This has been a while coming because I drove to see my family, putting a lot of miles on my car! I shot this between Phoenix and Los Angeles. At least some of the scenery was spectacular.
I’ve been into nonfiction books lately. One of the most powerful is The Three Laws of Performance, by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan. It is mainly aimed at business owners, to teach them how and why to bring their employees into the process of designing the company by giving them a voice and getting them engaged and excited about their work, but it gives plenty of advice that anyone can apply to create better relationships with the people around them and to become more engaged and excited about their life.
I found the example at the beginning of the book, of a mine in South Africa, the most interesting and amazing. The idea that people from different aspects of the mine could be brought together to even talk (and that means top management listening to mine workers with respect) let alone brainstorm to create a company that wants to operate in the best interests of its workers and their environment still seems like a fairytale, but apparently the authors and mine personnel actually did this and created a more vibrant and caring mine operation.
The Three Laws of Performance helped me understand some things I learned through Landmark Education. They talked about true listening, where you let go of preconceptions, and the ways people communicate non-verbally. They talked about the ways that we all see the world through our own pasts, and they talked about leadership. It’s a great read, which I will keep handing on my shelf to review occasionally.
I also finished Larry Brook’s Story Engineering, which Kristen Lamb recommends on her wonderful blog about writing and blogging. I can’t praise this enough if you want to write a novel. It’s so logical and I love logical. It breaks novels down into manageable pieces which didn’t, at least to me, seem like they would prevent one from being creative. I definitely will be applying his ideas to speed up the writing of my next novel and avoid all of the rewrites that I did on the last one. I am curious to see if it really helps to plan rather than sitting down and letting the creative juices flow (which is so much fun as far as I am concerned!).
This article talks about what fiction authors should read. Everything, in my opinion, that interests us! What Non-Fiction Authors Can Teach Novelists