[WITI No. 61] Renewing a personal commitment with new friends, connoisseur of Japanese culture, writing tips, anti-library recommendations, stealthy poetry injection
Hi, I’m George. You’re a friend. We may not have met IRL but if you are reading this - that’s good enough for me. I usually write about what I’m reading or what audiobook I’m listening to and how to turn that into wisdom I can pass along to my kids. I also write about tax debt here, if that’s how you found me. Sometimes, I share interesting bits from the internet too. Welcome!
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On January 6th, I was on the kick off meeting for Ship 30 for 30 which is a writing cohort based writing course where the goal is to have the participants publish 30 “Atomic Essays” every day for 30 days. You might have heard me talk about Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole, the course creators. Search Twitter for either of those guys or Ship 30 for 30.
Needless to say, since then I’ve been writing a ton. So far I’ve published 7 Atomic essays ( 5 about tax, 1 parenting and 1 fiction piece) - you can check them out here. Needless to say, I’ve been busy.
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I started reading Less by Andrew Sean Greer. This book won a Pulitzer prize. I’m not far enough into it to have an opinion. We’ll see what happens. However, over the weekend, I did get a chance to watch a Japanese movie called Fable, The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill. You might remember I’m a Japanophile and this definitely scratched that itch.
It takes a special mind to appreciate the zaniness of someone like Jackal Tomioka from the movie or even this. I won’t spoil it for you, in case you want to watch but this evening before sitting down to write, I found myself tapping the fleshy part between my eyes, in the same way Fable does when he switches the modes of his behavior. I needed to get into my writing mode.
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Here’s a short list of things of some writing tips that I’ve re-integrated this week.
Set your sacred hours. Have a dedicated time to write. I’ve had some success for the last 8 days, sitting down and writing at 8:30a for about an hour.
Don’t start with a blank page. There might be topics you want to write about. Start a stub. Brain dump on to a page a headline, introduction, three sub-headlines, and other details you might want to include. It makes writing easier.
Start a bunch of stubs. This way if your motivation for a piece has a waned, move to another. Maybe you can resurrect later.
Publish enough to figure out your Golden Phrase, a phrase that hooks people into reading more. For Nicolas Cole, his golden phrase was…
“By age 17, I was a top rated player on World of Warcraft and I had learned X, Y, Z about…”
Publish daily, make a bunch of small bets. Double down on what works.
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I haven’t decided what I reading besides Less. I picked up Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzgerald and One Morning by Jessica Hagy, a recommendation from one of the 30 for 30 Shippers, Ron Hekier. I’m also trying to get through some of my anti-libary, pic below.
Able to be seen here:
Springtime for Germany by Ben Donald
Why the Germans Do It Better by John Kampfner
No Filter by Sarah Frier
Everything is F*cked by Mark Manson (already listened to this…)
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (already read this..)
It’s All About Me by Robin Dreeke
If you care to join me one of these reads, we’ll have a bookclub.
You might notice the fireplace roaring at the top of the pic. We’ve battling with a finicky furnace that is challenging our HVAC technician. He nearly tried to leave the house without fixing it. Today was cold as hell. Gentle German Translation: Heute es it sehr kalt. It seems like I’ve burned through have a cord of firewood to keep this part of our first floor warm.
Word of the Week: Coracle
Find of the week
This is both frightening and inspiring. It reminds me of a Robert Frost poem.
That’s all I got this week. I linked to a poem. I shared my weird, PPAP is soooo-weird and some learnings and my writings. Comment below:
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Till next week,
-George