When We Stop Thinking Consciously We Open Sensory Doors →
Imagine the pain of not being able to write or paint anymore. Vincent van Gogh once said, “I paint to stop thinking and to start feeling.” This idea of using art to transcend thought and tap into emotion is not just powerful; it’s powerful and transformative. It suggests that the things that help us stop thinking are not just about finding a state of mind but about opening other doors that lead to enhanced creativity and inspiration. This journey connects us deeply to our emotions and the world around us.
Stop Thinking Tree
The phrase "To stop thinking" denotes a deliberate act of quieting the mind and reducing conscious thought, ultimately reaching a state of mental stillness. This state, where one is not actively engaged in ruminating or analyzing ideas, often brings a profound sense of relief. It's about releasing the constant stream of internal dialogue and simply being present in the moment, a practice that can bring calm and tranquility to your life.
When we feel like our brain has stopped thinking, it still processes information, but our focus is on the present. When we think our brain has stopped thinking, we can direct our attention more fully to our sensory inputs. This shift in focus can bring a sense of liberation, a feeling of breaking free from the constraints of overthinking, allowing the words we pick to write with and the colors we choose to paint with to have more meaning. When we Stop Thinking Consciously, we open Sensory Doors, inviting a world of creativity and expression.
Anaïs Nin: Writing to Taste Life Twice →
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
That single line by Anaïs Nin captures why her work has left such a lasting impression on writers and reflective thinkers. She believed that writing wasn’t just a form of communication—it was a way of processing the world, of reliving experience with greater clarity and depth. And for anyone who has tried to understand themselves through words, her perspective resonates on a deeply personal level.
Anaïs Nin was more than a diarist or author—she was a witness to the inner life. Her writing, often intimate and raw, blurred the lines between autobiography and art. She began journaling at age eleven and continued until her death, creating a body of work that chronicled the complexities of identity, desire, creativity, and emotional truth.
Another of her quotes says:
“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
This insight cuts to the core of self-awareness, revealing why reflective writing matters. It reminds us that our perceptions are filtered through our experiences, and that to write well—honestly and meaningfully—we must first come to understand ourselves.
Anaïs Nin’s life and legacy show us that writing is not just an act of recording life but of shaping it. Her influence lies not only in her bold content but in her fearless belief that the personal is also universal—that when we write from the deepest parts of ourselves, we often speak for others too.
“Cue Up The Confetti” and Bring on the Connected Events that Matter →
“Cue” typically refers to a signal encouraging someone to act. If you “cue” the confetti, you then take the action that stimulates your desired results.
You could find some confetti and toss it in the air in celebration. The word “confetti” might instead be a symbolic suggestion that what you will throw around will, for example, be compliments or kindness and that your efforts will cover everything.
58.7 Million Words Analyzed Over Two Years of Writing →
Grammarly's algorithms flag potential issues in the text and make context-specific suggestions to help with grammar, spelling and usage, wordiness, style, punctuation, tone, and even plagiarism.
Grammarly is a tool that helps writers, and it offers some AI functions, but I have yet to use them. Expecting AI to determine a topic or provide a complete overview of that topic leaves the author in the position of not being an author.
If, in order to be an author, you would have to be a perfect speller, always with perfect punctuation and perfect sentences, then authors wouldn’t need editors.
Editors analyze the clarity and flow of your writing, ensuring that ideas are communicated effectively and smoothly. They help improve sentence structure, paragraph transitions, and overall readability.
Read Personal Development Books Until You Find and Become Yourself →
Professor Bloom’s book includes responses to why he reads profoundly. He asserts that reading is not just a pastime but a crucial tool for individuals to retain their capacity for independent thinking and form their judgments and opinions about themselves and their views, including the Preface and Prologue of books. He then demonstrates his ideas by using other authors he knows well in the rest of the book.
His answer to the question of why he read is that - it matters. He adds that if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their judgments and opinions, they must continue to read for themselves.
How they read, well or poorly, and what they read cannot depend wholly upon themselves, but why they read must be for and in their interest.
READING CHANGES OUR VIEW OF THE PATH TAKEN THROUGHOUT OUR LIFE →
I admire those who can quote favorite thoughts from favorite books, famous people, or scriptures. Even more so, I admire those who can remember most of what they have read. I find myself going back and rereading much of what I have already read, and when I do, it often feels like a whole new experience. Each reading brings something new to us.
Reading is especially important because it provides us with knowledge. C.S. Lewis said, "The good of literature is that we want to become more than ourselves; we want to see with others' eyes, to imagine with others' imaginations, to feel with others's hearts, as well as our own.
What is the Good of Literature →
C.S. Lewis said, “The good of literature is that we want to become more than ourselves; we want to see with others’ eyes, to imagine with others’ imaginations, to feel with others’ hearts, as well as our own.”
He also said we become a thousand men and yet remain ourselves. When it happens, you will feel renewed and reinvented.
Common Reasons People Read
It helps gain valuable knowledge and learn about new things.
It exercises the brain and improves cognitive skills, such as comprehension, memory, and focus.
It provides entertainment and stimulates the imagination.
It improves the ability to empathize and communicate with others.
Reading Overview →
Nationwide, on average, 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2022. 21% of adults in the US were illiterate in 2022. 54% of adults have literacy below a sixth-grade level. 21% of Americans 18 and older are illiterate in 2022
The average reader will complete 12 books in a year. If the life expectancy is 86 for females and 82 for males, and the proper reading age is 25 years, Literary Hub notes that the average number of books read in a lifetime is 735 for females and 684 for males.
Countries that Read (And Buy) The Most Books
United States The U.S. reads about 275,232 per year. ...
China – The country reads 208,418 books annually, about 10% of all books bought.
United Kingdom – This nation reads about 188,000 every year.
India. The NOP World Culture Score Index* puts India as the nation that enjoys reading the most when considering the time spent among the 30 major countries surveyed. India tops our list, with its residents reading an average of 10 hours and 42 minutes weekly.
What is the US rank in education in the world?
The U.S. ranks 14th in the world in the percentage of 25-34 year-olds with higher education (42%). They have an upper secondary education are just 29% -- one of the lowest levels among OECD countries. Enrolment rate. Sources, while in the U.S., 62% do.
NOP World Culture Score(TM) Index Examines Global Media Habits
Write in the Moment and Connect it to a Bigger Story →
What does saying you are “writing in the moment” mean? Sometimes, it means that what you are writing about is something you can observe happening around you at the very moment you are writing. This makes it easier to capture details like a slow-motion camera’s input gives focus, and the writing is true to life and a reflection of the “here and now.”
In addition to your particular moment, a moment in time for the characters in the plot can be captured.
“In good writing, words become one with things.”
What is happening around you right now involves many things, and a choice as to what to include and not include has to be made. Some events stand out in the moment, and you can sense them, almost breathing them in, and then using the reasons to direct your thoughts at the details, you capture what the moment can be about.
A life story can be a series of chosen references to past moments. As you tell or write the story, you choose the particular moments and interpret them differently than when they happened. Seldom do you hear a person tell their own life story the same way each time they tell it unless they are reading it because, in a different moment, more experiences filter the memories and conclusions?
The conclusions we draw from past events and in those cases where those events strongly influence our self-image, then re-looking at events can change parts or all of our self-image and lead to reinventing our self-image. You can write at the moment when the subject of your story is happening, or you can reach back for specific moments, but those moments change each time you reach back for them.
Fiction brings the reader experiences that they would have never expected to have. Instead, we step into a new reality (both the reader and author can feel they are there in the moment) where all our beliefs can be set aside, and we meet new people who can inspire or terrify us.
Will these fictional characters and experiences influence your self-identity? I think they will. Do they play a role in the narrative of how you see your life story? Again, they do. Does fiction have any redeeming value? Will its influence raise or lower our intelligence? There is plenty of evidence that it increases it.
You can talk to them about various subjects and new ideas, and different perspectives can be found. It sounds like opening a book of fiction.
The first time I read William Faulkner’s fictional story, As I Lay Dying, it took me by surprise. I expected to enter a unique storyline and learn about the people in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, during the 1920s. Yet the conversation's language, tone, and sound were a surprise. How the characters interacted and spoke to each other differed from anything I expected, and I knew I was in a different place seeing life differently.
Einstein suggested, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
Neil Gaiman is a writer of fantasy and fiction, and in his book The View from the Cheap Seats, he wrote about attending a meeting for fiction writers in China. In previous years, China didn’t allow fairy tales and fiction in their schools, so he was surprised to learn of this invitation. He asked an official what had changed and was told, off the record, that they had toured all the big companies they did outsourcing work for in the United States and asked those they met what they read. The resounding answer was science fiction. The officials then began to understand the connection of invention with creativity. (I guess it took a random event for them to figure this out.)
There are good and bad guys in fiction, fairy tales, and horror stories. For some, the “Force” in Star Wars might represent the goodness in the universe, but what about that goodness? Will it reaffirm our beliefs while seeing our beliefs as an element of a fictional plot; does it make the fiction more believable? The bigger question is, can we really step out of our world, or are we just going always to view things through the lens of our experience?
A Jumpstart to Life Experience can be gained through Reading →
Many book lovers write about their lifelong love of books. I didn’t start my love affair with books until I finished college. I remember a family of one of my Uncles and what seemed to be an absolute devotion to readers when the cousins were growing up. The books I saw in the girl’s rooms during our visits over the years impressed me.
I recall seeing an interview conducted by Prince Harry with President Obama. He asked him many questions, some seeming insignificant. What kind of boxer briefs do you wear? Obama said that was off-limits. Good for him. Who cares? Questions about Royal Weddings were attractive to many. The comments on social media were good ones.
These men have had exciting lives, but they have some insight beyond their path of experience. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what books had been essential and of interest to either Obama or Prince Harry? What books influenced Gandhi, Lincoln, Putin, and maybe my father and their fathers?
The books with the most significant impact on our lives change and evolve, but so do we. Some books may always make our top list. Some new ones have come. So, this year, I had several new ones that will likely stick with me. "American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee and Nothing to Envy, Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick came to mind and impacted me, but many others did.
Recalling what books I read when I was young is challenging. Unfortunately, I only read books with deeper meanings and influence once I was almost out of high school.
One time in my early teens, I recall visiting my uncle’s family on a trip our family took. He had a large family, and the two girls that were the closest to me in age were sharp. Socially, probably ahead of me at the time and perhaps even a little brighter (I can't believe I said that). Walking down the hall in their home, I remember seeing many books in the girls’ rooms. So I asked them to show me what they were reading, and they were books with more profound meaning and influence than I was used to.
This wasn't my life a-ha moment for loving books, but it was an important one, and I did up my own game and added some better books to read.
When I was about 3 or 4, my parents would take turns reading to me at bedtime. They read kid books, probably from the Little Golden Books series. At about eight years old, I started reading funny books. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Donald Duck, and Uncle Scrooge. At about ten years old, I began reading Boy's Life. At around 12, I started reading movie magazines. I read the TV guide, Reader's Digest, Popular Mechanics, and everything around the house.
After about the 9th grade, I became interested in well-known dystopian books such as 1984, Brave New World, and Animal Farm. By the time I started college, my interest in philosophy had led me to The Republic by Plato, Aristotle and The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, to name a few.
After High School, I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and many self-help books.
When I finished college, I began reading many business books. Robert Ringer's book "Winning Through Intimidation" impacted me. I also started reading church books. I have read the scriptures over and over throughout my life.
I have read Ulysses by James Joyce several times to determine if I could understand it. I have read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and most of what Shakespeare wrote. Moby Dick is a book that I read several times and started out hating, but after the last reading, I saw it as a great book. Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Civil Disobedience are books I have read several times.
My love of these books led me to pick the authors that stood out. Edgar Allan Poe, Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charles Dickens are all authors I like. Hemmingway and Mark Twain are authors I have read but don't care for. I have read great books, such as Faulkner, Nabokov, T.S. Elliot, C.S. Lewis, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman, and Franz Kafka.
I love the authors but love the poets even more sometimes. Robert Frost is a favorite poet, and a new poet I like and want to hear more from is Amanda Gorman. Her inauguration day poem for President Biden, "The Hill We Climb," is amazing.
Ok, I have some fallback favorites. Stephen King always gets my attention. There are several dozen authors I should have included. (Apology to Maya Angelou, for example) There are lots of modern and exciting authors.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
~ George R.R. Martin.
What to Read Next and Why →
The question of what to read next comes up over and over throughout our lives. Some offer answers but don’t explain why their choices should be of value to us.
A successful fiction and fantasy writer, Neil Gaiman doesn’t hesitate to suggest an answer and offer a why. He said, "Fiction is the gateway drug to reading.” He added that fiction drives us to want to know what happens next. It becomes exciting and satisfies the excitement as we turn the pages.
When we read fiction, it increases our imagination and results in our finding something new of interest. The new things we find may lead us in a direction such as science, history, or art. So we could look for a biography of a person with an area of similar interest to our own.
The path to the next book, or even choosing one to re-read, is often built on past choices. Years ago, I watched the movie “Apocalypse Now.” That led me to reread Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” set in Africa with the same basic plot. The book was considered one of Conrad’s best.
Some criticized Conrad’s book for having a white man’s perspective on life in Africa. I wanted to find another view. I wondered if there were good African writers that I could read. At that point in my life, I had never looked for African writers. I looked and found many good ones who were respected for their work. I found several authors of interest. At the time, Chinua Achebe emerged as a well-known African author for his book “Things Fall Apart.”
It seemed to be the perfect “other point of view” I was looking for. This book is indeed something that should be read by anyone who reads “Heart of Darkness” and wonder if they have seen Africa correctly.
REVIEW OF "THINGS FALL APART, by CHINA ACHEBE
HEART OF DARKNESS BY JOSEPH CONRAD
Why You Should Read Before Think
I wish I had a better list of books to show for my younger years →
Looking back to my childhood to recall what books I read is challenging. First, I don't remember many of them, but then I know I didn't read many books of any importance until my mid-teens. I don't understand why that was because I thought I was a pretty smart kid. I got good grades, and school was just easy for me.
One time in my early teens, I went to Salt Lake on one of their regular trips with my parents. At that time, my Uncle’s family lived in the North Salt Lake area, and we stopped for a visit. He had a large family, and the two girls that were the closest to me in age were sharp girls. Socially, probably ahead of me at the time, and perhaps even a little brighter. I remember as I walked down the hall, seeing in each of their bedrooms that they had books by their beds. The idea that having books to read at that age was good did occur to me from this experience. Nevertheless, I didn't just change my habits and start reading things. I wish I had.
When I was about 3 or 4, my parents would take turns reading to me at bedtime. They read kid books. Probably from the Little Golden Books series. At about eight years old, I started reading funny books. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Donald Duck, and Uncle Scrooge. At about ten years old, I started reading Boy's Life. At around 12, I started reading movie magazines.
I read the TV guide, Reader's Digest, and Popular Mechanics. I suppose I read everything that was around the house.
After about the 9th grade, I became interested in some well-known dystopian books such as 1984, Brave New World, and Animal Farm. By the time I started college, my interest in philosophy had led me to The Republic by Plato, Aristotle, and The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, to name a few. I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and then a lot of self-help books.
When I finished college, I began reading a lot of business books. Robert Ringer's book "Winning Through Intimidation" impacted me. I also started reading church books. I have read the scriptures over and over throughout my life.
I have read Ulysses by James Joyce several times to find out if I could understand it. I have read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and most of what Shakespeare wrote. Moby Dick is a book that I read several times and started out hating, but after the last reading, I saw it as a great book. Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Civil Disobedience are books I have read several times.
My love of these books led me to pick the authors that stood out to me. Edgar Allan Poe, Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charles Dickens are all authors I like. Hemmingway and Mark Twain are authors I have read a lot but don't care for. Faulkner, Nabokov, T.S. Elliot, C.S Lewis, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman, and Franz Kafka all have many great books I have read.
I love the authors but love the poets even more sometimes. Robert Frost is a favorite poet, and a new poet I like and want to hear more from is Amanda Gorman. Her inauguration day poem for President Biden, "The Hill we Climb," is amazing.
Ok, I have some fallback favorites. Stephen King always gets my attention. This shortlist is top-heavy for what I have read as an adult. There are probably several dozen authors I should have included. (Apology to Maya Angelou, for example) Lots of just modern and exciting authors.
Is The Target Market Always Obvious →
Sometimes the goal you are seeking needs research. Perhaps your writing a book or looking for a job. Reading about those goals will give you direction. You will want to make sure your reading targets your goals.
A target market is the specific group of people that you want to reach with your message. They are the people who are most likely to need to hear your message and buy your products or services.
Their behaviors, demographics, and as much information about them as possible are needed to find these people.
When you write and market a book, you want to provide the answers your potential readers wish to. For several of the books I have written, I found the information needed because I was with those people working one-on-one, observing whether they had the skills and available networks that would fit the goals they were seeking.
When these things are understood, finding strategies and insights coupled with some fundamental analysis of the personal values, skill sets, and networks becomes easier to identify.
Many of my books address those questions because the source for these books was not just a list of questions that came from understanding how the questions were the core of the challenges faced.
I worked one-on-one with hundreds of job seekers and people needing a career change over several years.
These books can be found on my Amazon Author page at https://amzn.to/3NNUhd6.
Is there a point to writing if no one ever reads it? →
About Writing
Writers often ask themselves, “What is the point of writing if no one reads my work? Okay, yes, this sounds like the beginning of a pity party, but it is a valid question. Even so, there are a lot of high-sounding reasons why the answer is that I should indeed continue to write.
What I am looking for, however, is something original that goes to the heart of this question.
One answer, for example, is that the point of writing is to “think deeply and to inform, entertain, and communicate your insight with your readers.” Yes, I found that answer by googling this question, so okay, it still is a starting point for the question.
I can go with “thinking deeply” because just pulling sentences together requires that, and, as far as I can tell, the more we do this, the better we become. However, this benefit’s point isn’t to communicate with readers, since that is the problem. There are no readers!
We can inform and entertain ourselves, but the real problem becomes apparent when readers are required. As I previously said, there aren’t any readers.
Another point for writing is to seek the truth. It doesn't matter how you do that or whether you're writing thrillers, detective stories, comedies, website posts, or picture books for children. When you write, you often must validate what you say, which is a worthy goal for someone who writes. As Stephen Pressfield writes in The War of Art, “We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”
Writing also forces you to open your eyes to the world to ensure your story makes sense. When you open your eyes to all around you, your ideas find new connections. You can catch up on lost time and gain insight beyond your capabilities by reading more. This opens you to new feelings and experiences. The more you learn about this world, the more you realize how much you don't know. In this way, writing keeps you humble and open to more knowledge.
Author and marketing guru Seth Godin produces blog posts daily, saying, “Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating, and (eventually) fun.” He adds that “after people get to posting 200 [posts] or beyond, they uniformly report that they’re glad they did it.” (Taken from Why Writing Content Is Useful, Even If Nobody Reads It - Forbes
Even when no one will likely read it, the real point of writing is that it is clear evidence for you to know that you are a writer. Writers write because they must write.
Did you really mean what you wrote and does the message come through clear? →
Good writing stands out; you hear a distinct voice when you read it. The agent is just right, meeting the needs of the story. The paper stays within the reader for a while and makes the reader feel richer when reading. Good writing makes the reader want to read more.
The verse below from Ecclesiastes 9:11 was used in George Orwell's book Why I Write as an example of "good writing." Then, Orwell wrote a more modern approach to the verse, saying the same thing: the current is not better.
The Ecclesiastes verse stands out as well written compared to what Orwell presented as a more modern approach of that day. It was a rewritten version written as a parody of the original verse designed to ridicule the bloated writing of his day. The important message is that simplicity is better, and it helps if you know what you mean so you can clearly say it.
See Both Verses Below.
Ecclesiastes 9:11, King James Version
“I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
George Orwell’s parody in what he called more modern prose. (not a compliment)
“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
The original verse is well written and says what it says so very, very well. Then, on the other hand, is what this verse says correct? Is it true that here on earth, under the sun, the efforts of men are dependent on chance and time for those efforts to make a difference? Is it logical to draw any conclusions from “objective conclusions about contemporary phenomena”? Are not those conclusions and phenomena aggregates of experience, and do they even exist in singular form?
Many whose "stars shine bright" and who have the limelight are no better or wiser than many who do not. Some luck and timing make a lot of difference. On the other hand, so many define their journey through life as part of a "plan.” Trials are part of the plan. Setbacks are thought of as part of the plan. So what about time and chance? Does the fact that the original verse suggests that everyone will get time and chance make it all ok?
Did the writer of Ecclesiastes successfully communicate what was meant? Does it mean the writer failed if it is interpreted differently by different readers?
Quotes from Authors about the Meaning of Their Writing
“I didn't fail the test; I just found 100 ways to do it wrong” -Benjamin Franklin, 1706 -1790. Based on the quote by Franklin, I would suspect that he would come down on the side of "a plan" rather than feeling that time and chance rendered the 100 failures of no worth.
“In the depths of winter, I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer." -Albert Camus, 1913 – 1957. It looks like Camus figured there was a plan since his challenges were labeled "depths of winter," which seemed to prove something of worth to him.
The difficulty of literature is not writing but writing what you mean."
-Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 - 1894.
