Writing And Rewriting Are A Constant Search For What One Is Saying: Fill & Download for Free

Reading. Reading in the genre one is working in definitely makes for better writers; but reading and re-reading as much as possible - in any and all genres or form - improves one's writing. I've read thousands of film and television scripts for studios and production companies as well as for my own education; I've read and had to analyze miles-high piles of complex financial information, case law, and regulation for my various work in the financial sector; and I like to read as much as I can about pretty much anything, fiction and non-fiction. I gravitate to non-fiction, or mystery/crime/detective fiction; but I will read horror, romance, sci-fi, self-help and classic literature because I learn about story-telling, plotting, persuasion, structure, language, settings, character and form from everything I read.Writing. Write every day. Practice writing every day. 5 minutes, 20 minutes, four hours - it doesn't matter. Questions on Quora provide excellent practice for writing to a prompt; sometimes I'll just draft an answer and not publish, and that will suffice as my writing for the day. Sometimes I'll do more purposeful writing exercises, including writing for 5 minutes incorporating 3 random words (from writing workshop coach Ellen Snortland) or entering NYC Midnight flash writing contests (Inspiring Challenges for Writers and Filmmakers). Sometimes I'm working on a writing project. Writing everyday makes me a better writer.Experimenting. I'll try to write in a different genre or form. And fail. But I'll try. It helps me better understand the conventions and boundaries of the genre that I'm working in.Re-writing. Edit. Revise an idea, restructure a chapter, throw out my darlings, rephrase my run-ons, reinstate my darlings, check for typos, set aside. Get a snack, drink some water, do some laundry. Add adjectives, eliminate adverbs, check for lazy ideas and construction. Go for a walk. Talk with someone in real life. Ignore the parts I can't make work. Delete. Rewrite. Reread the parts that I'm happy with. Restructure. Fact-check. Review and rewrite. Rewrite again. Repeat. Rewrite.Reading aloud. Speaking the words I've written and listening to myself reading those words out loud provides insight not gathered by reading and re-reading the words in my head.Research. Research is key - sometimes it's like going down the rabbithole, but more often it helps me better understand the history of a place or use the jargon common to the particular endeavor or process that I'm trying to describe. The better I understand the underlying facts and details no matter how complex, the easier it is to write them so someone else can understand the emotion, experience, and perspective I am trying to convey - not that it's ever easy.Even the most fictional settings are rooted in reality. One of the "flash fiction" challenges I entered I set in a Paris sewer; as I researched the setting, I discovered critical details on the internet (like photos of the giant iron cleaning balls that use gravity to push sludge ahead and clean the sewage tunnels; and the art and homes of graffiti artists and underground dwellers in the 2000 kilometers of sewer tunnels) that I used to make the story better and my imaginary setting more real.Note-taking and observation. I take written notes, audio notes on my phone, and lots of photographs.Facebook posts occasionally serve as notes and allow me to practice capturing a mood, parts of a conversation, or a moment; and comments from friends provide me with additional perspective. Instagram posts are mood and memory jogs for sense of place, and allow me to condense experience or observation via hashtag. I like to take a lot of photographs, using either my phone or my big camera. Photography works my writing muscles: focus and lens selection translates to story perspective or voice; composition and framing to story structure; light, color, and contrast to emotion, tone, relationships and detail.The more I document, journal, and photograph, the quicker and better I am at translating experience and emotion to symbols on a page.Listening. Good writers are careful witnesses and keen observers, in addition to being story-tellers and artisans of language.I work, from time to time, as a mediator. I pay attention not only to what people are saying or what they've submitted in documentation ahead of each mediation, but also to their moods, emotions, urgency, body language and responses. People speak in chunks and bits and pieces and rants and tones and interruptions and thick silences. When I'm listening to someone speak, I'm always thinking "so what is he really saying?" and "how do I fairly translate or clarify what Party One is saying in a way that Party Two will hear" in order to do my job, to help resolve a disputed point or identify areas of agreement. In my former life as a corporate manager, my listening was focussed on interpreting instruction - identifying what actions were required based on a company mandate as expressed through a supervisor's or subordinate's words - for example, send an email confirming instructions, rewrite a policy, change a process, call security, etc. - without their providing specific step-by-step detailed instructions. My writing in that workplace was factual, unemotional logical argument or review, no dialogue.In order for me to write better creative non-fiction, I have to be able to write dialogue. I have to force myself to learn and apply a different listening style - to listen "flat" instead of Active listening. I'm training myself to listen on multiple levels in conversation, paying attention to how someone is speaking in addition to the substance of what they are saying, so I can write dialogue that is true to a character. Phrases, cadences, and slang expressions convey tremendous amounts of information in real life, but sometimes require revision to make them read well, require compressing real time into story time, and be rephrased to move story forward. Transcribing audio or taking verbatim notes as quickly as possible after having a conversation helps. (One famous writer told me he regularly goes off to the restroom during dinners to write conversation details in a notepad. On one particularly inspiring evening, his frequent excused absences from the table gave his dining companions cause to voice concern over his health).It's critical for me to work on improving my listening skills, so I can be more adept, adaptive, and focussed on spoken language and be a better writer. I'm working hard on being a keener "ear-witness" in addition to listening through my heart and my head. It's hella difficult.Discipline, Process, and Setting: I've started giving myself deadlines (compiled research finished by Tuesday; rough outline for Wednesday; synopsis/treatment by next week; 10 pages by the 15th; chapter revised by dinnertime; etc.) like a project manager. I'm not good yet at sticking to project phases or meeting those deadlines, but I've at least identified the elements of my projects and am improving my discipline. Breaking down my writing goals and understanding dependent deliverables - research, reading, interview, character description, proposal, outline, chapter, rough draft, revision, etc. keeps me from getting overwhelmed and boggled and confused, and reduces my frustration. Similarly, finding and making comfortable, well-ordered places to write with limited distractions (at a clean desk, at a coffee shop, etc.) makes sure I get to it.That said, laundry, dog-walking, craving an ice cream, Facebook notifications, and Quora are constant distractions. (I'm currently unemployed, so searching for paying work is also a kind of distraction - but I distract myself from my precarious financial situation by writing, so there ya go.)Writing Groups: Being part of a writing group is critical to improving my writing. I'm currently part of two writing groups. I struggle with resistance everyday. Receiving constructive criticism from trusted, patient colleagues and fellow sufferers of this writing compulsion is invaluable. Knowing that others expect me to show up keeps me disciplined (mostly) and wanting to deliver. My colleagues' comments, criticisms and opinions are powerful motivation; and their support means the world to me. I write because I want to learn, because I want to understand more about the world and the human condition, because I want to share my story, because I want to inform, because I want to be heard, because I want to be read, because I want to know. But I suffer from insecurity, laziness, distraction, frustration.My writing groups inspire me. Their discipline, dedication and effort makes me put in the work to hone my craft. Their thoughtful review and patient consideration of my failures and challenges spark and introduce me to approaches and solutions that improve my work. Their work, no matter how raw, inspires me, and motivates me to think differently, and I take pride and delight in their success and accomplishment as if it was my own.Readers: Having someone read my writing improves my writing, whether or not I get feedback and comments. Forums like Quora, where people can express their approval, disapproval, and comment, encourage me to be a more effective communicator. There is little better encouragement than having a complete stranger engage with your writing. Having people read and comment, even when their comments are not about the craft of writing, tells you something about what you have communicated versus what you think you have communicated. My writing group provides me with a consistent, vested readership; writing for work or school has also improved my writing, because someone reads and challenges what I've written.Writing is communication. If I have no expectation that anyone will read what I'm writing, all I have are notes, maybe a rough draft or sketch, perhaps no more than a shopping list of ideas to try blending together for dinnertime conversation. If no one reads what I've written, I don't know whether I've succeeded in communicating; I won't know how to measure my success. I won't even know if I've written! Consider the thought experiment: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is near to hear it, did it make a sound? If I don't have a reader, I don't know if I'm a writer, never mind whether or not my writing is improving.Being read is the single most important factor in improving my writing. Thank you, dear reader, for reading through to the end!

HISTORICAL METHODBefore answering this question, it seems necessary to refute claims concerning “how historians are supposed to use rules of evidence … my point is that these have not been followed by historians of Christian origins, or of the Christian textual tradition.”What this fails to understand—or perhaps simply acknowledge—is that times and standards change. Applying modern standards to ancient history is a common fallacy—but a fallacy none the less. That isn’t to say that the ancients did not value accuracy and dependability, they did, but they were primarily an oral culture, and they valued what they called “a living voice”—meaning an eye witness—as the single most important requirement of a good history. They would have scoffed at our dependence on written texts. Their standards were not the same as ours—but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have any.EDIT:After looking this over I realized I had done John Bartram a disservice by giving an incomplete and somewhat shallow response to his approach to history, so I am adding this edit on historical method and source criticism. I will close this with a discussion of paleography and hopefully show why it isn’t possible for John to be right.John references Wikipedia as his source of definition of the historical method and the page referenced is of Source criticism. It says source criticism is “the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, and relevance of an information source.” The problem here is that this is only one step of the historical method and it is only one of many possible types of criticism.The historical method does involve evaluating sources, but what qualifies as a source of historical evidence? Historians use primary and secondary sources.[1]Primary sources are 1) Original handwritten documents and their early copies, letters, diaries, and book manuscripts—the laundry list—everything they can find. They use printed documents, published books, personal documents, private documents, government documents, public documents; pictures, photographs and film; any and all archaeological evidence—statues, clothing, gravestones etc.; statistical data; and any oral evidence they can find. Secondary sources are basically sources that write about primary sources.Then it all gets evaluated, and sifted and searched for pertinent evidence, and what historians know is that there is no such thing as a perfect source: all sources have errors and biases, contain polemics and misinformation and have to be assessed accordingly. Source criticism is a critical method for evaluating and identifying all of that.The trouble for the definition John is using here is that source criticism is only one method of evaluation among many.There has been a “flood” of various critical methods since the eighteenth century, but my personal experience is with seven major types of criticism and several more of their subsets.It isn’t possible to include a full explanation of each of these here—and no one would want me to—but some explanation must be included so it can be seen how far off the mark this limited understanding of “historical method” actually is.Textual criticism takes available materials and attempts to establish original texts. The method generally practised by editors of classical Greek and Latin texts involves two main processes: recension and emendation. Recension is the selection of the most trustworthy evidence while emendation is the attempt to eliminate the errors found in all manuscripts. This approach is generally practiced according to the “canons of (Lobegott Friedrich Constantin von) Tischendorf” according to Metzgers’ criteria and Aland’s Rules.[2]Philological criticism is a study of language—the vocabulary, grammar, and style of a period. Language is constantly changing and extremely revealing sociologically. What is “bad” today was good yesterday. Chaucer’s English has more in common with German than modern English. We can trace the history of the world through those kinds of changes in language. [3]Tradition criticism concentrates on how traditions have grown and changed over the time span during which the text was written. It attempts to use such traditions to trace what preceded the written text being studied. In Bible criticism, that would include a study of oral history, its practices and what evidences there are of it in the biblical texts. The goal of philological criticism is to make a judgment on the faithfulness of the recording of that tradition.[4]Literary criticism is quite popular right now. It identifies the literary genres embedded in the text in order to uncover evidence of composition, date, authorship. It also attempts to determine what the original function of these different types of writing served. For example, the book of Esther is fiction filled with subtle humor—why include that in the Bible? [5]What was the purpose the author perceived as being uniquely fulfilled by this particular text?Form criticism classifies written material according to its preliterary form. Form criticism rose largely because of the weaknesses of source criticism, since Source criticism must confine itself to the documents at hand. However, when all the limitations of form criticism are taken into account, the scope of a true form-critical approach is also extremely limited. [6]Giving rise to Redaction criticism which studies how documents were assembled by their final authors/editors.These are all methods of historical higher criticism, and they all have strengths and weaknesses in what they can and cannot do.These varied critical methods use about a dozen recognized criteria, set out by R. H. Stein, which include things like multiple attestation—(the more sources the better)—and coherence, to do their evaluation. [7]I include all this to demonstrate a critical crack in the foundation of John’s approach. Not only are these other methods overlooked, but what John describes is more properly historiography and not history. It looks as though he is using the methodology of one to reach conclusions in the other.History and historiography are not exactly the same. They are often conflated, but generally, historiography is about “the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation; methods of historical scholarship” or in other words, how one goes about doing history which is “the study of the past.”History has been compared to ruminating over a great meal from the past, recording the event, and what was involved, while historiography is perusing all available cookbooks in an effort to find the recipe used to make that meal.The key is that suffix— “graphy”. It means "writing." It is an anglicized version of the French (graphie) which was inherited from the Latin (graphia), which is transliterated direct from the Greek—and they all mean writing. It is historiography that studies the writings—the texts John refers to—the histories of history. It’s not that the formation of history can’t use texts too—they do—but not in the manner John has: imposing these modern standards—not simply on the study of the documents—but on history itself.The key to doing good historiography is not to fall into the fallacy of presuming historical writing has been making a linear progression of improvements from the backward simplistic to the sophisticated and complex as it has marched through time. (This is sometimes referred to as a “Whiggish” view.)Historiography assumes that historical writing is as much a product of its time as any other historical development. But that means texts must be analyzed on their own terms, in their own contexts, according to their own standards.All ancient texts are handwritten, which means the study of handwriting in ancient texts—paleography—has become a highly specialized and extremely valuable tool for this.Several methods are employed by historians to date the handwriting of a manuscript. Some texts are easy—they include scribal colophons (an inscription at the end a manuscript that sometimes includes the date of completion of the transcription) and these can then be used to date others. For the rest, historians can attribute common practices to certain time periods and places of origin. Paleography’s ability to distinguish time period, skill and author has proven to be a fundamental tool for dating literary compositions.[8]Different periods of history have their own chirographic trademarks (specific handwriting). Manuscripts dated within the first and second century AD used a decorated style of handwriting known for its emphatic form. This is generally referred to as the uncial style. It employed elongated letters written separately in capitols. There followed the scriptio continua which was a connected form that did not provide spaces between words—or sentences! Shortly after the fall of Rome, a larger annular (forming a ring) form of writing began and circular letters became more oval and narrow. Alcuin, might have written in Merovingian, a form of miniscule writing developed around his day.Early Christian texts do not evidence the “fine book-hand” of professional scribes, but they have left their mark on paleographic history by developing what has been called a type of “reformed documentary” writing. It used fewer ligatures (combined letters) and more precise letter formation than a regular documentary hand. Probably in order to facilitate public reading, they also wrote fewer lines and fewer letters to the line than was normal practice. They also used the nomina sacra— a form of contraction of a religious word using the first and last letters and the middle of the word. They liked to abbreviate. Xmas is actually how they wrote Christmas.None of the monks of the middle ages would have known these particular details.If John Bartram was aware of these other critical methods he would know that changes in language, tradition, practices, writing styles, literary forms, and not simply content, would all have to be created, then carefully coordinated and artficially progressed to appear to age and change. Think of the huge breadth and sheer amount of knowledge—much of it only discovered in the last 200 years—required to accomplish such a task! All while keeping such a huge conspiracy perfectly quiet, and leaving no evidence—even of whispers—of such a thing. Forgery is harder to pass off without detection than most people realize.I can’t imagine actually writing the five million word ouvre of Augustine in one style of aristocratic Latin, and the entire New Testament in the rudimentary style of the early Christians, and the classical Syriac of Eastern documents, all at one time—nevertheless coming up with the often nuanced and complex thoughts of many of those early writers.That monastery would have had to contain not only the quietest, most skilled, yet most dishonest monks of history—it would have to have contained a collection of minds like the US put together for the Manhattan project!If Christian history is not dependable because it didn’t adhere to modern standards, then Roman history is not dependable either, nor Greek history, nor any ancient history of any kind anywhere. By John’s standards it becomes impossible to do history at all.All history is probabilistic, and in a sense, all history is revisionist history. That’s why historians repeatedly rethink and rework and rewrite, not just about their understanding of specific historical events, but of the parameters of the discipline itself. Parameters I’m afraid John Bartram simply has wrong.The challenge here is to “show a manuscript dated reliably to the early centuries of the modern era that contains either ‘Jesus Christ’ in any language, or ‘Christian’.”That is simple enough. I will pick one.The letters of Pliny the Younger record that he interrogated, using torture, those he called “Christians” about their beliefs and practices in 112 AD. It was commonly believed by those outside Christianity that Christians were cannibals and incestuous—because they ate the “body and drank the blood” of their leader and called each other brother and sister. He ‘put to death’ those that did not recant. The use of “Christian” and “Christ” are in Book 10, letter number 96. [9]Footnotes[1] AN INTRODUCTION TO SOME BASIC METHODS[2] Textual Criticism[3] https://classicalstudies.org/sites/default/files/documents/137_2Gaisser.pdf[4] Quartz Hill School of Theology[5] http://Research Guides: Literary Criticism: What is Literary Criticism? How do I find it? (http://guides.library.msstate.edu/literarycriticism)[6] Oxford Biblical Studies Online[7] Seven Theses on the So-Called Criteria of Authenticity of Historical Jesus Research[8] Palaeography - Wikipedia[9] Letters - translation

After my dad went into a permanent coma I had to take his car back to the dealership and hand them the keys. They wanted to know what happened and I couldn't talk. I couldn't sign papers. I was shaking.I held out the keys and they took them. I walked out. My dad was my first mentor.After, I was waiting on the curb of the highway for a car to pick me up. I got a message, "Come to dinner."So of course I dropped all my plans and went. It was from someone who was mentoring me.Much later that night I had too much to drink. At my instigation, the mentor's daughter (who I had a crush on), now a well-known movie producer, screamed at the mentor's mistress ("Money hungry slut!") and then walked out of The Four Seasons restaurant.Mentorship over.I've had about 8-9 mentors in my life. I've had many many more virtual mentors. And it's an ongoing process. I try to learn from everyone. I constantly try to find people I respect who can teach me what they do. Right now I have mentors ranging in age from 20 to 80.I also get better at the quality of people who mentor me. No more mistresses, for instance. But this was a learning process.Learning never stops. Many people die at 25 but are not put in the coffin until 75. The learning stopped for them early.Every day I seek out mentors: people who have great experience to help me, particularly in areas I am new to, excited about, and know nothing about.Here are the only ways I've ever been able to find a mentor. I hope they work for you as well.RESEARCH: I do heavy research on their bios, their histories, everything. One time I even read an academic paper written in 1965 by one person who I wanted to mentor me and I sent him my comments on it.I read all the books they like and have spoken publicly about. I read all the analysis on the books so I can discuss it with them. I read all of their books. I read about people they've previously mentored and what happened.This may seem overly coordinated or manipulative. But this is the real world and not the land of legend where magical caddies help golf pros deal with a spiritual crisis in the middle of the most important tournament of their lives.VALUE: I send ideas how they can improve their businesses. I still do this every day. I just did it about 20 minutes ago with a business I want to learn more about.But this involves even more work and research. For me at least, I have to put in a lot of time before someone wants to spend time with me.The ideas have to be so good that I feel they have never thought of them before. I write, let it sit, rewrite, let other people look at them sometimes, and finally send.QUANTITY:Some people are simply too busy and will never be a mentor. They already have their mentees. Or they just don't want to. That's fine.But, that said, I have a technique here which is to provide updates every 3-4 months. This has worked for me in about 2-3 cases where they have eventually gotten back in touch. One of those cases resulted in the sale of a company I started.Also, quantity is important because there is never just one thing you have been placed on this Earth to do. Life is a buffet and not a fixed-price meal. At least for me, I like to sample.AVAILABILITY:Even if they like your ideas and they send a note back and are friendly, then there is still work to do.I might fly out (even to another country where they might be) and then tell them, "I'm in the neighborhood, happy to discuss the ideas more".I make myself available for whenever they are available because , by definition, they are less available than I am.I am NEVER available 99.9% of the time. I am ALWAYS available for people who I look up to as mentors. And I expect that of them.I'm infinitely grateful for these people who have spent some of their hard-earned time on me. Every day I wake up grateful for that.DIVERSITY:There's never just one mentor who will teach you "the ropes". I've always been on the lookout for more than one, usually at the same time.It's also not a love relationship. I definitely am willing to "trade up" when I have a mentor.If he or she is a good mentor, then this is something they would want for me. Many mentors fail in this respect. One of my first realizations was that mentors are never as perfect as I initially thought they were.VIRTUALBelieve it or not, sometimes it's just as good (often better) to read all of their materials rather than be directly mentored.Some people are very smart and you can get a lot of value from them but they are very draining when they are in person. I don't know why this is. Some people suck all of the air out of a room and they don't realize it about themselves.One mentor I was over the moon about but I found whenever I was around him personally I would end up feeling bad about myself.So there's different levels of engagement: reading, sending emails, taking courses, meeting in person, meeting in person every day.Make sure you choose the right one that doesn't drain you.But all of these methods of receiving the message of mentorship are equally viable depending on the mentor and what you want from them.DELIVER:It's not just ideas. Sometimes I've wanted someone to mentor me (or notice me) and they aren't interested in ideas. So I will drive business their way, or introduce them to people who can provide value for them, etc.This might be every three or four months. Just seeds that keep being planted.But it shows that I'm the type of person who can deliver, even if it's just the first review on their latest book. Something little every three or four months. This has helped me considerably (another company sold, for instance, after seven years of doing this without expectation).OVER-DELIVER:This is your only chance. And your mentor has plenty of people around him. Over-deliver on everything. Look for every opportunity to over-deliver.MICRO-MENTORSHIPTo this day, I have many mentors that I turn to for their areas of expertise even if it's not a main area of exploration in my life.It's ok for someone to be a mentor for a day. Napoleon Hill interviewed Andrew Carnegie for one day and after that considered Carnegie a mentor for life. The mentor that ultimately influenced one of the top-selling books of the past 100 years: "Think and Grow Rich".TIME:The best mentorships I've had have taken a lot of time to cement.I provide a little value, they ask for more, I provide more value, we meet, they ask for more, I provide more value, they critique, we lose touch, I later provide more value, we spend more time together (then the mentoring occurs), I provide more value, they provide value for me (finally...payback), I provide more value, we trade value, I move on, then they hate me (90% of the time).Why do they hate me? A poor mentor can't handle when the student goes sideways or higher. A good mentor will, with his last breath, push you to the top of the mountain, even at their own personal risk.Most mentors lean towards "poor" in this regard but a few are in the middle and "good" is rare. At some point you will be a mentor. Please, please, listen to me and be a good mentor.Your legacy is not what you do. It's what the people you teach do.Which leads me to...I'm very grateful that in the past 20 years I've had many opportunities to be a mentor. It hasn't always been me on the floor crying. Sometimes I've done well and have been able to share.When I'm the mentor: someone provides immense value for me, I show how the value could've been done better, and that cycle continues until they either surpass me (happens a lot which is always my hope for the mentee) or they stop delivering value or never fully delivered value in the first place and it took me awhile to realize.The benefit they get is my comments on how they can provide more value to people and that might include introductions, advising their companies, suggestions, hiring, etc.If they stop providing value, that's ok also. People's lives go in different directions and only sometimes we intersect.But I'm patient and many people come back, often years later and in much different capacity. This is happening to me now in at least two situations that are very important to me.I always want people to succeed past me. What I usually say is, "when you later see me lying in a puddle of my urine in the gutter with a needle coming out of my eyeball, please pull me out so I don't get wet."They laugh. "That will never happen". But deep down, I'm afraid it's true.