The Guest House by Jelaluddin Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
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A Poetic Description of Behavior Change
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
By Portia Nelson, From There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.
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Desiderata by Max Ehrmann
Desiderata by Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
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10 Brilliant Examples of How to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang
“The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until … safely hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit: the lead.”
— William Zinsser, On Writing Well
With respect, I must disagree with Mr. Zinsser. We all know the most important part of any article is the title. Without a compelling title, your reader won’t even get to the first sentence. After the title, however, the first few sentences of your article are certainly the most important part.
Journalists call this critical, introductory section the “lede,” and when properly executed, it’s the bridge that carries your reader from an attention-grabbing headline to the body of your blog post. If you want to get it right, try one of these 10 clever ways to open your next blog post with a bang.
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If You Want to Make Writing Easier, Try Morning Pages.
Writing is often a chore for me. With that in mind, I’ve undertaken a new morning ritual called “morning pages.” Morning pages is a writing exercise devised by Julia Cameron and popularized in her book, The Artist’s Way.
The morning pages exercise is designed to help you recover (or discover) your creativity, and silence what Julia refers to as the Censor. The Censor is that critical inner voice that criticizes each and every word you write and makes it brutally painful for you to write anything.
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Morning Pages: 8 Lessons Learned
Today is day four of the morning pages exercise. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
1. Make Morning Pages a Priority
I almost skipped morning pages today. It wasn’t something I consciously chose to do. I just let myself get side-tracked. I started surfing around reading other peoples’ stuff, looking for inspiration, and before I knew it, an hour had passed, and I’d still not started writing.
I may have to change my morning routine, which typically looks like this. I roll out of bed and hit the bathroom. Then I grab a coffee. Next, I turn on my computer and check a few things. Then I finally sit down to write my morning pages. I think tomorrow I won’t turn on my computer until my morning pages are done.
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