Momentum of the Muse

Welcome to post #3 in the Effective and Efficient Posting Series: Link Love.

Link love is a great way to tip readers onto helpful, informative, useful or simply hilarious information elsewhere. It is also a good posting strategy for when you’re lazy/efficient/effective/riding on someone else’s work/dedication/coat tails. So what if you don’t want to put in the leg work to achieve results that keep people coming back for more? Someone else does! Make them feel appreciated by pointing people their way.

Now, I’m going to send out some link love to Millionaire Mommy Next Door. I don’t know what my deal with Mommy blogs is; I’m in my 20’s and haven’t trusted children since my brief stint as a waitress at Red Robins, and a four year term coaching 5 to 11 year olds in ice hockey. Millionaire Mommy Next Door is more about Millionaire than Mommy, and lately I have been reading really insightful posts over there. The post I am referring to specifically today is How to Find Your Zingers. It’s a writing exercise which involves making lists of 100. I like making lists, and if you do too, I encourage you to make lists of 1000, or even 10 000.

Hmmm. If I’m so lazy, why and how can I make lists of 1000?

Well, maybe you should just listen to Jen Smith and try the exercise as she describes it.

Be sure to check out the rest of the series:

• Post #1: Quote Compilations Will Save You Time (And Effort Too!)
• Post #2: Using Holidays to Maximum Advantage

This may be the laziest post I’ve ever written, but I like quotes, so it’s happening anyways. Sometimes when I need a jolt, or *cough* procrastinating on my nanowrimo *cough*, I browse around through them. Sop, today I saved a couple and figured I’d share.

• Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very;” your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be -Mark Twain
• If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. -Isaac Asimov
• I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. -English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University
• No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. -Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907
• I’d rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. -Jack Smith
• If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. -Lillian Hellman

And, saving the best for last – ahem.

What is writing? Is it the bird in the hand? Is an idle brain the devil’s workshop? DOES the second mouse get the cheese? No one can really define for certain that sublime display of power/fireworks/gourmet word cookery as the chisel hits the tablet, the pen hits the page, the chalk hits the board, and the fingers bash away at the hot chocolate encrusted keyboard. Is it endless spider solitaire, and mahjong? Is it knowing the darkest depths of the internet – religious sex toys and videos of people crying while eating various foods – and then playing free rice to improve your karma after horrifically discovering amputee porn? Is it dressing your pets up as rock stars, dancing around, playing “Welcome to the Jungle” for half an hour when you have a deadline? Is it becoming obsessed over a debate in a forum, tracking down the offensive dissenter, and making a voodoo hair doll after stealing their brush? Yes, my friends, that is the beauty of writing. – Erin Maher

Please include any gems in the comments section.