Simply Sincere Sentiments

I guess when you only have one job it is inevitable that you do that job well - maybe too well. Sometimes. It has happened before. I burn people. I damage their eyes. I cause skin cancer. They blame themselves but I blame myself. It wouldn't have mattered if they forgot to wear sunscreen if I didn't shine so well! They only had to invent sunscreen because of me! I only cause horrible consequences and more work for everyone! Every time someone wants to frolic outside he or she has to worry about me - unless it's my day off and the clouds are working. I wish all the time that I had my own controls or some type of filter. I don't want to burn everyone! I don't want to make people so sick that they can never enjoy me again! I don't want my beauty to make them never able to see beauty or feel beautiful ever again. But I can't stop shining. I don't know how! It's all I'm meant to do. If I don't shine... I have no purpose. I want to have...

Perspective. Point of view.  These are the concepts that allow a reader to connect to a story on a deep, personal and emotional level. This idea was talked about extensively in my Harkness circle. The POV of a story is crucial to helping writers get their desired emotional response from readers.           Now  I’m going to make an interesting analogy. I recently finished a show called Spy Games in which ten competitors live on a compound and get basic training on the most important skills of being a spy, then partake in fake missions set up by former spies or “the assessors” in a competition for $100,000. The skill the assessors stressed the most:  situational awareness. A spy’s ability to get him or herself out of danger depends on how situationally aware he or she is. He or she can be great at deceiving people, picking locks, and/or decoding ciphers, but if they can’t retain information from a situation, or assess a situation to get out of ...

          My dad was explaining to me this past summer how before the internet, cable TV, and social media, there was no way to spread news as quickly as there is today. You were a farmer and you didn't know what was going on anywhere else in the world until days or sometimes even weeks after the fact. This meant you had less time to worry and feel hopeless or guilty for not feeling hopeless because of the 7:00 news story , because there was no such thing! The news was not on a schedule. By the time you got the news it was too late to worry. What happened happened and there was nothing you could do. The article "Cheerful Despair" touches on how modern news impacts us, and it transported me back to that conversation with my dad and then back to the pre-internet, telegram era when people seemed more content and calm instead of constantly stressed and anxious like they seem today. Could that be because of the way news has been amplified over the decades? The ...