Archive for the ‘Prescient observations’ Category
Monday Inspiration: How “The Grit Factor” Can Work For You
Recently, I read “The Grit Factor” by Bob Carney in Golf Digest. “The Grit Factor” talks about many qualities that are needed for self-improvement, including mental toughness, resilience, and a willingness to work on all parts of your game — not just the easy stuff that you already know you can do, but the toughest things, too.
After I read this, I had one of those “aha!” moments similar to when I read The Inner Game of Tennis years ago. “The Grit Factor” has many of the same precepts, to wit:
- The real struggle is inward, with yourself, rather than outward against other players.
- Your principal obstacles are self-doubt and anxiety; once you can get a handle on those, or at least are prepared to deal with them, you can concentrate better on what you’re doing.
- You must believe that everything you do, no matter how long it takes, leads toward your goals.
Mind, there’s a lot more going on with “The Grit Factor” than that, but those principles seemed to make the most sense in a writing and editing context.
Consider that writers spend a great deal of time lost in thought, working either outwardly or inwardly on our works-in-progress. Because we don’t have a way to measure how well we’re doing at any given time, it can be easy to give in to self-doubt (“Is what I’m doing worth anything?”) or anxiety (“Will releasing my next book make any difference?”). So it seems obvious that managing these things is essential…or at least acknowledging these things exist could be beneficial.
Why?
Well, if you think that you’re the only writer on the face of the Earth who sometimes struggles with anxiety or self-doubt, it’s easy for that self-doubt or anxiety to stay inside you. Internalized, it sabotages your creative process at a deep level, and it can be hard to get away from that.
What I’ve found that works for me is to admit that yes, I’m anxious about certain things. (For example, right now I’m worried about how long it’s taking me to go over my final edit and come up with a revised first chapter for my second book, A LITTLE ELFY IN BIG TROUBLE.) But so long as I’m making any progress, even if it’s very slow and I can’t necessarily always see it, I have to count that as a win.
Providing I can admit that I’m nervous, I’m able to do a great deal more than when I try to shut it off and just refuse to talk about it. And that’s something I learned way back when I first read The Inner Game of Tennis.
Mind, that doesn’t mean “everything is awesome” (hat tip to The Lego Movie) when it comes to writing. There is a need for honest criticism. Without that, you can’t improve. (“The Grit Factor” discusses how just giving people ego-gratification all the time doesn’t help, though the author puts it a completely different way.) But you don’t need to beat yourself up while you’re working your heart out to improve, either.
If you take away one thing from today’s post, please remember this: As I’ve said before, writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint. Be resilient, be persistent, don’t give up, and keep working on your weakest areas.
That’s the best way to win, as a writer or at life.
Craig Wayne Boyd, Persistence…and You
Folks, it’s no secret that I am a fan of Southern country/rock singer Craig Wayne Boyd. His time on NBC’s The Voice was in some ways magical, especially considering his eleven-year odyssey in the music business. And that he made it all the way to the end, and then actually won The Voice, was just that much more special.
What I found in Craig Wayne Boyd’s story were a number of things. Persistence. Faith, not only in a higher power, but in himself and his talent. And the drive to succeed against all odds.
Consider, please, that Mr. Boyd has said in several televised interviews that he considered quitting music altogether not too long before he auditioned for The Voice. And he knocked around Nashville and the touring circuits for eleven long years, singing his heart out, with talent and drive and dedication — but all of that garnered him very little.
Or so it seemed at the time.
Because in retrospect, what Mr. Boyd was learning all that time was to have faith in himself and his talent. He was also learning to perform, and the limits of what he could do and what he could — and couldn’t — control.
This is something we all need to learn. Because like Craig Wayne Boyd, we cannot control what other people do. We can’t control who will take notice of us, who will show up at our gigs, who will buy our books and/or recordings, or who will care about what we’re doing.
All we can control is what we do and how we do it. That’s all.
And that’s why being persistent is so very, very important. You don’t know when the next audition you do will result in a major breakthrough (as was the case for Craig Wayne Boyd). You don’t know when someone will read what you’re writing and decide it’s wonderful and tell all his friends, because you don’t know when your big break will come.
The only thing you do know is this: Once you stop trying, you have absolutely no chance of doing whatever it is you want to do.
That’s why I’ve said over and over again that you cannot and should not give up. Because you don’t know what’s around the corner…for all you know, it might just be your big break.
Milwaukee Brewers Fire Two Coaches…But Not Manager Ron Roenicke
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Which is why I find the Milwaukee Brewers’ refusal to fire manager Ron Roenicke after the Brewers’ historic collapse in September 2014 so troubling.
This past Friday, in a press release, Milwaukee fired two coaches: first base coach Garth Iorg and hitting coach Johnny Narron. Hitting was a major concern for the Brewers down the stretch, so firing Johnny Narron wasn’t at all surprising. But firing Iorg made very little sense, as Iorg wasn’t to blame for Milwaukee’s players’ brain freezes on the basepaths or Mark Reynolds’ failure to remember how many outs there were in an inning or Carlos Gomez’s inability to lay off bad pitches or even Ryan Braun’s thumb injury.
While Roenicke wasn’t directly to blame for any of those things, either, someone has to be held accountable.
I mean, really. The Brewers were in first place for 150 days of the season. Then they went 9-22 over the last 31 games to miss the playoffs and finish 82-80.
And the person who usually is held accountable is — wait for it — the manager. Not the piddly first base coach.
Of course, if the Brewers had fired Roenicke, it’s very possible that every single one of the coaches on Roenicke’s staff would be looking for work right now rather than only two of them getting their pink slips. But it still looks very strange that Roenicke stayed while Johnny Narron and Iorg had to go . . . especially when you consider that Johnny’s brother Jerry Narron is still employed by the Brewers as their bench coach. (What sense is there in firing one brother but keeping the other?)
Overall, I am extremely disappointed that the Brewers retained Roenicke. But I am even more disappointed that the Brewers didn’t even have the guts to call a press conference; instead, they sent out a milquetoast press release on a Friday afternoon in the hopes that no one would be paying attention to the fact that Brewers’ owner Mark Attanasio has thus far refused to hold anyone significant accountable for the Brewers’ historic collapse.
My view is simple: Roenicke should’ve been fired, and someone else — perhaps former Brewers pitching coach Mike Maddux — should’ve been hired instead.
But that’s not what the Brewers did. Obviously, Milwaukee hopes that fans will forgive and forget the Brewers’ historic collapse. But my gut feeling is this:
No. We won’t.
Please Help Me Fix My Non-Working 2010 Hyundai Accent
Folks, I’m beyond frustrated. I had to set up a GoFundMe page to help me fix my car…and I didn’t want to do this.
Here’s what happened:
Over the past 41 days, I’ve tried to get Hyundai USA interested in fixing my non-running 2010 Hyundai Accent Blue. I bought it in November of 2011 at 37,000 miles; it conked out due to the transmission’s casing having cracked at 67,000 miles on September 1, 2014 — three days before I was scheduled to go in for surgery.
So I had the use of my car for less than three years before the transmission’s casing cracked. I’ve never had a car do this before. Not at any amount of miles.
Mind, I have had transmissions go out before. But not like this, and certainly not this early.
I realize that cars, like anything else, are on a continuum. Some cars do very well and last for over 300,000 miles; you tend to see those on Toyota commercials, or maybe for a Ford or Chevrolet truck. Most tend to last anywhere between 100,000 miles and 200,000 miles.
And then there are cars like mine, that have something odd happen when they’re seven thousand miles out of warranty.
As I’ve said before, I tried to get this addressed at the 52,000 mile mark. The old Hyundai dealership in Racine, Frank Gentile Hyundai, has since gone out of business and took all its records with it. My attempt to get the car looked at back then didn’t get put into the computer, so Hyundai USA has no record of it — and I wasn’t given anything at the time to prove I went there.
An aside: Forewarned is forearmed. Get documentation when you do something like this, even if it’s fifteen degrees outside with a howling wind and it’s near to closing time. Don’t assume they will do the right thing. And do not take no for an answer; I did, and I’m paying for it now.
All I have is my bare word. Plus the fact that I did try to get a hinge fixed on my car’s fuel door, and was denied that at Gentile — that is in the computer.
Why didn’t Gentile want to do anything? Well, they didn’t like Autowerks (the place I bought my 2010 Hyundai Accent from). They didn’t like Autowerks at all. And because I had bought my car from Autowerks, they just didn’t care about fixing it even though all warranty work is 100% covered by Hyundai USA.
The new Racine Hyundai has tried to help me. They sent a car for me yesterday so I could fill out forms to try to get financing (I was denied; I’m a writer and editor and my income stream isn’t very high yet, nor is it like a forty-hour-a-week job). I talked with the service manager, Raffaele, and believe he’s an honest man who knows I didn’t cause this repair and did try to address it properly.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much to Hyundai USA. That’s why I have to fully fund this repair on my own. And as it’s extremely expensive, I’ve had to set up a GoFundMe page.
I am a private person, and I don’t like going into all my personal business in this particular way. (Sharing some of it on a blog is one thing; admitting I don’t have the money to fix my car is another.) I feel like I’ve failed because I can’t handle my business, and I feel like I’ve failed even more because I truly believe Hyundai USA should pay for my repair — that they aren’t is unjust, unfair, and immoral.
I say this in regards to the Hyundai USA corporate enterprises, mind. I have no problems with the local Racine Hyundai dealership. I believe if they had been in business back when my car first started having problems at 52,000 miles, I would’ve been able to get this repaired in warranty and I wouldn’t have had to go through all this.
Yes, Hyundai USA should pay for this. They should realize that alienating a customer like this is a bad move from a customer service perspective, and look into whether or not I’m telling the truth about Gentile having a terrible relationship with Autowerks. (That shouldn’t be hard, by the way.)
But they won’t.
And since they won’t, I somehow must raise the funds to get my car back. I need it for three reasons:
- It will improve my quality of life. (Not being able to get to doctor appointments is quite stressful.)
- It will improve my mother’s quality of life. (See #1, as she needs to get to doctor appointments, too.)
- And it will ease the stress I’ve lived with since my car died three days before I had surgery, which should help my health a little.
That’s why I set up the GoFundMe page. Even though I’d rather have done anything else.
Thoughts After Hearing Adam Levine, Maroon 5 Sing “Animals” on SNL
Folks, for the past hour or so, I’ve been struggling with how I feel after hearing Adam Levine and his band, Maroon 5, sing their controversial song “Animals” while doing a guest musical performance on Saturday Night Live. As a woman, I suppose I should be appalled, as the video for “Animals” seems to glorify stalking — and excessively violent and bloody stalking at that. (In case you haven’t read anything at all about this controversy, please see this link from the LA Times as it’ll give you a heads-up.)
But when I listened to “Animals” as a song, I heard an entirely different narrative. One that deals with an obsessive love affair that’s run its course, where the couple in question has a tremendous amount of sexual chemistry and not much else, yet the male partner cannot let go quite yet and the female partner, for whatever reason, is allowing him to stick around so they can keep having great sex. Then she apparently kicks him out and pretends it didn’t happen afterward, only to repeat until she finally gets the stomach to tell him, “No more, buster.”
Or until he has the strength to tell himself that he deserves better than a woman who’s keeping him around just for sex.
So all the lyrics about “preying on you tonight” and “(I’ll) eat you alive, just like animals, animals, oh oh” take on an entirely different tone in that context. It actually sounded to me like the guy was trying to justify having kinky animal sex with this woman who otherwise despises him, and as such, that’s just sad. (And hardly objectionable.)
However, the narrative framing shifted once the video for “Animals” was released, and the shift isn’t pretty at all. The video (which I refuse to link to) stars Adam Levine and his wife, model Behati Prinsloo; Levine is a psychotic madman who can’t leave his ex-girlfriend alone. And when his ex lets him inside her apartment, the blood flows along with the sex. Sex is explicitly linked with death, and the obsessive ex-boyfriend of the song becomes a murderous stalker instead.
I’m not entirely sure why Levine and Maroon 5 chose to go in this direction for their video, mind you. But I’m guessing that it’s all about the free publicity. A controversial video gets noticed, so it usually gets downloaded more. That means, obviously, the music’s heard more, too. Maybe the hope was that after seeing this video, some people who’d never heard of Maroon 5 before — or hadn’t heard a Maroon 5 song in years — will go buy the new song (or better yet, their whole CD). Which will make Maroon 5 money in the short run, and possibly prolong their careers in the long run.
But all this controversy has actually worked to obscure Maroon 5’s music, much less Levine’s singing. And that’s a shame, because Maroon 5’s music is worth more than a few listens — and Levine’s live performance on “Saturday Night Live” showcased his impressive range and his pitch-perfect vocal control.
Maybe it’s all about the narrative framing as to whether the song “Animals” is actually offensive or not. Or maybe it’s in the ears of the beholder.
But the video of “Animals” will give most women nightmares, especially if they’ve ever had any run-ins with domestic violence in the past.
It’s a free country, and Maroon 5’s marketing people obviously have earned their money this year. But I’d rather have encountered the song “Animals” another way, so my own view of what the narrative is could more easily take hold over the extremely graphic, violent video.
Odds and Ends, October 2014 Edition
Today’s post is mostly one of odds and ends, with a bunch of minor updates and some other stuff that may be of interest only to me . . . so let’s get to it!
First, Dora Machado (author of the epic fantasy romance The Curse Giver) has now posted her blog post for the Sisters in Crime Blog Hop, and it’s available here. So please do go to her blog to see her answers for three questions, as they’re quite enlightening.
Second, in my blog post for the Sisters in Crime Blog Hop, I inadvertently left off another male writer who writes female characters extremely well. That author is Jeffrey Getzin, and my favorite novella of his is Shara and the Haunted Village. But his work in A Lesson for the Cyclops and the full-length, action-filled novel Prince of Bryanae (starring the very female Willow the Elf, no one’s plaything) is tremendous, and his newest novel, King of Bryanae, also stars Willow (read an excerpt from Jeff’s latest novel here).
Third, congratulations to the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals, winners of the National League and American League Wild Card games, respectively. Best of luck to them throughout the playoffs!
(Before I forget, my end-of-the-season wrap-up post regarding my favorite baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers, will be up on Sunday.)
Fourth, I’ve been writing and editing a great deal this week, as much as I can considering my ongoing surgical recovery. (It supposedly takes six weeks to be back to normal. We’ll see.) And I sent another story to the Writers of the Future Contest; may it do well!
Fifth, my car is at the local Hyundai dealership and the diagnosis of transmission failure due to a cracked transmission casing has been confirmed. Now it’s up to Hyundai as to whether or not they will cover the cost of the repair, considering the fact that I did try hard to get it taken care of when it was still under warranty (it’s just that the previous dealership didn’t want to be bothered, that’s all).
Let us hope I will get my car back, fully repaired, and soon!
Sixth and last, I hope to get a review up over at Shiny Book Review this weekend. It still may not be Michael Z. Williamson’s FREEHOLD, as I have a lot to say about that book and want to make sure everything is set in my head before I begin. (Mind, I would be astonished if any fans of “Mad Mike” or his novel will be upset by what I have to say. But I want to make sure I am well enough to make sense when I say it.)
So that’s about it. (Any questions?)
Barb Caffrey's Blog 