Tag: inspiration

10-Year-Old’s Poem About Dyslexia Inspires the Internet

As an English teacher, Jane Broadis has read her fair share of student-penned poetry.  However, none had ever inspired her as much as a poem recently written by a student with learning disability dyslexia.

The assignment instructed the class to write a poem that could be read both forwards(from top to bottom) and backwards (from bottom to top). Broadis was so impressed with this particular poem that she shared it online. Take a look:

 

Image via Jane Broadis/Twitter.

 

As upsetting as it is to read the poem forwards, the beauty of this ten-year-old child turning the narrative around the way she does is wonderful!

 

 

Broadis’ post has garnered over 30,000 retweets and more than 100,000 likes, and the comments that followed are as inspiring as the poem itself, with many people sharing their own stories of showing the world what they’re made of in spite of their disability!

 

 

 

 

Hopefully these stories teach all of us to be kinder to one another.

Let’s give everyone a chance and try to understand the meaning behind the words we share, rather than judging one another for doing things that may seem strange. Everyone has their own way with words after all.

(On a side note, The Dyslexic Advantage is a fantastic book. If you are interested, give it a read.)

 

Featured Image via Entropy

Dr. Seuss' most beloved children's characters

Next Time You Hate Your Writing, Remember: Dr. Seuss Almost Burned His First Book

Most writers second-guess the quality of their work, whether these doubts are frequent or limited to insomnia-causing late night angst sessions. Fewer writers guess that those on the bestseller list have these same fears. This week, a letter from a young Theodore Geisel—a.k.a. Dr. Seuss—is available at auction for $3,500. Like Geisel's books, the letter tells a fascinating yet unbelievable story: a vulnerable, personal account of an aspiring author who nearly burned his first children's manuscript.

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10 Enchanting Literary Quotes to Keep You Warm This Winter

December 21st marks the winter solstice, the very first day of winter. For those of you who are now in a state of dread and hibernation, don’t worry. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year; it’s the day with the least amount of daylight. However, this also means that days will only grow longer from here, so cheer up!

 

There’s nothing quite as cozy and inspiring as watching snow fall on a quiet street or looking out at the flurries from inside a warm house. I’d say it’s one of the closest things to magic. If you’re still not ready for it, maybe these beautiful quotes about the season can convince you.

 

1. “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

 

2. “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
― Edith Sitwell

 

3. “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

 

4. “Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono

 

5. “My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

 

 

6. “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

 

7. “Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.”
― Gustave Flaubert, November

 

8. “Even the strongest blizzards start with a single snowflake.”
― Sara Raasch, Snow Like Ashes

 

9. “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

 

10. “In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

 

 

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james rollins

‘Subterranean’ Author James Rollins Owes His Career to Life Coach Tony Robbins

During an interview at the annual four-day conference of bestselling thriller-authors from all across the globe, Thrillerfest, acclaimed science fiction and action author James Rollins admitted that his career may not have begun exactly as he’s stated in the past…

 

I reached my thirtieth birthday and thought, ‘well, if I really want to be a writer than I’d better start now,’ and that’s exactly what I did…google that story, you’ll see me tell it. I tell that story all the time…and it’s a lie!

 

Rollins then went on to explain that one night, around two AM, he was dolling out the payroll for the employees at his veterinary clinic, and was slightly delirious with fatigue. In the background, infomercials were playing on the television, that would alter the course of his life forever:

 

A booming voice asked me if I was ready to change my life…I turned toward the TV and started nodding…

 

As it turns out, that booming voice of God actually belonged to none other than infamous life coach, Tony Robbins. 

 

So, Rollins did what any lost soul during the late-nighties would do; he ordered all forty of Tony Robbins cassette tapes.

 

The first tape said to take out a sheet of paper, forget everything you know about your life, close your eyes, and write down what you want to do…I wrote ‘I want to write a novel.’

 

Rollins flipped the tape over and Robbins’s voice was soon urging him to take that one, first step toward achieving that dream…and that’s exactly what he did!

 

So yes, I owe my career to Tony Robbins.

 

And, thus James Rollins began etching away at what would one-day become his breakout novel, Subterranean. 

 

Subterranean

Image via Amazon

 

I’ve had no formal training in writing…I joined a a writing critique group in Sacramento and, to this day, they still read all of my work before my editor does.”

 

It took Rollins just eleven months to finish his first novel. He then shopped the book around; sending the manuscript to one literary agent after the next.

 

And, much like nearly every other successful artist in the history of time, Rollins received rejection after rejection after rejection; forty-nine literary agents turned down his work.

 

One agent was kind enough to take the time and leave me a handwritten note on the manuscript, however…he wrote ‘this is unpublishable’.

 

Still, Rollins didn’t let these rejections deter him from his goal, and, luckily enough, the fiftieth agent he sent Subterranean to said yes, and the book became a wildly popular success!

 

It just goes to prove that all you truly need to succeed is perseverance, a steady community of support, the belief in your work (and yourself), and the booming voice of Tony Robbins.

 

Don’t tell Tony Robbins that…pretty soon he’ll be asking me for royalties!

 

Via Tenor

Via Tenor

 

Featured Image via Similar Authors Like

helen keller

21 Helen Keller Quotes to Get You Through the Day

Children are taught the story of a young girl who learned to communicate with the world despite being both deaf and blind, but they hear little of the woman that she became. The fact that Helen Keller managed to find her voice is, arguably, far less remarkable than what she chose to do with it. Yesterday was her 138th birthday, so let her remind you of everything that she was.

 

An Optimist

 

“I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of to-day’s failures, but of the success that may come to-morrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles — a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward — if the road was always smooth and pleasant. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.”

 

 

“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”

 

 

“I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true.”

 

 

A Socialist

 

“If the capitalist class had the sense it is reputed to have, it would know that violence is the worst weapon that can be used against men who have nothing to lose and the world to gain.”

 

“Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.… You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?”

 

“Capitalism will inevitably find itself face to face with a starving multitude of unemployed workers demanding food or destruction of the social order that has starved them and robbed them of their jobs.”

 

An Author

 

“I don’t want to live in a hand-me-down world of others’ experiences. I want to write about me, my discoveries, my fears, my feelings, about me.”

 

 

“If I write what my soul thinks it will be visible, and the words will be its body.”

 

 

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

 

A Philosopher

 

 

“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”

 

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” 

 

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.” 

 

 

An Activist

 

“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.”

 

“The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think.”

 

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.” 

 

A Scholar

 

“True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.”

 

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”

 

“Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen?
I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbor was.”

 

A Philanthropist

 

“Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.”

 

“No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.”

 

“I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.”

 

 

Feature Image Via Flickr