More Aptly Titled: The Blog That Only Two People Read.
There is also a wide selection of other amazing books that they are featuring this week. Don't overlook them! This world is filled with a slew of amazing independent authors, and if we don't support them, no one may ever hear about them.
Until next week, keep reading and buy indie!
Alright, second post in two days, that's a record for me, but I really want to share this book trailer for The Gouge. Check it out! I hope you enjoy it, and it piques your interest in the story. The Gouge is available now on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YF7R1NL
My breakout novel, The Gouge, is now available for sale in Print and digital format! If you are a Kindle Unlimited member, you can download your copy for free!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08YF7R1NL
I hope that you do enjoy reading my book, and if you do, please take a moment to share a short review on Amazon! Thanks!
Disclaimer first—I do not consider myself a professional anything, so my suggestions and tips should be taken as just one more person on the internet sharing his personal opinion based on his own experiences. These tips and ideas may work for you too, but they may not. Just saying.
Writing Tip #010
Set
Goals and Reward Yourself.
Make
marker points for your breaks in writing. Decide
what your goal will be before you take a break.
Maybe you want to write for one hour, or maybe you can set your goal at
a thousand words. Whatever it is, get to
that marker point and take a break. And
don’t forget to set smaller goals for yourself. Setting a goal like, “I’m going to write four
chapters in one sitting,” are not goals that are going to encourage you to succeed. Set a small goal. Once you reach it, throw a little party for yourself. Have a cookie. Go out for a latte. Maybe order in. Do something that you want to do, after all,
you’ve earned it. Doing this is actually
a short form of positive reinforcement. Setting
goals and reaching them, even the small ones, has helped me be a better writer
in more ways than one. In the same way
the sales of your finished book are going to inspire you to write more
afterwards. Let me know how this tip
works for you. As always, these are just
tips that work for me. Maybe they’re not
for you, and that’s okay. Just wanted to
share my experiences. Have a great day!
Me and my Boys…
I love my kids. My
wife and I have two boys, one just turned sixteen (Michael), and the other will
be fourteen in April (Dylan). I love
these guys. They can be a barrel of fun
to goof around with and an exasperating challenge to deal with at the same
time. Sometimes, we do all of this on purpose.
Laundry day. Actually,
we do laundry just about every day of the week, but that’s beside the
point. Anyways, when folding laundry,
one of the things that bugs my wife and I a lot is that we have to turn the
boys’ clothes right side out before we fold them. I know, I know—it’s not that big a deal, but
it also wouldn’t be that big a deal for our sons to just take the care to make
sure their clothes are right side out before they go into the laundry. I decide to mention this to the boys, and I
get this sort of “okay” eyeroll. I can tell
they’re not taking it seriously, so I tell them that any piece of laundry that
comes out of the dryer inside out will be folded inside out. I get another “okay” eyeroll. I can already see how this is going to go, or
at least, that’s what I think.
Laundry day again, more clothes inside out. Screw it!
I fold their clothes inside out and throw it on their stack. I warned them, and I must follow
through. The laundry is finished, and I
don’t think anything about it till the next morning when Dylan comes downstairs
wearing his shirt inside out. Then,
Michael comes from his room, also wearing his shirt inside out. Trust me, they’re not stupid. They’re doing this on purpose.
Dylan sits across from me at the table, and Michael beside
me. I look at them both, back and forth
for the better part of a minute before Dylan says, “What?”
“Are you two seriously going to wear your shirts like that to
school?”
“Guess so.”
“Turn them right side out.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
“Maybe we can start a trend, dad. Maybe wearing shirts inside out is going to be
the new thing, and we will be where it begins?” Michael says.
“Don’t hold us back, dad,” Dylan adds.
It’s early, and I don’t have time to argue with them. My boys are stubborn, and I suppose they get
it honestly. I use reason, or at least
what I call reason. It’s cold out that
day, and they will probably be wearing their jackets all day, no one in school
will probably even notice, so I let it be.
As it turns out, they apparently turned their shirts right side out in
the restroom at school—they were both wearing their shirts correctly when we
picked them up from school that day. For
the moment, I believe that I’ve won.
Laundry day again. My
wife and I were folding a load of shirts and found another sign of my victory
as all the shirts in that load were right side out (okay, there was one inside
out, but it was mine, and that doesn’t count).
Progress! An hour or so later, we
folded a load of jeans. Have you ever had
a moment where you were on top of the world, and then suddenly the rug was
pulled out from under you? On that day,
I was standing on that very rug. Every
pair of our sons’ pants that we pulled from the load had one leg inside out,
and the other leg right side out. Every.
Single. One.
My wife looked at me, and I know that she could see the gears
grinding in my mind.
“What’re you going to do now?” my wife asked me.
I look at the pants.
This is obviously done on purpose.
If it were just one pair of pants, I’d call it an accident—but every pair
of pants in that load that belonged to one of our boys—they had taken extra
care to make sure that all of their pants were turned half in half out. They was trying to outsmart me—get one over on
their old man. I get that, and in a way,
I enjoyed that. Like I said, my boys and
I have fun. So, how do I respond to this? I turn the pants completely inside out and
fold them. I go a step further, and I
pull their pockets inside out too.
“What are doing?” my wife laughs.
“Justice.”
The next morning the boys come into the kitchen and drop
themselves into seats at the table. They’re
both wearing their pants right side out.
I say nothing. Dylan sits across
from me and he shakes his head.
“What?” I say.
“Dad, it would have been just as easy for you to turn the
pants right side out.”
“I know. It would have
been just as easy for you to turn them right side out when you took them off
too.
“Whatever,” with his famous eyeroll as he pours his cereal.
“Besides, I was being nice.”
“How?”
“I could have folded them as they were, but I didn’t want you
to hurt yourself trying to put them on with only one leg inside out.”
Dylan looks at me for a moment. He’s thinking, and I soon realize that he’s
taken my words as a challenge.
“I could do it.”
“What?”
Dylan gets up from this chair and heads to his room. I turn and look at Michael.
“Well?” I said.
“I have a girlfriend.
I’m not doing that.”
These boys. They’re so
funny to watch, and so frustrating at the same time. All I can say is that if you have kids, love
the hell out of them, and never get too angry in front of them. Watching them grow up is an amazing thing. I do hope, and I know, that they will both
one day be much smarter than me, and I will have to accept that. But so long as we’re folding their laundry,
mom and dad rule this house.
Disclaimer first—I do not consider myself a professional anything, so my suggestions and tips should be taken as just one more person on the internet sharing his personal opinion based on his own experiences. These tips and ideas may work for you too, but they may not. Just saying.
Writing Tip #003
Write something every day!
I know this is a tip that a ton of writers throw around as the go-to-advice
for being a writer, but there is so much truth to this exercise. Seriously, if you actually sit down (or stand
if you write standing up) commit yourself to write just one thing every day, it
will keep your fire lit. Write one
chapter. Write one page. Write one paragraph. Hey, just write one sentence—something that
develops your story a little further than it was. Set that small goal before you sit down to write,
and just make that little goal happen. Yeah,
maybe you will delete that sentence, or paragraph, or page tomorrow, but you
wrote something today. You set a goal,
and you achieved it. Chances are, you
will appreciate what you’ve written and will have a difficult time calling it
quits for the day. Or maybe you will
only complete that small goal and come back to it the next day hating everything
about what you had written—now you’ve learned something about your story—you know
what doesn’t work. Try again, and set a
new goal for the next day. Write Every
Day!
Part Two: There is far too much hate, arrogance, and bullying on social media. Now, this is an opinion that I’ve had from the first swollen up hate filled rant that I read on social media. I don’t recall the topic of the rant, but I remember knowing to my core that this person would not be saying these words to the recipient if they were face to face. This thousand-mile buffer zone creates a false sense of bravery for some posters, or trolls as some people call them. I do my best to reason that maybe this act of dominance over a person they don’t know and probably will never meet is a confidence builder to some. Maybe taking that stand enabled the poster to stand up to a bully in real life, or walk out on an abuser. I don’t know, but I can only hope for a positive effect from all of this. Plus, there are a lot of people that want their opinion to be heard, and why should they? Why shouldn’t they? That brings me to the rants of opinions and the spreading of information that is deceptive and sometimes just all over incorrect. Every human being is capable of doing their own research when they read of some outrageous farce on the internet—I know that I do. Sorry, I’m just not going to take your word for it. But I’ve witnessed a lot on social media where people do not do the research. Someone posts: “Can you believe that enter name of person of interest once said that we should hang babies from trees if they refuse to quit crying?” (Admittedly, not a real post, and a bit of a stretch, but you probably wouldn’t be surprised that it’s not that much of a stretch.) Replies begin to fill that original post with ideas of canceling or terrorizing that person’s life before any research or confirmation that the information is even legitimate. Then, there are the arrogant know-it-alls that want to explain the reasoning behind said comment, and why they believe there is more truth to it than ever. I am the last person that wants to see social media policed by someone who decides what can and can not be posted—that delves into a whole topic of whether or not ones freedom of speech is being restricted. Maybe we should go back to the first section of this paragraph—how is your freedom of speech being infringed upon if you’re not actually, and literally saying it? You’re typing it on keyboard a thousand miles away—you’re not saying anything. And would you even say it if you had an actual., physical audience to say it too? My principal argument for Part Two: Social Media makes people grow the balls to say things that they wouldn’t normally say to another person. Maybe I’m wrong about this—maybe you would walk right up to me unprovoked and call me a twat-waffle for wearing a t-shirt that supported something that you don’t—I think that’s just another problem all together. Be nice. Respect one another. Treat others the way that you would want to be treated. And please, be understanding—Just because I don’t agree with your point of view, doesn’t mean we can’t coexist on the same planet. I'm certain that there is no way that we can peacefully remove social media from our existence at this point, but it would be nice if some of us started using it to spread more kindness, instead of tearing others down.
There's so much going on this world that we cannot control. Sometimes, we are led to believe that systems like democracy, certain privil...
