Jane Genova talks about ‘finding one’s voice’ as a blogger, the same idea as finding one’s voice as a writer in general, not just of blogposts.
As Jane says, the question is derived from the greater question of ‘Talent’: is one’s ‘Talent’ of a finite quantity and, if so, do we peak early or late in life?
Are we born with just so much talent, just like we fems are born with just so many eggs? That thought is floating around, even in America, the nation of no limitations. For example, in the new book “Old Masters and Young Geniuses” that question is raised about artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald. When he was 29 he published “The Great Gatsby.” And that was that in the talent territory. It’s conjectured he had no more talent in him. If Sylvia Plath, who wrote amazing poems like “Daddy” before she was 30, had lived: Would her later work be derivative?
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Until I bumped into Galeson [author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses] I attributed my amazing new success, which some colleagues describe as having power and influence, to finally snagging the right medication and therapy (cognitive) for depression and ditching the whole chase after conventional rewards such as maxing compensation and having a second home.
Now Jane is finding far greater success through fast-tracking her different ‘voice’ experiments through blogging. Starting out as a Peter Drucker sound-alike, she morphed through Tom Wolfe until starting to find her own, authentic ‘voice’.
Like Jane, I hope that my talent (whatever it was/is) wasn’t squandered in my youth, but awaits patiently the correct time for its full blossoming.
Joseph Thornley uses his Crackberry or Outlook Notes to take notes about the meeting he’s in.
Taking them in such fashion forces him, he says, to review and ‘tidy them up’ later, wherein he is able to pause and reflect on what he’s written and why it was important.
I’ll simply find that quiet contemplation of the notes allows me to find meaning and significance that I had previously missed.
Joseph asks if anyone else has similar note-taking and/or pause-and-reflect practices to help them remember and think about what’s important each day. If you have a view, shoot over to Joe’s blog and add a comment.
Mark Shanahan from the UK has been judging a ‘business writing’ competition and is appalled by the lack of anything worth giving a medal to. As he says,
who on earth thought these tired and cliche-ridden pieces were worth an accolade?
The challenge comes, perhaps, from finding anything worth writing about and having the time to pick a new viewpoint from which to write the piece. Too often in business the pressure is on to find something ‘brilliant, new, challenging and find it NOW!’ and of course that’s not how innovative thinking works.
This ties in with Jane’s earlier thoughts about ‘finding one’s voice’: finding a voice takes time, as does finding a point of view that is not just a poor reflection of someone else’s. Take away the ‘performance pressure’ and often-times better outcomes result.
I can attest to this, not only with my own writing, but also my own music composition many years ago when I went to England to be a rock star. It was only after four years of sweating night after night over keyboards, sequencers and drum machines that I decided that I wasn’t ‘going to make it’. A huge weight was taken off my shoulders and I started writing music just for me — and the music was much the better for it. It was music I can still listen to a decade later and take pride in.
Courtesy of Steve Rubel comes a superb post from Ryan outlining his favourite and most useful bookmarklets.
What’s a bookmarklet, you ask? Well, Wikipedia has a fabulous answer:
A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page. Because Internet Explorer uses the term favorites instead of bookmarks, bookmarklets are also less commonly called favelets by users.
Bookmarklets can be saved and used like normal web page bookmarks. Therefore, they are simple “one-click” tools that can add substantial functionality to the browser. For example, they can:
- Modify the way a web page is displayed within the browser (e.g., change the font size, background color, etc.).
- Extract data from a web page (e.g., hyperlinks, images, text, etc.).
- Jump directly to a search engine, with the search term(s) input either from a new dialog box, or from a selection already made on a web page.
- Submit the page to a validation service.
Ryan firmly believes, as do a large majority of we in the Business Communication online community, that bookmarklets are going to be a bigger and bigger force in the future, as widgets take over the browser and ‘page views’ drop (because you will be able to do more things from the one webpage, rather than skipping from webpage to webpage to accomplish your tasks).
Great article, thanks Ryan, and thanks Steve for picking up on it.
And from the ‘putting mating in one’s mind can bring out the creativity in you’ department…
It’s well known that men strut like peacocks when they are in the presence of attractive females. We may not be as overt as Picasso, but we certainly do add a bit more ‘colour’ to our plumage when there is the chance of entertaining thoughts of romantic (or otherwise) entanglement.
And it’s not just me who says it… according to Psychology Today researchers at Arizona State University found that men — but not women — were more creative after picturing a hot date.
And I wonder if the rewards of corporate consultancy will change with their finding that even offering monetary rewards didn’t spark the same level of creativity as did mate-seeking.
Patrick Hughes, associate professor of communications studies at Texas Tech University, claims that there are two types of religious orientation: intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic doesn’t need to go to Midnight Mass, for example, to feel a better Catholic; the extrinsic needs to have the company of others to feel fully ‘there’. Which helps me understand why I haven’t felt the need to go to Church in ages; my relationship with God is a personal, not public one. My Masters research into Christian theology helps keep me feeling the flame.
Patrick’s words may help any of you who worry that not attending a formal religious service means you are less of a member of your religious body and further from your God.
And lastly, a video obviously pinched from some German ‘hidden cameras’ tv show, showing what happens when you exchange a real water bed for a bed of water… the laughter of the victims is contagious.
Enjoy!
Technorati : David W. Galeson, Old Masters and Young Geniuses, arizona state university, bookmarklets, creativity, extrinsic, intrinsic, jane genova, joseph thornley, mark shanahan, muse, patrick hughes, psychology today, religious orientation, ryan, steve rubel, wikipedia
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