Simple Mistake = Red Face

Hello to all!

Second short story is now on Amazon - it really is true. The more you practice these things, the better you get. I only took 4 hours to get this one up - the first took all day. Now, if I can just get the cover right .... Of course, now I don't look at the ones I've got out at all - I'm too scared to. This one is called " Someone Has To Do Something" and, I have to admit, is one of my favorites I wrote many years ago. As usual, the characters simply appeared with their story one day. I thank who or whatever makes this happen to me. Stephen is just about to have another adventure - should be there next weekend if nothing derails me. :)

My old computer is really starting to annoy me. my fault really - I should have retired it years ago. Officeworks appears to have a neat variety of laptop, so maybe I will go check them out. But I learned a lesson quickly - ALWAYS check exactly how your blog posts or any work looks like.

The colour in this computer is very 'off'. In other words, you cannot tell blue from red or any of those any more. So, I carefully rewrote a work that a client wanted done, checked it for spelling and grammar, took out the original and sent it. Some days later, I got an email saying: Are you mad at me? This rewrite is all in red.

I know what was red - my face! All that checking and the one thing I didn't check was the colour of the print!  So it never hurts to have a last look. Even when we are experienced, we can make mistakes.  This was a simple mistake I never would have made if I had bothered to get the computer fixed. And it was such a simple mistake. Because the colour appeared black when I put it on Word I left it. Not smart at all.

I feel like I am back in Grade School, writing my every move down and crossing it off now. Yes, paper and pen. But if it gets my work done properly then I am all for it!

Do you make stupid mistakes? Maybe you need to keep pen and paper handy too. After all, the computer is only as smart as its operator.

If you want to share, my email address is  taylor.cheryl54@yahoo.com

Write on and shine.

Improve whatever your venture is

Hello to all!

Absolutely love this quote: Hard work beats talent when talent does not work hard which is somewhere on LinkedIn. So thank you to whoever came up with it. This has got to be one of the most truthful statements ever made.

I found it at this website, which is quite good if you want some good tips for Freelance Writing. http://www.writeawriting.com/freelance/build-your-writing-portfolio/ I haven't followed it for long, but already I've picked up a few things.

It really never hurts to try to squeeze 1/2 hour or so out of even a very heavy day to simply see what you can find to improve your writing. For all of you who say writing never changes from day to day, I say: BULL****. You mightn't notice the changes, but they are there and almost each day there is a new one. Hopefully, you are savvy enough to keep up with the basics of what is changing.

Google started the trend with its alogorhythms, I think. Since it began, everyone is still trying to beat the system and mostly still failing, sometimes very badly. If something is being programmed to be more like a human, then don't you think you should be writing for a human in order to get noticed?

That sounds pretty simple, I guess, but it is amazing how many people trying to build a business fail to do this. Take a look at your speech patterns. Apart from the usual 'um', 'ah' or 'mmm' while your brain is trying to catch up with your mouth, do you REALLY say one sentence of around 20 words and use the keyword for that sentence 5 times in it?

An experiment to do is to pick a word which interests you and you know a bit about and speak a sentence or two into something that will replay it for you. Check how many times you actually use the keyword naturally in that sentence/sentences. If you are not trying to force it, then you may find it there maybe two times. Do this exercise two or three times. If you really take notice, you will find your brain actually tries to substitute other words that mean the same if you allow it to.

No matter how small you consider your vocabulary, you do know at least one other word to mean the same as you are using, or even a phrase. A good speech writer also understands this. The most boring speech on the face of the planet can be livened up simply by substituting some words for ones with more action meaning the same. This is very much like the colour 'red' is supposed to conjure up feelings of warmth, heat, action.

Use a synonym creator. There are plenty of free ones on the Internet. Personally, I like:  www.thesaurus.com/browse/creator but there are many out there. If you want to improve your writing, 
do check around for synonyms. They will widen your scope and help you enormously to be a better
writer.

So go to it. No one is ever too busy to improve in what they really want to be.

How Long Is Your Headline?

Hello to all!

Yeah, I've been very slack and not followed my own advice. Like everything on this earth, life gets in the way on occasions. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. :) In other words, I've been plain lazy. Never mind. Let's see if I can impart some wisdom to make up for my tardiness.

Studies are showing a dramatic shortening of our attention spans for whatever reason. Don't believe me? Take a quick look at a study available on buffer.com on its social media tips. buffer.com has a lot of great relevant content, as I've found out over the past few weeks.

Take Twitter for an example. Apparently, a great Tweet is 100 characters or less to make an impact. Don't yell - the study says this is true. Which doesn't leave anyone with much to play with, does it?  You can't screw up at all, and that is exactfly what search engines want too. Every one of those 100 characters has to do a job.

Sentence length is so important to a lack of attention. How many times has someone glanced at a sentence, thought: Hell, this has got to be easier somewhere else and gone, never to be seen again? Yeah. I've been guilty of it too. Unfortunately, the sentence has usually been relevant to something I needed. This may have come about through our extremely busy lives, or just a part of the digital age we live in. After all, text messages come in shorthand too, don't they?

Yayyy - Children's Short Story Published

Hello to all!

Christmas is appearing everywhere - makes you wonder how all this stuff manages to keep looking so clean and saying: Buy ME, Buy ME continually. If I had to do that as merchandise for the ridiculous hours that I was on some shelf before the Big Day eventually arrives, only to find I was grabbed rudely at the post-Christmas sales, I'd deliberately fall off the shelf and hopefully break myself. At least the rubbish bin might be peaceful.

So what books are you thinking of buying this Christmas, either for Kindle, Nook or all the gadgets you can read on these days? Me, I belong in the dinasaur era because I still love the actual feel of a carefully/quickly constructed paper creation in my hands. This is not to say I haven't got a long list to read on my Kindle app on my computer. I have. I find Amazon amazing, which I guess is their wish.

I actually have 3 books there now. All of them are short stories really, ranging between 1,000 words and 10,000 words, but I am so proud of myself. The last one I actually managed to follow the guidelines and get it on Kindle all by myself. Now that is totally awesome, seeing as I am terrified of technology and people actually seeing my work.

The last book, Stephen's Dare, came uninvited but wanted after I wrote it. I've written a couple of kid's things, but none which I have ever wanted to see the light of day. They amused me greatly, but that is why I wrote them. Simply for my own entertainment.

So getting Stephen out there was really pushing past my comfort zone. I like to fool with uncomfortable little stories such as The Stump, which appeared one day, fully formed, straight after a visitor came and demanded why we had not blown the old stump where it was to Kingdom Come. I had this queer vision and The Stump  promptly appeared. Needless to say, the original stump is still right where it was, being home to some type of lizard and a strange looking weed. :) Terror reduced me to almost begging someone else to choose the cover and upload it.

But, getting back to Stephen. I cannot see him properly yet. I know he is tall for his age, and frightened of his Mum. His first episode took a weekend to write because he simply was there. I am debating if I actually like him yet, but he came again this morning, with another adventure.

Has this ever happened to you? A character comes fully formed or not, with one story. If you are smart, you will write their story and see if they come back again with another. I have found, over the years, that these types of stories satisfy something in me. Maybe not anyone else, but, if you don't get them out there, how do you know?

After all, no Man is an island, so they say, and, in the vast territory you have within your reach now
thanks to the Internet, why not let your stories reach out to someone else? You may not get rich, but some part of you will be, hopefully, as satisfied as I am that Stephen's Dare is all my own work, from the first word to actually being live. :) Believe me, it is an incredible feeling.

So, what are you waiting for?

Interesting hiatus

Hello to all!

Isn't it funny how life, just ordinary life, can derail us all? I was promising myself that I would post regularly and with something to say and fully intended to keep my word. However...

I have taken a break. Admittedly I have not been idle, but I just haven't written the blog posts I had circulating in my head. Afraid I am not one of those highly organised people who have 365 blog posts lined up on some autosubscriber or whatever ready to be posted each day. :) I genuinely envy those people that they can be so organised. If I have 3 blog posts written for different blogs, I consider I am wonderful. If they are all spontaneous, then that is the ultimate triumph for me.

I just cannot follow one mentor's words and organise myself to be several months in front of myself. This is what I mean life gets in the way. I like to be spontaneous - i.e. if a certain topic jumps into my head, then that is what I blog about. Admittedly it won't make me rich, but I am happy that way. Is it why I also have no idea what my characters are going to do from one minute to the next.

At the moment, I am having great fun with a possibly Young Adult  novel, or rather, a novella, which hopefully will segue into a series. It is giving me a great deal of fun because I have taken the vampire ideology and turned it on its head.

I mean, who imagines vampires as not perfectly sexual, charming, brooding and dark? My hero is blond, has problems with his teeth and has all the troubles of a young ordinary male trying to understand things. This in turn leads to some spectacular failures. I am having a great deal of fun with young Tebbenus and his dysfunctional family. He will end as a short story on Amazon, I hope. :)

One lovely lady, who is successful in her own right, has been giving me encouragement when I have wanted just to share a small part of my myriad of fears. She is Nancy Hendrikson. I don't promote people, but she is a genuine, caring person and her eBooks show it. Check them out on Amazon.

Have you ever wanted to reach out and contact someone without expecting anything back from them? This is how I connected with Nancy. She sent me a promotion for something of hers and I wondered if she had something else that I thought I needed to uinderstand a topic. I was stunned when she sent me a personalised email, without any promotion or anything apart from encouragement.Now I know many successful people genuinely do not have time to personally respond to emails, but those who do do themselves a service.

I do not mean to bombard these kind people with an email every day. Just to connect is enough. Try it sometime and see what happens. If you receive a reply, great! respect it. If you don't, then understand others are busy too. If you expect nothing, then a reply is a lovely surprise.

And, as always, keep writing and trying. Success has many features, not just fame and fortune. Just achieving something is also  success.  

Michael Hardach - Creative Writing: Five Great Free Web Tools For Writers

Michael Hardach - Creative Writing: Five Great Free Web Tools For Writers: Hi – I don't know about you but I'm a cheap devil and if something's free and works well, I'll use it!  Equally, if...

Which One Are You - Part Two

Hello to all!

My last post, I addressed those of us who agonize over every word, every sentence, everything in general. We write every sentence several times, changes words, changing the structure of sentences, changing it all, until the meaning in the first place has been forgotten.

We know who we are. :)

Now, let's have a look at those of us who are in such a hurry to get our words out there, we throw together anything and post it. Never mind that your inner editor is unconscious on the floor from yelling. Never mind that your audience, those people you desperately want to attract, can tell within a couple of seconds that you have literally thrown it together and out there, and hit the 'exit' button.

The worst thing about this scenario is those people you want to attract feel insulted. They consider if you haven't got the courtesy to at least check your spelling, then you really have no respect for your audience. The same goes for basic grammar, and punctuation.

So how can you make things better, without turning into the perfectionist? Give your copy a read-through at least. Take a leaf out of the advice for the perfectionist and give your script 5 minutes or so. Ignore it, walk away, do something else. Even start a new article. That small break should be enough to distance yourself enough emotionally to see it through fresh eyes.

If you can tell from a quick scan that what you have written is something you wouldn't even glance at, then how can you expect someone else to put in time to do so? Not only is this contemptuous of your audience, it is highly rude. You are defeating your own purpose.

Don't immediately decide that you are going all-out to get it all right and spend days on your article or post. As with perfectionists, you don't have to be word-perfect. Take out the imperfections you see, and usually you will find what you have written is going to be good enough for your audience.

They, after all, don't expect you to be a scholar. They expect you to be reasonable with your writing however. This isn't rocket science or being demanding. It is what you expect when you read other people's blogs and articles, so give it to your own readers.

If you think this is going to take you hours, no it won't. Take note of the advice for perfectionists again, and write from your creative side of your brain. As you have tamed your critical side so well, or so totally ignored
it that it no longer even bothers to cry out? Well, time you gave it a small say in what you are writing. Don't allow it full throttle, but just a small kick. You will reap the benefits.

Or, if you genuinely hate writing, then budget to employ someone who can. You really cannot afford to ignore this part of your business. Writing is the life blood of that business, after all, right down to product descriptions( no impoliteness meant!) If you haven't got your copy at least decent, then it doesn't matter how good your services or products are.

Give your readers good copy and they will love you for it. That means with very few mistakes, if any.

Which One Are You - Part One.

Hello to all!

How are you with writing? I mean, do you agonise over every word or do you get it written, cast a quick glance over it and get rid of it, often without really seeing what you have written? Both methods are fraught with trouble. Let's deal with the first one now:

1. Agonise over every word?

While this is fine, it also wastes a great deal of time you could be writing with. Do you check every word as you write it, correct spelling mistakes, grammar and think another word would be better there? Also good, but NOT WHEN YOU FIRST WRITE. In case this does not make any sense, ever since experts have started studying the brain, they have thought we own 2 sides to it.

Possibly very true. But the problem with using BOTH sides at the same time. You can use the more extroverted side at first. This is your creative side. ONLY then do you use the critical side, which screams at you that whatever you have written is no good at all, and worse, YOU yourself are hopeless.

This critical side can wreck your writing career before it has even begun. Nothing it sees is EVER going to be good enough. So you see, you cannot use both at once. Your writing will be bogged down from the start.

NO ONE ever writes a perfect draft first-up. Stephen King said, in his book: On Writing: Write the first draft behind a closed door. What this means is simple: Write fast and keep that draft to yourself. No one, even your best critic, is to see it.

If you can, walk away from it for a while. Even 5 minutes will do. Then come back and let your critical side loose. You lose some personal contact with the article or manuscript in even that short time and you can look at it more impersonally. So changing words etc is not so important then. You can live with slight imperfections. Not in spelling or grammar, of course, or very uneven sentences, but the rest - hell- even the best make mistakes. We are all human. We ALL make mistakes. I know, I know, you will ALWAYS run into someone who THINKS they are perfect. Take that with a grain of salt. No one is, even so-called saints. What we are is human.

Once you have let your inner critic have their say, take another break. Then come back and have a final look at your writing. Check for punctuation and everything you didn't look for the first time. Your manuscript will be ready for publishing. If you can, get someone else to cast an appraising eye over it, but it doesn't matter if you don't.

All the updates which are going on require content that is for human consumption, not robot consumption.  According to Jason Fladlien, you should be able to write a 400 word article in 10 minutes or under. What! I can hear you shriek. I have used some of his teachings and he is right. However, that is just HOW to write the article in under 10 minutes. To get your 400 word article as good as it can be should take you 10 minutes, with practice. His actual words are: How to Write A High Quality Article In 7 Minutes.

Personally, I  never endorse products, even if they work just fine for me. I am just too lazy to. :) But, if you can grab a copy of Jason's early products if you are just starting to write articles that will get accepted, go see if you can find a copy of his: Write Articles In Less than 7 Minutes, or words to that effect. I've lost the front page, unfortunately. But there is a front page I have got: How To Turn 1 Article Into 8, which is another one of his creations.

So there is a basis if you are wondering how to write your articles more quickly. I will help with the ones of you who throw something together, scan it briefly and send it, or, worse, DON'T do anything with it except submit it next time. Promise!

resolutions

Hello to all!

Happy New Year to you all. All made your resolutions yet? I hope they are achievable - a lot of us seem to get airlocks in our heads around about now, and plan for the most silliest of things. The problem is: when we made them, we were serious and thought we could keep them easily.

In the cold hard light though on the first of January, what we thought was achievable seems like Mt Everest.
We look, wonder what on earth possessed us, and promptly slip up because we just KNOW we cannot keep them.

But all is not lost. Go back to your resolutions, and look at them carefully. Let's say we were going to take up walking two miles a day immediately. If you haven't done anything but sit around and barely move apart from the kitchen to the bedroom for the last 2 years even, then there is no way on God's green earth that you are going to make two miles of walking immediately. Admit that and keep the resolution. Simply do the following, and you won't be breaking your resolution. After all, if there is a problem, there is a solution. :)

Break the goal down into manageable chunks before you despair. Okay, you won't get the two miles the first day, but no one said you had to, unless you really specified that. So, in order to get to your goal, simply start walking. Only as far as you can the first day and extend a little more each day. The point is: THAT YOU MUST START.

That is the biggie that almost everyone trips over. The START and CONTINUING, despite all obstacles. Your resolution usually is a broad thing. The broader it is, the more it is open to total failure. So take an element of your resolution and work on that. Add more pieces as you get better at it, and you WILL keep your resolution.

It does not matter if you told friends, family and your pets what your resolutions were. When they(apart from your pets!) tease you about falling off the wagon, you don't have to cringe. You can tell them you are keeping your plan, and let THEM figure out what you mean!

All the best to you!