Stuff we collect

Hello to all!

Have you ever given any thought to how much stuff we buy, all in the name of improving our work? Or our lives? Or just because we can? I'm sure all of us have things scattered around, or gathering dust on the hard drive which we had big plans for and never even read fully through the course, used the gadget, or even looked at it again.

So why do we buy these things? The thought that they will help is genuinely there. Most times. But also so is the cunning of a very well-written sales page. Or even not so well written. It just pops up when we have been paid, or we think this is going to transform me from hopeless to the best thing since sliced bread.

Don't worry! I'm as guilty as the rest of you. I have stuff on my hard drive that is years old and has never seen the light of day, except when I bought it. I put a few on a USB the other day and, found, to my sneaky suspicions, 2 of them were exactly the same, just rewritten. Fair enough, they were not expensive ideas or programs, but it did annoy me.

I plan on going through ALL of the stuff sitting on my hard drive (early New Year's Resolution!!!) and cleaning it up. Not that I intend to bin it or delete it. I have a collection of USBs around the house :), so they can stop wasting space and become useful.

And I have a Tweet up at the moment from a very smart man who put together the list below on how to make our lives less full of clutter. It is true. The more simplistic your life is, the more enjoyable it is. You don't have to have the latest gadgets, if they are going to sit ignored on a shelf, on your hard drive, or making clutter when they really have no use to you.

Buy Less

Think carefully before every potential purchase. Before you buy, ask yourself these questions and carefully weigh your answers:

1. Will it save me time over the long run?
2. Will it make me happier over the long run?
3. Will it increase my productivity?
4. What effect will it have on the people in my life? Will it bring me closer to them, or will it distract me?
5.  What are the environmental costs of this product in terms of resources and energy used, and pollution created?
6. THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!!!

One answer - one thousand questions

Hello to all!

Do you remember your first attempts at writing any sort of content? A letter home from boarding school or college, an essay on some boring topic that was part of the anything-but-wonderful class you had foolishly enrolled in because... well, because. Pick any ending to this story. I picked chemistry, because I thought it would be fun to experiment with substances that were never meant to be put together, short of in a bunker for nuclear disasters. That really wasn't the problem however. The fact I had to document every step of the way to this resulting disaster was. I switched to music after I managed to burn a hole in a steel table, on advice from the headmistress.

But, seriously, was your first attempt at whatever-writing-it-was good? Letters to parents excepted. They always think any letter from their child is wonderful. Even more so in these days of emails and mobile phones. ASIDE: Please, all kids away from home, send your parents a snail-mail letter every now and then. It will be considered better than any Christmas present to them.

But back to writing content. Today, we all know we need good, honest, clean content for our websites. Without it, any website is going to be chewed up and spat back out sooner or later. Google is working towards understanding just what a person wants when they type in a query to a search engine. And there can be a thousand ways to ask one question. This is where Hummingbird comes in. Every person in the world has a different way to ask one question, although they may appear the same. Words bolded, words singular or plural, misspelt or correct, long and boring or short and not easily understandable. Take a look at the way your two-year old asks for a glass of milk and how your father-in-law does.

This will get you some idea of what Hummingbird tries to do. No alogarithm can match human speech yet exactly, but it is trying bloody hard. So don't try to be smart  or cute with your keywords. Keep them simple and they will be more effective. And by all means, try to use keywords that can also be long-tailed. As the example of the baby and the older man asking for a drink of milk shows, there can be a lot of ways to ask the same question.

So, don't spend days or weeks tearing your hair out trying to find what Google means with their latest 'pet'. Simplified, they are trying to build an alogorithm that can decipher 'human speak'.

And they will get there, or very close to it. Eventually.

Pinterest and Tumblr

Hello to all!

I've been fooling around - well, not exactly fooling around, but checking out some more social sites then just here the last few days. Yeah, I know there are so many these days I could be doing that for the next millenium, but I didn't go THAT far. I just looked at a few that are steadily sneaking along, and, by doing so, are taking a small but important slice of the cake from the big boys.

Two of the ones that really stood out are Tumblr and Pinterest. These two intrigue me. I can see plenty of ways to use them constructively to get any business known to more, all without paying a fortune. PPC and all those can eat away any money you have or have earned, so why not check out these two in particular? Both appear to be quite easy to use and navigate, and I would say are fun too and we can all use a bit of that in our lives.

A writing mentor of mine swears by Pinterest. She recommends changing your pins around once a week, so your information appears always new, and replacing at least two each week with new pins, thus keeping your board neat and tidy and up-to-date.

Of course, I, being one of those stickybeaks who must inspect every nut and bolt before I trust myself to it,  haven't done much more than sign-up for both as yet, but I fully intend to. I like both, in the way they are set-up, and the way they work. Facebook does nothing for me, I'm afraid, although I have nothing against it, and I am rather ambiguous about Twitter. Good friends of mine swear by both of these, but when I don't use them very often, or may not go to my page for a week or so on end, it turns very hit and miss.

It's only a short post this week, but if you have ever wondered who I am, then here I am below. I don't know why, but I absolutely hate putting photos of me anywhere!

Keep writing. Practice is the best thing you can do for yourself. As Woody Allen says: Showing up is 80% of the work.

First drafts

Hello to all!

Why oh why do we think that the first draft that comes from our typing or writing is perfect? Okay, we live in a very busy world, but absolutely everything in it does not come fully formed when first it is created. Like pure ore, a lot of what is mined is no use at all and only weakens the pure stuff.

Using free writing may seem to be a waste of time and energy, but really it is not. You or I may think it is complete gibberish when it first appears, and it usually is. But, like a ball of string, if you pull the available thread that is seen loose, the whole tangle will eventually unravel and we have a whole new string to create with.

First writings are just that: the first draft. Over the years, our skill in reading has changed, and now, where we used to either gasp in delight at the many, many adjectives that can be used to describe a sunset, or run away in horror( 'purple prose' I believe were the words used to describe such passages), we did once have the capacity to at least skim these parts.

Not any more. Now, we want the meat of what is written available immediately. Our patience has shrunk. Besides, long paragraphs of this type of writing do not display well on the Kindle, Nook or anywhere else. I am guilty of writing some stories as Agatha Christie would have written them: almost dreamily. As a matter of fact, some of her romance novels were slow and dreamy. Today's reader probably will get impatient with them. Some of my novels are not long, but they have this almost dreamy air, although they are mysteries.

But this does not evade the point that the first things that come from your brain are first drafts. They may only need a word or two altered, maybe to make it stronger, or they may need a complete overhaul, but please do not send that first thing out of your mind to any place you are hoping to get published or paid. It takes many years to write something decent, so the masters of the art say, and writing is a never-ending learning skill. Take a walk back through some of your older stuff. Some of mine has been so disgusting, I have wanted to use it(shredded) for garden compost. Don't do that. EVER. Okay, it stinks, it's lousy, even the cockroaches and mice won't eat it, but there is ALWAYS a kernel or two of the beginnings of something good in it.

So, much as it may make you feel like being sick, trawl through these first drafts and look for those nuggets. Dig them out and try again. After all, some okay ebooks have found themselves cobbled together like this, and do sell quite well. Just remember, these are first drafts. Like a mentor of mine reiterates, " You need to make mud first, before you can make a mud brick." So, use these first drafts to help you write something good.

Although the content mills around want X-amount of articles written in Y-hours, you still should try to chose those mills where the clients at least give you half an hour for 500 words. This won't give you time to write a Shakespearean play, but it will give you some leeway to tidy up. Another shock I had was seeing a very amateur piece of mine under my byline on a website. I cringed. How on earth had I ever thought that was good enough for that place? Thankfully, the Web is quick to dispose of these mistakes, unlike a lousy novel I once wrote. After two years, I got so tired and sick of the negative comments about the poor thing, I took it out of publication. Years later, having sort of recovered from the criticism, I reread it, wondering what all the fuss was about. The novel was 175 pages long. It took me the first page to mentally apologise to all those poor people who had paid good money for it. It was and is utter tripe, although the grammar and spelling are good. Otherwise, to critique it would take ME, its writer, 100 pages.

One day, I will rewrite it, I hope. The idea was good, but I was very young, and simply fluked a publisher, who went out of business quickly. Both of us, I hope, learned good lessons from our experiments. In the case of the publisher, an expensive one, but I will always be grateful to them for giving me a chance. I was by no means their only client, but writers in Australia in those days were not considered very good for anything. It was a mammoth battle to get anything published, unless you were very well-known, or an overseas writer.

So give yourself the best chance you can. It really is a shock to look back at some old stuff and wonder how you ever had the temerity to send it off for publishing. But it is all good. :)

Good value

Hello to all!

       I cannot believe it. A blog that I was following had so much promise when I came across it at first that I was fairly hooked. Four weeks into it though, it turned to soup and a very weak one at that. I wonder how many people do this to their readers/followers and then wonder why they get pissed off and depart, never to come back?

No, I am not talking about the ones that suddenly turn into little more than a sales page, or, indeed, start off as one, although this can be disconcerting. At least you know that that is pretty well what it is from the beginning. I am talking about the ones that start by giving good, comprehensive content, then tire of that and put as many adSense and other ads as they can for God knows-what on their page.

Sure, all of us want to get to earn money as soon as possible. This is great. But, for Pete's sake, select one type of thing to advertise. Fine, have one or two variations on this as well, but try to have them all related to each other or an offshoot of the original.

Having too many ads will kill your blog. It's that simple. People get confused and won't stay. You simply cannot give good service if you come across as not really knowing what your blog/selling page is about. Even ugly little blogs look much better if there is some content on them which is related to your selling point. If you can't write a simple blurb about your product, outsource this small thing for your blog. For less than $5, you can get a pretty good write-up and keep your customer on your page a little longer. No need to do this every day, but make an effort at least once a month to check if there are updates about it and let your customers know.

Much better to do this for one product, instead of 10,20,30. Make a new site for each one or get someone to do this for you. This way, you can devote time to simply updating say once per month, and still giving your customer good value.

After all, there are literally millions of sites out there now, and you want to stand out from the pack. Try this and see what happens.

Quotes

Hello to all!

I don't know about you guys, but I adore quotes. Not ALL quotes, but those that I can take something away from. For instance I love this one from David Ogilvy: Wooly minded people write wooly memos. wooly letters and wooly speeches. Apparently this man was influential years ago. All I know is his quotes ring various bells with me.

The Unpublished Works Of David Ogilvy is online. You can also find it on Brain Pickings by Maria Popova. She has an interesting blog that holds a lot of out-of-the-box thinking. I've been looking on various blogs and places where I can find quotes that appeal to me.

My dentist has his dental receipts ended with inspirational quotes. No matter how painful the treatment has been, these quotes are also uncannily right for that particular day. I have quite a collection of them as I had some root canal work done over a period of time. One of these days(ha,ha) I will copy them onto a disc or my harddrive and have them all where I can just access them at my leisure(another ha,ha moment).

Seriously though, some very unexpected people gave some very interesting quotes. Marilyn Monroe, thought by her contemporaries and other people as a blonde bimbo without a brain to bless herself, had some very pithy quotes to make: I don't mind living in a man's world so long as I can be a woman in it and: I restore myself when I am alone. I love this woman, although she is dead.

Albert Einstein made a lot of sense when he said: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And one which I find very interesting in light of the way he is depicted: Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. Interesting. Did this genius actually try this?

As I said, I love quotes. Not because I wanted to say them myself, but often the attraction is who said them. And, if they are repeated, which they are, who repeats them the best? Some of them have also given me ideas for books, of which are in the first preparation.

Agatha Christie got many of her plot ideas from the Bible, as have many other authors. But why not do a Google search for quotes? Or pick a person and see if they have ever said anything funny, interesting or outrageous that has been noted down as a quote?

Believe me, great fun.

blogging facts-mixed

Hello to all!
Blogging. Yeah, I know, it is everywhere and about everything under the sun.  But are we finally getting the message that we can use blogs to link all our online activities together and get them known this way? Many of us squander this FREE and readily available opportunity to become better known in cyber space.

Is it because, after going to the trouble of setting the thing up, we run out of steam and therefore revert to the safety of using it for nothing-in-particular? So many of us do this, and I wonder why. Oh, we make plans to do lots of things with our blog: get a business up and running, make a lot of money etc, etc. But we don't keep focused on it. There are so many distractions which MAY make us richer faster.

I know: There has got to be a magic bullet out there, which is going to do it for me. So I will keep looking for it, spending money I don't have, and throw away the potential goldmine I have already have in my hands. This type of thinking is WHY something like about 90% of wannabe online marketers fail before they celebrate their first year online.

I really hate to rub it in, but Aladdin's magic lamp and genii have been lost somewhere and are not to be found.  However, his 5th removed cousin, WORK is always close by and delighted to help. Why have we developed into a race of people who look for the easy way every time? There is never an easy time in business, unless you have been carried into the boardroom as an infant, and learned by osmosis, then it may be. But you still have to put some effort into it, no matter what.

It is almost impossible to be a success at anything, unless you do use some focus and a little work continuously. After all, you/me put hours into getting the site just right, populating it with what you are advertising, the right content linked to it, etc. And then you sit back and do nothing? I don't care who says they earn X amount of dollars sleeping until 12MD every day, living the high life and never checking their sites from one week to the  next. It just DOES NOT happen that way. And that includes blogging.

Some blogs just fold up and die. That is a horrible fact, but it is true. The reasons for their demise are usually because their owners lose focus, and direction. In this case, cremate it, grieve for a bit, and then resurrect it. Not exactly the way it was born, but with some similarities. But, this time, for goodness sakes, take some time and see where you plan it to go before you put finger to keys.

Otherwise, you are doomed to failure each time you resurrect.

Potential start of a story

Hello to all!
             Can't get ideas for your books or short stories? Look around you. On your way to work or to drop the kids off at school, check out the other people you meet or see. Don't do this so obviously that they think you are staring at them. Just take a glance or two. This doesn't look out of place, and, combined with imagination, can start you on a new story or even a short story. Just do not make it blatantly staring. Choose a promising study and apply the five questions to them: How, When, Why, What and Which. You'll be amazed what your brain can do with those questions.

Of course, it is always better if some little thing also catches your eye as you glance quickly. A spot on the nose or face of a perfectly dressed and made-up lady? Was she distracted about something when she put her makeup on? Now what could that have been? And you can go on from there. You do not have to know what the problem was, where she is going or anything else. She has served her purpose, simply by being there. You can build on just the look of her.

See how you can build up a story from a quick glance? A second glance may add to the story, if she wearing obviously imported clothes or shoes. Or she has a dark-toned face? Is she from a different country? Here to find someone or something very important? Possibly a lover or something else? And where is she going to start her search? Has she any clue where to start?

This is where mind maps come into the equation. Be as outrageous as you can when you first start. Use free flow with your thinking and just go with it. A great story can be partially developed using this method. After you have finished, do NOT just continue to let your brain whirl or go blank. Get up, walk around, and DO NOT think about what you are trying to do. Put it totally out of your mind, preferably for the rest of the day.

The next day, come back and look at your notes, or scribblings, if you prefer. Follow the main word out on each line you have written and find if you can go any further. I will be very surprised if one line cannot be continued. Take that out, but don't throw the rest of the map away. Please, DO NOT THROW ANY MIND MAPS AWAY. Instead, put them into a shoe box or some storage device and keep them. Often, if you take one or two out weeks, months or even years later, you will have yet another one to start a story with. Sometimes the premise in the first place seemed impossible or ridiculous, but with the speed technology is moving, science has expanded, and the globe has seemed to shrink, it may not be any of those in the not-to-distant future. Make a set date each year to throw or at least go through all these cards or bits of paper, or at least go through them.

  

Food, glorious food.

Hello to all!

Food, glorious food! Necessary for all functions of a writer or a human being. But how much notice do writers take of their eating habits? Not too much, I'll bet. Some of the more savvy of us do keep a good check on what and when we eat, but far too many of us do not.

Then there is the other side of the fence, whereby we eat everything not nailed down, usually on the fly, just simply stuffing some type of food or drink or some very dodgy protein drink down our gullets and hope for the best.

At the risk of getting slammed up against the wall hard, this is NOT a good idea. The five minutes it gives you to make a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea or coffee is more valuable than you think. In this time, you can refresh your eyes by being away from the computer screen, move your body, think of something else and allow the tension in your shoulders and elsewhere to dissipate somewhat.

And, whether you think you are working on the next War and Peace or a headline that will grab everybody's eyeballs, you need both the food and the change. Even if it is only three steps to the sink and the fridge, take them. Anyone who has spent hours and hours staring at a computer screen at work, only to go home and stare at either another computer screen or the television and still not make an effort to eat properly is doing themselves no good whatever.

Whether you like it or not, even if you are very young, or middle-aged and feel a little saggy, you must take care of what you have. And that means taking the time to eat something nutritious. Fast food, on the whole, is not. Nine times out of ten, it is filled with a 'quick-fix' of either fat or sugar and will leave you starving again in an hour or so. Perfect recipe for eating yourself silly when you can get away for a while.

I have nothing against protein drinks or shakes. I just would like to see more people at least give themselves one good feed per day. Real protein, like fish, eggs, red meat, chicken, etc. Tofu or bean paste if you are a vegetarian. Plenty of fruit and vegetables, raw or cooked. Swap one lot of cappuccino for  one big glass of water. At the end of the week, your wallet and waistline will thank you. And your progress rate should have improved considerably.

Shiny new objects

Hello to all!

Are any of you out there suffering the same thing as I am? Information overload? Come on, don't be shy. I'm sure there are far more than me in this leaky rowboat. The worst part about it is: I am not sure if I can break this nasty cycle. I have a great deal of writing tools and lessons on my hard drive, but, every time there is a new one released, then I fall right in and buy it.

 Over the years, I have collected many of these articles. I'm sure many of them would have been useful, if I had bothered to actually do anything with them at the time of purchase.

Have you found that a lot of these ' shiny new objects' have a core value that is taken from an even older one? Sure, they are written as if they are new, but a study of most of them will reveal old ideas wrapped in new descriptions, some very bad, some not so bad. Some are even actually rewrites of the original idea, but they still hold true to it.

What a waste of money, not to mention a disappointment. Of course, this scenario usually refers to some idea that was profitable in the first place and has been turned into evergreen for the consumers. The old-time merchants and writers didn't try to reinvent the wheel. They simply placed the idea in a new setting and continued with it. Why try to remake 'Romeo and Juliet" or the 'Taming of the Shrew'?

Agatha Christie and numerous other authors have mentioned that their best plots came from the Bible or Shakespeare's plays. Well, why not? Both of these have every scenario that anyone can imagine in them, and also the emotions as well as the five senses. Okay, it means returning to the days of actually reading a book made of paper at times, but it really is worth it.

Even if you are up to your ears in ideas and writing, take a few minutes out of the schedule to evaluate these old writings. Even if the language drives you nuts, you will pick up something extra. I'll bet on it.

Writing can be fun

Hello to all!
Nope, haven't died, got bone disease from that rotten goat's misdeeds, or anything else.

On the other hand, I have got something finally done that I have wanted to since, well, whenever.

I have written and got published a book. Yay!!! Okay, so what? Doesn't everyone do that these days? Well, yes, they probably do. I love reading and I have joined the Kindle Revolution. Bit late, I suppose, but, hey who is worried? Not me anyway. I am now back to being a voracious reader and a bit more: a published writer.

No, I didn't self-publish. I got a sweet man, Ron Kness, to do all that finicky stuff. otherwise the book might never have got to where it is. Thanks a lot, Ron. He set up all the small details, like an Amazon account and all the bits which I would probably messed up something shocking. And it didn't cost me and arm and a leg either.

So, one lesson during this exercise. Fine, self-publishing is great for those of us who know every function of every button on the computer and what exactly font and style is needed. Amazon is fantastic with this for most people, but not for someone as timid as I am where those things are concerned. Maybe I fluked a good publisher for me the first time, maybe the Fates felt sorry for me. Either way, paying someone to do all the down-and-dirty parts, including source a nice photo for the book, saved me a hell of a lot of worry. so, if you have a book you really want published, I can thoroughly recommend Ron. Polite, obliging, reasonably priced:  what more could you want?

But the main lesson I learnt was: I can do this. Not all the gritty, post-write stuff. No. Not that. Yet. The book, Opals Are Bad Luck by Cheryl Taylor, may not be everyone's cup of tea. I have no idea. I wrote it, so I'd be biased if I talked about it. great literature, it is not. Fifty Shades of Grey or Harry Potter it certainly is not, but I enjoyed writing it. Mind you, I ignored all of what I say( so what's new?) and wrote by the seat of my pants, a big no-no. You need to plan these things. But it worked okay. I think. 

So what is the excuse for all you others now? I will never be J.K.Rowling. Indeed I never want to be, in all truth. I certainly don't want to be E.L.James and be asked all those sorts of questions about my personal life, but I wish them nothing but the best.  Writing can be fun, as an old mentor of mine always maintained, no matter what it is. Whoever said paper would be obsolete when computers really took off wasn't watching the clouds right. Not that paper is needed these days, fair enough, but writing is. It is the life blood of our businesses online, for almost everything we do. So, if you want a third lesson: LEARN TO WRITE. Just look at all the free classes online that give you a bird's eye view on punctuation, spelling, grammar and just about anything else you could want, pick one which you know you are weak in and get on with it.

 Write your first book in draft, while you are picking up the bits you aren't wonderful on. That way, you have something at the end of it, and you can polish it with what you have learned. You don't have to be too smart, or too cute, when you write. Write in your style, not someone else's. You may have to fool around until you discover it, but usually the tale you are bursting to get out will show you the way it wants to be written. Opals Are Bad Luck did that to me, anyway. The  follow-up is on the way too.

So, get writing! Anything. You can always find something in free writing that you can build on. 

Make the ending the beginning

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Everyone starts to write a book at the beginning, right? I mean, where else would you really start the damned thing? Well, apparently, this isn't the case at all. Some research I have been doing actually showed me that some pretty good writers reverse that trend entirely and start at the END.

What? What rubbish! How can you write the end when you haven't a clue where you started from? Yes, a very good question indeed. I did the same, thought these people, success ignored, nuts. But, like a grain of sand in my shoe, the statement irritated me until I took a good look at it. I even wrote an end paragraph of my own and sat staring at it for a while.
This was it:
" Laura brushed tears away from her eyes. Through the blur she saw Andrew just standing there, smiling. For a long moment, neither of them moved, then as one, they hurled themselves into each other's arms."

Now, let me tell you: I am NOT a romance writer. I can tell you that with perfect confidence, seeing as nearly all my so-called romantic writing has turned into something else entirely by the first 10 or so pages, or has died miserably on the computer screen. Romance is just not me. ( Readers of some of my work would qualify that a bit more, I think!) So, although that paragraph is good for a romance, someone else could build it from there; just not me.

Admittedly, it's only a small paragraph. But WHY has Laura been crying? What has Andrew done to be able to just stand there, a smile on his face?  The interesting part is HOW I can shape the story to come to that point. Laura might have had and solved a crisis in her happy life; she may have solved a mystery that has puzzled her all her life; she may have found Andrew after a series of bad decisions; there are innumerable ways to do it. And, because I freak out every time I come anywhere near writing a romance, you can bet I'd make it probably a short story about something valuable she has thought lost forever and has just found again.

Back to my hopeless attempts at writing romance: Bored out of my gourd many years ago, and trying to study for University, I decided to write a Mills&Boon romance as a brain-break. It was terrible; even I thought so. My oldest sister, whom I was staying with in breaks before exams, read it and asked me, very seriously: Ahh, love, I think I know where you are going, but WHERE is the romance and between WHOM? Enough said; this woman was/is a connoisseur of Mills&Boon. In those days, she had a full room devoted to those types of books.

So why NOT start at the end and work your way backwards? If it works for others, it may work for you. :)

Gypsy's doings

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Man, breaking a shoulder really does put a dampener on things! I have always wondered how sporting people can get straight back into things after doing something like that. I still don't know. All I know is: A) It is bloody painful; B) it is frustrating C) finding out just how much you used that shoulder beforehand is extremely painful and D) I can't really type one-handed.

This little problem came about courtesy of my delightful husband and our extremely enraging, irritating, perfect escape artist goat, Gypsy. May as well add my brother into the mix; the @$#% gave her to my daughter as a present some 17 years ago. We should never go to hell; that damned goat has created it here on earth.

Gypsy is a feral goat. Well, sort of. My brother breeds them as a business, along with his sheep and cattle. His excuse for giving her to us: Meg needs a pet, blissfully ignoring the fact that the girl(back in those days!) had a couple of pet cows, two dogs, two cats and a guinea pig, which my other brother had supplied, also assorted chickens around the place, supplied by "friends".

Anyway, back to how I got my shoulder broken. Thanks to having a stroke 2 years ago, I am still not very stable on my feet. I am much better than I was, but not brilliant. So when my husband yelled to help him get our escape artist out of the garden, I staggered outside, to see Gypsy almost poking her tongue at him from a palm tree he absolutely loves. It's low-growing, so EVERYTHING loved getting under its leaves. It has a regular community there, including, at different times of the year, some very unfriendly inhabitants.

He dived. She dodged. He zigged, she zagged. This was good fun. For Gypsy anyway. Not for my husband. He was out of breath and red-faced. "Block the bitch!" He roared at me. I attempted to. What I forgot was that that particular area of the yard has a hole where a tree has fallen down and is now covered in grass. Very deceptive. When my foot hit the hole, I tilted and grabbed for something. That something happened to be Gypsy. She bolted and I went down. Straight on my shoulder.

I knew I'd broken it. I had no feeling at all, and nothing in that arm worked. Which wasn't the worst of it. Try imagining explaining how I had done it to some very lovely but bemused nurses and doctors at the hospital. No doubt I kept them in stitches for days.

Gypsy is still alive. While my husband was panicking over what had happened to me, and threatening at the top of his voice to shoot her, the little bitch walked straight up to the gate and stood there, waiting for someone to open it. It took me a while, and the trip to hospital to calm him down, but she is still getting where she should not be.

Whoever decided to name that goat Gypsy should have called her Houdini. Unfortunately as a kid, she was very cute. She still is not very big, but her brain is. That goat can outsmart any human any time she pleases.

So that is why I haven't been here for a while. But I can use my shoulder limitedly again, and my hand does no longer resemble a catcher's mitt.

pretty blog

Hello to all!

Okay, you are going to start a blog that hopefully is going to make you some money. What do you want your blog to look like? You want all the bells and whistles first-up? Of course. Everyone does, so if mine is very plain then I won't be able to compete with the big boys.

Not necessarily so. Again, most anyone who has wanted to make some money has had to start at the bottom. That's the whole thing in a nutshell. In my opinion, get the blog up and running before you do anything at all. After all, if you have good content and, even better, something to interest people in buying, hopefully related to your content, and, above all, your blog is easy to move around, that should be all you need for a start.

   Many people decide to set up their blog as though it is going to be perfect, and have everything on it. this often gives a 'busy'appearance and potential readers shy away before they read the first page. Grabbing people by the eyeballs can be hard to do, but you will get their attention if you give them what they want to read. Get them first, by using a knack with words.

All these people who encourage you to spend a fortune 'buying' likes and views are not doing you any good, if you have nothing to keep them. On one of my blogs I simply let it do its own thing. The only thing I did was to feed it content almost every day. I simply like connecting with people and it amazed me. It went from 0 to 350 and still growing in less than 3 months. I do very little with it. Occasionally I throw something out of the box on there, which has nothing to do with its main topic. So anyone can do it. The off-the-map topic proves that I am human, and not a bot or someone who is just interested in money.

I really don't think you should go for the jugular at the first. I know, you have to grab your potential sale as soon as they appear on your page. But if they are only browsing, then they will probably run if it looks too obvious what you are after. You have about seven seconds to get their attention, so make sure your first sentence of the content is compelling. If it is, most readers will follow along to the second one to make sure it is interesting. Don't drag it out, get to your speil soon enough, but make it part of the content. Use your second paragraph to grab by starting to sell there. Make the first sentence intriguing  but honest.. Personally, I don't see what you can get out of  running another product down blatantly, but some sellers do.

My idea of that is it is not playing by the rules. If you think your product is better, then show them by good content that does not simply repeat how bad you think your opposition is. There are rules against this, after all, and it can backfire badly if your client has bought the opposition's first.

Give back sometimes

Hello to all!

Today, I  want to talk about leaving your writing for a while. Many people advocate this, but I really am not sure about doing that. In this crazy world of speed, no one really does have time to put their work away for a week

When you are making a type of living from article writing, you simply do not have the time for really fixing your work. Most probably send the work back as what would be a first draft any other time. This does not do the employer any good at all. Result: You and them end up with substandard work that is luckily accepted most times, but you end up with very little repeat work from this employer.

This attitude is not good. From the employer especially. Okay, you are busy. That's a given. Your work has to be accepted to wherever you want it to be. So you pay someone the lowest rate you can get away with, then swear about the crap you get back and either repeat this cycle or do it yourself. Or maybe you fix it and send it off, but refuse to pay the writer and get rid of them. Plenty more in the pond to fish out and again use.

Finding someone who could be good may be quite simple. The problem is their writing itself. Then why not take even ONE of these writers and try to make them better? At least to your standards anyway? Sure, it's going to take you time, but isn't it going to be worth it? After all, it was often the way the old-fashioned employers went about staffing, and it worked just fine. Workers that they took the time to educate were worth thousands to their business. You don't have to overwork these exclusive writers. You can always outsource other work, or train another one or two as you build up.

I am not advocating you do this. I am simply pointing out something that is going to be to your benefit. No one is ever going to write exactly as you do. That's just not going to happen, unless you have yourself cloned. but this way, your 'permanent' staff can take other work, if you have not much on one day or another. Or you can share this person with your friends. You still have all the perks of not having to buy space and pay insurance for this employee, but you also get their help willingly, which is worth uncounted money to you.

One of the best employers I have ever had worked on this principle. He picked and chose from candidates and worked one -on-one with his choices. They had 10 minutes online with him every day, as well as their work, and he granted this time gratis, in order to help/teach. If he hired three, then three got worked on. He kept a list of the first rejects and went back to them when the first ones were competent to work without his supervision and input.

At the end of 3-6 months, he was ready to let them go, should they want to go. he even helped some get further employment. If they wanted to stay, then they usually were farmed to friends whose work they had unknowingly done during this period. No one was ever abandoned to fend for themselves.

This man taught me much. for the year or so I spent with him, I enjoyed his stern, gentle tone and teaching habits. I figured he'd been in the game for 30 years, he should know what he was talking about. Now, I try to model myself on him and another female mentor who was similar but a little more expecting of me. From both I learnt many things and that caring about strangers is one of them. Not being able to see your writers does not mean that you do not have to care about them, or  just see them as dollar-signs.

They are, at the bottom, people with feelings and dreams. Just like us, in fact.

Next time, I will look at the argument from the other side: the employee's side.

 

back to basics

Hello to all!

Okay, we've left the path on a couple of occasions recently. And this is not a problem. After all, if you want to involve people in your blog, then you have to share bits and pieces completely out of the box from time to time. this makes them feel you are real and not a machine spitting out facts and figures all the time. :)

But ALWAYS come back to your original topic soon. Don't keep wandering off on your own tangent, especially if you plan to make some money from your blog. Do that, sure, but keep the main idea in mind. Even better, try to link it to your personal happenings or events.

Right, so back to starting a blog. Or doing some writing. Maybe even publishing(gasp! shock!) something that may make you some money.

Let me deviate a little( yeah, again!). I've been looking for some ebooks that can help people who have a book or a long article ready to publish, but are terrified to approach Amazon and the Kindle. Well, there are other places that you can try. I looked at one yesterday and I don't mind the look of it at all. Have any of you heard of or looked at something called Smashwords.com?

If you haven't, then I strongly suggest you take a  look at it. It is not so complicated as the kindle to start with, and another thing that interests me is you can publish something that has lower words than the Kindle likes. I saw one one there that only had 880 words. 880 words? Do you honestly say that some people paid for THAT? No, I did not. It was free. But it was there. That's what I am trying to say.

The reason I point out this point is that a dear mentor of mine always said you do not have to have a set amount of words to ePublish. Say what you want to say as concisely and interestingly as possible, tidy it up, add an introduction(not too long) or a table of contents(always a good idea) and a conclusion and that is it. Of course you need to have enough to ensure that people who are thinking of reading the eBook/ article can download/ read a snippet without grabbing a heap of your TOC or your dedications( actually, another point my mentor makes is: Put all but your TOC at the back of your book, so they do not annoy people who are interested in your information. Dedications, author bio, any of that can go there, instead of perhaps boring the life out of your readers. Even put your request for reviews there. Having put that at the back when your reader has just finished the book, they may be inclined to give you a review then and there, instead of maybe bookmarking it and forgetting totally.

I digress, helpfully, I hope. Back to Smashwords.com. There are 3 books by Mark Coker the founder, that you can download for free that explain about Smashwords and what it can do for you. Yes, I said FREE. I've been greedy and downloaded all 3 of them, in order to read them in sequence. so far, what I have read has been good and very helpful. I've been probably like a lot of you and bought and downloaded a pile of How-To books about getting my books on Kindle. Guess what? I've decided I'll get a very nice young man to edit and publish my book for me after all! It may not be cheaper, but at least I will not have to face that paralysing fear that has grabbed me every time I look at my Kindle account :).

Of course, you may be more courageous than I am, or probably ever am going to be. But I do urge you to just take a quick look at Smashwords.com. It really is worth it, and I said a while ago that I was not going to recommend something that I hadn't read/reviewed/tried. :)

post-cyclone

Hello to all!

Another thing I dislike intensely is the amount of things that go wrong AFTER we are told that everything will be back to normal the moment the clouds disperse/ the rain quite/the sun comes out/ you name it. very irritating indeed.

Like the last few days for instance. The rain went on Friday. It immediately got blazing hot. Then it got smelly. So what? That's fairly normal for my part of the country. What is NOT, however, is the sudden downtime of not the power( that's already been there, done that!) but communication tools. Not all of them true, but the one I use most every day for my business.

Living in the country like I do, and hating physical writing, (since my stroke I do not write copperplate any more and that infuriates me, as rightly or wrongly I was PROUD of that!) I missed my computer's access to the outside world something chronic. Not being able to talk to one of my sisters, my remaining brother or sick friends was the most irritating thing that has happened in a long time.

My grown daughter, who does her own thing usually, nearly went stir-crazy. Imagine being in the same house as this usually placid person of 30 years(she'll kill me for that!) with no phone access at all. No Facebook, no nothing. Her father did not help either. He hates Facebook with a passion, and most everything that is not still two tins tied together with a string to talk through( no use using smoke signals either. He panics at the first smell of a cigarette or a fire), so he invented every way he could to add to her misery. I was sure I has going to have plenty of blood and bone for the garden. Mainly his.

Anyway, we have survived. But, honestly, you would think the biggest communications system in the country could have warned us somehow. At the end of my road, there are two elderly people who have medical problems. One relies on the phone. The other needs it. When your road is washed out, your power is not brilliant, and your communications are down, you need more than smoke signals. I have no problem walking the half a kilometre up and the same coming home three or four times a day to check on them( after all, my so-called retired horses could do with Jenny Craig nowadays!), so why not ride once or twice? My husband and my daughter were also delighted to do the same( good way to lose weight), but really. Thank God there was nothing wrong with them each time, apart from sheer frustration, but what if there had been? Both of them are large people and walking over a kilometre with one of them parked on my shoulder was not going to be anyone's idea of fun. As both of them are beautiful people, but absolutely petrified of horses, that wouldn't work either.
Sometimes, I wish these giants would take a little more care of the old and less able.

try once more

Hello to all!

Right, where are you at? Still not thought of anything, or even tried to? Nothing wrong with that at all. That way, you can fail miserably without breaking a sweat. It's true. So is this. You never know what you are capable of, if you don't at least try. After all Einstein had over 100 tries before he got the lightbulb invented, and he was thought to be brilliant.

Besides, it really is kind of fun to struggle sometimes. Most of the time, we make things so much tougher on ourselves than we have to. Mistakes are not failures. They are learning curves and nothing you will ever learn will teach you what mistakes can. As a matter of fact, if it comes to paying a fortune for some shiny new object which promises to do everything for you apart from tie your shoes, then what are you going to do when your book/ business takes a wrong turn? You will have no clue, because you didn't learn a few mistakes on your way there.

This is when the law of averages comes in. And there is nothing on earth that exists that this won't happen. A romance springs a leak when you see him/her with another of the opposite sex, although the stranger may be explained away, if you have not met any of the family yet. You are writing a book. Fine. you have all the characters worked out, but your story needs something more. You invent another character to take care of this and he/she runs off with the story. Don't believe it? You should. It's happened to me countless times. i have needed someone who is less nice/bad/whatever to bounce the others off, because, if I do that, then they remind me of a soft tennis ball being whacked into the stratosphere.

You suddenly find that you may have to pull into some small island where there is unrest. You take fright and decide you are not going to sail around the world after all. Just cover the so-called 'safe' areas.  So what's the point in going at all. Although there may be unrest, the island may also be fantastic where the unrest isn't. So you deprive yourself of beauty, adventure and maybe a fine time. Oh well, fair enough.

Struggle is part of life. There is no way you can get away from it. But think of the rewards when you beat whatever it is that you are worried about. And you may get lucky too. The huge struggle that you envisioned may just be a small hiccup when you finally confront it.

So, why not just try? If Einstein was determined enough to keep going over 100 times, then surely you can try once or even three times.

Next stage

Hello to all!

Life is slowly returning to what passes for normal around here. A few fences to mend or replace. A few branches to cut off properly. A few animals to find the owners of. Just another day. But all these things can be done. Thank the stars there are no PEOPLE to miss forever, as you can't replace them. No photo will ever do the real thing justice.

Anyway, I guess, it's over and now back to WORK Yeah, that dreaded word.

So you want to write a book / sail the world / change your job / find a boy- or girl-friend/ whatever. Well, let's get on with it then.

Last time, I wanted you to simply START. No nuts and bolts, just THINK about what you are going to do about this task. Well, let's advance today.

You have got your topic/ read your maps / decided what skills you need to update/ learn/ what type you want / whatever. NOW, having done the thinking, start writing down every thing you can think of about what you KNOW about your topic. Divide a piece of paper into two columns. Head one side positives. Head the other side negatives.

For instance: No character in a book should be all good, or all bad, and I am not talking about the crooked tooth description either. Give them real characters, not stereo-types. You looked at the maps of the seas and oceans you need to have to sail around the world. If you have any brains whatever, you wouldn't take a dinghy, would you? If you want to work in the field of nursing and you are a car mechanic, then you wouldn't go into someone's room to change an IV with a spanner. What do you need to do/learn to be a nurse? Do you want someone who is good with money and you, but looks like your friendly mutt? So do this. Just free-write. You may be surprised what comes out of your head.

Don't worry if this seems a long, drawn-out process. For the boy- or girl-friend process, it also helps if you draw up a chart for yourself also, and pick the characteristics of yours that you need balancing. Don't worry about the star sign either. remember, there are exceptions to every rule. :)

We will talk about the next stage soon. have fun with this. It isn't the end of the world if you don't come up with exactly what you think you need/ want. Sometimes our subconscious is smarter than our consciousness.

part of a cyclone

Hello to all!

I was going to continue what I started doing, but decided to share my experiences of the last few days instead.

You see, we had a 'small' cyclone move down our coastline. Well, sort of, with a few deviations this way and that. Being a 'small' cyclone, no one worried particularly about it. Mistake Number One. It would only give us the minimum of rain, which was needed anyway. Mistake Number Two. The ground was so dry, it could do with a thorough drenching. Mistake Number Three.

When you look at it, it was going to be easy-peasy. Nothing much but a small rainstorm, really. Nothing at all to worry about.

That was, until it actually got here. You see all these news videos of other towns who have been visited, but, until you have been through even a part of it yourself, you have absolutely NO idea. that goes for everything - war, famine, drought, anything.

The rain started. No real dark clouds, no real noise, no really anything. Just the beginnings of a simple rain storm. I have no idea when it dawned on me this was not just an ordinary storm. Maybe it was when leaves started flying past the window. Or the washing from the line. Or my dog, howling from her perch on the steps.(A German Shepherd, she is too big to have inside, especially with my daughter's cats, but, since she was a tiny pup she has claimed that particular stair as hers exclusively, even though she was allowed in then), or my horses, suddenly running for the shed.

We had been overrun in the house by ants for weeks. Now, there wasn't an ant in sight. Who says insects are stupid?

Like an idiot, I opened a door, thankfully one on the other side to where I thought the rain was coming from. I got soaked within five seconds. The rain was running horizontal, something I  had never seen before in my life.

Then the wind came. And it came fast and hard. The rain was still sheeting horizontally, but now the wind pushed it through every hole it could find. It didn't rip anything off, apart from a few large branches in the yard, but, for the first time in fifty years of standing, the ceiling leaked, great blisters of water that didn't burst.  We could no longer see the dog, although she was only a metre away, determined not to go down the shed or under the house, or on the patio.

The power went. And it stayed went for 36 hours. And that was the most worrying, annoying part of the whole thing, all 48 hours worth of it. No power. Not for the television, although that drove my husband mad. No Internet, although that drove my daughter stir-crazy. That and not being able to go anywhere.

No. None of that. The thing that annoyed me the most? Not being able to make a cup of tea when I wanted one. The storm had gone, leaving bits of mess to clean up. And no cup of tea.

Isn't it funny how the smallest things can suddenly mean so much?

starting

Hello to all!

Okay. yesterday, I talked about having to do a dreaded word: WORK.  Funny how that word draws all sorts of nasty connotations, but it is a fact of life. You work to breathe - all sorts of muscles and ribs work without your noticing or giving them permission to do so.

So, enough of that. I hope you have got the message: without some input of yours (i.e. WORK), you will not get anywhere. EVER. It's that simple, or that complicated, if you want to make it so.

Good. On to the nuts and bolts. Next thing is: Choose WHAT you want to do. One more step.

You want to write a book/ sail the world/change your job/find a boy- or girl- friend/whatever. Okay. That's great. That's another small step.

NOW comes a harder step. BREAK that big step into a set of VERY SMALL movements. If you want to writer a book, pick a topic. If you want to sail the world, look at maps of sailing routes. Change your job? Evaluate your skills. Do they need to be updated to go get another job? Most do these days. But, for now, just find which skills will need to be updated. Find a boy-or girl-friend? What TYPE of them do you want?

Right. That's your homework for now. Nothing else. Not a thing. Just seed the idea. Otherwise, you will be overwhelmed before you start. Use pad and pencil to actually WRITE these ideas down. Once you have them out of your head and in sight, they exist. So, only do that for now.

Then put the whole thing out of your mind for a day or so. Then come back to it. I'll be waiting for you. :)

What you have to do

Hello to all!

Yesterday, I talked about irritating emails from ONE person, despite how you get them. Today, I want to talk about a dirty word for some of you: WORK.

There is no magic potion, bullet, carpet or anything that will take the place of WORK. You simply cannot go into Internet Marketing, without doing some work. It doesn't work that way.

Yes, you can waste your money on the next thing, old or not, that comes around, promising the world. Fine, it may do something for you. But NOT if you do not invest some WORK and TIME into it. Nothing on God's earth or under it works that way, I am very sorry to say. By all means, throw your money away, especially if you have none in the first place, but you will still not find that little green man under a four leaf clover who is going to grant you three wishes. After all, he WORKS  very hard at NOT being found.

There are sometimes things that fall into place very  quickly like dominoes falling, when you put a little bit of effort into whatever you are doing. Internet Marketing is one of them.

I think, personally, the best advice I have ever seen come from ANY IM expert is: Do not get rid of your day job until you have got your system at least running. This includes if you have a pile of money saved to back you up. Most of us, unfortunately, do not have that luxury. So, even if you burn the candle at both ends, work your day time, bitch about it if you must to all and sundry( but out of the boss's earshot!) and use whatever spare time that you can scrape, scrimp and steal from your day to build on your business.

Even writing one 500 word article for your blog or your business should only take you 3/4 hour, max. Use free writing. Sit down and just go with the flow, as it may be. I have mentioned this before. At least try out free-writing. It a very simple. just sit down and write/type for a specified time. It may come as gibberish for the first minute, while rusty gears get moving again, but it does work. In all the  junk that comes, you will find some good stuff. You may even be surprised at how much you can write in say, 10 minutes.

Do not go any longer than 10 minutes. Ever. That seems to be the amount of time the sub-conscious 'throws-up' anything useful before it needs a rest. Use a timer. You can buy cheap kitchen timers everywhere, and set it for 5 or 20 minutes. Then just type/write for that time, even if you have to break off when the bell goes.

It may sound tiresome and not what you expect to be told. But i cannot emphasise this enough. You must do SOME work. The only way you are going to become a millionaire overnight is win Lotto. Or buy an online business that is already making millions. And even then you need to do something to keep it that way.

This is the most honest thing you can ever be told. You MUST work. There is no way around it.

affiliates and spamming - is it done?

Hello to all!

May I ask: What is your definition of spam? Is it receiving one email per day from one person? Or finding loads of emails every day from supposedly different marketers? Then you discover,  when you really decide to dig into where they come from, that they are ALL from the same marketer, although he/she may be behind affiliates?

I'm afraid this happens to annoy me. I know: You must have different streams to make some money;  that I also know. But, if I join one person's list, this does not give them the right to hand out my email hell, west and crooked to anyone else, even if it is a starving affiliate to get them started. And, no matter that

I also know, human beings are the laziest creatures on the face of the earth. Don't reinvent the wheel, blah, blah,blah. But you do not have to turn into lemmings either. You have no idea how infuriating this is, or maybe you do. But this approach is liable to end BOTH of you wiped from someone's Email list.

Please, people, when you get started, DO NOT feeds your affiliates any or part of your lists. It gives affiliates a bad name indeed, as well as you. Okay, you want to help others, which is fine. But don't think that others will appreciate a pile of affiliates almost spamming, in order to get one order. With me, it does not work.

I consider, if you have affiliates, THEY can find their own clients. really, they should. Like baby birds who follow their mother around, squeaking and waiting for her to drop a titbit into open jaws. Sooner or later, Mum gets sick of this and flies off, leaving the baby to fend for itself.

This is what you should do with your affiliates. By all means, pay them what they are worth, or come up with.  But make them earn it, not ride on your shoulders or program. It doesn't really take long to put together a report( short and sweet) on anything related to the product, and put it out there for anyone to grab. You will get far more trust this way, and build your list honestly.

If you have to, buy some PLR relating to the product or service, alter it a little bit( I know, I know, work!) and put it out. Using straight-out PRL is just not the done thing though. Half an hour's work  with one piece of PLR will grab attention far faster  then if you simply slap it out as is.

There are millions of potential buyers. They also know that there are potentially millions of marketers, so they may just check around. After all, if you want fresh produce, you will quite likely shop around for the freshest and cheapest, won't you? And if they see the same PLR as is one several wide-spread websites, then they may decided not to buy from those sites ever again, because they know they will only be getting someone who is only interested in money, and that is the last impression you should give them.

Time to try

Hello to all!

Today, let's start! Start what? ANYTHING! ANYTHING AT ALL TO START YOU MOVING!

Check out a few sites where you might want to try a blog on. Don't sign up, just have a look at them, get the feel for them. If you don't like the way they feel to you, choose another one. If you can write an email, you can write a blog.

It's half-way through the first month of the year already. Sound dramatic? Yeah, I thought so. So what? Well, SO WHAT is this: that's at least a week when you have sat on your posterior and procrastinated  and you won't get it back, no matter what you do.

So get your act together and use this week, starting from now, to at least do this one tiny thing. Cut a minute from your Facebook chatting to friends and go look. Start with the free ones, there's plenty of them. This one is great if you haven't a budget at all, and many of you don't, or, if you do, you are chasing bright shiny objects which usually only make the owners rich. That is not knocking them; they need to live too, but they have also gone through all the problems and catches before they got where they are. And NONE of them got rich overnight. Unless you win Lotto or a huge payout from somewhere, that just is not going to happen.

And a week DOES NOT have to start on Sunday or more commonly Monday. Get that out of your head. A week is a week is a week, no matter how you look at it. It does not matter which day you want to start something - a diet, exercise, whatever. Six days from Tuesday, Friday will still be a week in anyone's book.

So, just get started. Remember: FAILURE IS ALWAYS THERE, IF YOU DON"T EVEN TRY. And failure is never failure when you have tried. It is experience!

what have you done with your imagination?

Hello to all!

I hope you are enjoying the day/night or whatever time it is where you are. For me, it is disgustingly hot and 2AM in the morning, not usually a time I like being out of bed. Oh, admittedly, when I was a bit younger, this witching hour was okay. No, I wasn't partying either. My job kept me up :)

What time of the day is yours? The time when you absolutely love? The minute your other half is at work and the kids are at school and the house is all yours and the cat's for a whole 6-8 hours? Yeah, those days were good too, but my kids are long grown and gone now. Well, sort of gone :) So now what do you do?

I loved ANY time I could squeeze to do some writing. Any sort of writing. Or being like Prince Charles and talking to my beloved plants. Even then, as a very young adult, I would tell them all sorts of strange things from my imagination, when I couldn't be bothered writing it down, but  it demanded some sort of expression. The weird part is: some of those pieces come back even now, demanding I take notice of them.

So, these days, I often take just 10 minutes, by a kitchen timer, to sit and let whatever come into my mind. As it does, I don't shift it out, unless it is a mad pulse of panic thoughts - I'm sure you know the ones I mean - why does Sarah tear her clothes so often? Why won't the dog shut up? (Shame on you for being so lazy as to not find out why he/she is barking and just yelling at it: you know that is EXERCISE!) - those sorts of mundane things and really look for what your mind throws up.

Train your mind to do this every time you have ANY interesting thought. You know - two flies circling a cup. But they aren't ordinary flies. No, they are two special guards who have been sent out to bomb the cup because it is the home of an evil elf ..... Hey, that ain't bad. Maybe I'll play with that myself sooner or later.

The point that I am trying to make is MAKE some time anywhere, day or night, and let your imagination loose. As adults, we cram so much into our minds, that our imaginations are squashed and forgotten. Can you remember as a child the crazy things you could imagine? If you can't,  then I am terribly sorry for you. I wasn't an only child either; I had 4 siblings, so wipe that psychoanalysis out of your mind. :)  I simply liked what could come out of my head, scary, pleasant or not.

So take the time to get to know your imagination again :). You'd be surprised at the friend it can be.

Problems with writing.

Hello to all!

So, have you decided what is your passion? But there are some problems with just writing when you get down to it. I love writing. Adore it. But there are also some elements of it that I dislike intensely.Grammar is one of them. Spelling is another. Unfortunately though, you MUST HAVE these in order to allow people to read your words comfortably.

Imagine you are driving on a lovely, smooth road. Or that's what it appears to be. Then you hit a small unexpected rise on the road itself, or worse, a large pothole. What happens? You get shook up, and your calm and peace are jolted, as well as your good self. You continue on, but the pleasant feeling tends to evaporate for a while.

This is the feeling that your reader, no matter if they are children, will get if your spelling or your grammar are off. If you are into Internet marketing, for your own sake, ensure that these two elements of writing are perfect. You may be a lousy word-smith, but you don't have to make it worse for yourself. There are some who will deliberately go out of their way to find these mistakes in your writing, whether it be sales copy or a novel.

And, believe it or not, they WILL make you pay for those run-of-the- mill mistakes. They will leave you bad reviews, consider your products second-rate, so not worth buying, and numerous other things, none of them good for your business. If your main work is as a writer, then you will lose clients quickly.

One of the best information products you can buy is a spelling guide. Computers do have them installed, but you need to know the small differences if you are writing for an American English reader or an English English one. This can be a subject in itself, but you MUST get it right, or you will have many rejections, because people are people with funny little quirks.

I am planning on writing a guide to the differences, but I have no idea when. It is stacking up as a big work, so I'll be doing it in sections.:) But, for now, just train yourself to check every sentence. If your words are great, but your spelling and grammar are not, then you have lost a potential client straight-up.

And that should be enough to get you motivated to do this.

Lost time

Hello to all!

Isn't it amazing? You think you have it all wrapped up and it suddenly flies apart like using cheap sticky tape. Oh well, just as well I am only two days past my usual deadline for resolutions. No great harm done, I suppose. But if you have done the same thing with something you are passionate about starting/getting really stuck into this year, then it can really make a mess of things.

Two days isn't really all that big a miss, if you think about it. But, in the world of getting an online income up and running, it can add up to years. In those two days, you could have written a short report( 7-15 pages) and got it uploaded, or whatever you wanted to do with it. You may even have been able(gasp!) to write 2. That's 2 potential streams of income that you have not even started.  These reports only need to be things that are ONE answer to ONE question. They do not have to be 'Pick your answer from 50,000 answers, nor do they have to attempt to answer any more than one.

Say your question is 'How To Start Your Day Right". This is before you even get out of bed, but your eyes are open. Write a report on that usually short window of time between the actual opening of the eyes and the putting one foot on the floor. It is surprising just how many things can happen in that short time, so cover that. You don't even need to go into the bathroom first, this is all before then. Is it easier to just think what you need to do for the day and whether you have it all together before you get up? Or must you REALLY grab that coffee/tea first even if the house is falling down on top of you?

These little things should be full of facts and no fluff. People want quick answers and they do not wish to dig through miles of fluff just to find one nugget. So make them short and very sweet, even if the topic is a pain. We all have things like that in our lives that we really want help with, so supply it for one particular person, and you will find that there are many more where they came from.

After all, no man is an island!!!!!

passion -revisited

Hello to all!

Let's return to a post I wrote not so long ago. PASSION.

I asked what was YOUR definition of passion? Husband, maybe? Children? Of course. Gardening? Sewing? Something else? Whatever you can't live without, that is one of your passions, even if it is collecting stamps. I am not being rude about that. I have two sisters who were rabid about collecting stamps and one of them still is, although she complains she has very little time now and bitterly regrets the lack of it. As a child, I can remember being told to shut up and sit on the floor while this particular sister soaked and tweezed and stuck these stupid little pieces of paper into an album. Then the other sister developed a liking for photography and that was basically the end of that, as I was dragged like a doll from pillar to post, and set up in the most uncomfortable poses. Photography is NOT, shall we say, a passion of mine now.

Anyway, back to passion. If you are passionate about gardening, what exactly is the REAL part of gardening you love? Gardening, as a whole, is just too vague a term to use when you are writing, or searching for a niche you can fit into. For instance, I love creating things with words - books, articles, anything that is going to be read by anyone. But I create words items privately too, and these may never see the light of day. I have stories and bits and pieces around here on paper, which, every now and then, get pulled out from their boxes, looked at, shuddered about and get jammed back in to join the pile of ONE DAY, WHEN....

So narrow down your passion. You may love growing the colourful lettuces available now, for instance. But exactly HOW do you get them so sweet/tangy and lovely to look at? Maybe you can write a whole ebook on that topic? It is a specialized part of gardening that you may devote whole months to perfecting, and, although others have written on it, YOUR take is unique, so why not write about it? Don't forget, you do not have to write War And Peace again as length. You just have to write, with PASSION.

keeping New Year's resolutions

Hello to all!

Well, the Big Day has been and gone already! Crazy, when you think of it. We spend roughly half the year wishing for the current year to end, planning to start a new diet/me routine/exercise/new hobby when the clock strikes 12 on the night of December 31st, being too tired, too hungover/too lazy to ruin a perfectly good day, whatever your excuse is. And so your resolutions disappear into thin air.

Isn't that what usually happens? Then you get to 2nd - 3rd January and think, hell, I wasn't really interested in that resolution anyway, so life continues as normal. Why this happens is always a source of intrigue to me, as I suffer badly from it as well.

The way I have been keeping resolutions, for the last five or so years anyway, no -  I haven't given up making them! - is to ignore the first week of New Year, and start implementing my resolutions on the 7th or whatever is within 10 days of January 1st. And I don't, any more, make a list so high, a horse couldn't jump them. I realized, around the same time as I decided NOT to start my resolutions on January 1st, that if I got too ambitious, too greedy, too anything, then I was setting myself up for failure right from the go button.

So, I make 2 now. Just 2. Whatever is my main one for the year - write now, write more, trim my roses 4 times a year, and that  is it. I write these on bright Post It notes and stick them on the side of the cupboard next to my monitor.( I have a tiny space where the monitor, computer, a desk and me fit that is about 3" X 3' and that holds everything!), and there they stay, right where every time I look at the monitor, my eyes slide sideways to those bright, bright, BRIGHT Post It notes. They get changed to another colour, equally as bright, several times a year when they look slightly dull or bedraggled. The roses even have dates to be done on, depending on the weather, and a time limit of ONE week.

When I have got these two resolutions under control, about three months into the year, then I look at another 2 resolutions. This also goes with the seasons, so I can chop and change. But I always keep following the first two as I add another one or two. That way, I can devote an entire year to any of the resolutions, and, if one isn't panning out, then I make a concentrated effort to ensure that its replacement has my full attention.

Sometimes this way of doing things builds on the first part. For instance, with the roses, a follow-on could be to fertilize them twice a year. Or mulch them. or whatever, including(sob!) replace them, if they have died, despite my care, and, as where I live, has very bad Blackspot and assorted other problems, including not much water, there are numerous reasons why the poor things sometimes struggle. Or they are simply a bad batch from where ever I bought them.

So, if your way has not worked for you before, maybe you'd like to try my way. And, if it fails, at least you can blame me, instead of yourself!