Do you have all your

                                                              

marbles, but can’t 

                                                                                                                                                 

find the playground? 

     Do friends and family consider you a “whack-job”?  Do you have all your marbles, but can’t find the playground?  Are people constantly telling you to get your glove and get in the game?  HA!  You must be a  w r i t e r.     

     If you are a business or literary career writer, parttime writer, hobbyist writer, or wannabe writer . . . if you’re a writer of letters, poems, news reports, jingles, journals or diaries, speeches, matchbook covers, legal briefs, books, articles, curricula, business plan narratives, ads, brochures, cribnotes, commercials, short stories, websites, greeting cards, song lyrics, flyers, billboards, booklets . . . ANYthing that requires at least a few bolts of creative persuasion, you’ve come to the right place! 

     Why?  Because all of us writers get stuck in the muckity-mud of mondane monotony once in awhile.  (Hey, what’s a little alliteration between writers, right?)  Oh, yeah, back to the mud.  Sometimes a little finesse will work its magic.  Sometimes, just taking a few deep breaths—or a walk around the block—will do the trick.  But sometimes we need a bungee-cord-rigged tow truck to  T-H-W-A-P  us out of the gooshy swamp!  And sometimes it takes someone to put an occasional firecracker under our collective writer-blocked butts!

     If you live anywhere near the Lewes/Rehoboth Beach/Coastal Rt.1 Highway in beautiful, tax-free-shopping Delaware (there, now THAT got your attention, right?), and you are willing to give up four, two-and-a-half-hour chunks of your life (one chunk each on 11/5, 11/12, 11/19, and 12/3/08), plus $119 payable to Delaware Tech & Community College, guess what?  You qualify to win a fascinating opportunity to have your creativity fuse ignited, and free your imagination from the mud! 

     All levels of writing skills are welcome.  Participants will present one-minute weekly reports and bring a work-in-progress for personalized coaching.

     Stop staring at a blank screen!  Put an end to the dreaded “Writer’s Block” and — believe it or not— suffer no side effects!  Plan to have fun.  Expect to teach your self how to unclog stuffed up writer’s block passages, connect your writing with your dreams!  I’ll be your guide.  Me, Hal Alpiar, MBA, and author of this blog!  (Listen, I’ve stimulated creative writing expression for over 20,000 students, so YOU will be a piece of cake!)

     Limited seating.  Reserve your place now.  Call 302.855.1617 and register for course # ENO 289 231.

     See you on the ceiling!         halalpiar 

YOU WON’T BELIEVE

WHAT YOU CAN TEACH

YOUR  SELF !

     You need not be a writer, creative genius, recording secretary, or shrink to keep an effective, meaningful journal of your ongoing thoughts and experiences.  In fact, the further away you are from a writing career, the more productive and rewarding the practice can be.  (Most writers think too much!) 

     Having set a few thousand students on journaling paths, I can assure you that very few (mental) self-discipline activities can measure up to the rate of return on a journaling investment.  In just a few short weeks, you’ll find yourself producing great new self-awareness levels of satisfaction and personal “aha’s.”  

     Oh, but yes. you do have to be willing to commit to yourself, to keep a daily record of what you see, hear, touch, smell, taste and think about.  Get the blank book, and pen, but realize that that’s not enough.  You need to reach agreement with yourself to make a dated entry of some kind (ANY kind) every single day. 

     I have collected many years worth of personal journals, and picking them up to review from time to time never fails to amaze and amuse me.  I value some of them even more than the classics in my library! 

     I used to tell reluctant students if they couldn’t think of a word to say on any given day, draw a picture, doodle, paste a photo or article or ad on the page . . . or spit on it!  What’s important is to record SOMEthing. 

     One device that helps prompt regular entries, is –after putting the date at the top, which is a truly essential ingredient– to write “WHAT HAPPENED?” across the top of the lefthand facing page and “HOW I FELT?” across the top of the righthand facing page. 

     Besides serving to sort of force your hand, the distinction between the two headings forces your mind to separate fact from opinion.  Keep WHAT HAPPENED? descriptions objective, unemotional, straightforward reportings of what you saw or heard actually take place.  No judgements.  No opinions.  No feelings.  Then put all the good stuff you want to editorialize and offer opinions about under the HOW I FELT? heading.  (Oh, if only major media “reporters” could stick to this formula!)

     Okay, so what happens with WHAT HAPPENED?  You start to see and experience people and events in a more rational light.  With HOW I FELT?, you begin to corral your emotions and gain insights about how much your feelings tend to drive the ways you behave and respond to others, and to day-to-day circumstances. 

     To put a spin on your HOW I FELT? entries, try pretending tomorrow is your last day alive and that no one will ever see your comments, which will inspire you to dig deeper into your emotions.  The more you can learn about what makes you tick, the better you will be at understanding and dealing with yourself and others. 

     Remember that your journal is your journal and not something to be left around for sharing unless that’s really what you want to do.  Give it a try.  What have you got to lose?  Ten minutes?  Some ink and paper?               halalpiar 

Once Upon A Quarter 

     No, not the State Commemorative Series of 25-cent pieces (though my collector set’s still missing New Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii!), and no again, neither is this a reference to the homemade pie slice size I most prefer, or to sitting astride that magnificent breed of racehorse, and — not to discount those romantics among you whose fractionalized thinking relates only to the amount of moon showing on any given night.  None of these.

     The “Quarter” I refer to is the one that breaks up the year, not as a business financial measure, but as a season.  In this case, I am speaking of the date of issue period for a number of culturally diverse and literary driven publications . . . and here and now, specifically, the strongest singularly-focused magazine of its time and place: 

Delmarva Quarterly

     . . . Delmarva (Peninsula)’s window to the scenes and stories of the seasons is filled with with tales, tasty tidbits, festival schedules, and observations of life on one of the largest, most productive and most fascinating peninsulas on the planet.  Delmarva is named, not incidentally, for the three states it environmentally hosts, serves and supports (DELaware, MARyland, and VirginiA). 

     You can drive there by the Bay Bridge across the Chesapeake from Annapolis, or the Delaware Memorial Bridge from New Jersey to Wilmington, or the Cape May-Lewes Ferry from Cape May, New Jersey to Cape Henlopen, Delaware, or across and through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel from the Virginia Beach area.  A variety of airports serve the Peninsula from New Castle and Georgetown, DE, to Salisbury, MD, and in between.

     When you land, arrive or sail in, remember to check out Delmarva Quarterly.  Why?  Because it’s the standard-bearer for all things made on and native to the Peninsula, and especially all things that fall into or touch upon the following categories that roll across every quarterly issue masthead: HISTORY – LITERATURE – ART – MUSIC – PHOTOGRAPHY – ARCHITECTURE – NATURE – THEATER – POETRY.  Don’t do Delmarva without it!

     Whenever you live on, visit, vacation, or just pass through Delmarva, you deserve to see and experience the uniqueness of its coastal borders and inland farms, its rivers, wildlife and wonderful products through the eyes of Delmarva natives and of newfound loyalists who’ve moved from other states . . . as can only be recorded by the Peninsula’s exceptional creative community in the pages of Delmarva Quarterly . . . once upon a quarter, every season.   halalpiar   

[To subscribe to Delmarva Quarterly, send your name and address and $12 – $18 for two years – to Delmarva Quarterly, P.O.Box 213, Lewes, DE 19958.  Submissions, letters, and advertising welcome.  Email dnf@capegazette.com for additional information]      

The e-books are coming!

The e-books are coming!

The e-books are coming!

The e-books are coming!

                                                                                                                                    

As I sit here scanning the 38th (and hopefully final) revision of a novel I’ve been working on for the last seven years [See HIGH TIDE synopsis; “Literary Agents” tab on the homepage of this blogsite], my mind is spinning at the latest publishing trend revelation that my musician/composer son Christopher just emailed me. . .

     First, for those with little knowledge of publishing, I must note here that you should know the industry is a giant sloth (or slug, depending on whether you perceive it as asleep or, unlikely though it may be, in some measure of motion).  The point is that “latest publishing trend” is paradoxical to say the least, yet —– well —– 

     Well, e-books are on the way, and –like it or not– will be here to stay! 

     For the moment (like the opening round of consumer pricing for initial sales of TV’s, computers, cellphones, and i-pods), costs for the average Joe are still prohibitive at a few hundred dollars per unit.  Want more details?  Try this link for a video that I found rather astonishing, not to mention the cause for concern it gave me over the incipient obsolescence of my new library shelves!  Go here: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA/ref=amb_link_6369712_1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1TDY7EQ37FNCWC7TNQCA&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=420983501&pf_rd_i=507846    

     And here, says my son, is “the Sony version”: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-PRS-505-LC-Digital-Reader/dp/B000WP2RC2  (Hey, at least the link is shorter!)

     Finally, he sent me “a nice Forbes article about the whole thing”: http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/03/ebooks-kindle-digital-tech-personaltech-cx_ag_1203ebooks.html

     Oh, and there’s more, like Christopher tells me, a new fiber that lets you make actual pages –kind of plastic, like a thick magazine– he says, that are actually an LCD monitor so you can make a “book” with ten pages, soft or hard back, and get the feeling like you are reading a book but it’s all digital as well . . . still apparently in R&D, but coming soon!  See: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=US1996012000&DISPLAY=DESC

     And, even more impressive: electronic RE-USABLE paper like, Christopher says, a modern day “etch-and-sketch” that can be printed on electronically, like a digital download, or be used like a “white board” with an electronic pencil:

http://www.prism.washington.edu/lc/CLWEBCLB/electpaper.html

http://www2.parc.com/hsl/projects/gyricon/

     My love of books and worry about crooks stealing my books and replacing them with yet another cyberspace device (that even though it looks like a book and feels like a book and quacks like a book is not really a “book”!) and concerns about my sanity require me to stop here and try to get some sleep, so I can wake up in the morning and find the page I was on before checking all these mind-boggling links!  See you round the corner!        halalpiar 

 Special thanks to Christopher Kennedy Alpiar, Cinematic Composer   www.alpiar.com

COMIN’ OUT!

 

                                                

No, it’s not a reference to a specific type of celebration party, or to an at-long-last exit from one’s closet.  COMIN’  OUT! is a cry you can hear in almost every town across America every summer on every baseball and softball field! 

It’s the BP (batting practice) pitcher yelling to all those in the field to be alert and pay attention and don’t turn your back on the ball because the batting practice pitches are about to commence and the batting practice hitters will be trying to hit the batting practice pitches down the batting practice fielders’ throats!   

When an irate customer, business client or partner, patient or associate decides to throw a tantrum (or toss out a bombardment of accusations, half-truths or outright lies . . . in person or via email), don’t turn your back on the ball; it could hit you in the back of your head! 

Regardless of the indignant individual’s motivation to exercise pent up frustrations, flex political muscle, show off, play one upmanship or activate a superiority (or inferiority) complex, don’t waste time being analytical . . . and PLEASE:  don’t react!  Think respond, not react!  If you don’t react, you can never over-react!  The old saying still rings true that it takes two to tango! 

If you’ve mentally and emotionally prepared yourself in advance for such an eventuality, you won’t have to get your glove and get in the game; you’ll already be there! 

It’s easier than it might seem.  (Remember, since every behavior is a choice —yes, it is!— you can CHOOSE for it to be easy or, if you have masochistic tendencies, then go ahead and CHOOSE for it to be hard!) 

Simply imagine you’re in the field, glove in hand, and the pitcher yells over her or his shoulder, COMIN’ OUT!  Then turn to face the ball and get ready to catch it, even if it appears to be heading somewhere else.  Why?  It never hurts to be ready.  Be, as any good Boy Scout will tell you, prepared!  (I didn’t say “neurotic,” mind you, just “prepared.”)

For openers, most human beings caught off-guard by COMIN’ OUT! circumstances can benefit by taking a couple of deep breaths(to circulate oxygen and make the brain more alert, and to circulate blood flow and make the muscles more relaxed), which serves to pull the fuse out of the tendency to react! 

For closers, be persistently objective and unemotional in responding [The Adult ego-state in Transactional Analysis].  Attempt to get the whiner/complainer/bitcher/screamer/fist-pounder person to   s  l  o  w     d  o  w  n  and deal with each issue on a one-at-a-time basis.  Upset people tend to bunch together an avalanche of problems and issues, none of which can of course be addressed or resolved, buried under so many others. 

No guarantees with any of this except that —for sure— you will handle COMIN’ OUT! situations better having thought about best practice responses than you ever would with your back to home plate!

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