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An Unbidden Meditation

Feedback on: “What Does Your Shadow Sound Like?”

In these articles, feedback is provided on stories submitted by brave writers looking to learn and grow. Comments will be provided on anything from title and pictures, to grammar, language, and cohesion. All feedback is meant to help both the original author and anyone else reading this, and general writing tips will be highlighted.

Today’s story is something else entirely. I was honestly not prepared for what I was about to read. The story, by ItsAlwaysRightNow, is a mixture of poetry and a written meditation guide. Read it for yourself here:

The first sentence is “Digital soothing drops N°4”, which struck me as a bit odd… Until I realized it is meant as a subtitle and places this story as number 4 in a series. And next comes the beautiful and mesmerizing photo by the author himself:

When digging around a bit on ItsAlwaysRightNow’s profile, one can find the rest of the “soothing drops” series. While this story right here should focus specifically on “What Does Your Shadow Sound Like”, it’s worth to at least briefly address the series as a whole.

The series seems to struggle a little to find its form. Some pieces take the form of poetry, some are philosophical musings, and some are almost like transcriptions of guided meditation sessions. Though I am not a regular reader of poetry and do not normally enjoy this genre of writing, I feel the strongest pieces in the series are those that lean more towards the poetry style and less toward dialectic writing. This is because ItsAlwaysRightNow has a way with these very concise, but loaded sentences. The philosophical musings are almost a dime a dozen on Medium (sorry, but that’s a fact…). There is also a lot of poetry, but the style of ItsAlwaysRightNow seems rather unique.

Tip 1: Play to your unique strengths! Figure out not just what you are best at, but what you are BETTER at than most other writers out there. And then leverage that edge as much as you can.

And then we come to this piece…

I don’t know if it was the timing of reading this after an insanely high-stress workday, or if it was the way I had no idea what I was going into, but the piece struck me. Hard!

I looked at the photo. Read the text. Breathed. Read my favorite lines again, and went back to gazing at the photo. The whole experience was like meditation. Almost spiritual (coming from an engineer turned IT-project manager, turned executive manager!).

The sentences are short and are ingeniously designed to both describe the scene in the photo, while also acting as musings of what it would be like to be PART of that scene.

Tip 2: Consider more interesting ways of phrasing your content or message. There can be ways of skillfully crafting sentences that serve multiple purposes, and that can make the reading experience much more interesting and enjoyable.

The sentences include observations that are worthy of even the greatest zen monks like this one:

The rocks that just lie there silently, yet define the boundaries of everything else? — ItsAlwaysRightNow

The constant cadence of the sentences placed one below the other, lulls the reader into an almost trance-like state. This was an awesome and unexpected experience.

After the rhythmic sentences, comes a section that includes somewhat of a philosophical observation:

It seems important to me above all that we understand ourselves as part of the big whole and also align our actions and thoughts with it. — ItsAlwaysRightNow

This is the type of text that did not feel right for me in the other pieces of this series, but it somehow works here. It barely manages not to ruin the mood and the “trance”, but segues quickly onto the final message of becoming one with the scene. Again, it all feels very much like guided meditation. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece.

Tip 3: If you aim to create a certain rhythm in your text, be aware of the experience of the reader when this rhythm is finally broken. Make sure whatever comes next feels natural and moves the reader smoothly on to the next section.

Lastly, ItsAlwaysRightNow wraps up with yet another ingenious ploy:

And thank you very much for your clapping and your feedback. I very much appreciate your visit here. — ItsAlwaysRightNow

This presupposes that the reader claps and provides feedback (comments). A very strong unconscious nudge to do so to reciprocate the thanks you have already received. Very sneaky — and very intelligent. I love it!

Tip 4: Find interesting and new ways of writing your “call to action(s)”, such as asking to clap, comment, follow, or subscribe.

All told, this was a very enjoyable, though unexpected, reading experience. And I must wholeheartedly disagree with ItsAlwaysRightNow, when writing that the “ digital soothing drops” are non-addictive!

Summary

Title

While quite a lot of leeway must be given for titles of what can only be described as poetry, I feel this one is a bit off. The title itself is fine, but it doesn’t seem to correlate very much with the text itself. I have no idea of what an alternative title might be… I am nowhere near creative or poetic enough to come up with a suggestion.

Pictures

As the story is built around the included picture, there are no further comments to make regarding the choice of picture. It is beautiful.

Formatting

The very first sentence is likely meant as a subtitle and should be formatted as such. Other than that the formatting is nice, with good use of section dividers where appropriate.

Grammar

With only a single singular/plural typo, there is not really anything to comment on regarding grammar. It is not at all obvious that ItsAlwaysRightNow is not a native English speaker.

Language

Beautiful, highly “loaded” or “dense” sentences. Very potent. Well written.

Cohesion and Cadence

Very nice cadence, and an almost drum-like rhythm. You can almost feel the trance sneaking up on you when reading.

For more writing tips, read:

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