Silent
Silent provides the tools for seekers to recognize their path and enables self-reliance for spiritual and magickal growth.
Seekers gain insight from his work and find their inner calm from his ability to listen and help others reflect.
Listicles made easy
Lawrence Lerner • May 2, 2018
Four Ways to show you love That Pagan Life
Listicles, you cannot scroll through a significant website or new program without seeing one. Arguably made famous by Buzzfeed, listicles are journalistic or blogging tools with many impacts. Start with a title that tells you there is a list of information. The listicle is a portmanteau of "list" and "article."
- "Three easy changes to decorate your altar for Mabon."
- "Six things you should never do during a Great Rite."
- "The nine sketchy things no one knows about Fae."
I will help you write (maybe the first!) an article that illustrates how well you know #ThatPaganLife. Perhaps it's something that will help your coven, personal craft business, or betters the Pagan lifestyle for all of us. Creating listicles should be fun and easy, and I hope you'll share your knowledge.
There is an opening paragraph, then the list of items. Each item may have as little as one content line or several sections. How long is predicated on several things:
- Your audience – Pagans, generally want it short and to the point, although some might look for fewer bullets and more detail.
- Your style – Write your way. Use that to your advantage if you're known for short, pithy sayings.
- The topic – Deeply technical areas merit more attention; however, don't drag on. If you are an expert, you should be able to make your point in a few sentences (more on this later). If you need to write more, consider a different format for the article.
Why use this format? It draws immediate attention and generates a call to action. Attention generates eyeballs and revenue, whether direct or indirect. Why? Numbers indicate complex quantitative data ("Five Weather Patterns to Know During a Full Moon"). Qualitative data, if it's from sources we know, trust, or respect ("Mother's Four Favorite Yule Appetizers"). People are most likely to act upon practical and pragmatic information in short bites.
- Demonstrate your "Command of Data."
- Einstein wrote, "If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself." Therefore, using lists shouldn't imply simple or less relevant content. Instead, lists demonstrate that you understand a topic well enough to break it down and explain it in relatable, everyday terms. There are steps, an order of precedence, or a relatable number for highly technical subjects. For example, "Three parts of a good ritual," "Nine Tips for making herbal remedies," or "Four Steps You Must do to when Designing Mandalas."
- Writing is your opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, passion, and, most importantly, your capability to the world. But, unfortunately, anyone can over-complicate an article.
- Organize – This shows a depth of understanding. Creating a clear and understandable structure or taxonomy illustrates how well you know a topic.
- Be to the point – Brevity and completeness combined show expertise.
- Make it actionable and/or action-oriented – Briefly describe some techniques for putting your point into action. If it requires some foundational skill or knowledge, say so. ("Readers are assumed to have a basic background in Asatru traditions")
- Be "all in" with your headline/title
- Unless you have an established fan base, your title is the only reason people will read your article. It's the first thing they see. So whether you're pitching an idea or self-publishing, you need to state the one thing people will take away from the article. Make it clear and compelling. Numbers add credibility. You clicked on this headline, so there's your first bit of proof.
- If you're a great writer or a muse, you know this and can spout engaging headlines without effort. If not:
- Start with a placeholder title.
- Write your article.
- Your title takes about 10% - 15% of the effort of writing the article. Give yourself the luxury of time to create an engaging opener. You only get one shot per article.
- Crafting that sweet title:
- What's the one thing people will take away?
- Is it relatable to everyone? "Better GRoTP for Lefties" will be passed over by 99.9999999% of the world. Make it work out of context.
- Numbers are compelling. Adding the correct number will draw in an audience.
- A promise made is a promise kept. What are you promising with your title, and do you keep it?
- Less is more. Is every word necessary?
- An article entitled "27 Personal Rituals You Should Do Every Morning" will likely raise eyebrows and be passed over. Why?
- The number must be credible or incredible. Twenty-seven things are not either as, even assuming each item takes only two minutes, completing the list is nearly an hour gone. Incredible invites a closer look ("999 ways to make wands", "1,001 ways to screw up your evocations").
- Every morning? In today's world, we have a much more varied routine. We also include weekends in this headline, when generally, people's habits change over the weekend.
- It's not very specific. Try "Three Things the Spiritually Adept do."
- Add a picture that tells the entire story within the image. For example, many listicles have pictures (using animated gifs) for each bullet.
- Keep notes
- Writing takes time. Start with your list and develop the article around it. There is no need for it to be perfect the first time editing until you get it to a manageable pitch. A direct and focused article tells people you are an expert.
- Many authors will tell you, "There's no good writing, just great editing."
- Lists can become addicting. I once showed an artist, a most unlikely of list makers, this simple technique. On her first anniversary, she sent me pictures of three-page lists of tasks and activities.
- The Phrase that Pays
- In the early morning of the modern Internet (1997), RFCs (Request For Comments) were used to define how phrases in standards documents. The controlling body, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), still exists and is quite active.
- The RFC post, Keywords for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels, is the set of words used to signify requirements. For example, "Should, Should Not, Must, May, Optional" have specific contexts. Use them in your list's titles or headlines to generate impact.
- Other attention-grabbing words include "Best, Worst, First, Last." Remember this point when creating your title. Keep that promise, and your readers will come back for more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walk into any forest in the Cascades and you are standing on the dead. The fir that fell forty years ago is now the nurse log feeding a row of saplings. The salmon carried uphill by an eagle became the nitrogen in the cedar's needles. Nothing in that forest is wasted, and nothing in it is afraid. We have built an entire industry on pretending we are exempt from this. We drain the body of its blood, fill it with preservatives, seal it in lacquered hardwood, and lower it into a concrete vault—as if the earth were a contamination to be defended against rather than the place we came from. Cremation, for all its simplicity, burns fossil fuel and sends the body skyward as carbon. There is another way, and it began here in Washington. Human composting—the law calls it natural organic reduction—was legalized in this state in 2019, the first in the nation. The process is unhurried and honest. The body, unembalmed, is laid into a steel vessel and surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. No chemicals are added. The microbes that already live on the plant material, and on us, do the work they have always done. Over eight to twelve weeks, the body becomes soil—about a cubic yard of it, dark and alive. Families may take some home for a garden or a tree, or donate it to forest conservation land. What was a person becomes, quite literally, ground for new growth. I have sat with the dying, and I can tell you that the question underneath most deathbed fear is not what happens to me? It is did I matter, and will anything of me remain? The Hávamál answers plainly: cattle die, kin die, the self dies too—but what one leaves behind endures. We usually read that as reputation. I have come to read it more literally. A body that becomes soil leaves something behind that you can hold in your hands. Something that feeds. For those of us who keep the old ways, this is not innovation. It is restoration. Our ancestors were returned to barrows and bogs and burial mounds, given back to the land that fed them. The vessel and the alfalfa are new; the covenant is ancient. The earth gives, and the earth receives. Every harvest festival we keep is built on that exchange. It would be strange to honor the cycle all our lives and then opt out of it at the end. This choice is now legal in a dozen states and counting. If it speaks to you, say so—out loud, in writing, to the people who will one day carry out your wishes. Death plans left unspoken become burdens; death plans spoken become gifts. A leaf falls. A seed sprouts. The tree does not grieve the leaf, and the soil does not refuse the seed. When my own time comes, I intend to be useful one last time. That, too, is a kind of prayer. —Silent
For the Pagan and Contemplative Community
There is a grief that arrives before the death. It does not announce itself. It does not have a name that anyone uses at the dinner table, or in the waiting room, or in the parking lot of the care facility where you sit in your car for a few minutes before going in, gathering yourself. It lives in small moments. The first time they didn't recognize you. The day you realized you were making decisions for them that they would have hated. The night you caught yourself hoping — just for a second, just once — that it would be over soon, and then spent the next three days punishing yourself for the thought. This is called anticipatory grief. And it is real, and it is heavy, and almost no one will name it for you while you are living inside it, because you are the strong one, and the person you are losing is still here, and grief, we have been told, comes after. It doesn't always come after. Sometimes it comes alongside. Caregiving is one of the most demanding things a human being can do. It asks you to be present to someone else's diminishment, day after day, while managing your own fear and your own exhaustion and your own sadness — and while the world around you continues as though nothing unusual is happening. You go to the grocery store. You answer emails. You show up. You are praised for your strength, which is a kindness people offer because they don't know what else to give you. What you actually need is someone who will let you put the strength down for an hour. Not fix you. Not give you a plan. Not tell you that you're doing a great job, or that they couldn't do what you're doing, or that everything happens for a reason. Just someone who will sit with you in the weight of it. Who will not be frightened by what you are carrying. Who will let you say the unsayable things — the anger, the ambivalence, the love that is so tangled up with loss that you can no longer tell them apart. That is what I offer. I am a death doula and spiritual director. I work with caregivers who are in the middle of it — not at the end, not after, but now, in the long middle stretch where the grief has no official start date and the world has not yet given you permission to feel it. We meet, usually by video, for an hour at a time. I listen in a particular way — not for problems to solve, but for what is actually present beneath the exhaustion and the competence and the careful management of everyone else's emotions. You do not have to have it together when you come into this space. That is the point of it. A few things I will not do: I will not tell you how to grieve correctly. There is no correctly. I will not rush you toward acceptance or silver linings. Some things do not have silver linings, and pretending otherwise is a small violence. I will not give you more to manage. You are already managing too much. What I will do is be present — fully, unhurriedly, without an agenda — for whatever you bring into the room. If you are a caregiver and you are reading this and something in you recognized itself in these words, that recognition is an invitation. I have a small number of spaces available for caregivers who are navigating the approach of death alongside someone they love. The intake questions at tokeepsilent.me are where we begin. Or you can reach me directly. There is no script for this conversation. We simply start. — Silent