Karinwritesdangerously

In a speech called “A Way of Life,” which Sir William Osler, a famous Canadian physician, gave at Yale University more than 100 years ago, he explained a simple yet powerful technique he’d adopted: “living for the day only, and for the day’s work … in day-tight compartments.”

In his speech, Dr. Osler said that his “compartment” idea came to him while he was riding on an ocean liner. A warning light went off and all the watertight compartments suddenly slammed tight below the decks. Observing this, he had a revelation: By concentrating solely on one day’s work and shutting out all other thoughts and distractions, it would be possible to get a day’s work done without “mental distress” or “worries about the future.”

Draw a circle, Dr. Osler told his audience, around one 24-hour period of time. Determine what you can do in that time and make a decision not to bother your mind with worries about what you need to accomplish outside of that circle.

An example: A tourist was visiting a cathedral where an artisan was working on a huge mosaic. Seeing a vast empty wall looming before the artist, the tourist asked, “Aren’t you worried about all the space that you need to fill up and how you will ever finish it?”

The artist replied that he knew how much he could do each day. Each morning, he marked out the area of the wall he would complete and he didn’t let himself worry about what lay outside the space he’d marked. He just took one day at a time, knowing that one day he would be done.

A lot of the obstacles we face in our writing are like that Great Wall. We can worry about the bigger picture and fritter away our energies. Or we can simply draw a circle around the day and focus totally on completing the work at hand. Write on!

From a Railway Carriage
by Robert Louis Stevenson

As we all move forward into frostier days, it seems like the perfect time to pull out some stories we love, polish them and submit them. With this in mind, here are details of  a Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition. Total word count: 1500 and under. Deadline: December 14, 2020:

One First Place Winner will receive:

• $3,000 in cash
• Their short story title published in Writer’s Digest magazine’s September/October 2021 issue
• A paid trip to the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, including a Pitch Slam slot

The Second Place Winner will receive:

• $1,500 in cash
• Their short story title published in Writer’s Digest magazine’s September/October 2021 issue

The Third Place Winner will receive:

• $500 in cash
• Their short story title published in Writer’s Digest magazine’s September/October 2021 issue

Fourth through Tenth Place Winners will receive:

• $100 in cash
• Their short story titles published in Writer’s Digest magazine’s September/October 2021 issue.

How to Enter

• All entries must be submitted online.
• All entries must be in English. Only original unpublished work (at the time of submission) in print, digital or online publications will be considered. Self-published work in blogs, on social media, etc. can be submitted. Writer’s Digest retains one-time nonexclusive publication rights.

For full submission details, visit: https://www.writersdigest.com/wd-competitions/writing-competitions-preparing-your-entry

It’s always fun to throw your hat in the ring — write on!

Sustaining momentum, both in writing a draft and from a reader’s perspective, is one of the keys to creating energy on the page. How to Write and Sell Historical Fiction by Persia Woolley, a successful trilogy author, offers some helpful advice on keeping your story moving from concept through completion.

In Persia’s experience, many writers get themselves bogged down in polishing their prose as they go, which is often a recipe for frustration. As she puts it, “…keep telling your story; do not give in to the desire to stop and perfect each segment before you tackle the rest.” If you stop and tinker with each piece, she warns, you lost momentum because “…you are nowhere near experiencing the flow and excitement of creation.” It’s far more productive, in her view, to write through your full draft and then go back and refine it.

Why? Mainly because readers like to be “carried forward by the pull” of a story. To provide them with this experience, while writing, “…you need to keep your tale moving from peak to peak, following the arc of your story to climax and denouement in order to carry your audience along.”

If you stop and tinker with a little segment here and one there, you can’t move your story forward in a dynamic fashion. You may end up with some polished prose, but you’ll sacrifice narrative energy and drive. “So keep those words flowing,” Persia advises, “and worry about polishing individual chapters when they are part of a completed whole.” And write on!

“I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve.

“This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret.”

Anthony Robbins

Tony Robbins is a motivational speaker and writer who’s trained thousands and thousands of people all over the world. He’s seen firsthand the amazing breakthroughs people experience when they take massive action to achieve their dreams.

Dreamers and doers — an unstoppable duo!

Let’s unpack Tony’s words so we can reap the wisdom they offer us:

“Life is constantly testing us” — How true this is, isn’t it? Every day life throws challenges our way and present us with choices: We can walk away from them or deal with them halfheartedly. Or we can commit to meeting them with everything we’ve got — to going all out.

Our “level of resolve can move mountains” — If we bring a “never-ending commitment to act” until we achieve our goal, whatever it is, then nothing can really stand in our way. We can move mountains. We can do what everyone else tells us is impossible.

Committed action is the key to success — We don’t need buckets of money or contacts or even experience and talent. All we need consistent action — unshakeable resolve to act — to move forward and keep on moving forward until we get where we want to go.

Amazing, isn’t it? When you strip away all the excuses we can give ourselves about our writing and all the doubts, there’s one shining gift waiting for us: our own will to act. If we take constant and consistent action, we can move mountains. Let’s do it! Let’s make it happen for ourselves! Let’s be mountain movers! Write on!

Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the plot for the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde during a dream.

Paul McCartney discovered the tune foe his hit song “Yesterday” in a dream. 

Mary Shelley’s dream at Lord Byron’s villa inspired her gothic tale, Frankenstein.

Dreams have always been a powerful creative tool in artist’s arsenal. And studies confirming the importance of sleep to our long-term health continue to pour out: They’ve determined that our neurons fire almost as often when we’re sleeping as they do when we’re awake. But here are a few findings about sleep and creativity that may surprise and stimulate you:

There’s growing evidence that our minds tend to be most creative just as we are emerging from sleep: During the half-waking, half-dreaming state known as “sleep inertia,” our creativity seems to surge. This is why coming up with ideas and writing them down as soon as we wake is a proven technique for enhancing creativity that’s been used by everyone from writers and poets to Ben Franklin.

The theory behind this: When we’re in a post-sleep, dream-like mental state, we can bridge the gap between sleep and wakefulness, and bring insights and inspiration from our sleep state into our consciousness. Once we’re fully alert, our waking consciousness assumes total control, making plans and doing things — and we pass out of the more fluid, expansive state we enjoy when we’re just emerging from our rest.

Sleep can also be a powerful creativity booster because the mind, in an unconscious resting state, can forge surprising and innovative new connections that it might not make in a conscious, waking state. In fact, a 2007 study by the University of California at Berkeley found that sleep can foster “remote associates” or unusual connections in the brain. And these connections can lead to exciting “a-Ha” moments upon waking. According to the study, upon emerging from sleep, people are 33 percent more like to make connections between ideas that seem only distantly related. 

So why not test this all out and give your creativity a helping hand by having a paper and pen by your bedside, so you can jot down any hot ideas before they slip away? Write on!

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Failure — probably not the easiest or happiest topic to kickoff a week of writing. And yet. And yet. And yet. There’s so much we can learn from it, so much it can teach us if we’re willing to stop and listen. If we’re willing to mine the gifts it can give us.

Write now (love this — it just popped up!), you may be struggling with some kind of failure. I know I am. Something isn’t working in a piece of work I’ve been revising, and today, I have to go in and fix it because I’ve realized that my last round of changes simply isn’t working and didn’t do the job.

How about you? There may be some not-quite-there-yet feeling you’re experiencing, too. You may feel that you’ve fallen short in some way.

You may be struggling with a revision that doesn’t want to be revised. You may have sent out a story and gotten a rejection — again. You may have queried an agent you were hopeful about and received a pass.

Whatever the challenge you’re facing and I’m facing, as our boy Ralph says so well, it can be our “greatest glory” if we rise up.

If we rise up instead of giving up.

Failure can be so fruitful if we don’t let it knock us down!

It can force us to go back in to a story and fix what’s broken.

It can trigger a fresh new way of approaching a thorny plot point.

It can prompt us to reach out and ask for help from a trusted source.

It can inspire us to redouble our efforts — to really step on the gas.

Failure isn’t final. It’s just a blip on the radar screen. And it can be our “greatest glory” as long as we rise up and keep going. Write on!

The Lamplighter

Robert Louis Stevenson

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson, a favorite author of mine, was born on November 13, 1850. He wrote poetry, essays, novels, and more. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is a short but haunting lesson in creating atmosphere in a thriller and A Child’s Garden’s of Verses is a delight! In his honor, some of his wise words on writing and life:

“The difficult of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect hinm precisely as you wish.

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”

“You can give without loving,, but you can never love without giving.”

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”

“The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.”

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”

“Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to new thankful has fallen asleep in life.”

“To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.”

“All human beings are commingled out of good and evil.”

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.”

“If a man loves the labor of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.”

“All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.”

“The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.”

“The world is full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be happy as kings.”

“An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.”

“To forget oneself is to be happy.”

And now inspired and emboldened, let’s all write on!

A story: A man had passed away and a whole city mourned his loss. Members of a club were discussing him and remembering all the traits that had endeared him to those around him. 

After a time, one man said, “You know our friend hardly had a fair start. Nature did not mean to let him be a big man. She equipped him with very ordinary talents.

“I can remember the first time I heard him speak. It was a very stumbling performance. Yet, in his later years, we regarded him as one of the real orators of his generation.

“His mind was neither very original nor very profound, but he managed to build a great institution, and the imprint of his influence is on ten thousand lives.”

The speaker stopped, but those around him urged him to go on. With his modest start and abilities they asked, “How then do you account for his success?” 

“It’s simple,” the man replied. “He merely forgot himself. When he spoke, his imperfections were lost in the glory of his enthusiasm. When he organized, the fire of his faith burned away all obstacles. He abandoned himself utterly to his task; and the task molded him into greatness.” *

What an inspiring story about the power of enthusiasm! When we bring passionate ardor, zeal, and energy to our creative endeavors, what mountains we can climb! What amazing feats we can achieve — in our writing and our lives!

When we forget ourselves, when we abandon ourselves utterly to our task, when we simply get out of our own way, then like the man in this story, we can find the greatness within us. Write on!

* from Norman Vincent Peale’s Treasury of Courage and Confidence