Post: #26

Eventually I want to be able to come up with yarns like this. Not so I'll be good at bullshitting but I think the creativity ability will do me well after years of sterile engineering education.

I have no idea what percentage of this is fact or fiction and don't really care. It popped up in my facebook feed.

The Untold Story Behind Mitsubishi Logos On Ecstasy Tablets

Ecstasy first arrived into Ireland in the early 1990s on a small sailing boat owned by one Gunther Ashcroft. The spiritual explorer landed on Killiney beach on a moonlit night in July with some 12,000 brown speckled tablets, each one brandishing a carefully handcrafted emblem of the dove – a symbol which appears on the Ashcroft family crest.

The Dutch national and chemist had toured the UK the previous year, distributing his pills in the London underground dance scene. Realising its success, the then 43-year-old organised a meeting in Dublin with one of Ireland’s notorious criminals, Daniel O’Donnell, in a bid to pitch his new designer product here.
After availing of free samples, O’Donnell realised the jaw contorting potential of such a drug, and immediately struck a deal with Ashroft, after a series of back stretches and back rubs. O’Donnell would later make a fortune selling the product outside churches after Sunday mass.

Such was the demand from around the world, Gunther’s home laboratory in Holland began to struggle, and after three years he had to invest in three more laboratories on the outskirts of Amsterdam.
The now multi-millionaire purchased three businesses to cover his rather large financial empire, including: a crown making factory, and two car dealerships to avoid detection by authorities.

By 1997, Gunther was one of the biggest distributors of ecstasy in Western Europe, with an estimated weekly income of $687 million and 43 cents.
However, due to a tip off from a disgruntled tablet engraver who was fired over etching a smiley face into a pill, Dutch police raided the speckled Dove factory, forcing it to close, making 1,600 foreign nationals unemployed.
Luckily, the factory was under his Ashcroft’s son’s name and he was spared a lengthy prison sentence, which his son carried out instead.

“I’ve got four more sons, so it’s okay,” he was once reported as saying.
With only three labs remaining, Gunther decided to change the emblem on his signature pills to throw off further investigation.
In his crown making factory, he insisted that all etchings must contain a crown on each side – which later coined the name ‘double crowns’.
With both his car dealership labs, he decided to simply emulate the car brand logo; one Rolls Royce, and the other Mitsubishi.

Then a legend was born.
Gunther began experimenting with new formulas for each, and added colour dyes to reflect the chemical content, but kept the Dove formula for his Mitsubishi’s.
“Dad loved the Mitsis best,” son James told Time magazine in 2003. “It was the biggest of all his labs and was where he kept his office. We would sometimes share lines of pure MDMA together and hug for hours. Fond, sweaty memories.”

The Mitsubishi pill outsold the other formula’s by 20:1, making it the most successful brand of Ecstasy tablet the world has ever seen. For over five years Mitsubishi tablets flooded both the UK and Irish markets to such an extent that many people associated the three diamond emblem more with ecstasy than automobiles.

In a survey in 2001, 98 out of 100 people said that when they heard the name ‘Mitsubishi’, they immediately thought of Es and wanted one, forcing the Japanese car maker into action.

Company CEO Kato Kinaka announced that Mitsubishi was going to war with whoever was stealing their brand logo, and vowed to bring them to justice.
The car manufacturer hired 12 specially trained Japanese secret service agents to track down and eradicate the source of the pill. Rolls Royce later followed suit and joined in the search for the factory.

After 3 long years, the elite team of Japanese and English agents narrowed down their search to Ashcroft’s Mitsubishi car garage in Holland – the location of the lab. A four hour gun battle ensued involving Dutch special forces and dedicated workers at the pill/car factory.

“Everyone was high at the time. Gunther insisted that he wanted to go out on a bang. He really meant it,” recalled one member of staff who survived the raid.
Unfortunately, not everyone made it out alive.
123 pill engravers and 34 moulders were killed by bullets and another 57 people died of overheating due to overdosing on MDMA. Gunther Ashcroft managed to fend off police until the very end before dropping 12 Mitsis in one go.

“He just charged at officers. Eyes like saucers,” said one eyewitness. “I don’t know how he didn’t fall over his jaw. It was all over the shop.”
It took 267 bullets to eventually stop the drug kingpin in his tracks. Toxicology reports later confirmed the 54-year-old died after his heart exploded, not from bullets, but from a lethal dose of pills.

Agents employed by Mitsubishi later decapitated him and were allowed to bring back his head by the Dutch government out of honour.

Gunther Ashcroft’s head is now on display in Tokyo.

From http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2015/03...y-tablets/

Post: #27

Sooth, that was spectacular. I like to make stories like that (though not nearly as intricate) sometimes with my friends and family to see how much I can get away with. Doing it in person is an exercise in both persuasion and creating fiction. Definitely going to write up some stuff like that.

Post: #28

I think I am going to use my 1000 words to troll SJWs today. I may post a link to my blog where I am writing all this eventually, but it is pretty empty right now.

Post: #29

Are any of you guys writing by hand? I keep 4 notebooks--one each for the gym, learning Vietnamese, notes on books I read for my business, and now a personal journal. I love having handwritten notes to look at, and writing with a pen in general. When I fill out a book, I'll either scan the pages into pdf documents or use Dragon NaturallySpeaking (thanks BB, so far I'm impressed with this software) to dictate them into Word docs. It's inefficient, of course--I could just type them up to begin with and be done with it in a fraction of the time. Anyone else like me, or should I just go live in a cabin and write with a quill by candlelight?

Post: #30

(03-17-2015 12:05 PM)Sweet Pea Wrote:  Are any of you guys writing by hand? I keep 4 notebooks--one each for the gym, learning Vietnamese, notes on books I read for my business, and now a personal journal. I love having handwritten notes to look at, and writing with a pen in general. When I fill out a book, I'll either scan the pages into pdf documents or use Dragon NaturallySpeaking (thanks BB, so far I'm impressed with this software) to dictate them into Word docs. It's inefficient, of course--I could just type them up to begin with and be done with it in a fraction of the time. Anyone else like me, or should I just go live in a cabin and write with a quill by candlelight?

I preferred writing by hand like you about 5-6 years back.
Then I forced myself to type stuff out because it was faster and cleaner.
Nowadays I'm way more comfortable using the laptop than a notebook.

Its just whatever you're comfortable with, but preferences can change. Its not that hard (not that you should change, but if you choose to you can!)

Oh and day 1 complete. This was fun.

Post: #31

ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW - DON'T SKIP THIS POST

(03-17-2015 11:37 AM)General Mayhem Wrote:  I think I am going to use my 1000 words to troll SJWs today. I may post a link to my blog where I am writing all this eventually, but it is pretty empty right now.

I don't want to be a nag, but surely you can come up with something more productive than that.

How about create some content for that blog you don't have any content on? To me that makes way more sense. I mentioned earlier that journaling would be cool, but journaling is a very productive past-time that is promoted by great men throughout history. A journal is a great writing practice and it also creates something substantial you can come back to later in life or even turn into blog posts and other writing later on. One of my great regrets in life is having not maintained a journal over the years.

Trolling, meanwhile, isn't any harder to do than making forum posts and watching them disappear into the web forever; this should be a challenge for you, and if possible, it should at least become an attempt at producing something of value. Even if you don't quite manage that everyday, you should try.

I feel like maybe I could have laid more solid "ground rules" down starting this thread, so I've decided to up my game. Because I want to inspire you guys to try a bit harder, because it serves my biggest long-term goal, and because I need the kick in the ass as much as the rest of you guys.

So I'm committing to 3000 words per day for the next 90 days.

That changes my date. You can now mark me down for 3/18/2015.

I urge the rest of you to mark down your start date (for however many words) too so there's no confusion later. Please go ahead and announce your start date here for the rest of us.

(03-17-2015 12:05 PM)Sweet Pea Wrote:  Are any of you guys writing by hand? I keep 4 notebooks--one each for the gym, learning Vietnamese, notes on books I read for my business, and now a personal journal. I love having handwritten notes to look at, and writing with a pen in general.

Yeah, many authors or writers say they prefer writing by hand. Many swear it makes them more creative and productive.

I've stuck with it in the past. I feel like the reason it works is because even if you write fast, it takes time for the words to catch up with your thoughts. So by the time the pen gets there, you've already got a couple more sentences in mind to write. This puts you in an easy flow where you can write and write without stopping.

I type very fast, on the other hand, and my mind can't always keep up with my hands to produce polished and coherent enough thoughts to put down. Sometimes I wish I could scratch it out faster, but I've tried moving to a computer in those moments and I often lose that flow.

I keep a notepad in my back pocket at all times and have a few bigger ones in my apartment. It can be a bitch to type them up later, but it's a very natural editing process and brings me back into the work. Thanks for getting me to think of it more - I may start doing that on a more regular basis again.

Quote:When I fill out a book, I'll either scan the pages into pdf documents or use Dragon NaturallySpeaking (thanks BB, so far I'm impressed with this software) to dictate them into Word docs. It's inefficient, of course--I could just type them up to begin with and be done with it in a fraction of the time.

How long have you been using it?

It seems inefficient at first, but most people give up before every learning how to properly use the tool. First off, you have to train it to your voice.

I haven't used it in a long time, but when I did, there were training modules where you read different things so the program can "learn" how you say particular words and turns of phrases. It then uses this to build up a memory of the way you talk and calculate how you might pronounce other words.

The training modules get more and more complex, and you can revisit them at any time to train the software a bit more.

Also, it continues to learn your voice as time goes by. When you correct its mistakes using the voice technology, it "remembers" that and stores it in the memory.

You can also back up the memory so you can download it to other devices with DNS, etc.

It may not be for everyone but I urge you to properly take the time to bring it to a level of efficiency before writing it off, or especially before telling others it is not productive. Jon Morrow, an editor at Copyblogger and the owner of BoostBlogTraffic, has used this software to build a very substantial presence online - tons of bloggers look up to his work.

He's paralyzed from the neck down.

Of course, he is in a position where he had no choice but to master the software, but it just goes to show you what it's capable of.

Quote:Anyone else like me, or should I just go live in a cabin and write with a quill by candlelight?

Not a bad idea, actually.

I'm thinking when I get more comfortable with the dictating, I may take my smartphone and a notepad and head out to one of the local lakes here for a week or so. Get away from everyone and get a bunch of writing done.

(03-17-2015 03:15 PM)Sharkie Wrote:  Oh and day 1 complete. This was fun.

Agreed.

I actually saved it until last minute last night, so I had to stay up later and only got 5 1/2 hours of sleep last night. Wasn't a huge deal - still got in my morning sprints - but it's a reminder that it's best to knock this out, or a big chunk of it, in the morning.

I was impressed by how fast the words go by. I woke up and typed out a quick 300 on my computer this morning before my run and then dictated another 1000 on my phone while waiting for my training partner. I think it's important to block off some time to sit down and get after it, but you can get a lot done in the gaps if you prepare yourself to write anywhere.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #32

(03-17-2015 07:55 PM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW - DON'T SKIP THIS POST

(03-17-2015 11:37 AM)General Mayhem Wrote:  I think I am going to use my 1000 words to troll SJWs today. I may post a link to my blog where I am writing all this eventually, but it is pretty empty right now.

I don't want to be a nag, but surely you can come up with something more productive than that.

How about create some content for that blog you don't have any content on? To me that makes way more sense. I mentioned earlier that journaling would be cool, but journaling is a very productive past-time that is promoted by great men throughout history. A journal is a great writing practice and it also creates something substantial you can come back to later in life or even turn into blog posts and other writing later on. One of my great regrets in life is having not maintained a journal over the years.

Trolling, meanwhile, isn't any harder to do than making forum posts and watching them disappear into the web forever; this should be a challenge for you, and if possible, it should at least become an attempt at producing something of value. Even if you don't quite manage that everyday, you should try.

I appreciate you checking me here man. I am going through a phase right now trying to figure out what I like to write about. I've done a variety of different shit over the past few weeks. I wrote 1,000 words on what I eat every week. I wrote another 1,000 on some philosophy style shit. I've been all over the place.

I will say that I learned a lot by writing 1,000 words trying to troll. I don't know if I have the heart for it. I'm not a funny guy, never have been.

I might go the journal route on some days, maybe delicious tacos style. I could set aside 2-3 days per week for journaling and the rest for more focused writing.

One thing I do want to focus on with this challenges is developing ideas more thoroughly. I have a lot of half-baked shit up in my head that I need to sit down sort out.

I've done 1,000 words the past two days. I will put my date down as March 16th. 1,000 words for 90 days.

Once this 1,000 starts getting easy I am going to ramp it up by 500.

Post: #33

There is a book available on kindle called "2k to 10k how to write faster..." which I recommend. One of ways the author maximized her potential is by logging her time spent and word count. I suggest the same. She noticed that she was particularly productive when she did a few things. Working from memory:

1. Spend five minutes planning the scenes you would like to write for the day. Not just the outline of the book, but even flesh out some of the basics of the dialogue.
2. Get yourself excited about what you are writing. If you aren't excited about writing the scene, why are you writing it? She was most productive when she wrote the parts she was dying to write. Well, shouldn't you be dying to write all of the scenes from your writing? If it's boring to write, then it has a greater chance of being boring to read.
3. Record your time and word count. You might only do 700 words the first hour but then 1400 in the second. It may be more productive writing if you can spend 1.5 hours in one sitting versus two one-hour sessions. Look, I just saved you half an hour.

I would also like to point out that Windows has dictation software that is adequate for many people, though Dragon Naturally Speaking does have the advantage of being able to dictate to mp3 and then have the software type out your dictation.

I'm still on the fence regarding joining this. I enjoyed creative writing when I was younger, but I never did much with it. Perhaps I'll join with a paltry number of words at some point, but I am enjoying the thread and the people here who are dedicated to it.

Post: #34

Cool I'm in 1,000 words a day.

Writing a book on game.

WIA

Post: #35

Took me ages to get started on my first 1,000 word day. It's very late and I'm exhausted now.

Lesson learned. Show up early! I'm hoping this will get easier.

Post: #36

BB, when I said it was inefficient, I meant that writing by hand and then going back to dictate or scan took a lot longer than just typing it to begin with. DNS is actually extremely powerful, although I'm limited by my laptop's PoS mic. I'll see if I can grab a slightly less shitty one at the store. I used to have a great recorder that I used for lectures in college, but I couldn't find it when I went home for Christmas. Being able to convert mp3 to Word docs would be awesome.

Side note: I started this challenge at the same time I started the minimalism challenge on theminimalists.com. It's amazing that, even though I can fit all of my stuff in a suitcase and a backpack, there's still useless junk I can throw out. It's a nice feeling to know that a handful of notebooks are the things that add the most value to my life.

Post: #37

(03-17-2015 08:56 PM)General Mayhem Wrote:  I appreciate you checking me here man. I am going through a phase right now trying to figure out what I like to write about. I've done a variety of different shit over the past few weeks. I wrote 1,000 words on what I eat every week. I wrote another 1,000 on some philosophy style shit. I've been all over the place.

I will say that I learned a lot by writing 1,000 words trying to troll. I don't know if I have the heart for it. I'm not a funny guy, never have been.

I might go the journal route on some days, maybe delicious tacos style. I could set aside 2-3 days per week for journaling and the rest for more focused writing.

One thing I do want to focus on with this challenges is developing ideas more thoroughly. I have a lot of half-baked shit up in my head that I need to sit down sort out.

I've done 1,000 words the past two days. I will put my date down as March 16th. 1,000 words for 90 days.

Once this 1,000 starts getting easy I am going to ramp it up by 500.

Yea, once you do decide on something, it may be helpful to set some time aside to create an outline you can work from so you have a plan when you get started. I'm finding that if I don't have something else I can just open up my book about freelancing and work on that - since it's already outlined I can pick a chapter that seems simple or fun and get typing.

(03-17-2015 09:44 PM)tarquin Wrote:  There is a book available on kindle called "2k to 10k how to write faster..." which I recommend.

Thanks, I've read that before but I'd forgotten about it.

If anyone missed it before, I also recommend "Million Dollar Productivity" from the Million Dollar Writing Series. Author who has written 125 books and has averaged 10K words per day when working on big projects.

Quote: I would also like to point out that Windows has dictation software that is adequate for many people, though Dragon Naturally Speaking does have the advantage of being able to dictate to mp3 and then have the software type out your dictation.

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't looked at the Windows dictation software. I wonder if there's a phone app - that may solve the problem of not being able to convert from mp3.

Quote:I'm still on the fence regarding joining this. I enjoyed creative writing when I was younger, but I never did much with it. Perhaps I'll join with a paltry number of words at some point, but I am enjoying the thread and the people here who are dedicated to it.

Do it!

(03-17-2015 10:11 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  Cool I'm in 1,000 words a day.

Writing a book on game.

WIA

Great! So is that 3/18 for WIA?

(03-17-2015 10:41 PM)dreambig Wrote:  Took me ages to get started on my first 1,000 word day. It's very late and I'm exhausted now.

Lesson learned. Show up early! I'm hoping this will get easier.

Dreambig, you may just be blowing up the 1000 words too much. I'm finding it helpful to just sit down and try not to think about what I have to produce so much as that I just have to produce something. Set your timer for 25 minutes and start cranking something out, and don't worry how shitty it sounds. Editing can come later, and your quality will go up as the days go by.

(03-18-2015 12:36 AM)Sweet Pea Wrote:  BB, when I said it was inefficient, I meant that writing by hand and then going back to dictate or scan took a lot longer than just typing it to begin with. DNS is actually extremely powerful, although I'm limited by my laptop's PoS mic. I'll see if I can grab a slightly less shitty one at the store. I used to have a great recorder that I used for lectures in college, but I couldn't find it when I went home for Christmas. Being able to convert mp3 to Word docs would be awesome.

For sure, it would be sweet to set yourself up with a headphone mic/recorder and just hit the trails in whatever town you were in. That's how I want to set myself up.

For now I'll just make do with my phone, even if it's not ideal.

I just typed out my dictation from this morning and I'm getting about 120 words per minute. That's about what I'd estimated but it's good to know for sure.

Quote:Side note: I started this challenge at the same time I started the minimalism challenge on theminimalists.com. It's amazing that, even though I can fit all of my stuff in a suitcase and a backpack, there's still useless junk I can throw out. It's a nice feeling to know that a handful of notebooks are the things that add the most value to my life.

That challenge sounds cool. I'm pretty minimalist as it is but may check it out myself.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #38

Just read this in "The Entrepreneur's Guide To Getting Your Shit Together."

"Don't put all of your notes on the computer, where they're all tidy and efficient. Instead, keep messy file folders stuffed with 3x5 notecards and napkins and torn matchbook covers where you've scrawled your thoughts. When it comes to nurturing creativity, neatness works against you.

All those carefully filed notes in your computer will do you little good, because they're hidden away.

But those messy folders can ignite your brain. Take the notecards and scraps of paper out regularly, juggle the order of importance, tape similar ones together, jot new notes on top of the old notes. Spread them out on your desk, and let them stare back at you. Circle, highlight, and draw doodles in the blank spaces. Let the fact a certain note is on a napkin from another city remind you of the circumstances behind the idea.

Work in the real world, where you can touch, see and smell things."

Post: #39

(03-18-2015 09:12 AM)Sweet Pea Wrote:  Just read this in "The Entrepreneur's Guide To Getting Your Shit Together."

"Don't put all of your notes on the computer, where they're all tidy and efficient. Instead, keep messy file folders stuffed with 3x5 notecards and napkins and torn matchbook covers where you've scrawled your thoughts. When it comes to nurturing creativity, neatness works against you.

All those carefully filed notes in your computer will do you little good, because they're hidden away.

But those messy folders can ignite your brain. Take the notecards and scraps of paper out regularly, juggle the order of importance, tape similar ones together, jot new notes on top of the old notes. Spread them out on your desk, and let them stare back at you. Circle, highlight, and draw doodles in the blank spaces. Let the fact a certain note is on a napkin from another city remind you of the circumstances behind the idea.

Work in the real world, where you can touch, see and smell things."

Duuuude, how could you mention a John Carlton book without dropping his name? Blasphemy! Fortunately the man knows how to write a killer title (as expected) so I took a second to Google it.

Up for free borrows for those of you with Amazon Prime too. I let my account expire so it's on my wishlist. Good find - thanks, Man.

I've also heard other great minds say that neatness works against creativity. I believe there was an article I posted in here a while back (or maybe someone else did?) with some scientific research to back up the idea even.

Anyhow, got my 3000 words in. Saved it for a bit later than I should have again. I better start getting these done earlier in the day or these short nights are going to affect my performance in the gym.

G'nite!

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #40

I wrote this when I visited the Taj Mahal back in high school. Never got around to finishing it. Let's post whatever work we're comfortable with sharing.

*

How do you describe that first drive into Agra? This is what I saw:

You roll down the highway. It’s cold, cold in the way of northern Uttar Pradesh in the winter; it isn’t a slicing, windy cold, nor is it the bone-deep cold that I felt in Yosemite. This isn’t the kind of cold that leaves your toes numb, that enrages you beyond reason. It’s a humid cold, if that makes sense. It’s a sticky, clinging cold, a thick cold, a dense, foggy cold, that wraps around you like a shawl. It’s a bizarre cold, because it still is cold, very much so, but it’s unlike any cold you’ve ever felt before. It’s an unclean kind of cold, an alien cold. It’s very, very cold.

You roll down the highway. The world is a pandemonium of mist. You roll past signs directing you to Noida and Gurgaon. Dessicated buildings rise up around you like carcasses. You see the spires of faraway colleges and corporate campuses. They come and they go, fade into green fogbound pastures dotted with granaries, villages, little puttering tractors driven by littler halfnaked people. Did I mention the fog? It covers the universe. The sky is slate grey. There are a number of checkpoints, one of which serves snacks and coffee. All the travelers to the Taj stop by there. You see old white people, chattering Korean tourists, an African. The coffee is the best you’ve ever had in your life. It’s sad that I barely remember the taste.

Then more driving and more fog. And then, finally, Agra.

Oh, Agra. How do I describe you?

Picture hell for a moment, if you will. What comes to mind? Fire? Blood? Demons with horns and cloven hooves, a giant red Satan, bubbling cauldrons, screaming, whips, chains, rape?

You’re dead wrong. You’ve been conditioned by a pampered, decadent media, manipulated by evangelists, stifled by a culture of sedentariness and insularity. The Christian version of hell is a weak uninspired façade, a children’s horror story, an abuse of the color red.

Agra is hell. There are soccer fields full of garbage. Canyons of trash. Trees buried up to their necks in candy wrappers and discarded cigarette packets. Dogs with flaring ribs and sagging teats, emaciated ponies with bells in their manes, grizzled camels with disgusting mouths, grey bullocks with guillotine horns. Rivers of traffic, indescribable streets, people living in huts of mud leather and newspaper. Deadeyed men shivering in the cold, warming their hands over open fires, smoking beedis in dim threatening houses. A slumped, herpetic city. At its center a golden statue of King Agarsena gleams like a particularly shocking joke.

Then you get out of the car, and the stink of the place assaults your nostrils. The stench overcomes the cold air and befouls the whole world. The streets are a riot of shops that pawn trinkets at the stupider tourists. Buddha heads line one shop rack; leaflets from the Bhagavad Gita line another. The streets are slick and moist, the breeze as chilly as ever.

Enter the Taj.

You see the yawning entrance of the Darwaza-i-Rauza, the gateway to the Taj. Huge, cubelike, crowned with twenty-two bulbs of marble, its walls a riot of bold snakelike calligraphy. You’re struck by the apish majesty of the structure, the way it grips the earth. You’re struck by its geometry, by the rust that taints its white facades, by the garishness of its brick flanks. The walls are cool to the touch. It’s dark inside, very dark, but then the fog beams in through the gateway, and through the fog, a shape, an outline in the choking mist.

It blasts away the Hobbesian filth of Agra. Scrubs away the bestiality of India. You whistle when you first see the Taj. It doesn’t seem real, partly because it’s so damn big. It doesn’t fit into the posterior opening of the Darwaza-i-Rauza; you can’t see all of the Taj until you fully leave the gateway.

The Taj Mahal fills the world. You see it. You see the glories of Sufism, the writings of Nizamuddin Auliya, the decadence of Shah Jahan, the order of the Chishti sages, Alauddin, Fariduddin, Qutubuddin, Moinuddin, the holy rung, the genius of Akbar, the humanity of Babur, the ironclad march of Islam into India. You think about that one despised sheepherder from Mongolia, how he prayed on the red mountain for an empire; you think about that weeping teenager from Farghana, how the Uzbeks hunted him like a deer, how he somehow broke the sultans of Delhi. The Taj isn’t a product of this India. It wasn’t born beside a river clotted with chemicals. It was raised when Europe stank of superstition and slavery, when America was a howling wilderness. It was raised when the Mughals owned the gold of the world. It was raised when India was the greatest country on earth.

It’s depressing, now that I think about it. To go from Taj to trash. That’s an awful transition, don’t you think? Agra must have been gorgeous, once upon a time. And now it’s a landfill. Its gold has been ripped away, its streets ravaged, its river stuffed with buffalo shit. Who do you blame for something like that? The British? Most definitely, but doesn’t the common Indian deserve some of the blame too? Aren’t they the ones who bury their monuments in garbage?

Post: #41

I recommend you guys to read Robert Greene strategies to write and think better.Before he starts writing a book, he says he spends the first year just researching information and he reads on average 250 books that year.

Check out his blog
http://powerseductionandwar.com/blog/

Post: #42

Aight so two things -- im repivoting for the next month or so from blogging a thousand words to actually writing cover letters for companies Im applying to. The cover letters arent copy pasta and given that Im applying to a wide range of roles, that involves a substantial degree of effort into each one (as opposed to applying for similar roles everywhere -- by the 6th cover letter you're just rewriting the same thing over and over).

Also for this duration I'll up the word count to 3000 to compensate for a degree of repetition that eventually creeps in.
Avg cover letter word count is 300 so thats 10 cover letters a day.

Day 3 check in.

Post: #43

I'll be officially starting on Monday, but have been throwing together ideas on a short story in the meantime.

Post: #44

I used my thousand words today for a journal-type post. It ended up as a rant but I got some cool ideas out of it.

Post: #45

I got most of my words for the day recorded on a walk back from the gym and then typed them up back at the room.

But just as I dozed off too sleep, I realized I still had 400 to go. Whipped out the smartphone and wrote them by hand in a writing program I downloaded there. Couldn't record because my girl was sleeping and we've got a studio but got 'er done.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #46

Well, I did 200 words in 20 minutes by dictation. I forgot how jumpy windows dictation software can be. I think if I want to continue this, I'll have to switch to Dragon Naturally Speaking as I don't think I can deal with the frustration.

Post: #47

(03-19-2015 02:15 AM)pitt Wrote:  I recommend you guys to read Robert Greene strategies to write and think better.Before he starts writing a book, he says he spends the first year just researching information and he reads on average 250 books that year.

Check out his blog
http://powerseductionandwar.com/blog/

Looks like he has a thread at reddit as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c..._of_power/

Here's a gem:

Hello Ryan. I used to scour UCLA. You're right. A great library. Now, in the era of Amazon, I can find those obscure books by using the UCLA library databank, online, and then ordering them from Amazon. It costs more, but it is a tax write off and I can accumulate an amazing library in my house. (I'm running out of bookshelves.) I am a big believer in cross referencing. In other words, I will come across the name of an historical figure or an idea that is intriguing, somewhat mysterious and obscure, and then using the footnotes or the Internet, I hunt down more information. In Mastery, for instance, I would read a book about the 10,000 hour study, and the book would reference another study that inspired it in the 60s. I would find the obscure book on that previous study, which would include a reference to some really intriguing book written in the 1950s on how the brain functions. That's my method in a nutshell.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #48

A few links you guys might enjoy.

If you want to follow a similar organization method to Robert Greene's (I used to do something similar, though far less organized - going to take it back up): How And Why To Keep A “Commonplace Book”

http://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2...lace-book/

And for fiction writers, here's an interesting piece on Ray Bradbury's strategy for making lists of random nouns that came to mind and then turning them into stories.

Ray Bradbury on How List-Making Can Boost Your Creativity
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2...-on-lists/

Anyhow, off to pick up some index cards and then do some hiking by the lake to get some "writing" done.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #49

You guys should start posting your material. Don't post anything that you want to keep under wraps or publish, obviously, but I think it would be cool if we could get a good review group going. Talking about writing tips is helpful, but it would do us a lot of good as writers if we could read and critique each others' work.

Post: #50

That's a good idea, but to be honest, I don't think that's the most productive use of this thread and it could be a distraction.

We've got who knows how many guys writing 1000 to 3000 words per day and more. It could quickly get cluttered and hard to separate the main topic from everyone's personal work.

I also find sharing work with other writers to be counter productive. People are usually more interested in their own stuff than yours and in these groups no one wants to be to critical, so if someone is really shit, they get the same compliments as everyone else. Which kind of robs any encouragement you get of its meaning.

I've been in writing groups and they felt like a bunch of back slapping to me.

I know some people do enjoy the sharing and reading one another's work, but let's link to it instead. If it's not online, I think a new thread for that purpose or a review group thread would serve better than posting it here.

I want this thread to be about building the habit, and what that entails. It's about conquering the challenge.

The links I posted were meant to help people who struggle with coming up with something everyday because it is a considerable challenge for many. I think research is a big part of that too because guys who keep a common place book can turn to it again and again for inspiration and the process of maintaining it fills their mind with a constant source of ideas.

Hope that makes sense.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling