150 Blank Pages to Fill

It was an emotional challenge to fill the last page of my old journal/planner/notebook.scrapbook.

It covered just under a year. Such varying events and moments condensed into less than 100 scrawled pages of ramblings and lists.

ParisI spent an hour flipping back through every page and copying over notes and writings that I couldn’t help but carry forward from my old tome.

After a year of weekly posts, one might think that this blogging thing would be easier. One would be quite wrong.

I still struggle to find the words to encapsulate my experiences. I’m battling the balance of living and writing especially during these full weeks. I want to be out doing, seeing, engaging, connecting, opening, expanding, loving my life with ferocity and consumptive fire.

There are rare times that I have the compulsion to write at length. Most often, however, it is a passing thought of “I should write about…” or a catchy title or sentence that I have repeating over and over in my brain.

I have pages of “starts” but few “finishes” in the banks.

When the muse visits for a long chat, I relish the words forming under my pen. I cherish the missives after the moments have passed.

It was with heavy heart that I faced the replacement my old notebook. Yet, as she often does, the Universe provided a perfect new one to purchase in Paris. And, to ease the ache, I was gifted with a glorious afternoon to first scrawl upon the pages.

On the banks of the Seine 9/29

My only regret is that my legs do not feel strong enough to run… that and that I not a poet nor a painter. Throwing gratitude by the fistful that I am here.

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Why Reading Makes You a Better Writer

Graffiti BridgeYou’ve been saying something that you think is profoundly true for a while. You feel like you unlocked a great secret, hack or have an inside track on the universe.

Then either you can’t express it well or someone with a larger soap-box comes along and says it before you can,

You have a moment of “ah-ha! I really am so brilliant!” and then “Damn! but now I can’t take credit because he said it first.”

This affirmingly frustrating situation happened to me recently.

Good writers read.

I re-tweeted Jeff Goins the other night (MT=Modified Tweet, I changed his a little):

@CoffeeBooksBeer: Hear, Hear! MT @jeffgoins: Good writers read. It’s just that simple. http://t.co/5ocIVqPd

His article makes the case that reading makes you a better writer. Not exactly groundbreaking material here and I promise that isn’t my entire brilliant idea.

I got a response saying simply: “data?”

At first I was going to dismiss it (troll?!) but I reconsidered. Sure, there is abounding anecdotal account of reading influencing great writers but is it a truism or actually true? Is there data to show causality?

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