Archives for July 2014

Learn How To Write More Interesting Posts

July 21, 2014 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Words are like puzzle pieces. — Words are like the puzzle pieces of a bigger story.

I publish more content than most people. Part of that is because blogging is how I prepare for work. It is like priming the pump or stretching before a game.

This story that I am workingÂ on is a hell of a lot of fun but part of that is because it is different. I find it stimulating in a different way than some of the other things I do.

If you want to be a good writer you need to practice writing and you need to stimulate your mind. Ask questions. Write down the answers. Think about how things work and find a way to look at the world with wonder.

A while back one of my 14k sisters asked me if I could help her put together a desk, a bookcase and some chairs that she had purchased. I have done that sort of thing a million times so I said yes and told her that my services were available for the very affordable cost of a coke and two slices of pizza.

When I opened up the box for the desk we found approximately 1,983,743 parts and an instruction manual that consisted of 18 pictures. Â Now I could tell you a story that would make you laugh but I want to go a different way.

When I looked at the various parts I began to wonder where the manufacturer of that unit acquired all of the parts. I looked at the pieces and wondered how many different people were involved in getting it all together. Think about this for a moment.

Someone had find the packaging for the unit.
Someone had to design the artwork that went on the outside of the box.
Someone had to find and purchase the wood that was used.
Someone had to find and purchase the other parts.
A machinist(s) were used to shape and form many of the pieces.
A technical writer was involved in building the manual.
Someone had to see that the manual was translated into multiple languages.

What Is The Point?

The point is that in less than 2 minutes I came up with seven questions about a desk. Every one of those questions offers an opportunity to tell a story. If I wanted to I could have come up with another 7 or another 50 questions. But the seven I asked are enough to provide a framework for a story that people would be interested in.

It is the tale of that desk is the culmination of the work of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people. Who are these people? Where do they live and what do they do? Surely there are some very interesting tales to be told about that.

The point is that when we open our eyes and look around there are a million different stories just waiting to be told. All we have to do is open our eyes and remember being children.

Start Asking Why

Children are famous for askingÂ WHYÂ and adults should be too. It is even more important for writers to askÂ WHY.Â Your readers have questions. AskÂ WHYÂ and you can answer those questions. Answer those questions and you add value. Answer those questions and you will entertain them.

Do yourself a favor and search for answers to your questions and then share it on your blog. You’ll learn something in the process and because you are already interested in the topic your post will have more energy and excitement.

Stop Over Thinking Things

Writing is something that you can improve with practice. Write often and good things happen. Ask questions and share the answers. But most of all have fun with it. Blogging shouldn’t be a task and if it is you need to reconsider why you are still doing it.

It is easy to fall into the trap of over thinking things. Our internal editor whispers in our ear that our words don’t work the way we want them to and we worry about boring the reader or not being as good as someone else.

But that internal editor forgets about how different voices appeal to different people. What is the major difference between Time and Newsweek or The New York Times and The Washington Post?

I’ll put money down that most people can’t provide any distinction or offer any substance. Maybe they’ll tell you that the Post covers D.C. and the Times covers New York but aside from geography they are unlikely to say one is better or worse based upon writing.

The point is some people will like your work and some will hate it and many will be ambivalent but the biggest impediment to your gaining more readers is listening to that voice inside your head.

Part of the way to overcome it is to just write and part of it is to work on writing stories/posts that you find to be interesting. When you do that your own level of interest in the story increases and good things come from that.

What do you think?

Girls Shriek When The Dead Walk During The Day

July 20, 2014 by Jack Steiner 8 Comments

5 Posts That Led To This One

There were 9,837,839 girls here last night but even though they spent the night very few of them slept which I suppose is part of why I didn’t.

It was a birthday celebration, the ~~dreaded~~ much loved slumber party and my daughter’s friends filled the house with lots of laughter and some of the shrieks that only come from girls but that is neither here nor there.

Last week I had a dream in which my paternal grandfather came to visit me. I stood in a bedroom and watched as he unpacked a bag filled with pictures.

I don’t know where we were but it wasn’t any of the hones I have lived in because when I looked out of the window the ground was covered in snow and the trees were bare.

The dog woke me up long before I was ready to face the day but mostly because grandpa was telling me something very important and the barking made it impossible for me to hear what it was he as saying.

Yet when I climbed into the shower I felt like whatever it was he had been telling me was waiting for me to find it. It was like he dropped a package in the back of the closet of my mind and all I have to do is find it and I’ll know what is in it.

Time Flowing Like A River

Shortly after the sun disappeared behind the mountains my son and I headed out to pick up the pizza and I had this crazy feeling that my maternal grandfather was sitting in the back seat of the car.

I didn’t look to see if he was there nor did I mention it to my son but he knew something was going on.

He looked at me and asked why I was smiling and I told him it was because I was happy. He asked me how I could be happy when the house was being overrun by girls and I told him one day he might like that.

He groaned and for a moment I thought I could hear my grandfather laughing.

Later that night I wandered into the garage, sat down on the stairs in the dark and just listened.

I don’t know what I was listening for or what I was trying to hear but I do know that for a moment I could feel the presence of both of my grandfathers.

It was as if the two of them were standing on either side of me, one hand on each of my shoulders. I am smiling just thinking about it, don’t care if it is was real or imagination.

Sitting here at the computer I can picture it, time is flowing like a river and I see myself as a very young boy moving through the years to the present.

I remember the days when my grandfathers were so very big compared to me and I remember when I grew taller than both of them.

It is surreal to picture, so strange to see this slow motion movie and watch them age. So strange to think about how they used to carry me and then during the last years of their lives I was the one carrying them.

Two Funerals

They outlived my grandmothers. I stood next to them at two different funerals and I kept them standing straight.

It never occurred to me until now how similar those moments were because if you had asked me I would have said they were different.

I want to talk to my kids about this. I want to share the story with them because I want them to understand the importance of family helping each other. I want them to understand there are moments when we have to lean on each other and they should be prepared to lend a hand or shoulder and not expect anything in return.

It is just what you do. It is how I grew up, what I was taught and all I know.

Every time I hear/see something different it makes me shake my head and wonder what happened in that family.

Free Flowing Content & The Closet

The words are flowing freely without any guide and falling onto the page wherever they choose to land. It is not going to be the greatest post I have ever written and I am sure the experts would chastise me for not following their very important rules and regulations about how to blog but that is ok with me.

You don’t hit a home run every time you are at bat nor do you strike out.

I am closing my eyes while I type so that I can look inwards and try to find the place grandpa put that package. Somewhere in the closet it lies in the dark and I want to know what it says.

Maybe it will be the thing that provides new meaning, substance and guidance to my life or maybe it will be something silly. Maybe it will be both or maybe it will be neither.

Either way I want to see what it says.

Great Grandparents & Slumber Parties

Just a few more moments before I put down my pen and do something else. Just a few more moments to try to scratch out something profound or something pithy.

The best part of sitting on the steps in the garage was that feeling that maybe, just maybe my grandparents were at the party. I have never forgotten how proud they were of their great grandchildren and how broadly they used to smile every time they saw them.

They would be so pleased and so proud of those kids of mine. I would have given quite a bit to get to see them talk to the kids now.

Your Best Posts Aren’t Always The Most Popular

July 17, 2014 by Jack Steiner 6 Comments

Someone asked me how many PR lists I am on and wondered if after all these years if I have gotten any cool stuff from blogging.

I told them I haven’t a clue how many lists I am on and said that I haven’t been asked to do any of the automotive stuff since I don’t know when, never hear from Disney and I seem toÂ missÂ out on many of the other giveways/reviews that I see floating around.

Don’t know why that is.

Might be because I don’t attend the blog conferences and that makes it harder to get on the radar of certain brands. Might be because I don’t know as many of theÂ popularÂ bloggers as I used to or it might not be any of those things.

What Is Important and What Isn’t

The children and I speak frequently about how to determine what is important and what isn’t. We talk about the need to focus inward and figure out what we want and what we need so that we can figure build road maps to get those things.

When they tell me about how other kids are growing up with more stuff I smile and nod my head. It doesn’t happen often but from time to time I hear from my daughter about how unfair it is that so many of her friends have cellphones and she doesn’t.

Sometimes I hear stories about who went to Hawaii during summer break or about kids who went to Israel and or Europe and field questions about why we haven’t taken those trips.

I always tell them we haven’t done it yet because traveling with the kids is something I want to do more of. Some of these trips are on my list of things to do but they haven’t happened because the financial wherewithal hasn’t existed.

Your Best Posts Aren’t Always The Most Popular

Periodically I make a point to check my stats to try and determine which of my posts are the most heavily trafficked and then I make a mental note to leverage that traffic.

I think about ways to try and use that information to build the readership and think about ways to do it.

Every time I do this I find myself ensconced in the midst of a dilemma in which I feel torn about running or updating old posts again versus writing something new.

It is kind of a silly thing because there is material here that is strong enough to run multiple times. Material that hasn’t been read by everyone because of changes in readership and time passed between the last time it ran.

I teach my children to work smarter, not harder but I am not always good about taking my own advice. I could reuse or repurpose those posts and build the blog more effectively and efficiently than I am doing now.

But then I start thinking about the posts that would best serve that purpose and I see some that I know are popular but they aren’t my best work.

That doesn’t mean they are bad, but it does mean they don’t always match up with what I consider my best writing.

Add my desire to improve my writing and it becomes harder to press publish again on some of that old stuff.

Why?

Because you don’t improve unless you practice. Every time I skip writing something new I miss out on the practice component or at least I feel like I do.

An Example Of Best Next To Popular

I am proud of The 100 Year Old PennyÂ and He Died A Hero. I think they are good examples of my writing but they don’t necessarily show up close to the top on the list of my most popular work.

Don’t get me wrong, if it is among the most popular I will probably say I am proud of it because it didn’t do well by being junk but there is a distinction.

I think one of the things that I am pushing to do is spend more time working on the longer form, essay types of posts. Things with more substance and meat that aren’t marred by concern over whether they will be too long.

Here is a partial list of some of the most popular posts here. You are invited to read them. I am going to look at them again and see what sort of information I can pull and think about ways to improve.

When Fathers Become Human

July 16, 2014 by Jack Steiner 3 Comments

If you ask me when I first realized that my father was human and not superman it would probably be tied into whenÂ dad had a major heart attack and ended up on life support.

You tend not to forget a week spent Â sitting at the bedside of an unconscious man praying he wouldn’t die.

But kids of all ages don’t always recognize the moments when their parents are truly vulnerable. Sometimes it just goes over our heads or sometimes we misread a moment.

When my daughter askedÂ Why Is Daddy CryingÂ there were no real tears upon my face.

It took me years before I realized that I had seen my father on the verge of collapse and that it happened years before his heart attack. Don’t ask me why I was so thick headed or slow to recognize it. Truth is it probably doesn’t matter to anyone but me.

What We See

I often think about my dad’s little brother and feel badly that I didn’t get as much time to get to know him as I would have liked to.

He was my father’s only sibling and even though they had many similarities they were very different. Some of it was for obvious reasons.

My uncle was a gay man who didn’t have any children. He grew up in Los Angeles and moved to San Francisco in the early 70s. We visited him often and it wasn’t unusual for him to come down to see us in LA but no one ever talked about his sexuality.

I am not suggesting they should have any more then they should have talked about my father’s. It had no bearing on our love for my uncle.

But I mention it now because of the timing because when I was a kid we used words that are considered gay slurs now without any sense of whether they might hurt or offend someone.

That was a time when it was much harder for gay people to be open than it is now or at least I think it was. I haven’t discussed it with anyone who is gay who lived as an adult through then and now so all I can offer is my perspective and what I remember.

I remember being surprised when my little sister asked him if he was gay and how he laughed and said yes. I remember it making sense but being confused because I didn’t know how to feel.

Sometimes I look back on things I have written about that moment and try to figure out how accurate they are. Sometimes I think about what happened when we found out he was HIV positive and I try to remember exactly how I felt.

The words I wrote only catch part of those moments and I wonder if I left out something important, something critical, something significant that would help.

But I don’t know that I did or if I didn’t. I just know I tried my best to capture it in text and that it is part of how I realized I missed a moment for my father.

When Fathers Become Human

I sure as hell remember getting the call about my uncle dying. I remember telling my grandfather and how he began to cry.

Grandpa was tough as nails. He was a streetwise man who had been a salesman, a pool shark and more but he was a father who had lost a son and that was all it took to make the tears stream down his face.

My father was stoic in front of me. I didn’t think anything of it because it was how he had always been. The men in the family tend not to be big criers.

Mom and dad drove with my youngest sisters to San Francisco but I couldn’t take that much time off of work so I put a day in at the office and flew up.

Two days later my dad and I rented a truck andÂ the familyÂ assembled at my uncle’s cottage and started to pack up his things.

That was when I missed the moment.

I can’t remember how long we had been working on putting things into boxes or loading them into the truck when my father pulled me aside and said he needed me to make sure the truck was loaded properly because he couldn’t do it.

He disappeared and I didn’t think twice about it.

I figured it was hard for him and kept myself busy loading things.

But when I think back now I remember how his voice cracked once and how he didn’t look me in the eyes.

Twenty years ago I missed the moment. I should have at least asked him if we was ok, offered to let him lean on me a bit. I don’t think he would have because twenty years ago he would have seen me as a kid.

I expect when my kids are 25 I’ll have a similar feeling.

We can’t go back in time so I can’t change any of that and I am confident my father wasn’t hurt or upset about it because he wouldn’t have held back from telling me so.

But I still wish I had said something but more than anything I wish my uncle was here now.

He was only 49. In many ways he lived a very full life but he missed so much and by not having him around so did we.

16 Sensational Ways To Murder Using Linkbait

July 16, 2014 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

I haven’t ever defenestrated someone but I imagine there is something very rewarding about it because every time I see it happen on television or in a movie there is a huge smile on the face of the person that did it.

Can’t say I recall a smile on the face of the person who had the good fortune to be thrown so maybe it is one sided sort of pleasure. And if fortune continues to smile upon me I will never learn how it feels from either side of the fence, just don’t need to know.

If you are a new reader you might not be familiar with my penchant for writing silly and ridiculous headlines so consider this yourÂ warningÂ and note that not everything you read here is factual.

Some of it is fiction and some of the real stuff may have been enhanced, elaborated upon or edited for entertainment purposes.

She Broke My Penis

The broken penis story is real and one day when my son is 17 and making me crazy I’ll make a point to ask him if he remembers telling me about it.

Mind you the story is a tale of innocence and it comes from when he and his little sister were quite young. They had a disagreement while playing Pokemon. She was all of about four and he was around eight and they acted as siblings sometimes do.

I still remember sitting them down and explaining they weren’t to kick, punch or bite each other. I am fairly certain that I told them both this would be a story they wouldn’t want me to tell when they were teens so they should knock it off.

That conversation really isn’t that long ago but it feels like light years. So much has happened and we have all changed so much it almost feels like I am talking about different people.

But then again, it is not so surprising because six years is still a significant chunk of their lives and enough happened in my own to make me look back and remember when.

Everyone Has A Story- What Is Yours?

Stories on my mind now. Been thinking about my story, not the fiction I write but the real ones about my life. Been thinking about what my story is and the best way to tell and experience it.

It comes from personal and professional interest.

A good writer can’t ever elevate their game unless they learn how to become a great storyteller. I spend time working on that each day because I care about my craft.

I spend time working on my storytelling skills because my grandfathers were master storytellers who knew how to make the mundane interesting. They could tell the poor souls who were trapped in cleveland about the river bursting into flame in such a way that the person listening couldn’t help but be moved.

And I like working on my storytelling so that when my kids get the keys to this blog they’ll learn a few things about their dad and his thoughts about life.

They might even enjoy reading stories about themselves or at least how I saw those moments.

16 Sensational Ways To Murder Using Linkbait

One of these days I have to spend some time putting together a post with my thoughts about linkbait and headlines.

We’ll have to delve into whether they are useless or overrated. But that post is going to have to wait because I only got 4 hours of sleep last night and the lack of shuteye is catching up with me.

See you in the comments.

What Door Will You Choose?

July 15, 2014 by Jack Steiner 10 Comments

“Standing at the crossroads, trying to read the signs
To tell me which way I should go to find the answer,
And all the time I know,
Plant your love and let it grow.”
Let It Grow- Eric Clapton

A parade of images flow through my mind and as they do I remember people and places and think about the choices I have made and those I haven’t.

Standing on the top of Masada, staring out into the desert listening to the echoes of the past touch my present I think about where I want to be down the road and I know it is here.

One day I’ll live in Israel, get married, raise a family and live this incredible, exceptional and amazing life. There is no doubt in my mind because at 16 you are invincible and all the world is yours for the taking.

Things happen and I don’t move as soon as I expect to, there will be no college experience in Israel for me. It is ok, I’ll roll with it.

It is midnight now and I am sitting at a pub in Jerusalem drinking a beer and listening to the Scottish girl tell me I have a funny American accent. She wants to know why I am wearing my baseball cap backwards.

I tell her that she is the one with the funny accent and her friends laugh and tell me “I am so American.”

Some hours later my roommate complains when I wake him up and asks me if I am drunk or happy. I tell him neither and he asks me how I blew the deal.

“I wasn’t trying to close it. I was just enjoying myself. I plan on moving here soon and I want to be free of all attachments.”

But it doesn’t happen then either. I go back to the states and in a bit more than a year I am married.

Third Time Is The Trick

It’s the summer of ’98 and it is my wife’s first trip to Israel. We are hanging out with some friends who live in Jerusalem and watching their kids run around the hotel.

I stare at these little girls and wonder when someone is going to call me dad. It will only be two years but I am having trouble imagining where they will be born, the kids I don’t have.

Later on we’ll swim in the Mediterranean and I’ll tell my wife that I still want to move to Israel. She asks me if I intend on joining the army and I nod my head.

“If I am going to do it, I am going to go all the way. This is a place that calls to me. It owns a piece of me and every time I leave I notice its absence.

The third time is not the trick but I can’t say exactly why. Â That was the summer D died and that changed many things. Don’t know that it really had an impact on moving or not moving but it is when I started to recognize how fast time can move.

I was 29 and I had discovered mortality.

“Time is getting shorter and there’s much for you to do.
Only ask and you will get what you are needing,
The rest is up to you.
Plant your love and let it grow.”

What Door Will You Choose?

I am standing at the crossroads again but this time it is different. Life experience has provided me with an awareness that didn’t exist before and a level of maturity that changes everything.

Who I am and what I am willing to do now is different than it was then.

I have a far better sense of what I want and what I need now. It would be easy to look back and moan about mistakes I have made but maybe they weren’t mistakes.

Maybe they were things I needed to do to become who I am now.

That might sound like a bunch of woo woo nonsense. It might sound ridiculous but it works for me and ultimately that is what is important.

When night falls and you close your eyes you need to be able to feel good about the door you chose to open and the one you didn’t.

People say you can’t ever step in the same river twice because the current is always moving and it is always changing but that doesn’t mean you can’t ever cross it or that the door you passed upon is permanently locked.

I don’t have to close my eyes to see where I want to go or who I want to become.

I planted the seeds and I am letting them grow.