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?