About this blog

This blog was created to make it easier for my friends to keep up with my book-writing process. The book is called "Journey to the Heart of God". It is about the importance of pursuing God's righteousness in order to live as He intended so that we can live a full and abundant life: the eternal life Christ came to give us. Happy reading! :D

Writing with Pizza Angel

Who likes pizza? Or maybe I should ask, who DOESN'T like pizza? Granted there are a few random people out there who don't like pizza. In my mind they are in the same group as women who don't like chocolate and men who are vegetarians. (not that I have anything against said people, they're just in the same group in my mind :P ) Sorry, I digress.
Here's the cool thing about pizza. It has more uses than just as a fun food that almost everybody loves. And I don't mean you can wash and sanitize your dishes, repair scratches on your floor, dig evacuation tunnels, and STILL cut a tomato with it... No, I mean it's great for illustrations. I've used pizza to help teach my brothers fractions (since we have it more often than pies and there's usually much more to go around) but it's also great for learning about learning. I hope I'm not confusing you yet...
When I was studying "Techniques of training the performance horse" they discussed the concept of "pizza learning" which basically means your horse learns things better if given to them in small "slices" and if those slices are broken up into "bites". If you try to shove the whole pizza down the horse's throat they're gonna flip out on ya. And as I've witnessed, the same thing goes for teaching people. If you set people down for an intense one-hour session and dump a big huge concept on them all at once they will go into overload mode and will not learn anything. But if you give it to them little by little they can take it and they absorb much more and it is much more effective. Just like blog posts--if a blog post is too long, unless you have a really catchy title or something, people probably aren't as likely going to stick around (unless they've got much time to burn).
But guess what? I've learned this little pizza theory also can apply to writing. For me, anyway. I mean, if I have a deadline to meet (like a college paper, for example), I can sit down and whip out a pretty decent 5-page composition in a single afternoon (don't ask me how I know this :halo: ). But when it comes to long-term writing (i.e. a book) with no particular deadline (other than a self-imposed deadline), it can get a little overwhelming and all-too-easily tossed aside--by myself or by other people of influence in my life.
So all this to say, I am adding a new style/rule/restriction/whatever-you-wanna-call-it to my writing regime which I'm hoping will accomplish three things: 1. make it easier to stay motivated and focused 2. make it easier to "get the word out" 3. make it slightly less of a necessity/emergency to find a publisher when the time comes. And who knows? Maybe getting a lot of reader interest will also help attract a publisher's eye.
What's this crazy hair-brained idea you got goin' NOW? You may ask. Well... I'm writing my book in blog form. Yup. Or at least trying to. We'll see how it goes. So far I have the introduction lookin' good and I'm gettin' fired up about starting "chapter 1" Now the bad news is I'm basically starting OVER (don't let me know that, though, or I'll panic :P ) but the good news is, I basically already have the content (at least for the first few chapters) as a springboard AND I get to iron out some wrinkles as I "re-write" B-)  So I'm lookin' forward to seeing how well this works. I'll share it eventually but in the meantime it's remaining under lock and key ;)  mwahaaha! So you'll just have to wait patiently. But root me on, ok? :D You rock. Have an awesome day
~L.E. Neighbour

2 comments:

Karen said...

You go LE. Whatever method helps you write-do it. And you're not starting over, just re-writing, which any writer does multiple times on one piece. You can do it!

L. E. Neighbour said...

Thanks! :D