John Bechtel, B2B Writer: When Content Matters
“When results are mission critical, inspired writing is no longer a commodity.”It’s about time.
Humans typically become more conservative with their risk taking as the time left to them shrinks. But what is the value of unfulfulled promise, the potential we left wasted on the table of life if we fear to try? How good could we really have been, if we could have taken our foot off the brakes?
A conversation between a writer and a scientist at Puerto Limón Hostel about sunsets, malaria, and buzzwords
They want their travel writer to do more research, work harder to find something new, or an innovative perception of the traditional. Dare I say it, maybe less sunsets, or at least only those sunsets so rare they are profoundly difficult to describe, and then they expect you, the travel writer, to find the words to match the challenge.
Thanksgiving, smiles, springtime, and where to have sex in Buenos Aires . . .
The Traveler: The traveler has no safety net. At home the familiar and unchanging serve as a safety net. But the traveler needs to be in the zone, and in the flow. Otherwise he can get lost with no one to help him. He can’t bother with worry or fear. So he allows for everything and can know nothing for sure, trusting that in the end things will be as they need to be.
About Enya in Buenos Aires
Enya, Ana, Ryland and others I have not written about (yet) give me courage and renew the joy of my life every day: their enthusiasm, curiosity, openness, and perhaps most of all, their purposefulness, that they are about something, creating value and meaning beyond eating, drinking, the satisfaction of biological urgings, and banal conversation. The specific direction their lives take really doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they have a direction, one of their choosing, and one that contributes a sense of meaning to their existence.
So you want to be a writer . . .
Can you get published as a mediocre writer? Yes, absolutely. I see mediocre writing all the time in publications. Can you rise to the top of the profession as a mediocre writer? Probably not. How good do you really want to be?
In search of an “un hombre completo”
We have learned to fear failure. We can unlearn it. As a small child we learned to walk by falling down. If we had been paralyzed by fear of failure then, we would be cripples today. Completo is an illusion. Failures are the seed corn of tomorrow’s achievements. Life is not lived in a straight line.
Looking for a lost ball in tall grass
For the purposeful, Puerto Limon is a plateau to catch your breath, reevaluate priorities; a needed gestation period to incubate new directions. An intellectual oasis on the road of life.
Hostel honey bees
One of the things I am enjoying about hostel life is that this place is a beehive of cross-pollination. What is heard here is unfiltered by teams of experts who determine what the public should or shouldn’t hear, or the politically correct interpretation that should be given to events or ideas under discussion.
The legendary pickpockets of Buenos Aires
As I saw the hand retreating from my pocket, my eyes locked on his. Jet black hair, eyes like inscrutable dark pools in an expressionless face. There was no frenzied reaction, no attempt to turn and run. Just a steady gaze.
Traveling Safely in a Hostel World
Very few here are drifters; everyone seems to be on the way to somewhere else. Every day I learn a few more words and phrases in Spanish and my mistakes are greeted with good-natured laughter. I am starting to unwind and relax my North American grip. I am learning to exhale. It’s a beginning. I am privileged to be a guest in the lives of these, my new friends.
Why extended travel? Why Argentina?
My own experience has been that there are two different kinds of landscapes; one being of the postcard and glossy travel magazine variety, and the quite different one of participating actively in a culture and being there long enough to acquire respect and acceptance by those living it.
John Bechtel Travel Writer Facing the Fears
What will it take for you to accept, and own, that you are a travel writer? Will a business card make you feel like one? Will a website do the trick? I know of only one thing that works: you must write.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” Revived in Minot Book Reading
KXNet.com - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson-KXNEWS,ND A Barnes and Noble media event with Kimberly Enlow. My neighbor and friend Kimberly Enlow is Community Business Development Manager at the local Barnes and Noble book store. So when she inquired if I would be...
John Bechtel advises aspiring writers: 10 Things you should know before hiring a website designer
The writing of the content of the website is the single most important element of effective SEO, not to mention developing loyal followers and subscribers and customers.
John Bechtel, writer, on overcoming media overwhelm: Take a break from the clock!
In a world of uber SEO, we are all Waldo trying to be found.