone. He is up front, direct, and pulls no punches in his choice of colorful metaphors. I loved it. No P.C. frosting to get in the way of the real message he was conveying. Get off your ass and put yourself into your art. He's right. At the end of the day it's up the author to put the words on the paper and no one else. Every obstacle can be in your way but unless you are willing to overcome them then you will never achieve what you want. You will revert to the path of least resistance and never complete anything.

This is one of those books that even though I have the e-Book I will get the paper copy to have sitting on my desk. E-books have their place but so do physical books as well. I need to quickly flip through books like this, scribble notes in the margins and feel the message in my hands.

If you are working on any kind of art whether it is writing, painting, music, gardening, or anything where you need to go that extra mile and apply all of your inner self this is a book to keep that fire going. I highly recommend it.

TIme to turn the page...