Wake Wizards! November is Coming!

Wake...

...you shamans, you storytellers, you wizards who have created this world. Sleep no more.

Do you remember who you are? Do you recall your power? You and I, we have created Gods, and have frozen oceans. We filled jungles far and wide with beasts of great wisdom and terror.

We have conjured suns, and pulled moons from their orbits. We have snapped the cables suspending Heaven, just to hear the enraged coiling spiral and whine across the sky. We have bathed in moonlight, consumed star-shine, and washed the world clean with rain.

Do you remember? On our off days we created kings, crowned their heads, then removed those heads with guillotines -- just as and exercise, *a proof of concept* (... told you I could do it with cake, the next round is on you).

And when the God we created became unworthy, we made madmen of its followers, then executed the God.

Have you forgotten Lilith? Asheara? The poets of Sumer?

I can still hear their language in your laughter. You were always the one worthy of sitting beneath the Bodhi tree, with your pen twisting your hair as you composed the phrases, the namshuk, the stories that created dynasties, religions and nations. 

But you have slept too long, and the namshuks need to be rewritten. War is on the world, tearing the fabric of their lives apart, flaying the hope from their souls, and the skin from their bodies.

Wake









The Golden Verses Of The Stoic

Seneca and Epictetus refer to the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, which happens to provide a good framework for developing a daily routine, bookended by morning and evening contemplative practices.

Zeno of Citium, who founded Stoicism in 301 BC, expressed his doctrines in notoriously terse arguments and concise maxims.  However, Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school, wrote over 700 books fleshing these ideas out and adding complex arguments to support them. 

Bringing it To Your Story

I just came from a conversation which brought up a peeve of mine. This Be a good reader, to be a good writer. I want to assure you, that if you don't know what you are looking for, you're not going to suddenly recognize it from reading. Not from any author worthy of study. Because right now, you don't know enough to ask the question -- which isn't a slight. Not at all. Here are couple of examples of techniques being used which are going to slip under the radar. But maybe they will spark enough in your writer's mind to figure out a few others.

Kaizen and the Art of Improvement


The Japanese method of Kaizen, literally translating as 'good change', is a proven method for helping people to change their behavior. Rather than requiring you to do anything drastic, the emphasis is on changing habits in very incremental steps.

"Kaizen (improvement), shukanka – these are all things that are taken for granted. But they have the power to transform your life, and simplify aspects of it in the process. It's not about getting things perfect, or setting unrealistic standards for yourself.

Where the Wild Things Are...

Chess is a Wild game I've only been playing for a short time, but I've gained enough understanding to realize that the angles of ...