This was a wonderful greeting that met us one Saturday morning at Rainbow Bay Beach where we walk and swim most mornings.
The sign Beach Report is put out each morning to tell swimmers the current state of the swimming conditions.
We don’t normally see the addition of words like Living the Dream.
These words remind us to ask:
Are you living the dream with your life and business?
– Des Walsh & Suzie Cheel
WriterÂs block. It happens to the best of us. You may have had a good nightÂs sleep, a comfortable chair, the right resources, and a topic… and yet, your writing muscles refuse to flex, and you are left staring at the flickering prompt at the upper left side of a mostly-empty screen, or driving a hole into your pad with a pen.
Do a Google search and youÂll find that many writers have their own ways of dealing with this creative blockage. ItÂs not exactly a one-size-fits-all proposition, so itÂs a good idea to get as many ideas as possible. Utilizing those bits of wisdom, concoct your own anti-writerÂs-block remedies. Hopefully, one or more of them work.
Let me enumerate mine, and see if any of them work for you:
Find a new place to ply your craft. Stand up, pack your mobile writing implements (paper notepad, notebook computer, restaurant receipts, toilet paper, human flesh scroll, etc.) and wander. In my case, I pack my tablet (equipped with a cover/keyboard, because I canÂt type fast on a touch screen), some loose change for coffee, and a Taser pistol (you can never be too careful).
The new sights and sounds definitely help me get out of the funk, and for as long as I find a comfortable spot to whip out my tablet and type away, IÂll be able to get some paragraphs out.
When the first remedy doesnÂt yield any positive result, I just stop trying for the meanwhile and distract my mind with something else entirely. This should be easy for most of us, as the modern world is rife with distractions. You could live your entire life distracted, in fact. Those closest I have come to that is a three hour Fruit Ninja binge on the tablet. Made my fingers hurt, too.
Time out from writing gives the mind some time to recharge and recuperate. Unfortunately, we who write for a living donÂt have the luxury of too much off-time, so this solution may not be the best course of action to take when writing projects are restricted by a deadline.
Corollary to the tip above, go engage in an activity that requires the least synaptic activity. This ranges from sports and fitness-related stuff, to exposing your mind to slapstick, lowbrow, and even outright pornographic stimulation. Nothing is taboo (except if itÂs against the laws of the land, of course)!
Too much of anything can be detrimental, so be sure to set limits to your physical fun-time distractions.
Well, not absolutely nothing. Meditation, yoga, drinking tea, isolating yourself in a dark room, or even a light nap are ways you can calm your tempestuous mind and rejuvenate your creative juices. Find a place you can be undisturbed for hours at a time, and proceed with the refilling.
Yeah, it means you have to put away your tablet and other mobile devices.
I hope one of these tips will be the proverbial plunger that will help unclog your creative pipeline!
Our beach notes pictures are usually from one of our local surf beaches. This one is different because our car is at the mechanic’s so to have a swim today we had to settle for the little beach here on the river where we live. Tough, we know, but someone has to do it.
Although there is a slight catch. As in, the tides.
We are quite used to being careful with the various currents, undertows and Ârips at the surf beaches, but it was a bit of a surprise to experience in the river how quickly the tide can run and how easy it would be, with the tide running out as it was today, to get carried downstream.
Looks calm though, doesn’t it?
– Des Walsh & Suzie Cheel
Today we visited the local Bleach festival, a celebration of the visual and performing arts and beach culture.
We saw that one of the stands was for the ABC Open service, provided by our national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
ABC Open is dedicated to providing a way for people in “regional Australia”, i.e. those of us who live outside the big cities, to produce and publish photos, stories, videos, and sound, via the ABC.
At the ABC Open stand for the festival they had a surfboard, lots of colored markers and an invitation to write a message on the board. The format of the message was to be:
(beach name) is the best beach
because……………………………….
Clearly a job for Suzie the artist.
Suzie leapt at the chance to celebrate our favorite local beach at Rainbow Bay.
As you can see from the picture, she wrote “Rainbow is the best beach because it is peaceful and full of spirit.”
– Des Walsh & Suzie Cheel
I had come to write about truth, beauty, freedom and that which I believed above all things, love. But there was only one problem…..I’ve never been in love!
This opening monologue in the movie Moulin Rouge, follows young writer Christian, who is faced with a serious dilemma. How can he write about love without even experiencing what it feels like to fall in love?
For writers and artists, love is a muse that inspires them in their craft, be it through literary works or through masterpieces in art. Have you ever noticed how the words seem to flow easier when youâre in love? Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a fine example of how love can inspire us to write. She immortalized her love for her husband, Robert Browning in How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways, one of the most famous love sonnets of all time.
Love, or lack of it, inspires us to write about our free flowing emotions that lift us up to cloud nine or bring us crashing down to reality when our illusions of love are shattered. Some writers thrive in loving relationships while others relish the angst of unrequited love. Yes, we need angst to write. Some writers, however, would choose not to fall in love because they donât want to be brokenhearted. But even a broken heart can be a dark muse, as proven by some of musicians whose albums were inspired by their heartbreak.
After breaking up with her boyfriend, Adele penned her best selling album, 21, which earned her six Grammy Awards last year, including Album of the year. Taylor Swift is another example of how heartbreak can be transformed into words or in her case, songs.
Some writers may not be part of the talkative lot, but when they fall in love, expect pages or letters filled with sweet nothings and lovely verse–the only way they know how to articulate their feelings. When you are in a relationship with a writer, expect to be immortalized in poems, stories and songs.
David Levithanâs book, Every Day, has this quote that perfectly describes what love does to us writers, âThis is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world.â
Stephen King contributes his own thoughts on love in his profession as an author. âWriting is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.â This line of course, speaks of his wife Tabitha, the loving constant throughout the ups and downs of his writing career.
Even with our increasingly digital and mobile world, writers will still take the time to write you a letter or dedicate a poem to you. Neil Gaiman is one of the more vocal authors, who is not ashamed to speak about his love for his wife, Amanda Palmer, on Twitter. The more bashful wordsmiths will send you notes coming from a supposed secret admirer. The more courageous ones will wear their hearts on their sleeve and declare their love on every social media around. In fact, writers can use online tools, to help them update their social networks and emails simultaneously in one place.
Love in any form–not just the romantic kind–will always inspire us to write. Open your heart and donât be afraid to fall love. If you do get your heart broken, cry and let your written words speak for you. But donât ever be afraid of finding love again. Just as Christian in Moulin Rouge learned, âThe greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.â
Behind the scenes, most people who are truly successful live lives that can only be described with one wordâintense.
They are intense about their work, their time, their money, and life itself. They use a different thought process than most people.
On the outside looking in, you may not always be able to notice. After all, we usually imagine successful people as these incredible individuals who just seem to have everything together and nothing at all to worry about.
Really, itâs the opposite. Successful people only appear to have it all together because of the intensity it takes to create that appearance in the minds of others.
But what exactly is that intensity, and how can we activate it in our own lives?
Intensity is:
What most people miss, however, is that intensity is not a state of mindâ¦it is a state of emotion.
Pursuing anything with intensity requires that you be emotionally connected to it. You must possess a fanatical commitment to follow through.
Here are a few easy things you can do on a regular basis to keep the intensity trending UP in your life:
Keeping your intensity level up will not only make you more productive, it will make you more aware. Time will no longer just slip away and get wasted on the things you know are not important, in both your professional and personal life. When youâre able to focus in on only the things that truly matter, amazing things will happen.
What do you do to keep your intensity level up?
Robert was gracious enough to share a copy of his new book, “20,000 Days and Counting,” for our community! Comment below if you’d like to have the free copy; best comment as judged by me wins the book. –Rosemary