Smart women are sexy

I’m lumping a lot of things into the word ‘smart’. Aspects like common sense without arrogance, natural and book learned intelligence, curiosity about the world, playfulness or seriousness in direct relation to the situation, and a solid connection to her body and spirit.

‘Smart’ shows itself in a lot of ways. It’s my thought that a woman, who typically has a more inward focus, can bring energy to bear in a way that cancels out brute force. A woman who is sure of herself can disarm a man with a word or a gesture. Face it gents, we can’t do that.

Any woman who can carry on a conversation about starting a new business while simultaneously setting the rigging on a sailboat is someone to be reckoned with. What? You say that’s too farfetched?

Okay, so how about a woman who works for a non-profit and helps dozens of people just because of the power of her heart? Or a woman who can drive a 40 foot mobile home through downtown traffic like she was born doing it? Does that still sound farfetched?

Better yet, consider a woman who broadcasts sexy, intelligent and capable while doing something simple, like gardening or teaching her children?

How many times has a woman in your life caused your inner turmoil or fear to dissipate with a single look or hug or light touch? Now imagine that power in the hands of a woman who understands how the real world works. Sexy as hell, wot?

Maybe it’s just me. I’ve been told before that I have a naïve attitude about who people really are. It just seems natural to me that properly expressed feminine energy is incredibly attractive.

Men are attracted to women for dozens of reasons. A nice rack or ass, a good job, a fancy car or house are all legitimate reasons. But I’m being totally honest when I say that even though the body catches my attention, it’s the mind and how it’s used that keeps my interest. I don’t think I’m the only man who admits that he’d get bored fast with an incredibly hot chick who didn't have two brain cells to rub together.

Making hard lessons stick

The hardest lessons to learn are the ones you have to teach yourself. This is because you have to make up your feelings and value systems in a vacuum. Everything that you believe or learn to value is essentially created out of nothing. Everyone is born with an innate personality, but after that we are blank slates.

It doesn't matter if you are surrounded by the smartest, most intellectual people on the planet. It doesn't matter if the greatest teacher or mentor alive comes along. It's up to you to evaluate how their words impact your life. What you allow in is what you have to work with. If you refuse to accept the teacher or if you refuse to understand their words, then what they say is just words bouncing around inside your head.

As long as I can remember from the time I was 9 until now writing has always colored my world. I had a rich fantasy life as a child and young man. That life was filled with my own theme music and peopled by characters that I would loved to have met for real. I made this stuff up to give a sense of purpose to everyday existence.

I wrote stories to please myself. I didn't care if they made sense. I didn't care if they were ever read by anyone else. I just wrote out of the sheer joy of creating worlds and seeing what was happening in them. Sounds simple, right?

You'd think that this is a simple process that after all these years I should still be able to do without much stress. But for some reason, sitting down at the blank page is now a terrifying prospect. It's gotten harder as I've gotten older. I've quit 'as a writer' more times than I can count. Even though I have finished a few pieces and sent them out, I've never placed it higher in my list of priorities than a sometimes hobby. The thing is, I know deep down in my soul that it's supposed to be more.

I've been digging into my heart and head lately trying to work through the bullshit that's keeping me stuck. Although I know I have a long way to go, I've learned a few things and I'm beginning to understand where my problem with writing is. It's encouraging.

Writers use what's called a voice. It's our way of identifying our own spin or way of doing things that works for us as individuals. You can read a Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Peter Straub novel with no covers and no author credits and tell just who is writing the story based on how they use words. Not one of those three writes like the others. That's voice.

Developing voice takes years and practice. It's easy to tell a beginner from a pro. The beginner sounds and feels like a half dozen other people. You can see elements of everyone he or she has ever read in their text. The pro only sounds like him or her self. I've been told that it takes 1 million words to clear the BS out of your head and begin to write with your own distinctive voice.

With me the struggle has been allowing too many others influence into my own heart and soul. For some reason its easier for me to accept their words as gospel while simultaneously ignoring what I feel, or acting as if I don't have any feelings.

One of the parts of getting clear is getting rid of all the noise in my head. This includes outside sources and my own bullshit that gets in the way.

I mean, lets be real. If I tell stories, or if I don't, it's really no one's business but mine. The only one who can make me ignore what I'm feeling or doing is me. The only one that I need to impress with my writing is me, and I'm the only one that needs to believe that I SHOULD be writing. I realize now that until I am convinced on a cellular level that no one in my immediate family will die, or even starve to death if I spend an hour or two writing I will continue to waffle back and forth like this.

People who are ahead of me at the game of life will read this and go 'Well, that was fucking obvious.' To those people I say 'congratulations' for being smarter, but for me this is a revelation. We all move at different speeds and learn lessons when we learn them. I'm just grateful to have gotten this far. That's the benefit of learning this stuff on my own, it has more of an impact than just having someone tell me.

Maybe now, with practice, it won't be so hard to put words onto paper.

Honest change is just a painful nudge away

Someone suggested something to me that makes so much sense it's sickening.

The thing is, its not immediately apparent why the concept might work.

Lets start at the beginning. Most people make goals according to what they want. They see something, or hear something or feel something and then want to experience it again. They make their plans or create steps designed to bring them to the goal in the shortest amount of time.

Sometimes they make it and sometimes they don't. At our core we are pretty lazy animals. It's one of the reasons that we've created all of these 'modern conveniences'. Every advance in technology has been about making life 'easier' or 'safer'.

But here's the rub, since we are essentially lazy creatures meeting goals is tough if you simply consider only what you want. If you are in a place of comfort and security (relatively) its difficult to break away from that to go out, expend energy and achieve something new.

I think this is why more people fail to achieve their goals. They are 'comfortable' so they don't see a need to pursue new goals.

I was talking with a good friend and she said something that caught my attention because at first glance it appears wrong.

Her way of achieving goals is to consider what she doesn't want and then work towards making sure it doesn't happen.

As an example she decided that she didn't want to be buried in debt any more. She wasn't thinking about next year or even next month. RIGHT NOW her main pain point was that she was in debt and it hurt. When the pain got to be enough that she acted she worked out steps that took her down the path of more than just getting out of debt, she worked out how she could NEVER be in debt again.

Read that last line again.

I didn't say 'would never be in debt again' I said 'COULD never be in debt. She's decided that the pain of being in debt is so strong that she never wants to feel it again. Therefore in her mind whatever she chose to do would have to wipe out debt not only now, but going forward for the rest of her life.

She didn't do it by being positive and all of that shit. She did it because it was worth it not to feel that pain anymore.

I know this probably sounds like common sense to all of you enlightened folks out there, but to me this was nothing short of revelation.

I've tried the positive approach to things. I've listed my goals and set them to timelines. I've worked on the details and even achieved some of the smaller stuff. I've told others about certain goals as a way to 'keep me honest' and do you know what I've achieved?

Jack shit.

Okay, granted I'm not homeless, I have food to eat and my own growing business, but the reality is, if I'd met even half of the goals on the list I created when I was 25 I would be a rich man right now living on my sail boat in South East Alaska eating salmon and crab cakes and watching the sun set into the North Pacific. My money would come from my published novels and screen plays and at this moment I'd be considering whether I was going to sleep on the boat or in my bed at home.

Get the idea? All of that stuff is 'important' to me, but since I'm pretty comfortable where I am, its not important enough to go after with all of my energy. I could probably live out the rest of my life where I am relatively complacent because I'm not in enough pain to change.

But her way of doing things gave me a reality check. Maybe if I really want to change I need to look at the pain that not having my dream is causing me. Even if that pain is subtle and easy to ignore.

We do what we focus on. And if we are comfortable all we focus on is creating more of that comfort. The instant we become uncomfortable things begin to change. It's a physiological thing that's hard wired into us. If we get cold we go somewhere warm or make a fire. You get the idea so there's no point in me belaboring it.

So in order to make the changes that need to be made I realize that I have to start thinking about the pain. What hurts and what can I do to fix it.

See what having intelligent, caring friends can lead too?

Thanks, Belle...

Be all you can be?

I find myself envying the people in my life who don't feel the need to clear their heads of the bullshit that's happened to them.

They are able to have a pretty regular life ignoring things like childhood rape, mental and emotional abuse, and other events both past and present that can stop life in its tracks.

For years I've been trying to find ways to overcome depression. It runs in my family pretty strongly (multiple members over dozens of years). Since I decided to do something about the depression I have discovered or developed plenty of tools to help me in the fight.

I feel that a person can't be whole unless they deal with the shit in their head. To my way of thinking if you don't deal with it, things come back around. Yeah, you may go years without having to think about that rape, or abuse you endured. You may go years and never deal with how you feel about your parents, your siblings or your best friend treating you like shit. But what happens on that one day when your control slips and you haven't learned how to handle it?

What happens when everything that has stunted your spirit rears its ugly head and bites the fuck out of you? What then?

I don't think its possible to go your whole life and never have anything bad haunt you. The present becomes the past pretty quickly and something that happened 20 years ago can suddenly feel like it happened yesterday. Damage stays with you even if you ignore it.

The question is simple, if you don't clear out your head do you end up having all of the life that you could have had? Do you realize your potential carrying tons of ignored baggage?

I wonder.

Sitting on the bench at the park considering....

There is a large family friendly park near my home that I've always enjoyed coming to. There are several baseball and football fields. A 1/4 mile track, a huge picknick/party area and the whole thing is wrapped by a 2 mile long bike/walking path.

It's one of the best places to come and switch off for an hour or two if you are so inclined.

And switching off is exactly what I need right now. Between the demands of my business and the demands of my newly awakened heart I can see how some people simply shut down and refuse to move when times get tough.

I haven't spent much time lately diving into my own head. In fact I've been purposely avoiding thinking about things at all. It's considerably less stressful to concentrate on repairing computer systems or mindlessly fixing broken things around the house than it is to get clear on what I want.

The only thing is, all of those things serve as a diversion at best.

I can only bury myself in computers for so long before my mind wanders back to the real deal - building a life that means something to me.

I wonder though, just what does 'mean something to me' even mean? Life is designed to be lived one day at a time. You can plan ahead for some things. Other things happen when they happen. A lot of life is up to the whims of fate and the universe. You can't control when you will die. You can't control the people around you. About the only thing that you have any control over is your own mind.

So, given that some portions of life are uncontrollable, where does that leave me?

I am building a business. That idea grew out of both a want and a need. I wanted to do my own thing and still make money. I needed to find ways to support myself and my family. So to the extent that it was my own idea that's a part of building a life that has meaning to me.

But at the same time I am at the whims of my clients. If they don't have work for me at that particular time I have to develop more ways to create income. I am forced to think in ways that wouldn't have occured to me as an employee. This is both good and bad.

It's good because the new way of thinking implies growth. Internal growth as a business owner/entrepreneur and a new level of maturity. I am not the same person I was when I started all of this two years ago. The idea of taking 'any old job' to pay the bills is now painful to me. I work harder to win the respect of my clients and I don't look back as much as I used to thinking about how easy it would be to just take a pay check to do the bare minimum. At the end of the day I have to live with how I feel about myself and its not worth selling out.

It's bad because I never really reach a consensus on the best way to do things. I discover and discard methods almost hourly. It's sometimes very frustrating because I can't just slip back into the mold of an employee - following someone elses procedures, even if I don't believe in them. I am left to my own devices to figure things out and if you've never had to do this let me tell you it can be very lonely and frightening. I can't use mentors every single time I need to make a decision. Life and business just don't work that way. You either learn to trust yourself or your essentially screwed.

And that's just the business portion of my day. I also am dealing with changes in my heart and mind about the life I've chosen.

I sometimes wonder if all people choose a life based on the things they are taught as a child. If you are told family is the most important thing, do you immediately start a family when you are old enough? If you are told that playing the field is the only way to be happy do you turn into a giggolo? If you are abused as a child, do you then turn around to abuse your children?

How many of us completely ignore our early training and strike out on our own? How many of us can simply ignore or overcome all of the bad or cruel things that happen just by strength of will? I'd love to meet the person who can just shake off everything and plunge ahead without dealing with any repercussions. What an incredible human being they must be.

The rest of us mere mortals must deal with life moment to moment. How would it feel to be able to trust intuition and feelings? How good would it feel to make a decision without later questioning if it was truly your idea or something that someone else put in your head.

Introspection in the park. Seems like that's exactly what I was trying to avoid, but like I said, the brain works in mysterious ways and no matter how much you might fight or try to ignore it, if there's a problem that needs solving you will come back to it until you either solve it or die.

Since I don't feel any incipient threats to mortality, I'd better get busy...

Adding Amazon

I've decided to start learning about affiliate programs.

I don't know whether or not its a worthwhile venture, but residual income is the name of the game when it comes to building a real life now a-days.

Since there are only 24 hours in a day, it makes sense to use them wisely. No one can work all 24 hours and no one would want to. Hell, even if you could it wouldn't make you any more money.

Residual income works for you no matter what else is going on. That's the whole reason that writers do what they do. When you create a novel or screenplay you are paid upfront if you sell it. But over the course of time the residual income can add up to quite a bit more than you were initially paid.

Writers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz could stop writing right now and still be okay for the rest of their lives because of their past efforts. Guys like that keep writing only out of love for the craft. They have long passed any need for large influxes of money.

Anyone who does creative work dreams of the same thing in their lives. That one or two major hits that spawn an entire level of income that they can draw off of for years. And it builds on each success. Sell 9 novels and each novel will have its own income for several years after they are published.

Of course this is dependent on how well you negotiate your contract and how well you market yourself. The publisher will do some of that for you, but how successful you ultimately become is up to you.

There are dozens of creative commons authors who do their own advertising and marketing. As a result they have built a loyal fan base without the need for a huge marketing machine and the expenditure of lots of money.

People like Scott Sigler, Mur Lafferty, Chris Lester, J.C. Hutchins, Phil Rossi and more. They believe in their craft and believe in their ability to light up a crowd of fans with well written stories. It isn't about the flash and bluster. It's about building a legacy.

And believe me when I say that legacies always outlast the creator in the long run.

So I'll build my legacy one click at a time. When I start publishing I'll build it even more.

Never stop trying to be more than you are.

Peace

Writing is all about waking up

Recently I've woken up to a startling reality.

Writing is about connecting to people.

Now I know that sounds kind of 'Duh!', but you have to understand how the writing process has always gone for me.

When I first tried to write a story I did it intending to impress the people that I hung around. I never felt like part of the crowd. One of those 'on the outside looking in' things that lots of pre-teens go through.

It didn't help that I lived in the projects and the word 'Geek' hadn't even been invented yet. My efforts got me called much worse words than that.

Still, I persisted because I discovered that writing helped me make sense of the world around me. It wasn't quite so scary if I was able to explain things to myself through fiction. All of a sudden stuff started making a lot more sense.

I've always been a fan of monster movies and science fiction. Add in a healthy dose of Old Time Radio serials and it's easy to see that I was doomed from the get-go.

Writing is a natural outgrowth of that love. When you see things on the screen it's almost automatic to begin re-writing it in your mind. You see where things could be made better or more clear. The imagination is spurred in ways that wouldn't occur to you on your own(well, that's partly because most movies or serials were written by teams of writers).

I did discover early on that writing is hard. It's easy to plan out a story or get some idea of how it should go, but the actual act of sitting down to write something that you hope someone else will like is HARD.

It takes an understanding of how people operate to make your story work. If your characters are constantly doing something that normal ordinary people can't understand or connect with then they will not read the story.

I don't mean that your superhero has to be shown using the bathroom, but he or she had better have at least one flaw that makes them 'human' to balance out all of the high wire acrobatics. If the character is too far outside the understanding or credulity of the reader, it will turn them off.

Even Superman has his weaknesses and had the audacity to fall in love and get married.

I realize that writing is about waking up in a lot of ways. You have to be awake and aware of the world around you to write about it. Think about this, even the world of Narnia with its talking lions and Minotaurs has some basis in reality. There are mountains and snow. There are political intrigues and family betrayal. There is a sense of the possible occurring right alongside the utterly impossible.

If you want to write a political thriller, don't you think it would be a good idea to learn how governments and politics work? If you are writing a technology story, being aware of current advances will help when it comes time to extrapolate out the inner workings of your star ships drive systems.

Don't get me wrong, you don't have to earn a political science degree or become a rocket engineer, but you should understand the basics.

That's what I meant by being awake when writing. I think that a lot of the stuff I'm trying to do is getting better because I finally admitted to myself that writing in a vacuum isn't possible and there is no way I will find everything I need to know in a book.

I have to talk to people. Get an idea of how their mind works. Learn a bit of what they know and then extrapolate out. That's what makes good fiction.

Well, that and creating characters that are human and capable of being cared about. Think about it, how many movies or books have you gone through only to realize at the end that you didn't give a shit about any of the characters?

Yeah, its something to ponder all right. And something to be aware of when I sit down to create...

Peace