Life spins around us pretty fast. It’s astounding that when we sit down to write, create, work, or whatever; the world comes to a screeching halt. Of course the distractions, the annoying emails, the tweets and post alerts seem to continue, but when creating really matters, you freeze. My last post talked about the need to conquer this writer’s block. If you don’t want to click back to read the whole post, here’s an excerpt:

It kills me every Wednesday night. While I’ve known all week that I have a personal deadline set to post every Thursday morning; I wait until Wednesday night (or later) to actually start writing. I take notes, jot ideas, scribble and doodle all week, but when it comes to Wednesday, I open TextEdit and just sit.

CRAP…

Suddenly, tonight, a voice in my head said “What the hell are you doing? Just start writing, you moron!” So I did. I wrote, “You’re going to die anyway.” and POW, the words started rolling.

So I challenged you to write the title of a future post for me – to kick-start some of the juices. And to my surprise, you stepped to the challenge (yay).

Now we – more to the point, YOU – get to vote on which title will be my next post! Read the entries below and vote for your favorite. You have until the end of the day (6:00 pm CST) Monday, June 21st to make your decision.

I will take the most popular title and interview the person that submitted it to get “the full story.” Who knows? It may reveal something about one of our fellow community of readers or it may just be cool to hear how they came up with the title. Any way we look at it, it’s going to prove to be interesting and challenging.

So, vote away! I look forward to seeing the results!

Keep Cooking! (free-flowing creative that saves the world!)

Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Feel that? It’s your life slipping away. Yep. Every second of every minute that you spend reading this post, you’re slowly dying. Breath by breath, each heartbeat with each syllable, you creep closer to the end.

oooooooooh….

Pretty ominous, huh? So, why the dark perspective? Well, this is what got me writing tonight. It’s what motivated me to pick one more juicy word from my mental nostril just to see what it looked like.

In other words, I had writer’s block.

It kills me every Wednesday night. While I’ve known all week that I have a personal deadline set to post every Thursday morning; I wait until Wednesday night (or later) to actually start writing. I take notes, jot ideas, scribble and doodle all week, but when it comes to Wednesday, I open TextEdit and just sit.

CRAP…

Suddenly, tonight, a voice in my head said “What the hell are you doing? Just start writing, you moron!” So I did. I wrote, “You’re going to die anyway.” and POW, the words started rolling.

Many (many) moons ago, I wrote a post about having writer’s block. More to the point, I wrote about the keys to getting the writing wheels out of neutral and making a connection with my readers. For me, it starts with a title. It can be anything – like free association. Eventually the words and images start connecting in my brain and the solution reveals itself.

I wrote:

“… All I want is a headline – a short sentence that would communicate something about YOU or about something you want to discuss… Below are a few examples…

‘Without feathers, I’d never…’
‘But I can’t feed my kids on your wisdom’
‘Forget the President, I want to eat Jell-O’
‘The importance of Balsa wood and Miller Lite.’
‘It’s not Rocky Science’

And so on… and so on…”

Unfortunately, the response was less than stellar…  maybe because I’d only just begun blogging and Drew McLellan was the only one that ever read my posts?  Who knows? But he was gracious enough to leave me a comment. And I dropped the ball… (sorry Drew)

So let’s try it again.

Send ‘em in. Post your headline and your name / contact info in the comments section below. Once I have enough (5-7 or more…) I’ll hold a contest to see who’s headline will be the start to a future blog post – AND THEY’LL BE VOTED ON BY YOU!

Maybe we’ll make a connection and create something the whole world will love. Maybe we won’t and it will be another piece of gravel on the shoulder of the information super highway. If anything, it will be a way for me to get to know some of you.

Hell, we’re all going to die, eventually. We might as well have fun while we’re here. I look forward to reading your headlines…

Keep Cooking (free-wheeling, fun ideas…)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef