Self-Defense Against Fresh Fruit: John Cleese on Storytelling

john cleese

If I could choose any living person in this world to have dinner with—anyone—it would be the British actor John Cleese. As a writer, I am in awe of his understanding of the human condition, his willingness to push the envelope and his brilliant use of humor to first catch our attention and then to connect us to each other.

A writer is always in search of the original. We pick up existing ideas and hold them up to the light, looking for the glint of something new in them. We ponder: starting, stopping, thinking some more.

But in this hurry-up world of ours, we are not rewarded for pondering. We must come up with ideas quickly.

“Come on now. Spit it out!”

It has become unacceptable to stop and think first. And yet Cleese’s whole take on creativity and storytelling is to give yourself the time and space to play with ideas, to ponder, to not go with the very first idea that comes to you.

For instance, in sketching out Mama’s character in my memoir, I am asking myself, “What is Mama’s worst nightmare?”

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Straw into Gold: 5 Blogging Lessons from Rumpelstiltskin

Blogging Lessons from RumpelstiltskinWriting and blogging ideas are all around us, if we just keep our ear to the ground. This week, I’ve been thinking about kid lit a lot. Children’s literature has a rich past and a ripe future.

This Saturday, March 2, is Dr. Seuss’s 109th birthday. And though he died at age 87, his legacy lives on through his many, many books. And every March for the last 16 years, on the day closest to his birthday, schools nationwide have a Read Across America event.

When I taught first graders, everyone came to school in their pajamas, including teachers, the principal and other staff. We hung out with our pillows and stuffed animals and spent much of the day on the carpet, reading Dr. S’s masterpieces.

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On Writing, Christopher Walken and Finding Your ‘Wild Thing’

On Writing, Christopher Walken and Finding Your Wild Thing1. Be fearless.

Throughout his long career, Christopher Walken has not been afraid of taking chances. He plays outrageous characters (remember Diane Keaton’s character’s brother in Annie Hall and Leo DiCaprio’s character’s father in Catch Me If You Can?) He took creative chances with those characters and wasn’t afraid to fail.

Alan Alda, MASH’s Hawkeye Pierce, sums it up really well:

“Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing.”

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My 10 Most Popular Posts in 2012: Want to Find Yours?

My 10 Most Popular Posts in 2012: Want to Find Yours? My friend Gini Dietrich over at Spin Sucks recently shared her most popular blog posts of 2012.

The cool part, aside the links to all the intelligent (and entertaining) posts,  is that her friend Adam Singer, who now works at Google, has created an analytics dashboard that makes the process simple. (Follow the link at the bottom of this post to get stats for your own blog.)

First, let me say that this was a refreshing exercise because it did not use number of comments as one of the measures. Instead it plotted the more important reader behaviors, things like pageviews, unique page views, unique visitors, social shares and average time on page.

And guess what? The posts I thought were my most popular ones, in some cases, didn’t even make the list. Read on for the ones that did.

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Stuff that Matters: A Blogger’s Creed

Stuff That Matters - A Bloggers CreedI threw out a question on Facebook this week that brought some very interesting responses. I asked, “ Do your values come into play as a blogger? As an entrepreneur, biz owner or author?”

What I really wanted to know was whether their values have ever played into a decision, either on what to post about on their blog, what partnerships to form or which clients to take on.

My friend, social media star and transplanted Scot Danny Brown said:

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A Blogging Conference Worth Every Penny: Want to Win a Free Pass?

New Media Expo 2012 Las Vegas

In my 25+ years of self-improvement ventures, I can count on one hand the memorable conferences I have attended. They were the ones that actually made me better at what I do and challenged me to try some new things.

And the older I get, the ones that impress me are becoming even rarer.

I have heard speakers who have very little of a concrete nature to share. They are usually the ones with a lengthy bio, but whose main (and rather obvious) purpose is to sell their latest book.

At one writing conference, the organizers closed (and locked) the auditorium exits and proceeded to hard sell an add-on program: an inner circle “club” with a hefty price tag. Being a little claustrophobic anyway, I experienced the sheer panic of knowing I couldn’t escape if I wanted to.

At another, we were presented with Native American Dreamcatchers, wands we were encouraged to wave around with our eyes closed, as we whispered our deepest and biggest wishes. (Okay teachers’ conferences can be a little woo-woo.)

But somewhere around cruising altitude on the way home, passing over the Rocky Mountains, the magical fairy dust would begin to melt and I wondered what I really got for all that money.

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What Happens If You Lose All Your Blog Subscribers Overnight?

What Happens If You Lose All Your Blog Subscribers Overnight?

I am not a a data cop. In other areas of my life,  I have tendencies toward OCD—lining up the pens on my desk with equal spaces in between, positioning the cat food cans on the shelf with the Friskies cats all facing forward, counting my M&M’s, and sorting them in two’s, things like that.

But I have never become paranoid about the number of blog subscribers I have.  I have even written about how losing blog subscribers can be a good thing.

The dawning of Monday, September 17, 2012 changed all that. 

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Zombie Blogs: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us

I am pleased to introduce Di Mace,  a blogger from ‘down under’ who is brimming with creativity and smartitude and appears for the first time today as a guest on the Judy Lee Dunn blog.  (I had no idea Di knew so much about zombies or I would have asked her sooner.)  Okay, just in case you were confused, this first picture below is not Di’s pic. To see her real face, visit the bio at the end of her post. And while you’re there, be sure to sign up for her blog and/or newsletter. 

Zombie blogs: how dead ideas still walk among us

You need an evil plan. I have one. World domination with my small army at my back is but a *few* pixels away.

Perhaps I’m nuts?

I’m told that pursuing a crazy idea along a nonconformist, passion-driven path is my survival tool to conquer the world. Surely I’m almost there—it’s so close I can smell it.

Or is that something else?

Look around. Rotting corpses litter the digital terrain. Millions of blogs are feeding cyberspace, with more being born (and dying) each day.

And here’s where the zombies come in.

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Show And Tell: What I Learned About Blogging from First Graders

 Show And Tell: What I Learned About Blogging from First Graders

When I was a first grade teacher, the end of summer always made me reflective (actually, it still does).  If there was going to be change, it was going to happen in the sun-drenched days of September.

Like the first day of school.

The intoxicating smell of new.

 Scents of wool sweaters with price tags barely clipped off and the fine shavings from freshly sharpened pencils. You know, the big old black ones that 6-year-olds could grasp in their pudgy fingers?

On the first day, I walked along the rows of tidy desks, placing a flat box of Crayola crayons on each one. Even today, all I need is a whiff of that heady wax scent and it takes me right back to the classroom.

Those, and the rectangular pieces of modeling clay that reeked of oil and stained your hands in one of three butt-ugly colors: Army green, chocolate brown or steel gray.

Most kids had the first day jitters. Giving them some clay kept them busy working to soften it—so busy that they forgot about their fear.

They were full of fears, yes. But I learned so many things from them. One of them was how to blog.

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10 Reasons No One Notices Your Blog Comment

 10 Reasons No One Notices Your Blog Comment

Of the many ways to get more traffic to your blog, commenting on other blogs, if done right, can be one of your best strategies. If you find blogs that share some of the same types of readers you’d like to attract, getting known on those blogs will help you promote your own.

You make an interesting observation, or add value with helpful advice, or have a unique take on the blogger’s topic and—bam—other readers will check out your blog and learn more about this fascinating person (that would be you, of course).

All good.

Except when it’s not.

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5 Hollywood Sequel Tricks to Turn Your Sizzling Blog Post into a Series

5 Hollywood Sequel Tricks to Turn Your Sizzling Blog Post into a Series

I’ve been a movie fan for a long time. Bob says I spoil the experience by over-analyzing. But, as a writer, I like to figure out what makes a story work.

And when a film reaches into the heart of its audience, you can be sure that Hollywood is paying attention. The industry has an uncanny ability to take a popular film and expand on it, giving the audience more of the story they loved the first time around.

They are going to make a sequel.

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‘Do What You Said You Would Do’: 3 Blog Post Headline Fails

'Do What You Said You Would Do': 3 Blog Post Headline FailsI was at a conference in Washington D.C. in the late 90s for an exclusive group of winners. We came from 31 school districts and 26 states. Our proposals had been chosen from more than 5,000 from across the country, to be funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Five years of funding, with an average of three-quarter of a million dollars to each of us to support academically at-risk middle schoolers in their learning challenges.

The feds present that day wanted to make sure we knew both how special we were and how much was expected of us.

The first presenter walked to the podium in that Hilton ballroom. We leaned forward with pens and notebooks, poised to record all the stuff we would need to know to implement our grant projects.

She removed her glasses, peered out at us and paused.

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