MUSINGS and other writing by Mark Kolke

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SEEDS IN SOIL
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
 
 
Why do some writers complain of writer’s-block, and why are speakers shy about taking the stage without rehearsal?
 
Because we want perfection.
 
We watch TV and movies – knowing many redrafts of the words and several takes of each scene were required to get it just right. We read about Hemingway-types, celebrated for their greatness and re-writing parts of their most treasured works many times over.
 
Of course, everyone has something to say.
 
We need to say it.
 
But telling a friend something hard, saying no to someone in a fragile state of mind, disagreeing with our boss or partner or customer isn’t simple. We need to be thoughtful, transparent, fair, and immediate. And effective.
 
And everyone knows hitting send prematurely produces a mess all too quickly.
 
So, what do we do with our thoughts?
 
Write them – yes, but before we send them, we should sleep on them. The writer of prose, poetry or the long-promised novel transcript has even fewer excuses. They can revisit their work any time of the day, every day, or put it away for months of re-thinking. But every writer on deadline or without timeline knows this truth: you have to do the work.
 
Ready, fire, aim ….
 
The challenge is to sit down, write about subject A and clickety-clack – in time, a quality piece emerges.
 
Or about subject X …
 
The blank-page ailment is one of not knowing what to write once we’ve talked about something or thought about it for a while, and we need to coax those words out of our brain and push them into view or land them on a page. Whether we are spilling our heart-to-paper or planning our next adventure, it’s all agriculture in some form. Planting seeds …
 
Planting seeds, the kind that grows, is like microwave popcorn.
 
Not every kernel pops. Not every seed grows.
 
A grandchild of homesteading pioneer families who farmed, and despite having many uncles who farmed – I never learned how. Summer holiday weeks on and near farms led me to understand the barnyard animals and their feed, but not so much about planting time …
 
In business, we spread seeds by cold calling and farming. In real estate work, ‘farming’ refers to cultivating expertise about a neighbourhood and then building a presence and clientele within that area of expertise. Other fields of work rely on two kinds of planting seeds in the virtual real estate world – social media turf and fertile territory between people’s ears.
 
How, then, do we infiltrate those spaces?
 
How do we ensure our well-spread, widely spread, or targeted plantings will take root so that seeds grow trees of stable relationships and crops for harvesting.
 
Writing is like farming – one seed/word at a time, planted in fertile soil and nurtured to grow.
 
Like every other one, this piece began with a few words, a few keystrokes – then writing, cutting, re-writing, cutting some more and so on …
 
 
 
Some recent talks: Mark Speaks


 


 
 

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