Get Inspiration from Quotations

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

Early on in my journalism training, I was taught to look for key quotations. Often these statements would be in the lead of my story or they would drive home the point of my story.  

As writers interviewing other people for the content of a chapter of a book or a magazine article, I encourage you to be looking for these key quotations. They will help you as you craft your stories.

When I read inspirational quotes, I get insights and encouragement. I look for them from many different sources like my own reading of books or blogs or articles online. When I find them, I will often cut and paste them into my social media plans for the future. It's been my pattern for years with my social media feeds for the day: I begin every day with an inspirational quotation and an image.

In the social media world, you can attract more attention, retweets and responses if you include an image. Through the years of my using social media, I have collected images of different people into a file labeled “Twitter Images.” These images are stored alphabetically so when I need one again, it is easy to locate and use again.

Here's an example I saw today:

“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”
-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr. 

I add the image and then save it into my HootSuite. It will begin my day of social media postings on Sunday, May 3, 2020 at 6:05 am. Yes on inspirational quotations, I am way ahead on my postings. I use Hootsuite (the paid version with unlimited posts to schedule—and I take full advantage of this feature and schedule my posts way ahead of time—at least some of them).

I have another reason I'm way ahead on my inspirational quotes. Several weeks ago, I was behind on gathering these inspirational quotations. I learned to use another feature of HootSuite which I had not before. This program stores all my old tweets which number in the thousands. I went back and took the inspirational quotes for a month (at least one year ago so no one would remember) and worked them into my future schedule. I created a pattern of beginning every day with this inspirational quotation. Do you have a pattern or grid for your tweets? I do and it makes it simple to schedule with this grid for certain types of tweets in mind.

Do you get inspiration from quotes? Do you use them and see them on a regular basis in your writing life? Let me know the details in the comments below.

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Inspirational quotes are often seen in articles and online. What do you do with them? Get some ideas from this prolific editor and author. (ClickToTweet)

Get Inspiration

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

Where do you find inspiration for your writing? For me, this inspiration comes from many different sources but as a writer we have to be aware and watching for it. I love a good story and find myself returning to these stories mentally and thinking about them over and over.

I've mentioned in the past about listening to audiobooks through Overdrive. It is a free resource through the public library. You can easily check out audiobooks, download them on your phone then listen to them as you walk (through earphones) or drive (through bluetooth) or many other means.

I love listening to memoirs and self-help books. Recently I listened to actor Michael Caine's memoir, Blowing the Bloody Doors Off. At 85 years old, actor Michael Caine has lived an amazing life. Like you would expect, his life is filled with ups and downs—and both aspects are captured in the pages of this fascinating book. I listened to Caine’s narration of the audiobook version cover to cover and enjoyed the book.  It is filled with stories and life lessons. To give you a taste of some of these insights, I tracked down the introduction to this book and wanted to include a few paragraphs:

“THE FIRST TIME I was in the United States, when I had just made Alfie, I was sitting on my own in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel and heard the sound of a helicopter landing in the gardens opposite. This, the porter told me, was strictly illegal. He and I stood at the door to see who was so flagrantly flouting the law—presumably the President, of the United States or at least of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Across Sunset Boulevard, out of a swirling sun-flecked cloud of dust, six foot four and in full cowboy get-up, strode the unmistakable figure of John Wayne. As I stood there with my mouth open he caught my eye and altered his course to come over to me. “What's your name, kid?” he asked.

“Michael Caine,” I managed to croak.

“That's right,” he agreed, with a tilt of his head. “You were in that movie Alfie.”

“Yes,” I said. I wasn't really keeping up my end of the conversation.

“You're gonna be a star, kid,” he drawled, draping his arm around my shoulders. "But if you want to stay one, remember this: talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much."

“Thank you, Mr. Wayne,” I said.

"“Call me Duke.” He gave me a chuck on the arm, turned around and swaggered off.
 
It was a mind-blowing Hollywood moment for an ambitious young actor on his first visit to the city of dreams. And it was great advice for anyone who was going to be acting in Westerns and delivering all his dialogue from a horse. Talk low and slow so you don't scare the horses, and say as little as possible before the horse runs away. But it was not such great advice for someone like me, an actor who was going to play all kinds of characters with tons of dialogue, and mostly, thankfully, with my feet planted firmly on the ground.
I am often asked what advice I have for actors starting out in this business. And for many years my answer was “Never listen to old actors like me." That was because, until John Wayne offered me his words of wisdom, I always used to ask older actors what I should do, and the only thing they ever told me was to give up.

But as I've got older, I've been reflecting on my life, as older people often do. And I've realised that, over my sixty years in the movie business and my eighty-five years of life, I have been given a lot of useful advice—by Marlene Dietrich, Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier among many others—and I have learnt a lot of useful lessons, from my many glittering successes and my many disastrous failures. I started to think I could do a bit better than “never listen to advice.” In fact, my advice would be, don't listen to that advice.

This book is the result of that reflection. I wanted to look back on my life from the Elephant and Castle to Hollywood, and from man-about-town Alfie to Batman's butler Alfred, with all its successes and all its failures, all its fun and all its misery and struggle, its comedy, its drama, its romance and its tragedy, and find, among it all, the lessons I've learnt and want to share, not just for aspiring movie actors but for everyone.
 
A few of my “lessons” are quite specific to movie acting. But I hope that most of them will speak, somehow, to most of you. You won't all have to audition for parts but in some ways life is always an audition: everyone has moments when they have to put themselves out there for what they want. You won't all have to learn lines but everyone sometimes has to make sure they're properly prepared. We all have to deal with difficult people and we all have to learn how to balance our professional and personal lives.” (From the introduction of Blowing the Bloody Doors Off.

I just gave a taste of the profound material in this well-crafted book. I highly recommend Blowing the Bloody Doors Off (which was the last line in the entire book). I hope this example has given you some ideas about where I find inspiration—and you can too.

Where do you find inspiration? What are some of your sources? Let me know in the comments below.

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Where do you find inspiration? Get some ideas from this prolific writer and editor. (ClickToTweet)

Two Ways to Write A Magazine Article

Two types of Leaves & Two Types of Articles

If you want to reach readers with your writing, one of the most effective methods is to write magazine articles. As your articles are published, you will reach thousands (if not millions) of readers. Through my years in publishing, I've written many different types of articles on all sorts of people and topics. The variety is endless in the print magazine world.

In the beginning of my magazine writing, I would be inspired to write a personal experience article or a how-to article.  I would sit down and write the article with no magazine or market in mind. After I wrote this article to the best of my ability, I opened up my writers' market guide and searched for some place to send the article or write a query. The process took a lot of searching and energy—and often involved getting rejected because I didn't send it to the right editor or right publication.

This type of writing is known as inspirational writing. You are inspired to write something so you sit down, put your fingers on the keyboard and write the complete article. It is one way that many people write and eventually with enough persistence, find the right publication or editor and get into print.

There is a second way to write a magazine article: write for a particular publication and what the editor wants or needs. As a writer, you learn about these needs as you read and study the submission guidelines. Almost every magazine has a set of editorial guidelines on their website. Some of these guidelines are more detailed than others. Sometimes the guidelines will say the percentage of freelance work they publish. The higher this percentage, the stronger the need of the publication for freelance writing (as opposed to something they write with their staff).

In addition to their guidelines, some publications include a “theme list.” These publications have planned specific themes they want to publish and they are solid indicator of what the editor believes their readers want to know. To get published, you can either write a query letter or write the entire article and send it to the editor (follow their guidelines). The second way to write a magazine article is a more targeted yet also involves meeting the needs of the editor and reader. Because it is targeted, it has a higher probability of publication and less time for the writer to search for a market and then get rejected and search for another market.

Inspirational writing is fun and something I still encourage you to do—particularly with personal experience articles. Each of us have unusual personal experiences in life but the successful published writers will take these personal experiences and use them as grist for their writing and craft their article. Almost every magazine uses personal experience stories (large circulation and small circulation).

My purpose in writing this article was to show you a more targeted (and potentially successful) method to get your writing into print publications. Writing for magazines is a solid way to build your platform or presence in the market, reach readers and build your reputation as a writer. After many years in publishing, I continue to write for magazines.

What tips do you have for writing for magazines? Let me know in the comments below.

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There are generally two ways to write a magazine article. Get the details here. (Click To Tweet) 

Whether You Love Football or Not

When a football team wins the superbowl, they take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. I know more than a few people are groaning that football is starting again. Others love the game and watch every single minute that they get a chance.

No matter what you think about the sport, Vince Lombardi was a coach who inspired his players to greatness. I want to encourage you to take a few minutes and watch this three-minute inspirational movie about What It Takes To Be Number One. It’s filled with inspirational quotations from Lombardi and completely transcends football.

As a writer, I appreciate these types of tools to help me. I hope it will encourage you and strengthen your work in the publishing world.