Angry Young Men

     In the 2012 movie THE WORDS, starring Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Irons, Bradley Cooper's character was a struggling writer living in New York and trying to write his breakthrough novel. At one point, broke and newly married, he took on a job in a big New York publishing house in order to support himself and his small family and at the same time make the proper connections to help him out as he works at night on his novel. So, at that publishing house he meets another guy working there for the same reason and in a brief encounter on screen they ask each other "what kind of writing do you do?" and they both answer "mostly angry young men, I guess".

     This made me realize that "Angry Young Men" is the same kind of writing I started out with too. And so I reflected on some of the first pieces I wrote when I got that advice I told you about, Stay Calm and Write Something. I tried starting journals, but for some reason the only thing I got out of it was a drawer filled with partially-filled notebooks of various designs and sizes according to the mood I was in when I purchased them. Then I moved on to writing NOTES on Facebook, which was not bad actually and helped a lot when people started commenting on these Notes which made me feel good to know that other people go through similar things or at least understand and empathize with what I was writing about.

     I might still be writing "angry young men". I'll leave that for you to decide. I would like to believe that my writing has evolved even if just a tiny bit since then and although I am still using writing as a therapeutic tool and to stay calm, I believe the subjects themselves are becoming more mature and interesting. Or at least that's what I hope in order for this blog to not crash and burn! However, the very first piece I wrote as a Note on Facebook will always remain as the clearest example of my writing about "Angry Young Men".

     For my next post I will share with you that piece, but I would like to hear about your examples of early writing. Was it also angry young men/women? or was it something else. Please share your experiences and let's be ANGRY and YOUNG together! Or we could just STAY CALM AND WRITE SOME MORE.

     I will be looking forward to reading and sharing your comments. See you next time.

The Words

The Words

The written word carries upon its breeze a magic that has never failed to capture those who have exposed themselves to its secrets. It's a magic that is imbued with the experiences and feelings of the men and women who poured parts of their lives into those words, and you can be so lucky to be able to soak up these experiences, share these feelings and make them your own. That is how and why the art of reading is an art that could take you on journeys through vast valleys and over high mountains, to cities you have never visited and to explore your own city through different eyes, to board rooms with the world's greatest CEOs, and to the corners of the human psyche, all in a matter of minutes or hours and brings you back to the comfort of your chair, only to realize that you have emerged from those pages a changed person, a more experienced person, a better person.

Many of us have been swept away by the rapid tides of modern day life to an extent that sitting down, and taking such journeys through the pages of a book, has become a great challenge no one can deny. Yet modern day life has brought us tools to help overcome that challenge even if only just a little bit. E-reading devices, tablet computers, smart phones and even audio-books, are all different media available today for us to use to compensate for the difficulty of not being able to find the time to sit down with "man's best friend".

All these tools are perfectly portable so that you can squeeze in the time for that magical breeze of the written word every now and then. Yet it will always remain one of life's greatest joys when you reach out your hand to grab and turn over the last page of a great book.

Choose to read fiction or non-fiction, fantasy or thrillers, read about business, about people who did your job before you and learn what they learned and get ahead of the game. Read a good book or a bad book, just rest assured that someone, somewhere, sometime, had learned a lesson and were willing to share that lesson with you, and all it takes is for you to be willing to listen to their words carried to you on a magical breeze, through space and time.

Keep a good book beside your bed, even if all you get is to read a couple of pages before you fall asleep, you will always know that you have a good friend to talk to every night, a good friend who, with every page, will always teach you something different, and will always help you become a better person.

We all have different jobs and each has its own art that one needs to learn in order to be better at it, but the art of reading is one art we all need to learn if we want to become a better version of ourselves.

We all have a vision of a better us, better at work, better at home, and if you think this is as good as it gets, if you think you have done all there is to be done, surrender to the magical breeze of the written word, listen to its whispers and you shall be amazed at how far you can still reach and how high you can still go.

Blogger for the first time!

     Stay calm and write something. That's the best advice I came by in a long time. Stay calm and READ something, now that's a motto I have been living by for some time now, but I only discovered the beauty of writing very recently, and it was the literal meaning of this motto "stay calm and write something" that lead me to this magnificent discovery.

     You know how you daydream of beating the living crap out of someone whose making your life miserable because society will "frown upon it" if you actually do? Call me crazy but I know you've had these thoughts too, even if they just come to you in the form of NIGHT dreaming instead of DAY dreaming. In any case, I checked, I am not crazy and neither are you, it's just called venting. And one of the best ways to do that is to literally STAY CALM and WRITE SOMETHING. So I did. And it helped. A LOT!

     So one thing led to another one piece of writing led to the next and one journal entry after another, an attempt which I failed to maintain for unknown reasons, I, like many others who take up writing, started to get vain and see the absolute beauty and hear the mesmerizing music in my prose and decided that I am the next big hit in the literary world. See how I used "mesmerizing" back there??

     However, after getting some tough-love feedback from very capable and honest writers and non-writers alike, I was told that using writing as a venting tool to stay calm is extremely valuable advice. And the other valuable advice that I need is to come down from my cloud and realize that I just took a shot at writing a couple of month ago. And that one of the best ways to write, as a tool for therapy and also as practice to get better and get instant feedback, is to start a blog.

     Eventually, I sat myself down and created this blog as a place to write down my thoughts on everything and anything that moves me in a good way, or bad. As long as I stay calm when I write something I will continue to write and I hope it will be good for you to read it. 

     For my next post I will be sharing something about the beauty of words and reading. In the meantime, I hope you too would Stay Calm and Write Something, or at least read something. My suggestion, you can start by reading this Blog!