Author: Garth Beyer

A Fair Place To Find Passion

Garth Beyer

You can write and talk about a lot of things you like, but it’s difficult to do so without sounding like you are promoting it.

When searching for passion (in writing, in creating, in art), find something that makes you angry.

I’ve noticed hundreds of exceptional products made because the inventor was angry that things were the way they were.

Sure, you can find something you love and add to it so that you love it more, but I can’t sense the passion when you do that.

If you communicate to me that you added more frosting to the middle of an oreo, great, I’m sure some people will like that. But, if you get frustrated that they don’t offer enough variety in terms of the flavor of frosting and then go out and create a new frosting, you will certainly get a lot more attention.

(Now is a good time to read about Cheez-Its.)

Remarkable change and creation stem from passion, and who is to say that anger is not a fair place to find passion?

 

Stay Positive & Count To 10, Then Do Something About It

Garth E. Beyer

Yea, You Are In Control

Garth Beyer

You have certain tasks you have to do. You have standards, deadlines or quotes that you have to meet. You may not have control of what you have to do.

But you do have control of how you do it. (Yes, even when you think you don’t!)

The reason you always have control of how you do it, even if you were given specific instructions to follow, is that what those instructions produce could be better. It’s not remarkable people who discover ways to improve something. It’s those who discover ways to improve something that become remarkable.

You are in control. Better start believing (and acting!) on it.

 

Stay Positive & How Will You Do It?

Garth E. Beyer

Repetition Repetition Repetition

Garth Beyer

Give them something to repeat to others.

That is what is being called forward with you and your work or art. Whether it’s a story about how you have gotten to where you are at or how your creation makes people feel, there has to be something that people can repeat to others.

After all, your rate of success is based on the number of times someone repeats something positive about you to another.

 

Stay Positive & Remember, No One Made It Big Without Being Talked About

Garth E. Beyer

What’s Your Junk

Garth Beyer

It’s time to clean up: your mind, your home, your hallways.

What junk do you have? The answer to that is your starting place.

Now think of what you could create out of that junk that has a realistic purpose, that you could possibly sell or market?

 

If you thought deeply about these questions. You will realize that the list of items you thought were junk in the first question got longer when you thought about the second question. Suddenly the metal figurine you have has become “junk” because you could combine it with the putty you have in your drawer.

This takes recycling to an entirely new level.

New ideas, I would argue, are just the result of reorganized or modified junk ideas. It’s incredible what happens when you consider more items or thoughts to be junk status. Being handed a box of 6 odd objects (junk) and told to create something worthy out of them is much more difficult to do if you were handed a box of 60 odd objects (more junk) and told to create something worthy from them.

Maybe it’s not junk, but no one tweaks with treasure, do they? Keep in mind, believing that something is a treasure limits what you have to work with in your box of junk.

 

Stay Positive & One Person’s Treasure Is Another Person’s Junk

Garth E. Beyer

Solving The Problem Behind Freedom In Lead Writing

Garth Beyer

Freedom gives us too many possibilities. We seize up when confronted with what feels like infinite possibility, and fear comes after you as soon as you manage to write your first lead.

What to do

1. You have to be you. Neil Gaiman has said,

“Tell your story. Don’t try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Because [as a] starting writer, you always start out with other people’s voices — you’ve been reading other people for years… But, as quickly as you can, start telling the stories that only you can tell — because there will always be better writers than you, there will always be smarter writers than you … but you are the only you.”

2. Don’t go back to figure out what is most important in the story, so you can use it with your lead. If you don’t remember the most interesting parts of the story after reading all of your notes once, then it’s not that important.

As long as you are considering the audience when writing your lead, what you thought was important is what is important. You didn’t miss anything.

3. Freak out and critique your lead into oblivion. Because that always helps.

Yea, that last one was a joke. The point of one and two is not to do three.

 

Stay Positive & Joking Is Fun In Leads Too

Making Good Things Better

Garth Beyer

I’m stressed right now and I wish I had a stressball to squeeze.

Of course, just thinking about a stressball makes me laugh because all I really think about is a poem I wrote four years ago about a stressball.

The stressball helps. It is good. The poem, though, makes it even better.

The simple fact is that stories make good things better.

As for my poem, maybe I’ll share it another time…

 

Stay Positive & Go Wave Your Story-Making Wand Around

Garth E. Beyer

Neil Gaiman Has It Right

Garth Beyer

When it comes to my writing, I write when I don’t want to. I do so not with hopes that I will work toward inspiration, but with acknowledgement that in the end, words on paper are only words on paper.

Neil Gaiman backs me up,

“And the weird thing is that six months later, or a year later, you’re going to look back and you’re not going to remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you wrote because they had to be written.”

After writing, though, what you do with those words is an entirely different situation.

 

Stay Positive & There’s No Bad Time To Write