RE-POST - Thursday, August 10th 2023
[Vol. 1 Issue #330]
When I started writing the newsletter back in September, the goal of publishing 100 newsletters seemed a worthy goal. In the beginning, the writing was the easiest part; Substack is a great platform and easy to use, but writing and pushing:
Is only half of the work. Building stories, curating other exciting stories, editing, adding artwork, working with the layouts, adding media, and doing your best to source everything you find is another big job for a daily newsletter. This all comes before promotion and communications. The experiment of 100 newsletters hit 300 today, and a thousand hours later, the question I sit with now is: where does it go from here. Stay tuned…
Bigmouth Strikes Again:
Stories | News | Music | Art & Design - With A Shout (out)
Big Projects
New With A Shout Playlist:
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Big Stories
The Struggle for Freedom
The 2006 feature film 300, directed by Zack Snyder, starring Gerard Butler, was based on the Battle of Thermopylae in the Greco-Persian Wars. The legend of 300 is the fight against overwhelming odds; in this case, it's 300 warriors against the massive Persian army with estimates in the hundreds of thousands of soldiers. A battle every one of the Greek soldiers knew they would not survive. For thousands of years, the Spartans led by King Leonidas have represented the ultimate sacrifice of their lives to protect; their home, way of life, and freedom.
Sacrifice
The struggle for freedom can be both epic and small. Starting a business or a creative endeavor you plan to share with the world takes courage, sacrifice and is a struggle for expression. A good writer can get a job writing for someone else or freelance for clients; in both cases, the writer is the service; some of the writer's writing will be personal, but most will be assigned. A good writer who wants to express his or her voice and includes art and music must start a publication or a business. That's a struggle; with courage, the sacrifice will be worth it, if you have a story you want to tell.
Big Shout
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Inspiration Nation
Writers Inspired Writers
I swore off reading books In the early 90s. I was knee-deep in the working world a few years out of college. Lots of two job 80 hour work weeks to accelerate the young executive experience and get ahead as fast as I could. It didn't take long for the repetition of work and exhaustion of happy hours to bring me back to the written word and off the book fast I had started. I remember the books that kickstarted my way back to the written word. The first book was The Firm by John Grisham; if you have ever seen the tv series Suits, it's basically The Firm for tv. Grisham writes with such detail and includes parts of each of his characters so that you invest quickly and must find out what will happen. Grisham makes everyday law work seem as exciting as any detective show ever made being a cop. Book two took the details of someone so focused and a puzzle so complex that I felt smarter after I read it. The book was The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. I read this book after I saw the movie with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins; even though the characters had faces and voices, the book was even better. As someone who struggles in traditional classrooms and education settings, I am attracted to reading about intelligent and focused people.
Expanded Audience
The NYT asked several authors who inspired them and the book selection wide. From Steinbeck and Plath to Toni Morrison and Norman Rush, writers and their love of art are as unique as the books they read and write.
Here’s a bonus – NYT asked authors the same question back in 1984; check out those recommendations and see if you recognize the young authors.
Big Things
Stranger Things
Urban on Time
As we celebrate a mini-milestone, why not highlight a story that takes you back billions of years to the Big Bang. Tim Urban and his Wait But Why blog sent a post highlighting one of his most popular posts over the weekend. Urban has several posts and thoughts on Time; this post is called Putting Time In Perspective – UPDATED. Tim Urban, similar to Austin Kleon, is both writer and artist – in this piece, he writes about the 1-second blip that is the modern human concerning the time it's believed that the planet was created. He dives deeper into time, starting with yesterday, and takes it all the way down to almost 14 billion years ago, at what Urban considers the confusing time of the Big Bang.
Urban's timeline and analysis go deep, but even his deep dive uses time blocks we are all familiar with. It starts with hours; even though it reaches 14 billion years (roughly 122 trillion hours), it gets there one hour at a time. Yes, we are just Dust in the Wind, but the hours before the dust are essential. 300 published posts in a newsletter in 300 consecutive days took us approximately 3 and a half hours to research, write, design, and publish. Close to 1,000 hours in 10 months are the little victories you can use to build up to big ones. Commit to writing and publishing every day, and you will force yourself to optimize your writing systems and be forced to prioritize other things to meet your deadlines. One word in front of another, one hour in front of another, that and a lot of faith and a little luck, you will get where you want to go.
Big Noise
Sound Checks
Just Like Heaven - Extended
In an excellent remix, A YouTuber named Ellis created an extended version of Just Like Heaven by The Cure. In this video, Ellis extended both the song and mashed up several videos with several members of The Cure over the last 30+ years.
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Today’s Tune
Laugh Tracks.
Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.
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Words from Gen X
Words from Gen X in age or spirit.
"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath
Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!
Don’t Tell A Soul
Secret Links to Cool Stuff:
Words | Music | Art | Unknown?
With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.
Last Call
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O/X