This week: Palate Cleansers Edited by: Jeff  
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"You never know what you can do until you try,
and very few try unless they have to."
-- C.S. Lewis
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of your regular editors for the Noticing Newbies Official Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 350 newsletters across the site during that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or the handy feedback field at the bottom of this newsletter! 
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PALATE CLEANSERS
In many multi-course meals (or those with a variety of complex flavors), it's not uncommon for the meal to come with a palate cleanser, a neutral-flavored food or drink designed to remove residual flavors from the mouth so that the next course of food can be enjoyed with a fresh perspective. Traditional French palate cleansers include sorbet, bread, apple slices, banana, and pickles. Tart or citrusy elements typically work best, and if you're a fan of sushi you're probably familiar with the pickled ginger most restaurants include with your meal for this very reason.
I've often extolled the virtues of writing in multiple genres or media in past newsletters. I believe that there's something to be learned from all kinds of different writing, and those who are willing to try different things often add skills and techniques to their toolkits that they wouldn't normally have acquired if they just wrote the same thing over and over again. For my own writing, I made a concerted effort for several years to explore the romance and erotica genres, even though they're not my main area of interest. That experience writing in those genres has really opened my eyes how to write those types of scenes well and, in many cases, when another writer is inexperienced or uncomfortable tackling that kind of subject matter.
That advice has often come with a "mix it up, try different things if you get bored with what you're currently working on" angle to it. But what happens when you do write different kinds of things? The truth is, you don't have to be a multi-genre hyphenate who dabbles in novels and short stories and screenwriting and poetry and essays to have experienced this. You might have experienced the same awkward transitory experience moving from your fiction to writing a newsletter for your readers. Or moving from your poetry to responding to emails. We write all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, and there are times when switching between two different modes of writing can wreak havoc with our rhythms and creativity.
Enter the palate cleanser.
By definition, a palate cleanser should be neutral and brief. It's not really a palate cleanser if it's a long piece of writing that could be a meal in itself. And it's not going to clear things up and allow you to refocus if it's not neutral. Wading into an argument on social media, or responding to an email you've been avoiding are probably not the best way to reset yourself back to zero!
Consider quick pieces of writing that you're comfortable with: a blog, a poem, or even a flash fiction story. Journaling is great for this kind of thing. Find something that you can accomplish quickly, and that gets you in the right mindset for the kind of writing you need to tackle next. The practice of undertaking a transitory task designed to help get you in the right mindset for what you need to do next is often the key to getting "in the zone," or into a flow state, or whatever you want to call it, more efficiently.
If you're struggling to transition between the kinds of writing you need to do, or are looking for a way to get into a better headspace when you're writing, consider designing some quick, easily-achievable palate cleanser writing activities for yourself to help with the transition from one task to another.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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EXCERPT: Ten thousand feet of empty air separated the toes of Lizbeth Valera's boots and the distant earth's surface below. She rocked back on heels supported by the smooth marble platform known as the Plunge, a platform sat atop a small, floating island that abruptly ended beneath the arches of her feet. She stood on both land and sky, poised between two worlds, a soft breeze sighing through her hair.
EXCERPT: As I approach the last few episodes of The Good Place, I find my interest in moral philosophy peaking. And so, I pondered on the ultimate question- are we really good or bad? and if yes (for any option), who decides that and on what criteria?
EXCERPT: If you travel the Euphrates, up the river, you will come to where the Garden of Eden will undoubtedly be, in eastern Turkey directly north of Israel. Adam and Eve could have settled somewhere around Israel or in Israel. The Nile River is the Pison and the Jordan River is the Gihon. The Mediterranean Sea and tha Red Sea did not exist before the great flood, and the Nile River ran in a southern direction before the flood.
EXCERPT: He laid in his bed sleeping with dreams of dread quietly, deep asleep. He awoke, startled, there was something in the room with him. He heard flapping sounded like when his grandmother would shake out the rugs on the front porch when he was very young. |
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Noticing Newbies: October 20, 2021 Issue [#11039]
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