LIVING THE NIGHTMARE

https://www.facebook.com/erikaferrandokplc/videos/606498709503780/

I will have to find some accessible road to go to Beaumont tonight, but I fear they will all look like this.

To drive these conditions at night is no fun, but ill patients need blood.  

If you don't hear from me after tonight ...

Well, you know I tried my best.  Think good thoughts of me.

LAGNIAPPE, GOSSIP, AND CROSS DRESSING!

{Macak, Nikola Tesla's cat who followed him like a dog}

Lagniappe -  (LAN-yap)

Something given as a bonus or extra gift -- usually from a merchant as a "Thank You" for doing business with him.

Gossip -

“Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth." 

 - Mark Twain 

 Cross Dressing -

“Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,

Wherein the...enemy does much.”  

- William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

So ... what am I going on about?  

Well, you will have to follow me to Hart Johnson's Blog,

Confessions of a Watery Tart:

 http://waterytart23.blogspot.com/

C'mon.  You'll have fun.  DayStar promises.  

Who's DayStar?  

Yeah, that's right: you'll have to follow me to find out.

And don't forget about my berth on C. Lee McKenzie's blog!

 http://writegame.blogspot.com/2016/03/hats-off-corner-welcomes-roland-yeoman.html

And remember the words of the ghost of Mark Twain:

"Why, if it t'weren't for immigrants, that Trump fella would have no wives at all."

TWO FREE BOOKS REMAIN FOR

 THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD GIVEAWAY! 

 ENTER NOW!

 https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/1b4510a1b3decb51

Win FREE The Not-So-Innocents Abroad!

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

• #69 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Steampunk

ENTER QUICKLY!  

There are only 5 copies available to win

 for FREE from Amazon!

 https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/1b4510a1b3decb51 

And don't forget to visit Lee's Blog 

and my guest post! 

 http://writegame.blogspot.com/2016/03/hats-off-corner-welcomes-roland-yeoman.html

REACHING OUT TO THE LIGHT

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road, unless you fail to make the turn.”
 - Helen Keller

“I am sore wounded but not slain
I will lay me down and bleed awhile
And then rise up to fight again”
- John Dryden

To be a writer is to bleed -- 

bleed out the words, bleed at each critical barb thrown at your work, 

bleed from isolation, and bleed at the indifference with which your hard-wrought prose is met.

Come with me to C. Lee McKenzie's blog, 
TheWriteGame:
http://writegame.blogspot.com/2016/03/hats-off-corner-welcomes-roland-yeoman.html

You have never read a guest post quite like this one.

When I lay in a borrowed bed in a borrowed room after my house fire, recovering from my burns, I listened to this to go to sleep:

 

HOW TO TAP THE CREATIVE MIND WITHIN YOU

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. 

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. 

What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
 — Alan Alda

Sadly,  while IQ, the measure of our analytical thinking skills, appears to be on the rise, 


our more expansive, creative thinking skills may be on the wane as our hyper-busy world promotes more narrow, analytical thought.


 The thinking at one time was that all thought gradually flowed, 

and that what people thought of as insight was just an emotional flourish, 

an added “oomph” at the end of the thinking process that made it feel sudden.

But how do you study insight to see if that is so?

Studying insight poses challenges.  You can't just stick a person in a MRI and say, "Be insightful, be creative."


 People were given what are called “remote associates problems.” 

Each consists of three words, like pine/crab/sauce, 

and you have to think of a fourth word that would make a compound word or familiar phrase with each one. 

By the way how creative were you?  I know You thought about what the answer was.

Stumped?

The 4th word was APPLE.


Right at the point where the problem is solved with a flash of insight, 

there’s a burst of gamma wave activity in the right temporal lobe just above the ear ...

So the Predator would've seen that part of your brain go Neon when you came up with the insight.  :-)


Many of Life's problems are unbounded, unconstrained:

How do I become happy? 

How do I become a good person? 

There are no particular ground rules, no formula to follow for that. 

People often solve those problems through a flash of insight, which is a form of creativity, and why it’s desirable.


So how do you summon creativity?

 Insight is like a cat. 

You can’t order it to appear. You can coax it. But you can’t command it. 

Creativity and insight flows from a particular brain state. 

And if you can put yourself in this brain state, you will be more likely to have these creative insights.

THE ROAD MAP TO THE CREATIVE BRAIN STATE 

(no passport needed) 

1.) TAKE THE HIGH ROAD

Research of decades indicates being in a positive mood improves creativity. 

When you’re in a somewhat negative mood, a little anxious, that actually improves analytical thought.

 Creativity flows from a state of feeling safe or secure. When you feel safe or secure, you can take risks. And creativity is intellectually risky. 

 But when you feel subtle, unconscious threat, you feel you can’t make mistakes. 

 Tension brings tunnel-vision.  A good mood literally expands the scope of your thinking.


2.) HOME ON THE RANGE

 If you’re in a CRAMPED SPACE, say your office is a little cubicle, your visual attention can’t spread out. 

It’s focused in this narrow space. 

Just as your visual attention is constricted, your conceptual attention becomes narrow and focused, and your thinking is more likely to be analytical.


 If you’re in a LARGE SPACE 

– a big office, with high ceilings, or outside —

 your visual attention expands to fill the space, and your conceptual attention expands.

That’s why a lot of creative figures like to be outdoors, to take long walks in nature, 

and they get their inspiration from being in the wide, open spaces. 

If you can see far and wide, then you can think far and wide.

 3.) AVOID THE JAGGED CLIFFS

Striking objects, ones with sharp edges, pointy features, like a sofa with angular sides, 

or a letter opener that looks like a dagger,

 it can cause this subtle, unconscious feeling of threat. When that happens, attention narrows.

 The ideal environment for being insightful would be large, airy spaces with soft, rounded features.

4.)  MIND THE COLORS OF THE LANDSCAPE

The color red 

— we think of it as an emergency color, associated with blood, fire engines and stop signs — 

grabs the attention and narrows it. 

But the outdoor colors, like the blue of the sky or the green of the trees, 

has been associated with relaxation, expansion, which creates a feeling of safety, 

which helps the attention expand and increases creativity.


5.) RIGHT TURN ON DEAD

 When you take a break from a problem that you’re stuck on and do something completely different, 

you forget the bad idea that you were fixated on. 

It allows other ideas, better ideas, to bubble up to the surface. 


6.) DON'T FORGET YOUR BEDROLL

One of the most powerful tools for promoting insight is sleep. 

If you’re stuck, take a nap, go to bed, you’ll more thoroughly purge the bad idea you’re stuck on, 

and you’ll be more attuned to clues that might solve the problems.


 When you acquire memories, they’re stored in temporary, fragile form. 


Like cement ...

when you pour it, initially it’s soft, but when it dries and hardens, it becomes strong and durable. 

Memories are like that. 

They become hardened through a process of consolidation, which happens largely during sleep.


 That’s why there are so many stories of people waking up in the middle of the night with a new idea or solution to a problem.

As how Paul McCartney awoke with the melody, "Yesterday," fully formed in his head.

 Sleep supercharges creativity.

7.)  WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE SMART DO NOTHING


As Beetle Baily keeps trying to tell Sarge: Doing nothing is creative work.

 Because when you’re consciously doing nothing, the conscious part is only a tiny part of what your brain is. 

The rest of it, the unconscious, is chugging away all the time. 

There’s this process cognitive psychologists call “incubation”

 – the brain churning over associations. 

And these associations can pop into awareness as insight. 

The incubation process is supercharged during sleep,

 and also when doing nothing, letting your mind wander and having no particular task to perform.

*But a fine balance is necessary:

Once insight is acquired, we must run with it (do something with it!)

8.) CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO INSIGHTFULLNESS


Take a shower.  I write my dialogue in the shower, speaking it aloud.

The shower is a great place to let your mind wander, to incubate thoughts and set the stage for insight. 

In the shower, the water is warm, 

you don’t feel a boundary between your skin and the outside of your body. 

You feel sort of expansive. 

There’s white noise in the background.

 What you see is kind of blurry, so you turn your thoughts inward, like sensory deprivation. 

It allows your mind to wander and your attention to broaden. 

That’s why people tend to have great ideas in the shower.

Unless you're in Norman Bates' Motel.

PEACE IN A WORLD WITHOUT IT

"If you want peace, stop fighting.  If you want peace of mind, stop fighting with your thoughts."
 -Elu

"Nothing can bring you peace of mind but yourself."
 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder." 
- St. Augustine


As I sat down at my laptop tonight, mulling over what to write for tomorrow's post, 

I heard one word murmur within my mind: "Peace."

I wasn't thinking of inner peace.  

I was thinking of what my writing friends might be interested in.

Perhaps the Great Mystery answered my question for me.

Don't expect any great wisdom here though.  

I am not the Great Mystery.  I don't have the job qualifications.

But I know that, like happiness, you cannot find peace by looking for it.  

Like happiness, peace of mind is a by-product of living not its goal.


Be true to you:

When we practice congruency, we behave similarly to the way we feel and think. 

When the way we see ourselves and the way the world sees us is the same, we are practicing congruency. 

Problems arise when we see ourselves one way 

(for example, as a loving mother) 

but behave in ways that are at odds with how we would like to see ourselves 

(for example, neglect our children because we are too busy). 

Finding ways to keep our inner ideals and the way we behave similar is one of the keys to peace of mind.


Peace on the battlefield:

It is easier to be at peace when we listen to beautiful music, play with our pets, 

walk through undisturbed nature, and step away from the world.

But Life is a harsh  mistress.  

She draws you back into the chaos of conflicts with bosses, spouses, children, bills, ill health ... 

the number of enemy troops you face sometimes appear endless.

Each battlefield we find ourselves on contains a lesson that will keep us from worse ones 

if we but learn it correctly.


Look for that lesson.  

Perhaps it is only to take ourselves not so seriously, to learn to laugh at ourselves 

(we will never run out of material!), 

to learn that some battles are not worth the collateral damage, 

or to find we should not fail to plan unless we plan to fail.

 Failure has negative connotations, but actually, everyone fails. 

 How can you improve or learn anything if you never fail? 

A healthy attitude towards failure encourages bravery. 

It’s not you that is the failure, instead it is what you tried that failed. There is a big difference.


Listen to the Wake-Up Call of Loss

 To lose something we had taken blithely for granted is jarring.  

It should alert us to look for all the other blessings in our lives that really are so precious.


Forgive:

Those who hurt us have taken enough of our time.  Why invite them along in your thoughts for the rest of the day?  

They have to live in the world they make for themselves with their thoughtless natures.  

Forgive them, release them from the obligation they owe you, and you will find you have released yourself.  

Hate is like drinking rat poison, hoping the rat will die of it.


Think Outside of Yourself

Each person you pass or meet is fighting a battle no one knows anything about.  

Be kinder than you might be inclined to be for that reason.


Learn the Power of a Smile

 Whenever you are laughing or smiling, something interesting happens.

 Not only does something happen on a chemical level to make you feel better, 

but it also stops all stress and negativity from entering your psyche. 

 A simple smile can make such a difference.


 ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’
 ~Victor Frankl

HOW TO WRITE A BESTSELLER

Each of us wants to know how to write a bestseller, don't we?

How many books have all of us bought, promising us the secret?

And here I am about to give you that much sought after secret for FREE!

All you have to do is follow me ... 

to Yolanda Renee's blog, DEFENDING THE PEN:
http://yolandarenee.blogspot.com/2016/03/xanadu.html 

This upcoming Wednesday! 

The music to which I wrote of the Xanadu struggling through a sorcerous storm:

In my The Not-So-Innocents Abroad, the Official Story is never 

the Whole Story: