writing – Page 10 – Business in Rhyme

Poetic inspiration: Instead of loneliness choose poetry

December 22, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

I’ve never met real loneliness.

I have a friend that never leaves me.

It’s always there for me.

A friend I call

Poetry.

Maja S. Todorovic

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6 questions for creative reflection

December 18, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!

New Year is often a time when we want to close one chapter of our lives and start fresh – with new ideas, with new energy and determination to fulfill our goals.

What usually happens, we do set new goals but as the months progress, so does our goals whittle along with autumn yellow leaves – until they become forgotten, unfulfilled and replaced by random events called life.

Instead of making a New Year’s resolution list, I have a different proposition for you. Why ‘hit your head against the wall’, and think of what and how you can accomplish when you are looking for the answers in the wrong place?

Here are 6 questions for your creative reflection exercise that can help you evaluate what you have accomplished in the previous period/year and maybe start from there? You might have a project that you could finish or idea that didn’t have enough time and space to mature – maybe now it’s the moment to give it a try?

6 questions for creative reflection:

1.What creative/writing projects did you accomplish in the previous year?

2.What you have learned from that?

3.Are there any projects you didn’t start and why?

4.What would you like to do the most in the next year – is there any room for unfinished projects?

5.What is the obstacle, what is holding you back?

6.Describe your most creative moments in the previous year and think of ways how you can integrate more of that in your current life situation?

Use this as a starting point for designing more creative life in the next year. It is important for us to make an objective estimate and work from there: building a realistic foundation for inviting more creativity into our lives. Instead of setting, sometimes lofty goals that quickly escape our reach like deflating balloon – making little changes and adjustments in our current schedule can seem less daunting and scary – and more likely achievable.

To get in more depth in planning your projects consult these additional 9 questions that can help you clearing any doubts about your creative ideas, offerings, opportunities..

Do you have any exciting writing or creative ideas for the next year? Do you have a firm plan how to achieve it? Please, share with us in the comments below.

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I didn’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Poetic inspiration: Did you know…

December 15, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

Every poet is brave-

it takes courage to

undress your soul,

dig deep, to the darkest and

scariest parts of yourself and

let them shine through your poems.

Maja S. Todorovic

Poetry in disguise: using your casual writing to discover the poet within

December 12, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate: exercises, Writer's creative bites

I can bet that many of you, as a little kid (just as I did) liked to have a small notebook or a diary where you would write your cutest and most intricate secrets – how you hated your lunch or how that boy in the second row always gave you weird looks and laughed at your braces.

And I do believe that even today so far I have never met a real boredom – because I’m always doodling, jotting something down and I find easy ways to amuse myself. That habit of simply recording your thoughts can have a deeper meaning and transfer into something more beautiful and valuable. Today I want to share my experience with that.

I’m a strong advocate for journaling and daily ‘casual’ writing, because if you look at it more clearly, it is a perfect guide and companion: paper can hold on to anything, it is there without any judgment, ‘listening’ and helping you reflect on your daily thoughts, feelings and experiences. I believe that our journal/diary entries can be a great source for poetry writing as it is a simple tool where you express yourself in a variety of ways – writing but also collecting and keeping small memorabilia (like scrap book), photographs, pictures, making interesting collages, vision boards, to do lists, goals and ext.

All that merged with poetry that accentuates language and experience can lead to developing your own little master piece. Any journal entry can be an inexhaustible source to discover poems as journal is a bridge between you and your perception of life. When you start to write, it is adventure for itself as you never know what might happen and where the words will lead you. You might get sudden burst of creative inspiration and from there transform it into the most beautiful poem. There are no barriers, limitations or vocabular sensitivities. You write who you are, in that moment. What I like about having journal as an inspiration for poetry writing is that it allows you to examine questions you probably wouldn’t consider ‘poetical enough’. But there’s the catch: it is a place for openness, no hide and seek games – it’s just you and your real interests, desires, emotions – raw, uncensored.

If you read your writing entries more carefully (and in the title I on purpose used term casual writing instead of journaling because even drawings and doodling can be translated into a poem – many people don’t keep journal per se but like occasionally to write and draw) you can recognize where poetry is well disguised and waits for you to be discovered.

What to look for?

Pay attention to the language.

Are there any words and sentences that seem more melodical, poetical, that offer sensual rhythm – being that about your beautiful pet, funny afternoon with your child or romantic evening with your spouse – these are emotions that can be translated into poetry.

Pay attention to the feelings.

Follow your writing entries to see where you write/draw with passion and strength, where you eloquently describe what happened to you (being that injury, pain or even a dispute with a friend), where all your senses are awaken and your descriptions are very detail and elaborate – from there you can derive sincere and strong poem.

Pay attention to the core themes that are repeating.

These are your central life issues and reveal what is deeply rooted inside and what’s important to you. In your poem you can further elaborate those messages, explore their meaning and get clearer insight on how they are impacting your life. In my case, that’s the issue of health – how that impacts everything that I’m doing, my general quality of life and many of my poems are health and family related.

In one my future posts I intent to discuss in more detail how we can use journal writing to enhance our language and poetic expression.

Do you journal or write every day? How that impacts your poetry writing? Please, share in the comments below.

The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent
down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation
until a rifle motions and you move
with guarded unconcerned acceleration—

a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happens again. The guns on tripods;
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance; the marksman training down
out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you’re through, arraigned yet freed,
as if you’d passed from behind a waterfall
on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between
the posted soldiers flowing and receding
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

Seamus Heaney

Poetic inspiration: Creativity – a shortcut to fulfillment in life

December 7, 2016December 6, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

Creativity is an expression

of your deepest truth.

Sometimes you are scared of it.

Sometimes you are proud of it.

But always let it live through you –

until on the other

side you meet your own greatness.

Maja S. Todorovic

4 reasons why ‘fake it till you make it’ is bad advice for writer

December 3, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!, Writer's creative bites

Have you ever read your words for a couple of times and thought “Oh my God, this is really bad, this really sucks!” ? Well it happens to every writer from time to time – that his own thoughts seem strange to him, like he’s faking his own writing!

The truth is, many of us struggle to represent themselves as who they are. They’ll rather follow the trends on social media, rambling about safe topics and not expressing their real opinions. Why? We all have that ingrained need to be liked, loved, accepted – if possible by everybody.

And that my friend it’s simply Sisyphean venture. Many do try to ‘fake till they make’ – build a readership and ‘when the time is right’, they’ll start to write what they really think and feel. Well, there is a slight problem with this approach: If you only follow the crowd, your words are just another minuscule drop in the ocean of the sameness.

I do believe that we as writers have a responsibility to say and write our mind – being that in science, history, poetry or religion. Expressing our opinions in bold, courageous way is not easy, but that’s how change happens. That’s how we open doors to new opportunities, and connect with people we never new existed.

People will care about your words if they can sense your honesty and belief behind them.

And here today, let me share with you what I think is (also in my own case) 4 main reasons we sometimes feel like we deceived our own writing:

You apologize for who you are.

You have probably noticed that brave writers, with strong words and opinions – just don’t give a damn what other people think of them. They don’t apologize for who they are.

They own their opinions and perspective as a part of their own identity. So neither should you hide yourself behind nicely packed words with silky ribbon. Being bold in your writing is being able to take a stand and give yourself permission to share your story.

At the beginning of writing this blog, I was scared – what on earth a geophysicist has so important to say about poetry? But maybe there’s the catch – it offers completely different point of view from someone who studied English literature or creative writing. And as the blog began to grow so did my confidence to more openly share my opinions, intimate stories, struggles. Because that’s what writers do. You never know how your writing will reach and touch someone else.

You are afraid to be vulnerable.

I know, world can be a cruel place. When you are completely open in your writing, everything you are becomes naked and so fragile to every negative comment, rejection, criticism… But this is the part of being a real writer. No matter how many slaps in your face you get, you are still there, showing up, continuing your work and firmly standing behind your words. Don’t be afraid to write about what you feel, what you experienced – it is real to you.

At the beginning of writing this blog I also clang towards safe, general topics. Yet with time, I also felt a need to share more personal experiences I got through poetry and I can tell you it is really liberating. As the act of writing is so fulfilling, so it is being able to show everyone how that wonderful, simple craft or art – you can call it whatever you like, is an amazing tool available to everyone. Everyone! And this blog simply transformed itself into a mission to make that more approachable and understandable to people. And I share some of my painful experiences where poetry directed me to the path of healing. I am vulnerable in my writing but it also has a purpose that’s much stronger and bigger than my fear of being hurt.

You strive towards non-existent perfectionism.

Not good enough. That is the sentence we repeat like mantra and I believe is the greatest enemy to creativity. As writers we sometimes put so high standards in front of us, that we cloud our reasonable judgment – in times we don’t even see how we are putting the bars higher and higher.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing. There is honest writing, fueled with emotion, passion, purpose and belief. That’s what you should strive for.

Somewhere along the way you lost the intention that drives your writing and it’s hard to get back on track.

You can recognize that this topic is repeating in many of my posts, because I know how it is important to know why you write. Your writing should seek to contribute, offer different perspective, encourage, inspire, support, analyze / synthesize information or simply to entertain.

Once you become clear with that, you can easily translate vision into a writing goal – then you produce meaningful work.

Do you feel like fake sometimes in your own work? What are your thoughts on this topic? Please share in the comments below.

31 day poem challenge and a gift of writing

November 30, 2016November 30, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Many of you who have been following my blog for some time know that I participated in the NaPoWriMo 2016 and it was a great experience. Some of the benefits I have described here.

At this moment, particularly in the last couple of weeks I haven’t been satisfied with my writing practice and I think it’s time to stir up things: in the next 31 days, in the coming December I intent to write 31 day long poem. Sounds strange? 🙂 Well, what I actually want to do is to write ONE poem for 31 days. The goal is to add at least three stanzas each day. And why not 30 poems for 30 days as usually challenges go? In this way, I think I will practice more my focus and attention, because as the time progresses I will have to each time read my poem from the beginning in order to continue it. So after couple of days, it will really require to keep up my concentration and follow the thinking pattern.

The second thing is, I want to use this writing experiment as a sort of an emotional tracker, to see how that reflects on my writing every day and are there any fluctuations, especially during holidays.

And the third things is, that this is a kind of ‘gift of writing’ (my birthday falls on 31st December 😉 ) – and use it as an opportunity to challenge myself to improve and observe my writing habits.

Poem post will be updated regularly every day and I will also use #31daypoem hashtag, so it’s easier to follow. If you also want to improve your writing and form a better writing habit, please join me in this fun experiment, share this information and invite friends who you think could really benefit from this exercise. Use the same hashtag so it can be easy to track down.

Once the experiment ends, beside the ’31 day long’ poem as a result, I will share my impressions and how that have impacted my writing in general.

Publishing other regular posts will go as scheduled.

So, how about you, have you participated in any similar writing experiment? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Poetic inspiration: The length of writing

November 29, 2016November 29, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

Count your words by

the strength of emotions they

evoke, not by

numbers.

Maja S. Todorovic

7 actionable strategies to attract more readers to your poetry blog

November 27, 2016November 27, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!, Writer's creative bites

Did you know that the roughly estimate of number of blogs on the Internet is over 150 million?

And no doubt we as writers do want to find new, interesting ways to attract readers and popularize content. To cut through all that noise of useless information, spam, adverts…it comes especially hard for poetry blogs, since traditionally we are more accustomed to read poetry in books and magazines. But more and more social media networks like Instagram are taking place and becoming a great resource for finding fresh and inspirational poetry – and you do want to take advantage of that.

Today I want to share with you some actionable ways that I have observed to work (especially for some popular poetry blogs here on the wordpress.com platform) and you can easily apply in your blogging scheme to attract more readers. But first of all, be aware that it takes time and persistence. Many of the high visited and read blogs are ‘in business’ for years and their success didn’t happen over night.

Analyze the direction of your blog and readjust your writing sails accordingly

Focus of the blog: do you post only poetry or do you blog also about personal stuff, writing tips, non-fiction articles, ext? Analyze your stats and see which of your posts are most visited and popular. It will give you a clue to what kind of topics are your readers most attracted. If they are not poetry related, than you might need to readjust your focus that dominant part of your writing is poetry. Initially you might lose some of the subscribers, but always keep in mind why do you blog and who you would like to read your blog. Shape your writing according to that.

‘Poke’ other bloggers

I do believe that the intricate purpose in every blogging attempt is connection and sharing. Link with other bloggers with similar affinities.

That can go by:

participating in conversations on other blogs (like comments), which will divert attention to your blog and content as well;
offer some type of collaborative work (writing a collaborative poem, story, initiating a challenge or a guest post);
interact with your readers – always respond to comments as it is the basis of building the trust between you and your reader – you are increasing the likelihood of reader to share your content/poem.

One of the biggest features in blogging in last couple of years is that this the era of engagement and there you should pour most of your energy. Engage your readers and with your readers in any form – it’s the key to attracting more traffic.

Go visual, where applicable

Poetry is about beauty of language and words – we should never forget that. For traditional blogging format, I still believe that accent should be on the background and space that allow words to pop up. But blogging trends are changing and you might want to stir up things by pairing your words with adequate visuals which can contribute to your poetry to become even more appealing to the reader.

As I mentioned, Instagram is fostering some great poetry networks and communities. Share your work in the form of engaging photos, videos and you are opening the doors to completely new type of readership.

Post regularly

Google loves fresh, unique and interesting content so update your blog frequently. People will have more reasons to come back, read and share your poetry.

Share your poetry on different poetry platforms

Allpoetry.com and poemhunter.com are useful resources for you to publish poetry especially as a newbie blogger and poet. You can get very good feedback for your writing and increase exposure of your work.

Share your publishing progress and success

This I find especially important if you want to connect with other poets in the blogosphere as sharing your experience can impact and give additional inspiration to other poets when it comes to submitting their work.

Be you – everyone else is already taken

Poetry offers unique experience so your writing will attract unique readers. Most of the tips given here are proven to work, but at the bottom of the line there are no strict rules what grows one blogs – especially when it comes to poetry.

Be yourself and enjoy your creative process – these are the two most important merits. From that space of trustful and peaceful enjoyment , your work will find most intriguing ways to captivate your readers.

Do you have any interesting strategy for attracting more readers to your poetry blog? Please share in the comments below.

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Wabi-Sabi

November 24, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

The Japanese

have a wonderful tradition

of admiring to

something that isn’t perfect, called wabi-sabi

and it has become my mantra

each time I look at your scowling eyes,

two dark rampageous

hawks rearing

to feast on my insecurities,

my habit to kneel at your monstrous ego;

Your mouth, enraged volcano

throwing missiles of sharp, burning words

at my bowed, tired head:

wabi-sabi, wabi-sabi,

nobody’s perfect – you for

misuse of uncontrolled power

and me for unused, powerless control.

I’m yet to learn, we are equal – that’s

the perfection you blindly refuse to see.

Maja S. Todorovic

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6 questions for creative reflection:

1.What creative/writing projects did you accomplish in the previous year?

2.What you have learned from that?

3.Are there any projects you didn’t start and why?

4.What would you like to do the most in the next year – is there any room for unfinished projects?

5.What is the obstacle, what is holding you back?

6.Describe your most creative moments in the previous year and think of ways how you can integrate more of that in your current life situation?

Pay attention to the language.

Pay attention to the feelings.

Pay attention to the core themes that are repeating.

You apologize for who you are.

You are afraid to be vulnerable.

You strive towards non-existent perfectionism.

Somewhere along the way you lost the intention that drives your writing and it’s hard to get back on track.

Analyze the direction of your blog and readjust your writing sails accordingly

‘Poke’ other bloggers

Go visual, where applicable

Post regularly

Share your poetry on different poetry platforms

Share your publishing progress and success

Be you – everyone else is already taken