If you don’t have an internet connection, there may be a chance you’ve never heard of Guy Kawasaki. For the rest of the world, he’s pretty much pervasive, the founder (or co-founder) of Alltop.com, Guy is also perhaps the most-recognized individual on Twitter. He posts links about every seven minutes on the strangest, funniest, most entertaining links he’s found online.

It’s funny because I’ve always felt I had a special relationship with Guy. When I first discovered Twitter in early 2008, he was probably the most popular person there. I sent him a message. He replied. We conversed. Interacted! And I thought, this Twitter thing is pretty cool. I think I’ll stick around. His charm and kindness enchanted me, not just with him, but with Twitter, and social media as a whole. And I doubt he even knows who I am.

For this reason alone, Guy Kawasaki’s book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, was a book I was eager to read. I read it through in a day, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone looking to make a change in the world. Because many of us know what we would like to change in the world, but knowing just how to go about doing it is not so easy.

It actually has less to do with technology than one might expect. It’s more like a primer on human relations, psychology, and communication. How to interact with people online is certainly covered, but it also includes a chapter on the art of shaking hands. It is full of intriguing examples on how people and organizations make an impact on others and convince them, in a positive way, to break from the status quo and to try something new, or see the world in a different light. My favourite story is how Richard Branson convinced Guy to try Virgin Airlines. They met backstage at a conference in Moscow where they were both speaking. Branson asked Kawasaki if he had ever flown Virgin. When he said no, Branson the billionaire,  got down on his knees and started shining his shoes… with his jacket.

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February can be a harsh month. For me personally, this February more so than most years. February has never been a particularly good friend in the best of times, but if there is ever a setback in February, there is seldom much kindness to be found. Outside, it is cold and icy. Inside, the rooms are dark and always seem to be a little smaller than normal.

If you get sick, or fall on your face and skid into headlong traffic in any other month, there is usually some scrap of good news to hold onto and use as a bandage until the Advil kicks in. (With the possible exception of January, because you-know-who is looking for a parking spot in the snow and will soon be banging on the door.) Get injured in February, however, and you’re pretty much on your own. Or so it appears.

In hindsight, it is always the darkest times that prove to be the most enlightening. However, knowing that the sun will shine again does not help one to see whilst still sitting in the dark.

In the midst of this darkest month, I’d like to share with you two passages that always get me through these cold weeks. The first is from Theodore Roosevelt. The second passage is more often quoted than Roosevelt’s but, unfortunately, the author is less famous. Her name is Marianne Williamson.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

~ Theodore Roosevelt

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

~ Marianne Williamson

See? It’s getting lighter already.

No related posts.

After a bit of discussion, not a little debate, and some quick planning, I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new website: www.pencilsandcrayons.com. Cool name, right? Yeah, I know. I was actually surprised it was available.

The website came after my rant on Murderous Poets last week, and the shabby condition in which poetry finds itself in too many hands today. Several people replied in the comments, in emails and on Twitter with the names of their favourite living poets. Unfortunately many of them have yet to be discovered yet.

And I thought…

Wouldn’t it be great to have a place where like-minded people can share their favourite works? Direct us to websites? Give us names and samples? And tell us why they love what they’re sharing?

My first thought was a Facebook group, or using other existing services like Stumbleupon or Posterous. But they really don’t have the flexibility this would need. I also thought of hosting it here, but it didn’t seem fair to ask people to put articles on a website that has my name plastered all over it. So I decided one more website  on the internet was required.

It’s not quite a literary journal, not quite a forum, but something in between. Its easy to join and contribute. To register, just send in your name and email address, pick a password and you should be approved without too many more questions.

Share your favourite authors, artists and photographers. Help us find out where they are!

And, as always, let me know what you think!

I’d like to publicly declare a huge thanks to Lori Flood for helping me get this website up and running.

Here is the first post featuring Annie Q. Syed.

Related posts:

1. Is it time to get your own website?
2. Planning a Website

Name your five favourite poets.

Most human beings in North America have a hard time doing this, especially if they are asked to exclude composers of song lyrics. Only those who are very well read even begin to start answering. Is it any different in Europe, or Asia? Do the masses of South America still revere the likes of Pablo Neruda? I hope so, but I wouldn’t bet any of my money on it.

Ask anyone to name their five favourite living poets, and you’ll be waiting a while for an honest answer. I can’t do it. Can you? I don’t mean the best of what’s available. I mean a poet whose book you have bought, and know exactly on which spot on which shelf it sits. I mean a poet whose words you can recite without resorting to Google. I mean a poet whose work does strange, unexplainable things to your central nervous system, your cardiovascular system, and your lymphatic system. Poets who interfere with your ability to concentrate on other things for at least six minutes. I mean poets who murder your doubts about the beauty in the world and make you want to go home and rethink your life. Poets like that. Can you even name one?

Poetry is Dead, Get Over It

Poetry is dead, I am often told. Good for you for writing poetry. Good for you for reading it. You’re a minority, I’m told. Get over it. Write another mystery novel, or write a good blog post. Have you thought of going back into sales?

Who or What is to Blame?

Some people blame television, video games or other technologies.

Some blame high school English teachers.

Some blame the government for poorly funding for the arts.

Some blame the people who don’t read poetry, don’t buy it, and don’t “get” it.

Add all of those opinions up and you have accounted for the majority of opinions on the question. I know because I talk to people about this all the time.

Most people are wrong.

It is the poets themselves who murdered poetry.

In our age, in Western culture, poetry should be more than it is. Pressed for time, dazed by the flurry of media that snowblinds our attention, poetry should be the double shot espresso of modern literature. A quick, fast jolt in the midst of a hectic day and you should be off and running, inspired, moved, and eager to get your hands deep into the humus of your own life, grasping at the roots beneath.

But its not.

The fact is that poetry was bludgeoned to death by the poets themselves.

I’m not talking about amateurs here. I’m talking about the professionals. The ones who know how to get their grant applications approved. The ones who reside in the corner office of English Literature departments with their own cappuccino machines.

If there was justice in this world, any modern professional poet who is able to assemble a collection of good poetry should, as a clause in their literary license, be decapitated the day after publication. Every poet who assembles and publishes a mediocre collection, and manages to get it favourably reviewed in the books section of a daily newspaper, should be locked in a room and force-fed the collected works of Margaret Atwood until his cerebral cortex succumbs to an irreversible ennui. Any editor who assembles a collection of modern poetry who regularly drinks with, dines with, or has had her work reciprocally published by any of the contributors in that anthology, should be shipped to a gulag in northern Saskatchewan for six years minus a day.

But there is no such justice yet. And the crimes are still being committed by sad-eyed, traipsing poets continue to defile the corpse of an art form that is sorely needed today.

There. I said it, and I feel just a little bit better. If anyone knows of a talented living poet who does not deserve to be included in such a bitter, scathing rant, please forward a name to me. I could really use a lift today.

(added November 13th) We seem to have a solution in the works here. A website for sharing the work of authors and artists you really love. It’s called Pencils and Crayons: a place for geeks who love art and literature. Take a look!

Related posts:

1. More About Poets
2. Meet Me Backstage

There are some books I try to put off reading. Good books. Books, I know are going to do more than entertain me, that are going to push me, inspire me towards doing more. Any good book should inspire its readers, but there are some – just by looking at the cover – you know are going to do more than most.
For me, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, was one of those books, and I finally had the chance to read it through this weekend.
I’ve been a fan of The Grateful Dead for quite a few years and was fortunate enough to see them in concert a few times when they came to Michigan in the Nineties.
While there are a lot of great ideas in the book, coming from the band, or cases of people or companies doing things in a particularly Dead-like manner, most of the ideas are things we already see quite a lot of today, especially for those of us with an eye on social media.
Here are five notes I took away with the book. As with most of the notes I take, they are partly from the book and partly from my own reflections while reading the book.

1. Give freely. The Dead would let fans record their concerts for free. This never hurt their record sales. In fact, it helped sales. Official recordings were always of a better quality than what the fans could achieve.
2. Be yourself. One fascinating idea is to look at websites by others who do what you do, examine what your website has in common with them, and then remove those commonalities. Be uniquely yourself.
3. Be your best. Practice. Get Better. Practice some more.
4. Experiment and don’t worry about screwing up. On stage the Grateful Dead were 80 percent improvisation. They screwed up sometimes, but for anyone at a concert, that was not a problem. Every mistake just made them more endearing.
5. Place your fans on centre stage. One of the best parts of a Grateful Dead concert was the audience. The party always started well ahead of the band, in the parking lot. The band always maintained that the audience was just as important in the concert experience as the band was. Where would any performer, any writer, any artist be without their fans?

“Making a record is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live music is like being
in a rowboat in the ocean.” ~ Jerry Garcia

Related posts:

1. Grateful Self-Promotion
2. Video Marketing for Writers

I was given a fascinating, beautiful and disturbing book this weekend,  The Great Forgetting by Calvin Luther Martin. It was originally the forward to another book published by Yale University Press, and in itself its actually quite seductive.

Beautiful fonts and graphics make what would otherwise be a quick read, something more of a journey, and I’ve actually read it four or five times now. There is something that lingers from it, something the text alludes to but does not exactly specify… that thing which we have all forgotten but still somehow remember that it was something we’ve forgotten.

It’s that thing that drove Nietzsche and Thoreau beyond the edge of sanity, that thing that Dr. Jung found lurking in the nights when he went to Africa, that thing that awaits us all, quietly in that dark shadowed corner of our consciousness that a wise person will never turn to face.

I am not so wise. I have flirted with it, and have let it whisper in my ear  – how could you not, while living alone in the wilderness for most of a year, dancing alone through the dark nights of the soul? Martin, indeed has faced it too.

Spoiler Alert: This thing we have all forgotten, is that none of us are who we believe to be, that we have layered ourselves with constructs, separating ourselves from that which cannot be named.

Martin seems to believe this is something we need to re-remember. I would tend to agree, and I know a handful of others who would agree as well. However, until humanity reaches that tipping point, I should warn you that this may be a dangerous path to take. Reading this book and contemplating it, and beginning to face that thing which seems to terrify some of the most courageous people I know, may indeed change your life for the better.

However, I must warn you: your life will never be the same.

That Martin, like myself, seems to prefer living on the edge of the woods, canoe paddle in hand, makes me believe this warning would be something he would agree with as well.

Here is a link to the book: The Great Forgetting. I’m not putting my usual Amazon affiliate link here, as I’d prefer that you purchased the book directly from the author himself.

Related posts:

1. The Kobo eReader – a Writer’s Review
2. Three Cups of Tea – a book review

The first line in a book is like a first kiss. It can lead to the cover being slapped closed in the author’s face, or the beginning of a wonderful love affair, an adventure that could span for days, leaving you breathless at times, and with memories to be cherished for the rest of your life. Rarely, the book itself becomes the first of many affairs that spread through a lifetime, until you begin to know the author as well as your closest friends and, in some cases, even more intimate than that.

Here are 20 of the best opening lines from books I adore, as voted by me. Long and short, some are classics, some contemporary, crossing genres and continents.

It is said that we have ten seconds when we wake of a morning, to remember what it was we dreamed the night before.
~ A Gift of Wings by Richard Bach

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
~ One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
~ Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

All this happened, more or less.
~ Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
~ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Call me Ishmael.
~ Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
~ Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

It was a pleasure to burn.
~ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
~ Neuromancer by William Gibson.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
~ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
~ The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
~ The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them.
~ Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

All children, except one, grow up.
~ Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
~ A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
~ To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
~ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”
~ In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.
~ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

In her dreams the river is always thick and bloated, its surface cast in the familiar blues of twilight.
~ The Tanglewood Murders by David Weedmark

Obviously, there are a lot of great books with great opening lines I’ve left out.

Care to share your favourite?

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Indecision took a holiday this weekend and I finally picked up a Kobo eReader from Chapters today (that’s like Barnes & Noble here in Canada, eh). I still have mixed feelings about the damned thing.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. No, it’s not a Kindle, but it’s smaller, has less buttons, and was in stock, which made it a much better choice on all three counts. Secondly, it’s not an iPad either, but it’s a fraction of the price, only supports eBooks, is smaller and lighter, and has a no-glare e-ink screen. Again, this was a better choice for me.

what is that thing on the left?

Once it was charged and I was able to play with it, the Kobo reminded me a lot of Star Trek.

There are two reasons for this. First, it looks a lot like something Captain Picard used to hold, doesn’t it? (Although in this picture it does look more like an iPad, certainly.)

The second reason is because it also reminds me of the technology we had available back in the olden days, when Star Trek TNG was originally airing in the late 80′s and early 90′s. Specifically, it looks and feels a lot like my old Nintendo Gameboy, which was pretty amazing back in 1990, but looks rather trite by today’s standards.

Yes, we have to keep in mind that the Kobo is just a basic eReader, designed only for displaying eBooks. Aside from the e-ink screen, it is completely alienated from anything we would consider cool today. Not a single aspect of this device makes you want to give it a second look, let alone start showing it off to friends and family. In fact, whenever I look at it, I have to wonder how long will it be before I start seeing these things at garage sales, or in the discount bin at the dollar store?

I’m not criticizing the device by any means. Truthfully, I really think it’s great, and its going to get a lot of use. I know I’ll soon get over the strangeness of it in my hand. I’ll appreciate being able to slip several hundred books in my coat pocket and take it anywhere. I’ll enjoy being able to read comfortably with only one hand. I also know I’ll sometimes prefer the texture of reading a paper book – particularly old books with thick pages that feel like silk to the fingers, because…

Because, this particular piece of technology adds very little to the reading experience.

With paper books, there is a huge difference between holding a cheap Signet paperback, a Penguin Classic, or a  fifty-year-old hardcover in your hands. The words are the same, but the experience is different. It’s the same as watching a movie in a good theatre compared to a tiny cineplex, or eating a meal on wedgewood china compared to a styrofoam plate.

Having the opportunity to read a few pages of Tolstoy on an iPad several weeks ago was an experience I treasured. The coolness factor of the technology rubbed off on the book itself. Holding the new iPad in my hands made me want to keep holding it, and keep reading the book. With the Kobo, the physical aspects of reading has almost no appeal. The only thing to keep my interest are the words themselves.

And when I realized this, I thought… uh oh…

This concerns me for one reason. As a writer, I have to remember that my books are being read in all sorts of formats, and more and more they are going to be on Kindles and Kobo’s and the $20 versions we all know are going to be available within the next three years. If my words are going to appear on technologies that are not only less than cool, but actually mundane, that means one thing: to keep anyone’s attention for more than a chapter or two, the writing had better be damned good compared to anything else they could choose to read.

This doesn’t just apply to me. It applies to every writer wanting to put out a book from today forward. With the number of books available, and the number of really cool distractions competing for a reader’s attention, the only way the books are going to do well is if the words themselves are more entertaining, better written, and more captivating than they have ever been before.

I’m just glad I love a good challenge.

Related posts:

1. My Heart is Africa – a book review
2. Three Cups of Tea – a book review

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, when the internet was still unexplored by most people, and the world wide web was still just a menu item on services like Compuserve, I spoke and dreamed of a time when anyone, anywhere, could get a free online education – degrees earned at home through the marvels of telecommunication…

We’re still not there yet. I don’t know of a university offering online bachelor degrees for less than an outrageous fee. But if you’re like me and you’re more interested in the knowledge than the paperwork, the choices have become more and more amazing each year. Here are 10 of my favourite resources for a free online education:

1. MIT – One of the first I ever logged into, many moons ago, MIT has one of the best selections of quality courses for a free online education in the world.

2. The OpenCourseWare Consortium, has a huge selection of online courses, brought to us by MIT and over 20 other universities from around the world. Most of the course are available as free audio or video lectures.

3. Yale University – for those looking for something more from the Ivy League.

4.  iTunes U is accessible from Apple’s iTunes Store for your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

5. Wikiversity and Wikibooks both have a wealth of information contributed by users from around the world.

6.  Textbook Revolution is an a great resource for free textbooks, and several courses ranging from physics to history.

7.  The Open Learning Initiative offers courses in a wide variety of subjects ranging from economics, biology, math and physics.

8. The Khan Academy has over 1600 videos on subjects primarily in math and science.

9. Literature.org is a great resource for classic literature.

10. Project Gutenberg Last, but certainly not least, Project Gutenberg is a not-for-profit resource which has 33,000 books online, for free, accessible to anyone in the world in ascii and html format, as well as audio.

Certainly there are many more free online education resources. I just wanted to share with you some of my favourites. Happy learning!

Related posts:

1. My Litter Free Zone

There were not a lot of comments on my last blog about minimal living, but the emails were flying fast and furious for the last couple days. If you’re interested in minimal living (and if you’re a writer, artist, musician or other such unemployable soul, you should be) a book you should read, or read again if you only read it because you were forced to in high school, is Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

It’s been of great inspiration to me, and I have always had a copy nearby. It was not a small influence on my decision to live in the woods for the better part of a year, to live cheaply, (ie modestly) and experience the seasons while sorting out my thoughts in The Nature of Trees.

Contrary to popular belief, Thoreau was not a hermit. He did not live in total isolation in the wilderness. Rather, his cabin was located just off the beaten path, “a mile from any neighbor”, near the town of Concord, Massachusetts.

The purpose of his two-year experiment was to remove himself from the day-to-day interactions with society in order to understand both society and himself. In Walden, Thoreau questioned many of the beliefs and principles his contemporaries in town took for granted. He prescribed for himself two years of minimal living.

First published in 1854, Walden has lost none of its relevance to modern life. If anything, it has gained relevance as the society he lived in then has only progressed and accelerated its pace towards today.

In the book, Thoreau questions living above one’s means; accepting commonly accepted ideas at face value without thought or contemplation. Among many other things, he discusses the merits and experiences of growing one’s own food and building one’s own house. He also challenges the reader to question his or her own lifestyle, their labours, and what they truly work for.

His observation, from the first pages of the book is that:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

“Most men,” wrote Thoreau, “even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that.

See my previous post for more on minimal living.

Related posts:

1. Downshifting or Minimal Living
2. My Heart is Africa – a book review