So Many Questions - A couple of answers...

I ask zillions of questions myself and have lots of patience for answering other people's questions (hey - I taught first grade and kindergarten, it's a job requirement "thou shalt answer zillions and zillions of questions during the course of the school year"). Having said that, I must say that some of your email questions get me thinking about why the information might be important or of note. I'm not sure why I'm going to write the following but here goes. Maybe I'm just exhausted and know not what I do...

Now, professionally speaking when working with clients I don't necessarily answer all their questions because the questions are not always relevant to the coaching and sometimes the question is information.

What do you want to know and why? It's a great exercise to try with yourself.
What information are you looking for and how will it help you to know it?
Will it inform a decision? Provide more information about whatever? I read a great line recently which I wish I could attribute but in true "reading overload" don't remember where I read it. It was something like "information can insulate against shock". Sometimes people want the information as a protective device, insulation as it were. There are more and more reasons people ask questions, too many to mention here. Then again there's something to be said for "sometimes a question is just a question".

So here are a couple of answers.
A number of you wanted to know why I mentioned taking the seat near the door at the doctor's office (I would have been curious too). Occupational hazard in addition to personal preference.

Dan asked here what many of you wanted to know and a question that comes up in workshops and seminars. What do I read for inspiration? It depends on what I'm working on. I devour books of every sort on every topic. I read vast amounts of non-fiction as well as fiction and when working in, or learning, a new genre I read everything I can on the genre, topic and works in that genre. That goes for fiction, short stories, essays, scripts etc. I also recommend reading current magazines on the topic. You'll find out what's going on, what the new trends are, what's being picked up or published etc. Subscribe to internet newsletters as well, there are tons on most topics - look through them and see which ones match your reading and information style.

Don't forget to go back to the classics in the area you're trying to learn about. Also, I recommend books that describe people's experiences when they were first starting. They're very helpful as far as finding out what to expect, what's considered "normal" and what should set off warning bells.

What am I reading now? Professionally....well - at the risk of your eyes glazing over, and knowing that talking about it can clear a room pretty quickly, I'll leave that for another time - or perhaps for The Dramatic Mind sometime in the future.

For fun - I've been devouring books by Douglas Kennedy. He wrote "The Big Picture" which is one of the few books I read and re-read. I like some of his themes and having started out as a playwright his dialogue is spot-on. He relocated to the UK and his books are only printed there now so I just tracked down a whole slew of them and have been inhaling them.

The William Zinsser book I mentioned in an earlier post is
Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel by William, Editor; Allende, Isabel; McCarry, Charles; Piercy, Marge, Contributors Zinsser (Paperback - 1989) .

About movie recs. You are correct that I haven't mentioned any lately, as far as writing, editing, character, story etc. That's because I have been soooooo underwhelmed by anything I've seen recently. That includes lots of the over-hyped movies we've been hearing about. Most recent DVD? An Israeli film called "One Small Step" or "Tza'ad Katan" which is the last film produced by someone I knew very well who passed away a couple of weeks after the movie was released in 2003. It's a sweet movie with some wonderful dialogue, characters and insights. In all honesty, I can't be very objective about this one but I loved it.

That's about it for now.

Enjoy the day,
RK