The Debt Everyone Owes

Ever since the 80’s, reality becomes more complicated faster and faster. Being generally knowledgeable has already become impossible for an average person. Our fields of expertise are inevitably shrinking as more detail is added to the database of mankind’s knowledge every day. There is just too much knowledge.

A few hundred years ago people like Leonardo da Vinci and Nicholas Copernicus were able to learn a vast majority of the whole knowledge accumulated by mankind. A few decades ago, the likes of Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking managed to become experts in their field while being not-overly-ignorant of other branches of science and the current affairs around them.

On the other hand an average person twenty years ago was pretty much ignorant about everything except his/hers very narrow margin of specialization. What’s even more important, he/she had no means to access any new knowledge without a certain articulated intent, considerable effort and often high cost.

But now… we’re in the Matrix. Remember the scene when they need to fly a helicopter and Trinity asks Tank to load a program straight to her brain allowing her to do just that? The whole procedure takes only a few seconds. Of course it’s not that easy in real life, but the general idea is already there

Pretty much all there is to know is already on the internet. And it’s not some arcane knowledge to find it either. Search engines allow you to ask more and more complex questions in a natural way. Only a moment ago, I entered “who does Trinity ask for helicopter flying program” into Google searchbox and there I was with the answer just a split of a second later. Just like Trinity.

 

Free your knowledge

Everyday you ask an endless stream of questions: Which movie to watch? How to cook spaghetti? Which wine is best with Italian cuisine? How to fix the toilet? How to start writing a book? How to make it good?

Is there a way to know all? Of course, you use it every day - it is called the internet. If you are connected (and you are for most of the time), all human knowledge is just a click away. Remember how many times you learned new skills within minutes? One click on the search button and suddenly the world suddenly is not so scary any more.

That is why we all have a debt to pay. Every one of us should contribute to this unprecedented database of human achievement by sharing his knowledge. Yes, sharing. For free. Pay your debt by letting everyone learn what you have learned.

The most powerful argument for sharing your knowledge is the ethical implication behind it. Imagine all those people in third world countries who can’t afford to get a proper education. Google gave them Google Translate to let them understand you (more on Google coming up), now it’s your turn to give them strong, reliable content. Empower the people and let them apply what you know to their lives. Whether you show them how to assemble a notebook or simply tell them the best recipe for pancakes, their choices will broaden even if they decide not to follow your advice.

Another strong point for sharing your knowledge is simple vanity. No matter whom you teach, they always end up being more like you. Obviously if you teach philosophy it will have a far greater impact on people’s minds than teaching them how to clean a carburetor (although teaching them what a carburetor is may prove really mind-changing). Regardless of the subject though, you will have the sheer satisfaction of being smarter than your students, which is a quality in itself and should make you start a blog, vlog or at least a Twitter account right away (follow me there while you’re at it).

It takes some effort, but it’s worth it. Think about it. Imagine how perfect this world would be if everyone learned how to be a little bit more like YOU. So start making it happen with one post at a time, reader by reader.

What’s in it for you?

But let’s not get carried away by the catchy phrases of ethical nature. Obviously I could point out how satisfying it is to help others and how important it is to make the world a better place, but the twisted point of my article is to convince you that ultimately it’s just good business.

Consider it from a more practical viewpoint. By letting everyone learn your skills, you also let them learn you are an expert. If your knowledge is worthwhile, useful and understandable, you will definitely benefit by sharing it. It may be a new client who decided to trust you seeing you knew what you were talking about, a new job offer from someone who read your article and was impressed or perhaps a new business proposition. Thus by making the world a better place you simultaneously make a better place for yourself in it.

Most of you will probably say, that sharing your knowledge creates more competition on the market, but while it seems like a good excuse not to do anything, it’s also just NOT TRUE. Remember that the people who just want to learn, will learn regardlessly, just not from you, but the people who just want someone knowledgeable to help them will not know that you’re the expert to turn to. Besides, the more people see you as an expert with valuable knowledge, the more valuable this knowledge becomes.

Whatever happens you just can’t loose. Start by sharing this article with all your friends. Sharing is fun. Try it.

The Dreaded Empty Page

Every now and then you face an assignment involving some sort of writing. It may be an essay in college, an instruction for your subordinates or a presentation for your business partners. You sit down, open your laptop, start a new document and… nothing happens. You find that in just a few seconds your mind has turned from a fruitful spring of ideas into a barren desert. Sitting in front of an empty page and wondering how to start is far more common than you think and occasionally happens to even most experienced writers. Thankfully, I don’t think a blank page is scary at all and I hope you will stop too after reading this post. 

Starting strong is not just a writers’ problem though. It’s just as important in business and education. No matter whether your audience consists of your subordinates, managers, students or clients - you have to pique their interest before they turn away. The ugly truth is, in today’s fast moving world, streaming information edited like an MTV clip, you just can’t afford not to start strong. The alternative usually is talking to an empty room. Even if your story is brilliantly written, your essay most insightful and your product a technological breakthrough, most of your audience WILL turn away if you fail to interest them from the start. Thus, you rightfully feel pressured to come up with a catchy starting line, because you fear, if it doesn’t immediately grasp the public’s imagination, your work will wallow close to non-existence. 

Starting new work is always difficult, but for a writer it bears even more gravity. Remember all those times  in your local bookshop you have browsed through random books reading just the first paragraph to decide which one to buy? Authors are painfully aware of this process, while being also strongly affirmed in their beliefs by editors, agents and fellow writers, who amongst themselves cherish the opening sentences of great novels, claiming you should write the first paragraph of your story with meticulous care, as it is paramount to your success. All this adds to the enormous pressure to start strong, causing panic in a lot of the inexperienced authors across the globe. While I concur that the quality of the first few paragraphs is of extreme importance (and will guide you how to achieve this), I also shamelessly admit that I don’t remember ANY of the first sentences of the many books I have read. Do you?

Still, even if your product, service or concept is groundbreakingly game-changing, making your audience bored will seriously slow its popularization and/or understanding. I can honestly say I have already lived through all those situations and thus, I give you a short guide to starting strong. The following recipe will allow you to start writing without experiencing the torments of facing an empty page for hours with no effect. Of course, you can write the beginning in many different ways, but following my tips will give you a plethora of safe possibilities, on which you can build your further excellence. 

The most obvious piece of advice is not to worry about the emptiness of the page in front of you and just write whatever comes to your mind to make the page less empty. There will definitely be time to make amends and edit the written text. You can even start in the middle orf write the ending first. Divert your focus from your opening and jot down a few lines from different parts of the story and various angles. I know it’s easier said than done, but it works (especially if you have taken some time to structure your work - how to do it will be the subject of another post). Of course this doesn’t solve the problem of starting strong, it helps with an empty page though. Now, let’s get back to writing a strong beginning.

Always start with some action. Starting strong means starting with an event. Remember Alfred Hitchcock’s saying that you should start with an earthquake and then mount the pressure. Think of a dynamic situation, which will expose the wanted traits in the course of its action. However mundane or menial, it is always better than even the most innovative description. Trying to describe an unfamiliar character, product (service) or concept without easing your audience into context is confusing and discouraging. In general, think about a situation describing a transition between the unsung past and a well written future.  The next step is to identify the core subject of your work. Usually it will be the main character, the problem (concept) or the product (service). Now imagine an average Joe and think how this total stranger should perceive your character/problem/product after reading your introduction. Choose three to five essential characteristics and write them down in short, simple sentences. Try to fit the sentences into the action, matching them with the activities that best expose the characteristics they are about. So, the scene is set and the story is in motion. What you need for the final touch on your introduction is something to pique your audience’s, interest, a hook. Make your readers participate emotionally in your text. Show them a danger, a conflict or a promise. The more emotional charge, the better. Finally, when your audience is emotionally engaged in your story, make it known that you hold the solution hostage. They will have to read read on to learn it.  

Example 1

A good opening for a science paper would be about the event, which made you interested in the problem in the first place. Dr Frankenstein could start his lecture like this “On one dark and creepy, stormy night I was doing an autopsy in the city morgue when suddenly a lightning struck the body on the slab, through an open window. Could it be it? Could electricity hold a key to the gate between the realms of the living and the dead? This epiphany led me to a breakthrough in my research…”  

Example 2

Another way would be to show the background of your problem. A good, although obviously comically extreme example of this strategy is shown in “The Big Bang Theory”, when dr Sheldon Cooper tries to explain the string theory to his layman neighbour Penny by starting with an explanation how physics research began and narrates along the lines: “It’s a warm summer evening in Athens c.a. 600 BC and you’ve just finished your shopping on the local agora…”  

Example 3

In business, a safe and effective way to start, would be to describe how arduous living/working/relaxing was before your product or service. Typically you’d achieve it by painting a picture of a random person struggling to achieve what your product/service/innovation helps accomplish effortlessly. “Remember how difficult it was for you to grow a beard? With our new beard seeds its easy…”  

Example 4

If your text or presentation is marketing oriented, you can also start with a good, old, John Lennon’s classic “Imagine” A direct call to action forces your audience to stay with you and follow your lead, so… “Imagine yourself in front of an empty page. The assignment is due tomorrow, but you have made no progress. Writing has always been scary, but this time you really start panicking. Well, panic no more. All you need is G..H. Guzik’s post about starting strong and you’ll feel empowered..."

If you wish to know more about business writing, express it in a comment and I will surely devote one of my next posts to this subject. Having several years of experience in business I could elaborate on the important features of a good business presentation or a marketing teaser, but since my current area of expertise is creative writing, let me concentrate on starting a novel or a short story. Now, let’s get back to guiding all lost souls through the perils of their first paragraphs with more specific advice.

Some authors (especially those writing action and mystery) argue that starting with a twist, e.g. a background character only remotely connected to the main plot or with an unexplained event that fits into the main story pattern, but becomes understandable only after a solid part of the book, seizes interest. This may be so, but it also inevitably creates confusion. If the beginning isn’t written masterfully, it only discourages readers and even if it is, you still need to fit it neatly into your story for the audience to put the pieces together.

Read the beginning of Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”. It pushes your patience to the limit, but the scenes are narrated cleanly keeping a brisk pace and finally reward your intellect with an “Awww* when you find out how relevant they were to the story. Alas, unless you write like Michael Crichton, it is safer to keep it simple. So far you have pictured your main character in your head and chose two or three main features of her/his character you wish to expose. Now find an event to open your narrative. You should aim for an action defining transition, one that symbolically divides the past from your story:

• beginning or finishing a journey, e.g. ship sailing into port, plane landing, exiting a motorway, etc.
• entering or exiting a building, a forest, a town, etc.
• quiet before a storm, e.g. troops awaiting battle, a girl before a date, a sportsmen in a locker room, etc.
• finding, losing or winning something, e.g. a bet, an artifact, information, money, etc.
• meeting or bidding farewell to someone, e.g. at an airport, bus station, in a restaurant, etc.
• someone’s birth, graduation, wedding, death, funeral, etc.

In creative writing you can safely turn to typical opening scenes without a risk of falling into a cliché trap, if only your writing keeps the scene interesting, some scenes though are so cliche you’d do better to stay away from them:

• waking up
• gathering herbs
• dining at an inn

Obviously cliches can be well placed and well written and I am far from claiming that they are useless. If you want to get to know more, be sure to come back to my blog site. One of my next posts will be fully devoted to cliches and how to avoid them or exploit them.

Having said all of the above the only thing left for me to do is wish you all the best of luck in all your strong starts. By now you should be able to ease into any document with a few slick, well-pointed and interesting paragraphs. If my post helped you in any way, don’t forget to share. In fact, share this post regardlessly on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and any other network you can come up with and help a starting writer start strong. If you didn’t like my post, share it anyway,, exen only as a negative example.

So, you want to be a writer...

So, you want to be writer… You will have to spend endless hours polishing your command of language, patiently put your stories together to make them into a logical tale and bear the frustration of nobody caring about your work. If you endure the strains though, your stories will make the world a better place and you will get your chance to become a really successful writer. All it takes is hard work and discipline… but in the words of a song from an old, classic movie “Bugsy Malone” - “you may as well quit, if you haven’t got it” (the line was about boxing, but it works for writing as well).

Having just started my writing career I don’t want to sound condescending, but I believe there are some points I need to share. I have tried quite a few jobs in my life and writing is by far the most difficult one. It is also by far the most rewarding, although definitely not in the financial sense at first.

If you still want to be a writer, here are some starting tips:

• don’t quit your job unless you have other means of supporting yourself and your family for at least two years - writing is not a well paid job, especially at the start of your career. It takes roughly one month to write 20 000 words of text and another one to have it properly corrected, edited and rewritten if necessary. Thus it will take at least a year to publish your first full-length book.

• read a lot - somebody once said that the problem with today’s writers is the fact that they start writing after reading a hundred books instead of a thousand. The more you read, the better your writing will be.

• write regularly, but edit your work after at least a week - however talented you might be, you have to develop a habit of writing and working on your texts and everybody needs some perspective before reviewing his own work, hence the break. And forget about the popular quote misattributed to Ernest Hemingway to write drunk and edit sober. You should always work sober, and if you need a drink, get it as a reward for yourself after finishing each chapter of your book.

• don’t be shy - show your work to your friends and family and get their feedback. Work with them to better your style, vocabulary and storytelling. Remember that writing is a craft and needs to be practiced and bettered, for writers are not born, they are made.

• be patient - if your work is good it will be noticed sooner or later and everything you have written stays written and gains value as you become more popular and remember that it is much better to publish a text that is good and finished than to publish it prematurely.

The first one!

While preparing to publish my first book I decided to start a blog site. Why? To be able to communicate to my readers without the fictitious ensemble of literature. This will be blunt, direct and definitely not politically correct.

Mostly I want to make this site about my way to becoming a skilled writer. Not only about the how, but also about the why.

I am not saying that there will be no bigger issues here. After all we are all influenced by big games, big politics, and big money, but I will try to focus on the more humane aspects of all of those. See what they really mean to people around me and around you. To all of you out there: Hello, thanks for reading.

PS. As I said there will be nothing about books (or at least my books) here, so for that go to my facebook page.