• Be warned, writing fiction is different

  In college, the Air Force and 30 years in the corporate world I have written and edited many different types of papers from very short to very long and for every kind of purpose and audience one can imagine, but none of that experience prepared me for a work of fiction like the business parable There’s More to Life than the Corner Office released a month ago by McGraw Hill Professional. Unlike writing to persuade or provide factual information, fiction is about providing a framework, but allowing the reader to fill in many details. We each have life experience, attitudes, beliefs and pride. We want to “get it” and when reading fiction, we most enjoy the writers who respect us as readers and don’t spoon feed us too much.

  For a business man with long experience fully supporting every major point in his writing, this was a tough lesson for me to learn. The co-author on this project, Tammy Kling, was very persistent in her correction of me because I was very quick to revert to the style of providing as complete a picture in living color with as many details as possible. “Show, don’t tell,” I heard Tammy say many, many times.

  Another requirement is writing in the character’s own voice as the dialogue and banter switches back and forth. You really have to get fully inside the character’s personality and break out of your own limitations to find that voice. If you do, the character becomes real and if there is change in the depth of the people in the story as in the case of young Patrick Mitchell in this book, you can show clearly that he is making personal progress without saying it.

  It is great to have the freedom to express your ideas through a fictional work, but it was much tougher skill to acquire than I imagined. As it turns out, you actually write each chapter about 7 times on average. But in the end, it is worth it if the readers find the work enjoyable and beneficial. We are getting enough feedback to see that goal was reached for most who have read the book.

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  Tags: Lamar Smith, more to life, writing fiction

• Lamar On Getting Your Money’s Worth

  Lamar Smith – Getting Your Money’s Worth from Lamar Smith on Vimeo.

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• Lamar On Fast Track

  Here’s a clip of Anna Gilligan, from the Fox Business show Fast Track, speaking to Lamar about what it means to get to the corner office.

  Lamar Smith on Fast Track from Lamar Smith on Vimeo.

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  Tags: Anna Gilligan, corner office, fast track, Fox Business, Lamar Smith

• Crank up Your Chainsaw

  When the chainsaw was first developed, a salesman traveled through the great logging territories of the northwestern, so the story goes, selling one or two saws at each of the camps.  This was to create demand for greater sales on a future trip.  One month later he retraced his steps and sales were going through the roof at each of the camps because the loggers were completely replacing their old methods and buying chainsaws for everyone.  Then he came to one camp where the new saws were not in evidence; the old manual methods of cross cut saws and axes were still in use. This was a completely different experience than every other camp.  He was mystified. He asked the leader of the camp if he did not find the saws to be a great multiplier of productivity. The leader answered that no, they actually slowed the productivity and his men preferred the old methods.  He asked if they had a chainsaw handy and the leader produced one.  The salesman quickly checked it for fuel and oil.  Everything was in order so he flicked the switch and pulled the handle, thus cranking up the loud engine.  The leader and his men looked at each other and said, “What’s that noise?”

  While we can understand that an uncranked chainsaw is not as efficient as a manual tool that is designed for that use, and although the story is funny it does beg the question, what are each of us capable of doing that we have not accessed… not really even tried… not considered what we could do?  Each of us is capable of so much more than we ever access.  At a deep level, we know it is true.  A commitment to courageously process and analyze what we are capable of and what would motivate us to reach much deeper, hold ourselves more accountable, become more disciplined and to honestly revisit our progress in the efforts with regularity can propel beneficial change that begins to feed on itself.  Few have the “guts” to do it, but the ones who do bless us all.  Crank your chainsaw in some way this week.

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  Tags: commitment, Life, progress

• Getting a Whiff of Balance and Its Benefits

  Up until a few years ago, tobacco smoke was a constant in virtually every indoor space.  It hung in the air, permeated fabrics and porous building material and placed a “grey haze” on almost everything.  Even non-smoker’s homes did not escape because many more people smoked and did so wherever they went.  It was so pervasive that indicating you preferred for someone to not smoke in your home or office would have been considered inhospitable.  Hard to believe now, isn’t it?

  In the late 1970’s non-tobacco users began to assert their desires and non-smoking spaces began to appear, slowly at first.  The air did not clear immediately so the remarkable difference between smoke filled and non-smoking spaces were not immediately discernible to all, but as new construction was completed and interior space that had never been exposed to smoke began to be occupied, the movement really took off.   At that point the great difference between smoke saturated and truly fresh air in enclosed rooms was clear and there was no turning back.

  Today, with so many of us living in a highly distracted and challenged mode that I have come to call Imbalanced, it feels like low energy, behind the 8 ball, confused, frustrated, unsatisfied, inefficient, burdensome living with high potential for burnout and wasted effort.  We each have so many files open in our heads that it is difficult to do a really good job on any one task for all the distraction of the work we are NOT doing.  Sound familiar?  I see it in most people around me including young and old, male and female, executive and blue collar.  A couple of nights ago the father of twin high school seniors girls told me one of his daughters has dropped out of her long love affair with dancing so as to pursue better grades and a more impressive array of activities to go on her resume for college and beyond.  He was sad about it as you are only a kid once.

  We are a nation of sleep deprived, caffeine fueled, out of shape, frantically busy people who live with feelings of guilt for not doing better and little knowledge of true joy and almost no personal satisfaction and peace.  Like the smoke filled rooms of a few years ago, it is the same to varying degrees for almost everyone around us, so we don’t detect the fact that there is a different way to go.  If we can ever get a little balance in our lives, the improved feelings, increased productivity, and joy of living more of each day aligned with our authentic purpose will give us a deep craving for much more of this sanity balance and focus offers us.

  How can we improve our balance?  Start by staking out some time to think through what is happening to us.  How are we really spending our time and how are those choices determined?  How does our actual time use compare with what is really important to us?  Such a review can begin the process and once we pay more attention to the relatively simple principles that drive progress and well being, physically our energy and self confidence increase providing real encouragement we can do the same in the other important aspects of our being.  But rather than seeing the analysis and planning step being proposed here as one more task to add to the list, it should be seen as a multiplier of your personal power, too important to ignore.  Put some time on the calendar this week.  Refer to www.ImprovingYourBalance.com for some more help.

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  Tags: balance, benefits, Life

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