View the making of Smokin’ Gun Terry Norman…

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear.

Many, many years ago I made a small, 8.5- by 2- inch card with the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune printed on it that I’ve kept above my writing desk. This past weekend I began reading Lawrence Block’s Write For Your Life, a book version of a writing seminar he created in the mid-‘80s. The second part of the seminar is detailed in the book’s fifth chapter titled: “Fear Is Nothing To Be Afraid Of.” A long time ago I learned that what writers and wanna-writers call Writer’s Block is nothing more than fear. Knowing that is insufficient to conquer the block, but I do know that no writer truly smashes through without first, at some level of consciousness, coming to that realization.

Block asks seminar participants, and readers to go through a paired exercise where they express their fears to a partner who simply responds thank you to each statement. This is his description from pages 38 and 39 of his book.

1. If you run out of fears, make something up—even if you’re sure it’s pure fabrication.

2. Don’t attempt to judge the reality of your fears. If something comes to mind, don’t try to figure out if it really and truly applies to you. Write it down anyway.

3. If a thought comes to mind and it’s so disturbing that you don’t want to permit yourself to write it down, write it down! Don’t censor your thoughts. Perhaps you find yourself coming up with a thought like A fear I have about my writing is that it will kill my parents. Don’t waste time telling yourself it doesn’t make sense, it’s not how you really feel. And don’t get trapped by the notion that writing down the thought will make it real. The object of this process is to let go of your fears, and you let go of them by releasing them from your mind and putting them down on the page. (Now might be a good time for you to take a breath.)

Okay. Go ahead and do the process. Let your thoughts flow as freely as possible and write them all down as quickly as they come, starting each sentence with A fear I have about my writing is. Don’t stop to think about them. Just stay with the process. (If you want, you can imagine a gentle, warmhearted partner saying thank you at the end of each sentence.) Don’t stop before you’ve written down at least a dozen fears, and you may be able to write a great many more than that. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t be concerned about how precisely you express yourself, or about the niceties of grammar and sentence structure. The only object here is to get your fears onto the page.

Go ahead.

Put down the book and do it!

These are the fears I wrote down this morning:

A fear I have about my writing is that it will suck.

A fear I have about my writing is that it may not suck, but it will fall short of good enough for a publisher to pay me for what I’ve written.

A fear I have about my writing is that my characters will be lifeless and uninteresting.

A fear I have about my writing is that I’ll reveal too much of myself and people will despise me.

A fear I have about my writing is that I’ll step back from the edge when the writing might get good.

A fear I have about my writing is that the story won’t go anywhere.

A fear I have about my writing is that readers will become bored.

A fear I have about my writing is that I won’t be able to make my story true.

A fear I have about my writing is that my story will lack dimension.

A fear I have about my writing is that my grammar will be weak.

A fear I have about my writing is that my word choices will be mundane.

A fear I have about my writing is that I won’t be able to complete my story.

A fear I have about my writing is that readers will think I’m weird.

A fear I have about my writing is that I will not find the courage to write past my fears.

A fear I have about my writing is that I am a fraud.

A fear I have about my writing is that I am a failure.

A fear I have about my writing is that readers will laugh at me.

A fear I have about my writing is that I will be called a hack.

A fear I have about my writing is that I am a hack.

A fear I have about my writing is that it is only typing.

A fear I have about my writing is that readers will tell me not to quit my day job.

A fear I have about my writing is that readers will pity me.

A fear I have about my writing is that I have wasted my life pretending to be a writer.

A fear I have about my writing is that I lack the courage to write.

A fear I have about my writing is that I don’t get emotions.

A fear I have about my writing is that I lack what the empathy to write great characters.

A fear I have about my writing is that my story can’t touch my readers.

A fear I have about my writing is that I’ll die having never written words of value.

A fear I have about my writing is that it will never be remembered.

A fear I have about my writing is that I’m not fooling anyone.

A fear I have about my writing is that people already know that I’m not a writer.

A fear I have about my writing is that people only pretend to like what I write.

A fear I have about my writing is that people pity me.

A fear I have about my writing is that people are indifferent to what I write.

A fear I have about my writing is that I’m only pretending to write.

A fear I have about my writing is that I’m writing to get attention.

A fear I have about my writing is that

Please, I wrote and post these for my own benefit. I don’t want affirmations that my fear aren’t real or that I’m not as bad as I think I am. My fears are my fears and I wrote them to give them solidity and I post them for much the same reason.

Once my fears are out there, I can’t take them back. I can’t pretend they don’t exist. And perhaps, in time, having given them form they will no longer seem insurmountable.

1326: The craziness of astrology

Via Mano Singham…

From 1730 today until 1830 tomorrow, I will be off-line. There will be no new posts during this time, nor will I be checking email. Go for a walk. Have coffee with a friend. Read a book.

Via Mother Jones…

So, only five out of 33 or were those five mistresses the only ones to come forward? Either way, the result is clearly god’s will.

So, this morning I open my email and one of the pieces waiting to be read is from The Root, a online daily news magazine written from black perspectives, with the subject line: Meet The Root 100. I started reading The Root because Jimi Izrael wrote for it and it’s one of my few windows into racial politics and social issues.

I’m never good with these kinds of list, I almost never recognize the people profiled, but when I looked at the photo matrix, my eye stopped at Lebron James (I think it was the signature headband). How scary is that?

I like how The Root’s staff characterizes James as professional athlete and disruptor but I don’t see him that way. To me he is an example of the classic boss-worker relationship. When I boss decides to lay workers off, the standard response is to cry that there is nothing personal about the move, the action was driven by economic reality. Let a valuable worker quit or even just explore other opportunities, and the worker is immediately an ingrate and affront to the personal relationship between boss and worker.

Bosses need to believe that they hold the power, it really is a security issue with them, and the very rare exception notwithstanding, to a person they will always act to benefit themselves. James never owed Cleveland or the Cleveland Cavaliers anything more what he perceived he was paid for. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t understand capitalism.

0906: OH-09: It’s over

0849: Is the US a nation of secret socialists?

View the making of Humanity…

View the making of Reverie

From 1730 today until 1830 tomorrow, I will be off-line. There will be no new posts during this time, nor will I be checking email. Go for a walk. Have coffee with a friend. Read a book.

The Navy has a tradition of all hands turning to and making the ship spic and span on Friday afternoons before liberty call. For five years I weekly scrubbed, cleaned and polished or made sure that my work center — the after missile house on the USS Bainbridge, CGN-25 — was scrubbed, cleaned and polished.

Today I resurrect that tradition as I tackle the most dreaded aspect of my journey of Going Up From Egypt: scrubbing my tile floors. You can see the spaces on the right where my refrigerator, cabinet and stove sat.

I’ve moved every bit that wasn’t nailed down either into my living room, or in the case of the appliances, to the extreme end of the space.

My original plan was to use an ammonia solution, but I tested two tiles this morning with Mr. Clean and Pine-sol. While neither is super white, I think they’re clean enough to justify me not going toxic on the floor and my lungs.

I started scrubbing at 9 a.m. and finished at 3 p.m. with an hour off for a break and lunch. The yellow line in the after pickure is the result of the shift from natural light from my living room window to the artificial light of my kitchen.

Just call me swabby.

*Going Up From Egypt…

[1423: I’m still working on this story, but the short version is that nearly everyone thinks I’m making a mountain out of a molehill and perhaps I am, but I’m the kind of person who thinks little things are important. I also think that the details have for years now been lost in the flow of other cash in the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.]

Where are Lee Fisher, Ohio Democratic Party Candidate for United States Senate; Dennis Kucinich, Ohio Democratic Party candidate Congress from Ohio’s 10th district and Marsha Fudge, Ohio Democratic Party candidate Congress from Ohio’s 11th district, on the Official Ballot of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party listing Endorsed Candidates for the November 2, 2010 General Election?

Nowhere to be seen.

Why?

That was the question I put to the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

I got a very quick response from the office manger that the CCDP (I almost typed CCCP) telling me that federal candidates were prohibited from appearing on an official ballot produced by the CCDP. That is true. I heard the exact same explanation from two people at the Ohio Democratic Party in Columbus.

It is also true, as far as I’ve been able to verify at this point, that the CCDP could have a Federal Political Action Committee and use money from that entity to add endorsements for Fisher, Kucinich and Fudge (or any past and future candidate) to its Official Ballot.

So why hasn’t it? Because there’s no patronage available from federal politicians?

According to the person I spoke with at CCDP, when I asked if there was any concern that Cuyahoga County voters might mistakenly believe that CCDP didn’t endorse the federal candidates, I was told that I’m the only person who has ever mentioned this

I suppose that must be true. Go figure.

Dennis and Marsha probably couldn’t care less that they’re not on the Official CCDP Ballot. They’ll be re-elected for two more years regardless.

Lee Fisher, however, has serious problems when the Democratic Party organization in his home county, the single largest block of Democratic voters in the state, gives voters the false impression that it doesn’t endorse him by leaving him off over a funding technicality.

I’ve been told by multiple sources that the rules haven’t changed, that previous mailings of this type also left off federal candidates, and maybe no one cared in the past since the ODP does include federal candidates on the sample ballot it mails out.

I’m sure I received a copy of the ODP piece, but I don’t remember it; the CCDP mailer, however, leapt out at me.

In Cuyahoga County, Democratic Organization is an oxymoron.

View the making of Heat Flo…

I went face-to-face with a customer service challenge at Heinen’s that was solved way too far up the authority chain. This morning Tom Peters has something to say about my experience.

CEO who re-invented an industry: His “secret” was dramatically expanding “low level” support staff’s responsibility for “little things” regarding customer service.

Re-invention happens when Bean’s co-workers aren’t afraid to blink.

Previously…

View the making of Hear Me…