Some Writers Think Life is Overrated

William Shakespeare wrote, “This life… is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Songwriter K.D. Lang put it more simply, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”

Some Writers Think Life is an Adventure

Joseph Campbell wrote, “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

Susan Ryan said, “We get to show up. We get to step into this story.”

Some Writers Think Life is Simple

Songwriter John Lennon said, “When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

Business writer Tom Peters said, “Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works.”

Some Writers Think Life is About Writing

Nobel-Prizewinning author Gabriel García Márquez wrote, “Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”

Anne Lamott, the author of Bird by Bird says, “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.”

Some Writers Think Life is Transformative

Wes Jackson said, “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”

Studs Terkel wrote, “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Some Writers Think Life is Service

Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”

Dave Wolverton said, “When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you have to give yourself away laboring one minute at a time.”

Some Writers Think Life is Contemplation

A Blackfoot warrior named Crowfoot wrote, “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

The Welsh hobo-poet W.H. Davies said, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”

Some Writers Think Life is Connectedness

John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

My friend Vess Barnes has his own definition of our purpose in life, “To encourage, to comfort, to awaken, and to stretch those who find themselves riding this big ball as it screams thru time in the silence of space. To be a bridge, not a barricade. To be a link, not a lapse. To be a beacon and a bolster; not a bragger or a bummer. To help bring the corners of life’s lips to their...

Open your ads with a big, emotional idea.

Save the details for your web page.

Use parallel structure if you can.

Parallel structure is a writing technique that uses similar grammatical constructions to express related ideas. Patterns of words, phrases, or clauses that are repeated show that your selected ideas are of equal importance. Parallel structure uses clarity and rhythm in writing to create a balanced and harmonious flow.

It is how you can sing to the heart without music.

Parallel structure is a poem that doesn’t rhyme.

Parallel structure is a song without music.

This is parallel structure…

Natural diamonds are rare and wonderful.

Especially when they are perfectly proportioned.

If you are going to ask a rare and wonderful woman

to marry you, be sure that her engagement ring celebrates

a rare and wonderful, perfectly proportioned,

Earthborn natural diamond.

This diamond was born when the earth was formed.

It has been waiting millions of years to be the

undying symbol of your love.

An unspeakably rare and wonderful diamond;

for an unspeakably rare and wonderful love:

Earthborn natural diamonds. Available in only the finest stores.

Visit earthborndiamonds.com to find

the earthborn diamond jeweler near you.

Born, celebrates, waiting, undying…

“Natural diamonds are rare and wonderful. Especially when they are perfectly proportioned.”

1. I suggest Earthborn Diamonds as a name to consider because:

(A) the name clearly indicate that these are natural diamonds.

(B) anything that is “born” is alive.

(C) Your engagement ring also comes alive when it “celebrates” the Earthborn Diamond it holds.

(D) I own the domain name.

2. Let’s examine the central stanza of this 5-part, 4-stanza* song of love:

“This diamond was born when the earth was formed. It has been waiting millions of years to be the undying symbol of your love.”

(A) “Earthborn” is explained in that opening sentence.

(B) “waiting” is the third activity that only a living thing can do, and fourth,

(C) to be “undying,” a thing must be alive, like this diamond, and your love.

3. “Rare and wonderful” is repeated 5 times in just 30 seconds.

(A) It describes the Earthborn diamond.

(B) It describes the woman you love.

(C) It describes the love that the two of you share.

4. This love song employs a writing technique known as parallel structure.

(A) The diamond, the woman, and your love all share specific attributes, and

(B) twice the ad tells us that these diamonds are “perfectly proportioned.”

(C) Due to the recurrent, parallel structure of the ad, “perfectly proportioned” will trigger the mind of a...

Pearl had the power of 5 different breeds. She was my Megadog. The Mustang was a 1971 convertible, white with a blue interior.

The car and the dog could not talk, of course, but speech is not required to show love.

Pearl and I found each other in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, when I was 8 years old. She had been abandoned by the side of the road and was starving. I was lonely and needed a friend.

When Pearl realized that she had been adopted, she became as mellow and contented as a dope-smoking hippie in a tie-dyed T-shirt. But Pearl was not a little yapper dog. If you acted as though you were going to attack me, that 16-pound dog would become a gigantic werewolf that could move at the speed of light.

Pearl followed the advice of E.W. Howe.

“When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”

Speech is not required to show love.

Rachel Dawes was a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne in the 2005 movie, Batman Begins. She said to him,

“It’s not who you are inside, but what you do that defines you.”

Matthew records a parable by Jesus in which he makes a similar point:

“There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.”

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.”

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Speech is not required to show love.

Likewise, in the second chapter of James we read,

“If a person is without clothes and daily food, and you say to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but do nothing about their physical needs, what good is that?”

My ’71 Mustang, like Pearl, was abandoned by the side of the road.

I left a note under the windshield wiper in 1991.

“Might this be a good time to sell this car? Give me a call and I’ll buy it where it sits.”

The man called me and I met him at the side of the road with the cash. He handed me the title to the car and asked, “Did you call a wrecker?”

“No,” I answered, “I’m hoping to drive it home.”

The man smiled and said, “Good luck,” as he drove away.

I then took the pliers out of my back pocket and quickly replaced the fuel filter. The car started immediately and I drove it home. The fuel filter on a Ford 302 engine of that era was notorious for getting clogged up, and this Mustang still had the original fuel filter. I was shocked that it had lasted 20 years.

I am going to tell you about that car, even though I know you won’t believe me.

It never had a flat.

It would perform as though it had 4-wheel drive if I needed to pull a friend’s car out of a ditch on an icy day.

The car would refuse to run out of gas unless I was within coasting distance of a gas station. And if it absolutely had to break down, it would wait until I was within coasting distance of an auto parts store that had exactly the part I needed. (The car knew, of course, that I already had the tools that I would need in the trunk.)

Speech is not required to show love.

You have people in your life that you love. I know you do. You know it, too.

Here are two other things that you already know.

1. Talk is cheap.
2. Actions speak louder than words.

I am not against words. In fact, I am in the word business. Banging words together is what I get paid to do.

And it is always a good thing to tell the people you love that you love them.

But it...