The Difference Between Amateur and Proper Writers; And Why You Shouldn - Freewrite Store

The Difference Between Amateur and Proper Writers; And Why You Shouldn - Freewrite Store Commit to your new job. Let me paint you a picture, one of those bizarre scenarios, frisky tableaus, that slowly segues into the topic and theme of the title. Imagine a big, bawdy bar, with a barkeep of barreled brawn, brined brains, and bedeviled behavior. A sprawling dome sanctified by the Gods, christened by Baco and sponsored by the good folks at Guinness†¦ in other words, a pub. A proper (we only serve booze) pub. Now, take that majestic construct and catapult it 100 years into the future, and since we are already breaking the space-time-continuum let’s shatter this flimsy facade called logic - and cement its pillars on one of the heaven’s marshmallow clouds. â€Å"The Cloud Nine† pub in the sky. There’s a marquee on the brick side by the petunias: â€Å"Jesus once came here for a pint.† Inside our celestial haberdashery, patrons dance, dames frolic, and inebriates fight and fess-up. In one corner, Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron are playing footsies under the table. By the jar of pickled eggs, Hemingway is displaying his legendary attitude towards liquor. By the door, giving a rousing and confusing speech on wordplay, Shakespeare. Tolstoy and Marx dip their wet fingers on a pile of salt, trying desperately to hoover the last crumbs of peanuts. Throughout all this madcap, watermark fandango of insanity, a conga line has formed: Maya Angelou, Charlotte Bronte, and Virginia Woolf do the cha-cha-cha while Austen and Christie follow with a brilliant rendition of the chicken dance. The lit cream of yesteryear rubbing shoulders and other naughty parts. The night carries on, sooner or later Karaoke comes into play and bonds are forged mid-way through â€Å"Bohemian Rhapsody†;even Poe manages a smile. Then Twain, that rascal that he is, poses a question:    â€Å"When is a writer no longer an amateur, but a professional?†    Noggins and cookies start boiling. Fitzgerald drools on the virtues of speaking from experience. Lovecraft gives a fairly decent argument towards making pacts with Old Ones. Hemingway zig-zags into a yarn about fishing, while Woody Allen tries to hit on the waitress. On and on they ping-pong the question around the room. Some manage to hit the ball, others evade it, preferring to occupy their minds with the physics of lager. Up and down, hours and hours, the philosophical item is examined; no real answer reached, no consensus patted down. Then, just before the rooster is about to call it a night, a voice is heard among the revelry:    â€Å"Oh, that’s without a doubt the easiest question out there.†    Everybody turns, eyes adjusting in the gloom and rum haze. Sitting on a stool, right next to a Pac-Man machine and flicking through a jukebox’s selection of Golden Oldies, the man himself†¦ Mister Stephen King.    â€Å"Like I said, you turnip heads, there’s a simple answer.† He takes a sip of his coke. â€Å"A writer is truly a professional writer, the minute, nay, the second he gets PAID. A check for something you’ve written instantly grants you pro-writer status. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.†    Mouths catching flies, everybody stares at the horror master, knowing full well that that Gordian Knot of a riddle had been sliced in two and packaged away with alacrity.    â€Å"OK,†goes Twain â€Å"Let me re-frame the question: when do you pass from being a mediocre writer aproper writer?†    Stephen King gets up, understanding that the wordsmith has him by the furry bits The man, having just read â€Å"50 Shades of Grey†, his belief in the power of humankind and the essence of his craft shaken to the very foundation, simply walks off. So, the conundrum still stands: when is a writer a proper writer?As a published author, I’m going to toss my two-cents into that fountain and hope they don’t get lost among the treasured detritus of others. In my opinion, a writer becomes what he is meant to be the second he stops measuring himself up to others of his profession. The second you manage to tie down your voice, tone and make it your own, without trying to copy someone else’s beats, that’s the minute you are a professional. That’s the minute you become something truly unique and irreplaceable.    â€Å"But,† you ask â€Å"How do I get to that point?†    It’s not easy, so here are a few tips: Commit to your new job. Writing, penning out articles, manuscripts, stories, poems, scripts, and all other wordy fragments of wisdom or sheer entertainment is a full-time, 24/7 task. There’s a lot of talk going around town about the power of visualization; I’m here to tell you that’s just nothing short of Hocus Pocus. In reality, you can visualize all you like. Buy the hipster hat, the flowing scarf and talk like a lofty SOB at your next family get together. Do the whole fandango and tango†¦ You’re still not a writer. Imagine as many unicorns and pie-in-the-sky ideas as your greedy little brain will allow, at the end of the day you’ll still find yourself at the stable wondering why your horse can’t fly or who stole his magical horn. The only way to become a writer is to sit down and put in the work. Plant your rear on a seat, or couch, snatch your tools and scribble ‘til you hit gold or have something worth publishing.    â€Å"What about the muse?†    Poppycock! My advice is to grab those Grecian mistresses and take them out back; two shots to the back of the skull for each. Neil Gaiman and Larry Correia will help you hide the bodies while Hemingway mops up the blood. The truth of the matter is that some days you’ll get up in the morning, slug your way to your laptop and discover that fiend writer’s block sitting on the ledge of your table. The specter is pointing out your worthlessness and handing out wanted ads; circled in crimson: â€Å"full-time accountant, great pay.† Before you log on and give Facebook a chance, open up your word-processor and freaking write. Maybe, after four hours of clacking away, you’ll have a sentence or two worth a lick.    A professional writer writes until his ass is raw and his fingers bleed. An amateur writer dabbles with his computer as long as there is nothing good on the television. A structured existence. Let’s build a bridge between the island up above and this grassy archipelago. It’s time to set down rules, to set down goals and lay the foundations that will eventually make you a professional writer. Hacking away at your diary isn’t, unless you’re Anne Frank, professional writing. Every great or at least successful writer has a process. Stephen King reads four hours a day and writes for another four. Dan Brown wakes up at the crack of dawn, stretches and then works until noon. Janet Evanovich finger-dances across the keyboard in the morning and edits at night. Carl Hiassen faces his desk against a blank wall and snaps on shooting-range earmuffs against his head. Hemingway strolled to the nearest bar, sat down and jotted down 500 words, celebrating each victory at the end with a stiff drink. Every single one of them, like Rowling at a coffee shop in Edinburg staring at a cemetery, had their magic recipe. And, unlike any thaumaturgical hootenanny, their â €Å"IT† wasn’t based on a virgin’s blood and a Saint’s holy tears; it was grounded on a businesslike attitude, by the numbers, by appreciation of their skill set. It’s all about discipline, especially when you don’t have a boss riding your ass. Establish a passable set of rules to live by; that’s the Golden Ratio. This is a nine-to-five job; you clock in, you clock out. You need a space for yourself, especially if you are working at home. Otherwise your novel will be slowly devoured and digested by those rugrats you call offsprings. You need to mark down daily goals and, even if you have to go over time, fulfill them.    A pro will edge at least 500 words a day. She’ll dip her arm into a fiery pit, 500 times, just to get those words out. She’ll wake up every day, forget her family exists, juggle divorce like a pro and become a statue in her office ‘til she hits the mark. An amateur will wake up whenever she feels like it, take her time with her coffee, play with her kids, talk to her partner and, finally, scratch out twenty words and say the day was productive. Sharpen your tools. I’m going to step into a Stargate and zoom our narrative into another whimsical dimension. Did you know that Eric Clapton became Eric â€Å"Oh dear lord Layla is the bomb† Clapton after hearing and jamming with Jimi Hendrix? Did you know the Bob â€Å"I just won a Nobel Prize† Dylan purposely bought a house close to Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison? There’s a reason why there was The Police, before Sting. Why Don Henley needed that adrenaline shot known as the Eagles. Why Lennon needed Paul, George, and Ringo. There’s a time in every artist’s life when the chords, the beat, the rhythm, the skills are all learned and mastered; you can either stagnate or take it to the next level. If you’re not a music lover, then let’s flip that analogy onto another field†¦ snatch your boxing gloves and go beat up someone better than you. One of the keys to being a legendary artist is to know you are part of a community. You have to purge that misconception that art is a lone wolf’s hunt. Nope, DiCaprio became an Oscar winner thanks to Scorsese. Hemingway earned his legendary status on account of Gertrude Stein. Frankenstein was penned thanks to an oddball weekend with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Polidori in Switzerland. Talent is partly like an STD. It’s more contagious than syphilis, and some of your peers are so infected with it that you’re liable to catch it by mere osmosis. Surround yourself with people in your neck of the woods. People that appreciate your craft and actually dabble in it. Think about the mid 20s and roaring 30s, or the Beatnik movement, or SoHo London; flash back to those rocking times. Everybody was doodling everybody. Post-coital carnal caper chats ensued on the craft recipe of the day. Pores sweaty, salty and open, your soul as bare and naked as the rest of you. Your mind lathered and frothed by livid libations and popping endorphins. A sultry poetista whispering Keats into your ears; the primordial soup in which creativity is stewed and prepared. Or, if you’re a bit square, the following Open Sesame phrase will win over any writer: â€Å"let me buy you a beer!†If you toss in some Wild Turkey, we will allow you to pump us for as much info as you want.    A pro will, after getting up at the crack of dawn, crawl his way into an avant-garde play at midnight. He will wallow past the existential dingus, toast with his artsy friends at 3 AM, decline a snort of Peruvian moon dust at 5 AM, get an UBER at 6 and start the day on Red Bull just to start writing again. He’ll do that and more just to bathe and float in creative juices. An Amateur will call it a day at 4 and switch on the ballgame. Know your genre. Every platform has guidelines. You can break them, you can go all Gonzo on Journalism, but first, you have to conquer them. Once you have them down to a science, once you can build your rifle with your tongue while blindfolded and barking like a loon, only then can you defenestrate those pesky commandments and dash them against the rocks. Genres have tropes, they have verified axioms that somehow still manage - in many cases - to seem original. For example, in mythology - and most Marvel and DC movies - the age-old Hero’s Journey is the archetype; Campbell’s 17 stages, the playbook Batman was built on. In hard-edge journalism, the â€Å"Five W’s† are the linchpin of any piece. Analyze your sandbox. Take it apart and put each grain of dust under the microscope. Want to Tolkien your way to the top of the fantasy aisle? Then you better have your world-building criteria down on paper. There’s a reason why publishers search for word counts for each genre . Why Westerns shouldn’t be more than 65k words; why Horror has to be at least 100k; why Game of Thrones is considered a hostile mallet in certain New York City boroughs. Here’s another example with the same sentence done and tweaked for different schools of thoughts.    â€Å"It was twilight, five minutes past 6 in New Jersey when†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Journalism.    â€Å"In the Kingdom the sun had dipped below the marbled turrets, bronzing the golden crest when†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Fantasy.    â€Å"A crisp and sharp wind bit into John’s cheek. Night was fast approaching, his instincts coming full force with it†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Action.    â€Å"The sun decided to call it a day. Happy Hour was starting up just to thewest, and that flaming ball of gas needed some Sake, Geisha Hanky-Panky and, oddly enough, a dose of Sumo†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Comedy.    â€Å"A funeral shroud clawed its way pass the horizon, digging its long bloody talons into the last rays of light that clung to the day. A Halloween orange snapped just past the emerald mountains, scatting for a second the landscape in a multicolored afterglow. Then, in a flash and with the same feral ferocity, bewilderingintensity, and vivid violence it disappeared into the ether. With it, all sense of safety was snuffed out. A Stygian wave rolled over the street; pulling in all sights and sounds into its ravenous event horizon†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Horror.    A Pro will hit her head against the head, for an hour, just to catch that word - that perfect word - that’s dangling at the tip of her tongue. She’ll study and read every great book published in her genre before daring to approach that theme. She’ll take months penning that perfect book or article. An Amateur will hook from the pond whatever word comes swimming by and stitch it onto his pieces just to be done with it. She’ll ask herself: â€Å"Why not just say the clown is scary and be done with it† when discussing IT with her friends. Tips from this side of the table. Here are some Golden Rules that truly construct pieces worth printing. Rethink every adverb you place in your text. Anything that ends with â€Å"ly.† The trick to good storytelling is to show and let your audience infer. How was he â€Å"calmly† walking to the gallows? Be mindful of alliterations. They work great in comedy, but might sound funky in other genres. Grammar, in fiction - especially in horror - is flexible. This is paramount when placing your commas, periods and semicolons. Every paragraph has a beat and rhythm; you’re the artist, you build. Then Edit some more. Dean Koontz, for example, will edit each page to death before starting to write another one. It helps to get everything into perspective and, if you’re playing with a novel, it slices the task into digestible sections. Get a thesaurus and learn some odd words. Each genre has a formula, a dictionary to it, get cracking and know your theater’s vocabulary. H.P. Lovecraft used to trudge around, constantly searching for bizarre and arcane words to fill his manuscripts with. Read like a madman. And, when you are not reading, get some audio books. Before shipping and closing the chapter on anything, read it out loud. There’s a reason why storytellers were so adored back in olden days before the printing press. Your phrases or sentences have to hit the ear just right. Critics are right monstrous Unfortunately, they are also your best friends. Before you publish anything, pass it around. Start by copying some of your favorite author’s tone and pattern, learn from them. Slowly start molding them to your frame of mind. You have to mature and nurture your unique voice, but before that happens that fertile egg has to be inseminated†¦ so pick a proper genetic input. And finally, and most importantly, get someone to bankroll you. If you’re getting paid for it, then you’re a writer. Money in the bank, despite what the critics say, is the bar you have to measure yourself against.

The impact of 50% of American workers not taking vacation time

The impact of 50% of American workers not taking vacation time Have you heard what happens when you lead a life of â€Å"all work and no play?† Beyond becoming dull, a life without a healthy work-life balance can lead to a wide array of negative outcomes- both mental and physical. It’s true, the most effective employees aren’t the ones who work nonstop like robots; individuals who work hard but also make time for vacations away from their jobs are the ones who are able to maintain high levels of work efficiency and healthy well-being over the long haul. According to a recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73 percent of civilian workers have access to paid vacations. However, a concerning trend is being witnessed across industries in the American workforce- many employees are simply not taking vacations, believe it or not. Approximately 50% of American workers- half of the entire labor force- don’t take vacations for one reason or another, and its having a big impact, both on employees and the companies they work for.Why don’t people take vacation?Let’s take a closer look at why this is happening, and its impact.No paid vacation benefitsAlthough the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 73 percent of civilian workers have access to paid vacations, all industries are not created equal and some employers don’t offer their employees a full suite of benefits that include paid vacations. For example, only 55 percent of workers employed in service occupations have access to paid vacations. Workers who don’t receive paid vacation benefits are typically at the lower end of the wage spectrum, or have part-time, freelance, or contract-based employment arrangements, and often they either can’t afford to take time off of work or their work schedules aren’t flexible enough to take vacation time.Juggling multiple jobsA growing number of people have resorted to non-traditional work situations, either by choice or by circumstance, which can include having mu ltiple part-time jobs- which often don’t include vacation benefits. It can be tricky enough to take time off from one full-time job; when you’re juggling multiple jobs with varying scheduling needs and demands, carving out time for a vacation can be a real challenge, one in which many workers can’t seem to make happen.The funds just aren’t thereThe sad truth is that many people simply can’t afford to go on a proper vacation; they either don’t receive paid vacation benefits or live paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to go anywhere even if they can take time off, and would rather just go to work than take time off and have nothing to do.Other life obligationsSome people who work in inflexible work environments have to use their vacation time for non-vacation obligations. Life happens, and everything that comes up that needs to be taken care of- from dental appointments to a sick child or taking the dog to the vet and everything in be tween- may mean having to use vacation time, leaving no time to take an actual vacation. Although some of us are lucky enough to have understanding employers who are willing to work with us to handle life’s unexpected responsibilities, some of us don’t have that luxury.People are afraid to go on vacationYes, this is a sad but true fact- some folks are simply too afraid to take a vacation from work. They may either be worried that if they take time away from work there’d be no one there to cover their responsibilities or afraid that taking time off could make them appear replaceable and put their jobs in jeopardy. In a world where job security is elusive and positions dangle precariously, some workers may not feel like a vacation is worth the risk.The impact of not taking vacationsAlthough there are many reasons why individuals may not want to take time off from work for vacation, the impact of their decisions not to do so is clear. Research has shown that not ta king a healthy break from work can lead to a wide range of unwelcome mental and physical effects on the average worker.Job burnout and decreased efficiency on the job are not uncommon phenomenon for folks who push themselves too hard without taking some time off for themselves; as a result, their perceived dedication to work may actually be working against them, resulting in their becoming less productive and valuable employees. Not taking vacation can also negatively affect employee’s moods at work; this includes increased irritability and decreased patience, which can really place a strain on relationships and communication with colleagues. Job focus and energy are also typically depleted at a more rapid rate without a â€Å"vacation recharge,† which ultimately benefits neither the exhausted employees or their frustrated employers.Not taking vacations has a measurable spillover effect outside of work as well. Think of all the detrimental on-the-job effects we just co vered- you don’t think they just magically evaporate when workers go home, do you? Folks who work hard and don’t take vacations are much more likely to be unhappy overall, which follows them around whether they’re at work or at home. They typically dread going into work more than workers who take vacations, which likely means weekends full of unease or anxiety over the coming work week. As if negatively effecting coworker relationships wasn’t enough, carrying around all of this unwanted â€Å"no-vacation baggage† nonstop is sure to have an impact on personal relationships as well. Furthermore, it isn’t hard to imagine a cyclical effect coming into play: unhappiness at work leads to unhappiness outside of work, which feeds back into itself in a circular, downward-spiraling loop of disastrous negativity.All of these negative feelings and emotions tied up with working too hard and not taking vacations can really take a physical toll as well. Th e mind and body are interconnected, and job burnout and unhappiness due to not taking vacations can lead to lethargy, increased aches and pains, lower resistance to illness, and a host of other unwelcome symptoms. So, if your reasons for not taking a vacation are tied to financial frugality, consider the fact that what you’re saving on vacations might wind up costing you in sick days and medical bills.Looking aheadThe bottom line is that most people need a healthy mix of productive activity and relaxing downtime to function at optimum levels, which makes intuitive sense- most people function at their best when they lead balanced lives.So, now that you’re aware of the impact of not taking a vacation from work, what can you do if you’re finding it tough to strike a balance? If you can’t seem to make time for a vacation, either because of your current work situation or because of everything in your life that you’re currently juggling, take a closer lo ok at your routine and see if you can make some adjustments. If it’s a financial concern, consider creating a savings plan that will help you fund a vacation- even modest savings over time can really add up!Again, this is not a frivolous thing- taking a vacation is a responsible way to ensure that all the elements of your life are operating properly over the long haul. This might entail getting some help from friends, family members, or colleagues to help you carve out some quality â€Å"you† time, but it’s a worthwhile investment in your long-term functioning. And if you have a boss or work for a company that frowns on vacations from work, or doesn’t offer vacation benefits, then show them this article- hopefully they’ll quickly see that employee vacations benefit them as much as it does you.