P.M. Castle

Colorado Author

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When the going gets tough, the tough get writing

September 28, 2020 by Thin Air

I’ve always believed that when the going gets tough, the tough get writing. Sometimes about writing.

While there are no doubt prolific writers who crank out copy as if they’re making sausage, don’t count me among them. I’m more like Sisyphus, the mythical Greek guy condemned to forever roll a boulder up a hill only to have that big rock come tumbling down every time he nears the top.

For me, at least, writing is no less a Sisyphean task. In my day job as a newspaper editor, I no sooner complete stories and columns in time to meet one deadline than another looms. It’s almost always a struggle. And the whole troublesome process invariably starts with the same quandary: What do I write about this time? 

After putting it off for I don’t know how long, I once wrote a column about avoiding procrastination. Stymied by writer’s block, I wrote a column about writer’s block. It’s not especially surprising, then, to fall back on a familiar strategy in writing about writing. 

So what makes writing good? After working as a writer for 40 years, I’ve reached one immutable conclusion: I have no idea. It remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Nonetheless, I know good writing when I read it. Nearly everyone does. 

To that end, three general attributes come to mind.

Writing is compelling enough to keep readers reading. Otherwise, what’s the point? There’s the risk they’ll move on to more interesting pursuits — flossing their teeth perhaps.

Writing offers the stuff of revelation. Good writing provides insights and draws conclusions that leave readers scratching their heads over the implications. Great writing leaves them slack-jawed in realization.

Writing is personal, inimitably so. Good writers bring to their works not only their distinctive styles and voices, but also their unique experiences and perspectives.

Writing can be tough, an unrelenting struggle to turn thoughts into words and arrange them artfully on the page.

But when the going gets tough, the tough get writing.

Filed Under: Home Slider, Writing

What’s blocking you from getting things done?

October 1, 2019 by Thin Air

Writer’s block. I shudder to type those words, fearful the very act could trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In case you haven’t deduced it already, writers can be a superstitious lot. We attribute success and failure to all sorts of circumstances that have no bearing whatsoever on the outcome. How much coffee you’ve chugged, for example. The music to which you listen. The color of your socks, for heaven’s sake. The Latin phrase for these fallacious connections is post hoc, ergo proctor hoc. Translation: after this, therefore because of this. After writing what I deemed a particularly amusing newspaper column one time, I remembered I’d sprinkled blueberries on my cereal that morning. It’s been blueberries and Cheerios for breakfast ever since.

Writer’s block has been described as a black dog from hell, creative constipation and — my personal favorite — muse repellent. Picture your mind as a sere landscape where no novel thought grows.

There are as many explanations for writer’s block as there are writers. Each affliction is uniquely torturous. I’m fortunate as a newspaper editor in there’s never a shortage of news to report. It’s only a matter of setting priorities given the restraints involved. There’s scarcely time to keep up and no time to overthink the process. Writing blogs? That’s a horse of a different color, one more likely to throw me ass over teakettle than carry me along for an enjoyable ride.

Perhaps the best antidote to writer’s block is mustering the confidence to get started. If you still suffer doubts, start anyway. I’m the kind of writer known as a “pantser” rather than “plotter.” I tend to write by the seat of my pants instead of plotting my progress or, God forbid, creating an outline. That makes the process all the more uncertain. I’m often pleasantly surprised, though, how one step leads to another. Before I’m aware of it, I’m headed in a different direction than I’d anticipated, but toward a better destination.

I suspect writer’s block also could be a symptom of an underlying condition. Writers don’t want to write. That could be as temporary a situation as they don’t feel up to the task at that particular moment. Take a break, then get back to it. But if a chronic aversion develops, some soul searching and resulting changes might be in order.

I could suggest still other remedies to writer’s block. Mark Twain worked in bed. So did Winston Churchill. Victor Hugo sometimes wrote in the nude, although that could prove problematic for those caught naked in front of their laptops.

What’s your remedy for writer’s block? I remain open to any and all suggestions.

In the meantime, I’ll let you in on a little trade secret. When writers believe they suffer from writer’s block and can’t think of anything to write about, there’s always a fallback position. They write about writer’s block.

Filed Under: Home Slider, Writing

Call me chief storytelling officer

October 1, 2019 by Thin Air

I’m perfectly content, honored even, with my title as editor of the Business Times. Although editor of a one-man news staff isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds and necessarily requires a lot more than editing. Like reporting, writing and occasionally hauling out the trash.

But I’ll admit it. I’ve long aspired to something my beloved late wife, ever the astute attorney, would have dismissed as ostentatious. Your royal majesty, perhaps. Supreme allied commander has a nice ring to it. Then there’s my personal favorite: illustrious potentate. For that matter, I wouldn’t mind becoming what the Beatles called a paperback writer.

All kidding aside, the one title that actually matters most to me also describes a function, and that’s storyteller. I use that word not at all in the derogatory sense of those skilled at fabricating exaggerations. Rather, I offer reverential praise to those who make connections, convey truths and perpetuate culture in ways great and small.

I love to tell stories. Hopefully, I offer some compelling ones in the mysteries I’ve written about a small town newspaper editor and brilliant history professor.

At work, I love to tell stories about entrepreneurs and their ventures. I love most of all to tell success stories with happy endings because I believe they offer lessons from which other entrepreneurs can learn. Kind of like the morals of the fairy tales that were read to us as children.

Not at all surprisingly, storytelling has garnered growing recognition as an effective form of brand promotion.

Kindra Hall, president of the Steller Collective consulting firm, also possesses a title of which I’m especially envious — chief storytelling officer. She comes by the title by education and accomplishment in both earning a master’s degree in communication and winning a national championship in storytelling. Yes, that’s a thing.

In her forthcoming book “Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences and Transform Your Business,” Hall details the four kinds of stories businesses can tell. They include the value story to convince customers they need what a business provides, the founder story to persuade investors and customers the business is worth the investment, the purpose story to align employees and the customer story in which those who use products and services share their experiences.

Let’s add to the conversation my observation from working more than 20 years as editor of a business journal. Nearly every business has a compelling story to tell. Few businesses tell their stories well. Some don’t even try.

Fortunately, part of my job as editor of a business journal is telling those stories. You could call me a storyteller, in fact. Actually, make that chief storytelling officer.

Filed Under: Home Slider, Storytelling

I treasure stories about treasure hunts

October 1, 2019 by Thin Air

I love stories about treasure hunts. How about you? What’s your favorite story about a treasure hunt?

The story that invariably first comes to mind was told by Robert Louis Stevenson in “Treasure Island.” What child — or adult, for that matter — can resist reading about Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver and the search for treasure buried by the infamous pirate Captain Flint?

Mark Twain told what I consider an even more compelling story in the “Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Twain combines in his novel a murderous plot and treasure hunt, both of which are resolved in sometimes humorous and sometimes dramatic fashion.

Treasure hunts also feature prominently in works by everyone from Edgar Allan Poe in “The Gold Bug” to Ernest Cline in “Ready Player One.”

I knew I wanted to tell my own story about a treasure hunt the moment I aspired to write a novel.

“Small Town News” covers what happens when Tucker Preston, a big city newspaper reporter turned small town editor, uncovers a plot involving betrayal and murder. But a second story unfolds after Tucker meets Billie Brownwell. She’s a brilliant and beautiful history professor searching for — you guessed it — treasure.

As if looking for a cache of stolen loot hidden in northwest Colorado by the outlaw Butch Cassidy wasn’t enough, I wanted to raise the stakes even higher. I took advantage of an actual mystery in the fate of some of the rarest and most valuable coins in U.S. history. Of 24 dimes minted in San Francisco in 1894, only nine are known to exist. What happened to the other 15? What if two of the dimes were included in the mail stolen in a train robbery? By the way, an 1894 S dime sold at a recent auction in Chicago for more than $1.3 million. How’s that for treasure?

Of course, there are many kinds of treasure and just as many kinds of desperate searches for what’s truly valuable. What kind of treasure will Tucker and Billie find?

Filed Under: Home Slider, Storytelling

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