The Cuckleburr Times

Life Zigs and Writing Zags

A Guest Article Writer — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:00:21 +0000

This Be My Guest Article is by Paula Renaye, Author of The Hardline Self Help Handbook:What Are You Willing to Do to Get What You Really Want?

When we look back on our lives and think about how we got to where we are, it is never a straight line. That’s a good thing! It’s the zigs and zags that make us who we are. Whether mine were all necessary is a different matter!

As for my writing career, it’s hard to say exactly when, where and how it all started. Was it when I was old enough to hold my first book? Was it because of my exposure to journalism in high school? Well, that’s certainly the first writing contest I recall winning. Then again, my promising journalism career in college was important too, except that I walked away from all that for “love”—big huge zig-zag.

Of course, there really isn’t a true line in the sand that I stepped over and proclaimed myself a writer. It took a while for me to get in sync with where my heart had always wanted to go.

If I have to pick a point where that inner knowing grabbed me by the throat—kind of literally—and said it was time to get busy, it was when my dad died suddenly in 1991. I did not handle it well, and the turmoil unleashed a lot of things that had been bottled up for many years. And it came bursting out in a really odd way—I started hearing songs in my head.

The lyrics and melodies would just pop in so I started writing them down. After a while, I had a pretty good collection—a couple of local groups even played a few in public venues, which was really fun. But since I was neither a singer nor a musician, I didn’t really know what to do with them—or myself.

I was, however, really enjoying writing again and wanted to do more. So, I found a local writers group and joined in. A couple of people were writing poetry and short stories, but most were writing novels. Well, I thought, I wanted to do that!

I’d read zillions of books and I saw no reason why I couldn’t just whip one out. So I did. Here is the first line of the first book I ever wrote: Still holding the warm gun, Maddie lifted her skirt and ran for the buggy.

Now, seriously, it’s a pretty good line! That book actually won several contests right out of the gate, but never made it to print. My first published novel was Hot Enough to Kill, a humorous mystery that was featured in Redbook. My second, Dead Man Falls, won the 2001 WILLA Literary Award for Best Original Paperback. The third, Turkey Ranch Road Rage, was released last year and I’m working on Killer Moves in all my spare time.

So, you ask, how did it happen that I went from writing funny mysteries to self help books? Well, if you’d read my fictional tales you wouldn’t need to ask that question!

Actually, after the first book came out, life happened. The second book was already set to be published, but life kept zigging and sagging—and not in a good way. In short, death, divorce and delusion took a toll. And, like many people, I started searching for ways to ease my own pain.

I spent a lot of years feeling like I was just treading water—I knew I needed to do something, but I couldn’t see what or how. I love the movie The Secret, but when I was in that stuck place, the only thing I was capable of manifesting was more pain. I needed a pre-requisite class—I needed the secret before The Secret!

Over the course of about ten years, I started some version of a self-help book at least six different ways, but it just never came together. I knew what I wanted to do—to help people who were in the same boat I was, people who feel stuck and yet were afraid to be un-stuck. I wanted to give people in pain, as I had been, a simple and direct roadmap out of it.

That’s really what The Hardline Self Help Handbook is about. It’s a do-it-yourself short course based on what I learned on my own jagged journey and what I now do with my coaching clients and in my workshops. It’s a step by step guide to help people figure out what they really want in their lives, why they don’t already have it—and how they can.

And while the title of the book let’s you know you’re in for some tough love, and with times as they are today, it’s exactly what a lot of us who have been zigging and sagging need and are ready for. Which is exactly why the subtitles asks: What Are You Willing to Do to Get What You Really Want?

Take the challenge, do what you need to do, make your zigs and zags a little less harsh and start living your joy!

Paula Renaye is a professional life coach, motivational and empowerment speaker, regression hypnosis practitioner and award-winning author in both fiction and nonfiction. She has been a consultant for 18 years, holds a degree in Financial Planning and is a member of the International Association of Coaches. Her passion is helping people face reality and take personal responsibility for their choices in order to reclaim their own power and live the life they really want. For special book tour bonus materials and a link to purchase the print book at a discount, visit www.hardlineselfhelp.com. The book is also available here at http://www.amazon.com and on Kindle.

Book Excerpt: Keys to The Kingdom by Senator Bob Graham

A Book Excerpt Author — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:15:57 +0000

July 15
Washington, D.C.

At 10:15 Friday morning Tony arrived at the senator’s hideaway in the Capitol, one of seventy offices secreted throughout the Senate wing. Ranging from cubbyholes to ornate suites, they were assigned depending on that truest acknowledgment of status in the upper chamber, seniority. As seventeenth in years of Senate service, Billington had a room that overlooked the east lawn, decorated with furniture from the Senate storeroom and landscape art of his state.

“Mr. Ramos, have a seat,” the senator greeted Tony.

“Thank you.” He sat on the end of the sofa closest to Billington’s desk.

The approving smile and tilt of the head indicated the senator was intrigued with Tony’s athletic grace and presence. “Mr. Ramos, before we go to the subject of our meeting, may I ask if you had a relative with your name who played infield for the Havana Sugar Kings? As I recall, you look a great deal like him.”

Impressed but not flustered, Tony replied, “Yes sir. That was my grandfather in the old Florida International League. I’m surprised you would remember that.”

Billington placed his hands behind his head and stretched out in the desk chair. “My father loved baseball. When I was growing up, we had season tickets to the Miami Sun Sox, and he and I drove in from the farm to almost every home game. The Sugar Kings were the dominant team in the league. Dad especially liked your grandfather’s grit and hustle.”

“I wish I’d been able to see him play.”

“You would have been proud. I remember when Dad told the sports editor of the Post about Tony Ramos and several of the other Cuban ballplayers. He said the Washington Senators should pick them up; the only thing they could do would be to improve the weakest team in the American League. But that was a couple of years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line, and the Senators were not about to do that in a southern-culture town like this one.”

“That was my grandfather’s dream, to play in the major leagues, and I know he would want me to thank your father.”

Billington paused to pour two glasses of water. After offering one to Tony he sipped and continued, “That was yesterday and today is now. I’d like to ask a question.”

“Yes sir.”

“Mark Block is not an easy grader, and he has given you very high marks. I’m satisfied you have several of the aptitudes we will need for the inquiry, so I’m more interested in motivation. Why do you want to break your INR career path to take this on?”

Tony leaned forward. “I think the president has fundamentally mischaracterized 9/11 as the beginning of a war on terrorism. It is not a war unless we make it one. This is not a war. It is an intelligence and paramilitary operation against a relatively small and enormously out-gunned enemy.”

“What do you mean by ‘relatively small’?” the senator asked.

“A week after 9/11, my current boss asked the head of the INR how many terrorists were there in the world?”

“And what did he estimate?”

“He said if you define a terrorist as a person who has been through training camps like al-Qaeda’s in Afghanistan, or Hezbollah’s in Syria or Lebanon, and who belongs to an organization prepared to use those acquired skills, he estimated 100,000. I don’t disparage that figure, but it’s hardly the Viet Cong, or Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf.”

“So, that’s why you want to join our inquiry staff?”

“Yes sir. To understand the nature, objectives, and capabilities of our enemy. And also to understand why we have exaggerated its threat. Those are some of the questions I think your inquiry can answer.”

“Tony, that is a very thoughtful statement of our mission. I want you on the team.”

The above is an excerpt from the book Keys to the Kingdom by Senator Bob Graham. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Senator Bob Graham, is a former two-term Governor of Florida and served eighteen years in the United States Senate. He was appointed by President Obama to co-chair the National Commission on the BP oil spill and served on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

He is recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from healthcare and environmental preservation, and for his ten years of service on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — including eighteen months as chairman of the Committee. In 2004, he authored Intelligence Matters, based upon his experiences during the Joint Inquiry and its analysis of the run-up to the Iraq War. After retiring from public life, he served for a year as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. While there, he wrote a book about civic participation entitled. Currently, he chairs the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida.

Bob and his wife, Adele, reside in Miami Lakes, Florida. For more information, please visit Bob Graham’s Web site and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

Author Interview: Lin Pardey, Author of Bull Canyon: a Boatbuilder, a Writer and other Wildlife.

A Be My Guest Author — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:22:08 +0000

Thanks to Maryglenn for sharing this interview with Lin Pardey, author of Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and other Wildlife.

How long did it take you to write Bull Canyon
I wrote the bare bones of the first five chapters almost 20 years ago. They languished in a file folder for twelve years. A chance encounter with Maria Eugenia Bestani, a professor of English Literature from the University of Tucuman, Argentina made me reconsider those chapters. Even with her encouragement and the enthusiasm of Kathryn Mulders, a Canadian literary agent, 8 years passed before I was fully satisfied with the manuscript. That’s 20 years from inception to completion—not a record but definitely a long gestation.

Which part of the writing process did you find easiest?
The story telling. Getting the individual incidents down on paper, especially those about my neighbors, the floods and all aspects of building the sheds and boat.

Which part of the writing process did you find most difficult?
Eliminating over half of the stories and incidents I put down on paper. I had such a treasure trove to choose from. I knew I had to be selective so each incident paid off and helped the plot progress toward a logical conclusion.

How was the process of writing Bull Canyon different than the process of writing your previous books?
The vast majority of the chapters in each of my previous ten books had started life as magazine articles, rather like a series of sailing stories. Since editors bought and paid for the stories, I had almost immediate feedback and validation of my efforts. Later, the individual articles were combined into a book with the addition of a few connecting paragraphs. Bull Canyon is, in effect, the first book length story I have written.

I also had an intimate knowledge of the people who would be reading my previous books, as those books were aimed toward other sailors, armchair or actual. At first I tried writing Bull Canyon for my regular readers. But Maria Eugenia convinced me the story would resonate with a much broader audience. This created a new challenge—being sure I didn’t bore non-sailing readers, and at the same time describing how my sailing life influenced so much of what happened during the years in the canyon.

How long after you left Bull Canyon did you begin working on the manuscript?
I always keep a journal, jotting short notes each day. Interestingly, I chronicled the majority of the story about the great car crash within days of it happening. It was such a bizarre event that I didn’t want to forget any of the details. I didn’t actually sit down to write the book until eight years after we left the canyon.

Did writing the manuscript make you homesick for Bull Canyon? If so, how?
No, not homesick, but it definitely brought back a flood of memories. In fact, one of the most enjoyable parts of writing this story was reliving those years with Larry. We spent hours reminiscing, laughing over the crazy incidents, metaphorically patting ourselves on the back as we reflected on the successes we had in spite of some quite daunting roadblocks.

What was your favorite part of living in Bull Canyon?
The parties! Big ones, small ones. The old stone cottage had a magical quality about it. The quiet of the canyon and the beauty of the hills around us helped our visitors slow down and relax. Almost all our friends who drove out stayed for a night or two. Then the warmth of the oil lamp light, the intimacy of the roaring fire seemed to evoke wonderfully wide-ranging conversations and music. Even better, since we had lots of room around us, it didn’t matter how many people showed up for two or three times a year pot luck occasions. It is amazing how many friends trace the origins of their relationships back to those country weekends at the old stone cottage in Bull Canyon.

Least favorite?
Mud and dust. I don’t think either of us was prepared for this aspect of country life. Remember, we had just spent eleven years on a small sailboat anchored out in quiet lagoons, sailing across oceans. One of my favorite aspects of life afloat is, though it may sometimes be wet or windy, it is almost always clean and dust-free. Of course being allergic to the desert plants and insects was a close second.

What was the hardest part about leaving Bull Canyon?
Saying good-bye to Cindy. I still miss that lovely dog and the long walks she lead me on. Right from the start leaving had been part of the plan. For a few years, while we were caught up in the California dream, we did contemplated making the old stone cottage part of our long term life. But my allergic reaction and the break down of Barbara and Jimmie’s marriage changed that. So in the end the cottage had to be sold.

How did your time in Bull Canyon change you?
I gained tremendous confidence in my ability to earn my living as a writer. I also felt less intimidated by the challenges I’d later face as we set off to sail around the Great Southern Capes because I realized almost anything would be easier than trying to control the forces of nature, and the inter-neighbor politics we’d seen in Bull Canyon.

How did your time in Bull Canyon shape and influence your work as a writer?
I never had formal training as a writer; numbers, math and engineering were what I was attracted to as a youngster. Until we moved to Bull Canyon, the few things I’d learned about my craft came about from reviewing stories after editors had massaged them (or hacked them up to gain space for advertising) into magazine articles, and by dissecting why particular articles were purchased quickly, why others were rejected. Once telephones arrived in Bull Canyon, I found myself working directly with Patience Wales, an editor at Sail magazine who had a successful background in short fiction. She gave me dozens of hours of one-on-one editorial training and plot-shaping advice. From her I learned the difference between a vignette and a story and, hopefully, used this lesson well.

If you had to pick the “best” lesson Bull Canyon taught you, what would it be?
I have always prided myself in being a highly organized person. But living in the canyon taught me to be far more flexible about changes to what Larry called my “tidy little plans.” I also learned going right to the top is often the only way to muddle through a bureaucratic situation.

It is fascinating to watch the progress of Taleisin through the pictures in Bull Canyon. What was it like to see Taleisin taking shape before your eyes? Was it bittersweet in any way in that it represented a time when you would leave Bull Canyon?
The only thing I like better than watching things being built is being part of that process. Watching Taleisin take shape was utterly fulfilling. Each new piece of timber that was fitted then varnished felt like a reason to celebrate. At first, I didn’t want the construction to go too quickly as I was enjoying the adventure of being on shore, savoring canyon life. I came to love our daily routines, my writing time (and wonderful office,) contact with my family. But as the frames slowly began to look more like a boat that would carry us onto new adventures, I began feeling ever more restless. Looking back, I feel blessed that the project and our time in Bull Canyon lasted just long enough.

Did the two of you ever drive each other crazy?
Although we worked together on the whole project, we both had our own jobs to do. When we weren’t working separately we were scheming and planning and wishing there was more time to spend with each other. Then I tended to be away on my own for twice a month shopping expeditions. Twice during the four years, I was off for 3 week long special events. Thus when readers envision us being constantly together 24/7 they are getting the wrong picture. On the other hand, we and others like us who share careers find it hard to imagine what it is like sharing their partner with jobs that fill the best hours of the day. Soon after we began building our first boat, 18 years before our Bull Canyon project, Larry asked me to quit my day job and work with him. His reason, “You wake up rushed and in a hurry to go off for 10 hours to work for someone else. Then you come home tired and often grumpy to spend the evening with me. Some employer gets all the best hours of you for money and I get the little that is left over for love.” In Bull Canyon we definitely shared the best hours. But as you’ll learn in this book, tensions do occasionally rise so we have come up with rules for handling them.

What do you hope readers take away from Bull Canyon?
The most important aspect of our Bull Canyon life was the growth it created in my marriage. By working as a true team Larry and I built something far more successful than either of us could have conceived of doing by ourselves. If this book inspires even one reader to work in true partnership with their spouse, then it will not only have been an enjoyable project but an emotionally rewarding accomplishment.

Did you ever envision writing a memoir? What finally convinced you to take the plunge, so to speak?
I never considered writing a memoir. I have written many tales about my sailing adventures but in those I rarely discussed the emotional aspects of my life. This book did not start out to be a memoir. But as it came together, it took on a life of its own. At first it was my mother sneaking her way into the manuscript. I had to examine my relationship with her. Then it was having to explain how I related to my canyon neighbors. Only when I accepted that this was a memoir did I figure out how to draw the story together.

What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Just when I decided to write my first magazine article in Cartegena, Columbia, Larry and I were invited to dinner by the owner of a local restaurant. He introduced to his wife, Penny Lernoux, a professional journalist and at the time, head of the South American International Press Bureau (see Penny Lernoux-Wikipedia for more). She generously invited me to spend the next morning at her home. When I arrived she handed me a note book and said “write about something that happened at dinner last night.” She left the room without giving me any further instructions nor time for questions. So I sat and pondered then wrote. Two hours later she came back in, stood at the door about 15 feet away from me and said, “Show me what you’ve written.” I held up the notebook and fanned out the pages. She tossed me red pencil and said, “Get rid of half of it.” Then Penny turned and walked away. An hour later she came back and quickly thumbed through my heavily red penciled pages without reading them. “I’ve taught you all you need to know; one—there is a story in everything you see or do, and two—half of what you wrote doesn’t have to be there.” After she made up a tray of coffee and sandwiches Penny did sit down and skim through my words and add, “Learn those lessons and you’ve got a good chance since you obviously know how to string words together.”

What is the worst piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
Soon after I started writing sailing stories almost 35 years ago, a magazine editor took me to meet a quite famous London literary agent. “Haven’t been attacked by any sharks? Haven’t been eaten by a whale? Forget it, no one will read a book that doesn’t have a really dramatic story.” It was about three years later that our first sailing book was published. It told about life on a small boat and the interesting encounters we had with people along our sailing route. There are no big dramas, only a few days of stormy weather and lots of fine sailing tales. Cruising in Seraffyn has now sold over 50,000 copies and is still in print and available as an eBook, and people still write to tell me they how much they enjoyed the story.

What’s next for Lin Pardey book-wise? Do you have other books in the works?
I have already begun work on a book about the adventures we had on the boat we built in Bull Canyon. I also have notes for a second book I want to call The Compelling Power of Adventure.

Thanks Lin for sharing that with us! – Ed.

Bull Canyon (Hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-929214-67-9, $24.95, 6 x 9, 304 pages; eBook, ISBN: 978-1-929214-66-2, $16.95, Category: Autobiography/Memoir; Midpoint Trade Books, distributor) is now available via all good bookstores.

Lin Pardey is the author of eleven books. She and her husband Larry have sailed more than 200,000 miles and received some of sailing’s most prestigious awards. The Pardeys have also created several instructional videos on offshore voyaging. They make New Zealand their home base, but spend part of each year cruising on board their engine-free 29-foot sailboat Taleisin. Visit Lin Pardey online at: www.linpardey.com.

Book Excerpt: Pitch Uncertain By Maisie Houghton

A Book Excerpt Author — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 06:05:01 +0000

I was born in 1940, a bad time for the world, but I never did anything bad until the day I cut off my hair and left it on the floor for my mother to find, a bright, hot pool of yellow curls.

I was four. It was wartime and we were living in a rented house in Winter Park, Florida. My father, an officer in the navy, had recently been stationed there. My mother and I, along with Sybil, my older sister by two years, and Elizabeth, “Tizzy,” a new baby of two months, had moved from New York City to be near him.

Florida, despite all its palm trees and relentless sunlight, seemed dark to me — the people and the houses. Unaccustomed to southern heat, my mother kept the old, verandaed house heavily shaded. The blinds were always down, the curtains drawn. Someone was always taking a nap, my mother, my father (but not together), the amorphous baby. Sybil and I tiptoed around the closed doors, but when we went outside the glittering light hurt our eyes.

In the kitchen was Lily Mae, the black maid. Marion Skillon, a trained nurse from Naples, Maine, was also there. Uncertain in a new land, my mother had persuaded Marion to make the long journey south. Marion, all starched whiteness and squeaking rubber-soled shoes, stuck to the new baby upstairs. Lily Mae ironed endless rivers of laundry and passed dead-looking platters of food in the shadowy dining room.

My father was almost never there. When he did appear, it was often with a swirl of laughing young pilots in uniform. They brought us shells from the beach that we never visited. They set us on their knees, putting down their drinks to balance us on their laps.

The afternoon I rebelled, my mother was a long while on the telephone. She wasn’t the type to chatter on. She served as a sounding board to solve other people’s problems. My mother had been called to the telephone during a rare treat: We had been having lunch alone together. Her low voice burred on as she twisted the cord in her hand. What was she saying? To whom was she speaking?

I slipped away from the dining room table, wandering sulkily through the muted rooms. On my mother’s desk a pair of scissors gleamed. Long and sleek, they were grown ups’ scissors, not the stubby, disappointingly blunt ones we used for paper dolls. I ran my hand over my head. My hair was the one thing about me that was different. In everything else I matched my sister — our seersucker dresses, our red sandals, our black eyes. But Sybil had two brown pigtails while I still had a baby’s fuzz of buttery curls. I thought about Marion Skillon in the mornings, twisting my hair into ringlets, wrestling the ribbon to the top of my head. “There now, aren’t you sweet? Now go and be good.”

Suddenly it was easy to pick up the slender weapon and start to cut. One tentative snip and then I was possessed with the necessity to act and be done with my boldness. My curls fell away like skin being shed by a snake. It went so fast I hardly knew what I was doing. I crept back to the kitchen to face Lily Mae. She stared silently. “Your mama be upset,” she said, shaking her head as she moved through the swinging door with a stack of freshly ironed shirts. A little panic seized me, but, almost gleefully, I hurried to stand defiantly before my mother. She was still sitting, unspeaking, by the telephone. She seemed unmoved. “Heavens, what did you do that for? It will take forever to grow out.” Marion peered at me over the banister railing. “You’ve lost your looks,” she sniffed.

My mother guided me toward the dining room. “We must finish lunch,” she murmured, rousing herself. The table looked half-ravaged, like my hair, with crumpled napkins and tired lettuce on the plates. I started to weep at the enormity of what I had done. Fat tears fell on my grilled cheese sandwich. “Don’t fuss, darling,” consoled my mother distractedly. She wasn’t even looking at me.

There was an unspoken lesson in that afternoon. My mother should have been angry but instead she held her tongue. Was it at that point that I learned to guard the peace, to mind my manners, to keep my mouth shut?

On my report card, the music teacher wrote “pitch uncertain.”

In school someone would grab me from behind on the playground: “whose side are you on? Lucy’s?” — the charismatic troublemaker, or “Kitten’s?” — the charismatic good-girl. It seemed easier — and smarter — to keep my mouth shut.

One day I came home from school tense, weepy from trying to please everyone. My mother uncharacteristically drew herself up and exhorted me to “Stick by your guns, have the courage of your convictions.” Most important of all, “Be yourself!”

“But how do I know who I am?” I wondered.

Growing up, I swam like a fish in the clouded waters of family life.

My family was large, consisting mostly of women. Since I was born in 1940, the men in the family were soon absent, sent as soldiers to Europe or as naval officers aboard ships to the distant Pacific.

I remember not only my mother’s mother, “Gran,” as we called her, but also her mother, my great-grandmother, erect, dignified and austere in her long dress. The family I remember also harbored a great-great maiden aunt, several great-aunts and endless pretty cousins. During the war we stayed intermittently with my mother’s mother, Gran Jay. Though a young widow at fifty-two, she still kept a rambling house in what was then the quiet countryside of Long Island for her five daughters and one neighboring daughter-in-law.

Gran ran her house as an ark, the center of an otherwise fragmented family life. Her daughters dipped in and out of this comfortable, familiar world, using it as a kind of sacred place, sometimes for absolution and redemption, sometimes just for temporary sustenance, always for nourishment.

The above is an excerpt from the book Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice by Maisie Houghton. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Maisie Houghton, author of Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice

Maisie Houghton, author of Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice, was born in New York City, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fifties and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1962. With her husband, she has lived in Corning, New York, for over forty years. Pitch Uncertain is her first book.

For more information please visit TidePool Press.

How The Ego Co-Opts Feelings

A Be My Guest Author — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:54:10 +0000

This Be My Guest Article is by Richard Moss, Author of Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence

In an evolutionary sense, feeling is a much older mode of consciousness than thinking. The large brain and highly convoluted cortex that supports the thinking of modern human beings is a newer development than the midbrain and thalamus that govern most of your feelings. It is feeling that dominates a young child’s experience because until the ego has developed, thinking is very limited.

Just watch babies, and you can see that they are constantly experiencing ever-changing feelings, from utter bliss and contentment to screaming distress and misery. A young child feels his own internal reality as well as the emotional environment around him. But he does not yet realize that some feelings arise from within himself and that others are being stimulated from outside.

Now try to imagine how a baby learns to deal with feelings as her ego develops, and she begins to see herself as a separate self: Gradually, feelings that seemed to come and go without cause become objects of consciousness that the ego interprets as self. The baby begins to identify with the feelings and to regard herself as happy or unhappy, good or bad, according to the nature of the feelings. Once the ego has claimed these feelings as self, her only defense against them is to try to turn the untamed into the tamed through thinking. In other words, the ego turns feelings into its emotions.

I think this is why the emotions of children change so quickly. A few weeks ago, for instance, I was with a friend and his five-year old son. In the course of an hour or so, the little boy was smiling and happy, closed and complaining, angry and demanding, timid and clinging, crying and inconsolable. . . round and round. The father expressed concern because his son seemed more disturbed and emotional since starting kindergarten. Moreover, whenever his son expressed any unhappiness, the father wanted to immediately do something to take that emotion away; such a normal response for a parent who imagines that something is wrong.

But what I saw was completely normal and to be expected. I saw a young ego trying to come to grips with the flux of feelings (some of them agreeable, and others confusing and dark) that were arising in him because of so many things: having a new daily rhythm, being away from his family more, being in a new environment surrounded by new people (teachers and children with all their own behaviors and emotions), and even the changing of his own growing body.

I could just imagine his young ego bombarded by feelings and his mind racing with thoughts. And because a child has no way to meet feelings with focused-spacious awareness and no way to evaluate his thoughts, those feelings are instantly co-opted by the ego and invariably turned into emotions. For me, it was like looking at the history of humankind and how the thinking mind inevitably makes us all crazy once that which is not of the ego (feeling) has been appropriated by the ego.

How can you tell if your ego has appropriated a dark feeling? You find yourself compulsively thinking. Your mind will spin with story after story about what is wrong with you, what strategy to pursue, why your situation is hopeless, why your life is ruined or meaningless, or how you can save yourself. It will find every way it can to attack you, judge you, blame others, or even attack them. It will make you guilty, resentful, terrified, hopeless, impulsive, and aggressive. . . one after the other. It is frantically trying to create a known (albeit, terribly amplified) misery in a desperate attempt to be in control of an unknown and ultimately unknowable feeling that it doesn’t even realize that it is reacting to.

But the ego can never control what comes from a deeper ground of consciousness. Even though thinking is a newer evolutionary development that has given human beings great power, it is the wrong mechanism for addressing feeling. The more your ego spins stories in the face of abysmal feeling, the more miserable you come. It is the thinking mind that drives a person to suicide or to abusing drugs and alcohol — not the actual feeling.

Until you understand what is happening to you and can stop your thoughts and instead turn your full awareness with focusedspacious attention directly toward the dark feeling, you might as well be in hell. Indeed, I believe this is the only hell that exists, and it is purely mind-made. The abysmal feelings in themselves are never as terrible as what the ego creates to try to control them.

The above is an excerpt from the book Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence by Richard Moss. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Richard Moss, author of Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence

Richard Moss, MD, author of Inside-Out Healing, is an internationally respected leader in the field of conscious living and inner transformation. He is the author of six seminal books on using the power of awareness to realize our intrinsic wholeness and reclaim the wisdom of our true selves. He lives in Ojai, California.

For a calendar of future seminars and talks by the author, and for further information on CDs and other available material, please visit www.richardmoss.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

‘Choosing’ to be a writer

A Guest Article Writer — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:10:39 +0000

Some years ago when I decided to take the plunge and become self-employed I was offered the chance of a little financial help and support from a local small business start-up unit. I had reservations about taking up the offer because most institutions don’t see ‘Writer’ as a career, more as a sign of self-delusion and possible mental instability. The financial carrots being waved by local and national government were, however, substantial enough for me to go through the motions at least.

My fears were largely confirmed when I found myself sat alone in a room with a grey looking man in a suit, drinking cheap instant coffee out of a plastic cup. I don’t think he’d read through my details in advance because when I explained what my ‘business’ was, he jumped both visibly and nervously. I realised that there was a gulf in understanding opening up between us when he said that I’d certainly ‘chosen an industry that was hard to break into’. At least he showed the courtesy of calling it an industry. While he sifted through his paperwork I pondered the word ‘chosen’. I’ve never felt I had a choice when it came to being a writer.

The writer’s life

In the end the business support was of little help – although he did explain that I would have to pay my own tax, not exactly a revelation. Perhaps business advice shouldn’t be aimed at us sensitive, artistic types; at least that was the impression I got from the advisor. Writing is, I’ll admit, a difficult industry to break into, but in the case of nearly all writers I’ve met along the way, I never did get the impression that they ‘chose’ it. In some cases, like my own, many just ended up giving in to writing, instead of having proper jobs like normal people! But if you are facing the fact that you no longer have the strength to resist the call of the writer’s life, where on earth to start? There are plenty of claims on the internet that you can make a living as a writer, working from anywhere in the world. They offer seductive images of the possibilities, but what’s behind this and is any of it really true?

Bloody Revolutions

The internet revolution evolves each day – if not hourly – and as Charles Dickens once put it ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times’. Revolutions are like that. For writers, the internet revolution is exactly that, the best and worst of times. While the internet has created a massive market for content – written content still being the basis for this new media – it has also created a whole industry full of pitfalls. To those contemplating the move into full-time writing, understanding what the opportunities are, and why they exist, can be very useful indeed. Content writing or web copywriting is about selling stuff, simple as that really. However, there are a huge range of techniques used by online marketing professionals to do so.

Research subjects

The techniques are varied and change as the internet changes. For those looking to become online copywriters researching the opportunities and techniques below is worth a little time:

SEO Copywriting: This subject is so vast that it really defies a short summing up and the best thing you can do is a lot of your own research! In short this type of writing is designed to raise the profile of a piece of writing (and the site it appears on) amongst search engines. These little robots have some pretty high standards and they prefer quality and originality over something called ‘keyword stuffing’. Recent changes to the way the major search engines operate mean that originality and quality are more important than anything else – so if you can manage those your work is likely to be saleable.

Content Farms: I’ll avoid libel as best I can here. Content farms operate on different models, some generate titles based on the most popular search terms ‘du jour’ (literally) which they then pay writers to create. Pay is, in some cases, something of an imaginative leap as the rates are pretty poor. There are good and bad content farms out there; from the writers perspective they are all relatively lowly paid, but they offer the chance to learn the trade from the inside. They are also a good place to hone your skills and develop a portfolio.

Online copywriting agencies; there is a growth in online copywriting agencies – big and small. These offer some real opportunities to writers. Because the search engines are focussing on matters of quality and accuracy when it comes to web copy, this type of agency is in a strong position to build a ‘stable’ of good quality writers – and pay them well. Some are just one man/woman operations while others have a number of writers.

There are probably as many routes into online copywriting as there are individuals working in the industry. It’s fast paced and changes constantly. While some sites claim that anybody can be an online writer this claim may be a little enthusiastic. Good writers will find it more straightforward than bad! If you are prepared to study, learn and practice you will in time find that success is possible and the rewards are, believe me, well worth the effort.

Chris Hoole provides copywriting services and more for Apple Copywriting.com If you would like to find out more information about Apple Copywriting visit their website at www.applecopywriting.com. They offer a no obligation quote to any visitor interested in their services.

The Dynamic Duo: Words And Your Imagination

A Guest Article Writer — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 01:22:09 +0000

Writing can be a very simple process. You put pen to paper and watch what comes out. For many, it truly is that easy. For others, it’s a little bit more of a struggle. You stare at a blank piece of paper for awhile and wonder how you’re going to get any words on it.

Writing is about using your imagination. Focus not on the topic but how the topic makes you feel. Transport yourself to another part of the world. Close your eyes and pretend like you’re not sitting at your desk trying to write something. Think about the topic.

Now, open your eyes and write what you saw. As your hand connects with the pen you will likely be surprised that there are suddenly words sprawling across the page. You are using your imagination to form words that will ultimately lead to a really creative article. It really is possible but sometimes pressure is our worst enemy.

There are a few things that you can do to help get your imagination and your words working together to write creatively.

FIND YOUR VOICE
You need to find your voice. Everyone has one. This is how you’re going to be expressive within your article. You can write a fact-based article and still have some fun with it. Many people may be reading this and the only way that they’re going to get through the whole thing is if they are enjoying themselves while reading it.

You can be sarcastic, energetic, monotone or any other emotion as you are writing. It will come through in your writing so it’s important to actually be aware of it. You don’t want to sound monotone throughout the article or people will stop reading it. No one wants to be bored when they’re reading, even if it is about a boring topic.

DO YOUR RESEARCH
Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, you need to have your facts straight. You can still be imaginative, but if you write something that has any grounding into reality, you need to know what you’re talking about. If you make up information because it sounds good, people won’t trust you anymore and they will stop reading things that you write. Even if you think people won’t notice, you need to assume all of your readers are going to be experts about what you’re writing.

The research has to be done in such a way that you are weaving facts into your creative work. No one wants to have a bunch of facts spewed at them. They want to slowly learn about them throughout your witty article that has them wanting to keep reading. Otherwise, they could get the same thing from going to a trade journal or reading from wikipedia. Your job is to wow them with the facts.

WRITE, WRITE, WRITE
The more you write, the more you will want to write. If you get stuck on one thing, start writing about something else. Even if it’s a journal entry, write. It’s why so many writers have multiple projects going at once. It will get the creative juices flowing so that you are ready to take on the next article with much more vigor.

There are plenty of ways to stay active writing. You can write for work or for pleasure, or both. It’s important to write when you want to be a writer. It’s exercise, just like an athlete hits the gym every day, you need to hit the paper every day.

Anything’s possible with imagination but sometimes our head gets in the way. If our imagination and our words can pair up without interference, the results are often quite impressive.

Article by Alice McCoy. Alice’s father was a long-haul trucker and ever since a kid she’s been fascinated with that life. Although she stays at home with her kids and writes now, she is still involved by keeping an eye out for CDL jobs and writes about topics like commercial truck insurance quotes. One day she hopes to have her own rig.

The Power of Intention

A Be My Guest Author — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 01:52:37 +0000

This Be My Guest Author Article is by Pascal Marco, Author of IDENTITY:LOST.

I’ve had fun quoting Oprah’s “There’s no such thing as a coincidence” mantra and I will tell you I have fully embraced this belief with Lady O. She has been the world’s #1 proponent (besides my own personal life coach and wife, Karen) of the belief of the power of intention.

I guess it’s really all about letting go and having fun. Children embrace this belief by playing and using their imaginations. I was once like this with my own creative imagination, many, many years ago. But for various reasons (some valid, some purely weak excuses) I hid and buried my desire to create for decades.

Then it all changed about five years ago.

Through a series of remarkable, serendipitous events, things started to happen. Some would call them coincidental but for me they had a distinctly stronger message than just mere happenstance occurrences. One of the first was when I attended Game 5 of the 2005 ALCS Championship when the Chicago White Sox visited the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. If my White Sox won then they would be playing in their first World Series in 46 years. Chance got me and a friend not only into a game when we were told no tickets were available but had us sitting in the opposition owner’s box seats with his family.

The White Sox won and that event spurred me to write a story about it. That story turned into half-a-dozen more I wrote over the next year on a White Sox fan web site. By this time my desire to write had been rekindled and I began to think about this story I had locked away for over twenty-five-years.

I had recently sold my business, which provided me with a very modest profit, enough I hoped to give me a brief amount of time to not have to work full-time. I took that time to look for my notes I had kept along with newspaper clippings about that story only to find that after moving a few times over those 25 years I had misplaced the documents. The power of the Internet and the help from a friend’s daughter who attended a Chicago university, allowed me access to the Chicago Tribune’s historical archives.

I plunged headlong into finding the details of that crime that had been committed along the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago’s Burnham Park. Along the way, I discovered this rich, long forgotten history of the area where the crime occurred. That took me down another road and re-ignited my love of history. By this point I was completely hooked and spent many months researching, reading, and writing.

It was at about this same time I stumbled upon a local writers group called the Scottsdale Writers Group. I was back to work, keeping afloat a fledgling Internet business I had started, which now consumed the majority of my time. But I was too deep into my pledge to myself to not quit on my dream of writing this story. So, with some trepidation, I walked into the SWG one day and announced I’d like to join. I was warmly welcomed by such an unselfish group of people, all willing to help me (as well as themselves) develop our writing skills and story ideas.

After two years of bringing in a new chapter every other week, I was done, and my novel (with the working title “The Murder of Manny Fleischman–Last of the Black Sox”) was complete. How naive I was because from that point forward the real work had only just begun.

That was March 2008 and about two months later I had another serendipitous event occur that would change my life forever. I was summering in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and one day saw a small poster at the library in nearby Fontana, announcing that New York Times best-selling author Brad Thor would be in town signing his latest book. I had never heard of Brad Thor but I knew I had to go to this event. When would you ever expect to meet a NY Times best-selling author in Fontana, Wisconsin? So with my wife and brother-in-law at my side, went to meet Mssr. Thor.

It was a very intimate signing for his latest book, THE FIRST COMMANDMENT, but that setting gave me an opportunity to speak with Brad. I admitted to him I had never heard of him but that as a budding writer I felt compelled to meet a real author, let alone a best-selling one. The words gracious and warm don’t do justice to describing Brad’s demeanor toward me and when he found out I had a completed manuscript he immediately recommended I attend ThrillerFest in NYC. He told me if I got there to “look him up” and he’d be happy to help me in any way he could.

When I got to my computer and investigated this event, I was blown away at the cost. The event was less than two weeks away and putting a last minute trip to NYC added to the financial challenge. We were stretching (squeezing) dollars at this point and as far as I was concerned, if there was a definition of a trip we could not afford, this one was it. But Karen scoffed at my fear, dismissing the thought of my not going. “He invited you, didn’t he?” she reminded me. “If you really want to get this manuscript publish you have to go.”

I paid the last minute airfare, booked the mid-town Manhattan hotel, sent in my non-member attendee fee. When I landed at La Guardia, I hailed a cab and headed to ThrillerFest 2008.

And…well…here I am now, ready to see my novel on bookstore shelves across the country with its release this week.

There are no coincidences anywhere in this tale. It is just a story of a naive guy who grew up on the southeast side of Chicago who always kept believing even someone like him could one day make his intentions come true. And so can you.

Pascal Marco was born and raised on the far Southeast side of Chicago, the grandson of Italian immigrants. Listening to his father’s advice, he stayed close to home and graduated with honors from the University of Illinois – Chicago with both B.A. and M.A. degrees in Communications and Theatre. He’s thankful and blessed he grew up in the Windy City, a place which helped inspire him to create the rich and unforgettable characters in his debut thriller novel, IDENTITY: LOST from Oceanview Publishing. Visit Pascal at www.pascalmarco.com and join him and his fans on Twitter and Facebook.

Video Game Addiction: Five Warning Signs for Assessing Risk

A Be My Guest Author — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:43:00 +0000

This Be My Guest Author Article is by Scott Rigby and Richard M. Ryan, Authors of Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound.

Games are powerfully motivating of deep engagement that can last for hours on end, day after day. The first step to really understanding how to manage gaming in your life (or that of a loved one) — and to identify when there may be a problem — is understanding what is really at the root of games strong motivational pull. It’s not some mystical force, or a secret desire to blow things up, as many non-gamers might fear. The research we’ve been doing for the last eight years, has helped to identify the basic psychology of game motivation and engagement. This serves as a critical foundation to understand the incredible “pull” of games, as well as serving as a guide for when addiction may be emerging.

Simply put, hundreds of motivational studies have demonstrated that we all have basic psychological needs for competence (a feeling of mastery, growth, and efficacy), autonomy (that sense of personal volition and feeling there are many interesting opportunities from which to choose), and relatedness (a feeling that “I matter” to others, and they matter to me). Decades of research have shown these needs are always operating, whether we’re playing games, at work, playing sports, or just being social. They are, in other words, fundamental or basic psychological needs.

Good games draw us in because they are designed to satisfy these needs really, really well. Specifically, they satisfy needs with immediacy, consistency, and density. Let’s talk about each of these briefly . . .

Immediacy means that games are readily available. I bet all of us could be playing a video game — either on our phones or computers — within the next ten seconds if we wanted to. Sure beats the hour of driving just to get back and forth to the movies or out to the soccer field.

Consistency means that games give us clear paths to success and achievement, and treat us fairly. A game doesn’t tell us we got passed over for promotion because of office politics, or benched during the baseball game unfairly. Games give us the rewards they promise, each and every time. And we can count on them in that way.

Density means that games give us a rich field of opportunities to pursue, activities to undertake, and challenges to conquer. While “real life” often seems sparse, games are there to offer us this density as well as instant feedback that makes us feel effective and even important.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with games ability to satisfy us in these ways. In fact, it can make gaming a very rich and meaningful experience. But it is also true that we need to watch out for becoming over-involved with gaming. Since we now know why gaming is so compelling psychologically, we can look out for “warning signs” more effectively. Here are five tips:

1) Do you see a big “satisfaction gap?” — When you think about how needs are satisfied in your “real life” versus games, do games come out way ahead? In our research, we consistently find that over-involvement in games goes hand-in-hand with feeling a lack of basic need satisfactions for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in other areas of life, such as school, work, social relationships, and non-gaming hobbies and activities. The data suggest that if our basic needs are too sparsely satisfied by life, there may be a susceptibility to over-involvement in video games. Why might this happen? Well when life isn’t meeting our needs, the immediate and dense availability of satisfactions for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in games often become a stronger pull that draws us in too long and too often.

2) Are Games “Crowding Out?” — Do you miss deadlines at work or school because of gaming? Do you often choose to game rather than spend time with friends or family? One gamer I know reflected wistfully that he had missed most of the first five years of his daughter’s life because he spent so much time gaming. If you’re having these kinds of feelings about relationships, or not meeting other responsibilities because of playing video games, it is a sure sign that you might have a problem with too much gaming.

3) Are you feeling personal pressure, guilt or shame around your gaming? — It may sound like a funny thing to say that some gamers feel they “pressure” themselves into gaming, but it happens. There is a feeling that games are something you’re compelled to do, even if you don’t particularly enjoy or want to play at that moment. You may feel a sense of guilt or shame about firing up another game, but do so anyway. If this feels like a common experience for you, it is a sign that you are over-involved in gaming.

4) Are you playing four or more hours a day? — A simple rule of thumb is how much time you spend on average every week playing video games. We find that up until about 25 hours, there is no direct association between time spent playing, and negative feelings or decreased well-being. Above that line, however, we see a relationship begin to emerge between 25+ weekly hours, and bad outcomes. So as one quick check: How much time on average are you spending gaming each week? If it equals a half-time job or more — it really deserves a look.

5) Is gaming isolating important others? — While you are running around virtual worlds, perhaps in the company of dozens of other online friends, slaying dragons and completing missions, it is sometimes hard to remember that you are leaving the molecular world — and often the loved ones that are under your own roof — alone and isolated from you. If you are immersed in a fantasy world, you aren’t in this one. Be sure to check in with family and friends about this. Listen to them if they express concern or even some feelings of abandonment. If you feel you can’t respond to their requests to have more of your time, it is a sign you are too deeply involved with games.

© 2011 Scott Rigby and Richard M. Ryan, authors of Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound

About the Authors
Scott Rigby PhD, co-author of Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound, is founder and president of Immersyve, Inc., a research and consulting group specializing in the psychology of virtual worlds and interactive technologies. In addition to publishing scholarly research on human motivation, Dr. Rigby has himself developed interactive applications for entertainment (Sony, Warner Brothers), education (The Smithsonian Institute), and health care.

Richard M. Ryan, PhD, co-author of Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound, is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, psychiatry, and education at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. He is cofounder of the Self-Determination Theory and has published well over 300 scholarly articles in the areas of human motivation, personality development, and applied psychology.

For more information please visit http://www.gluedtogames.com/ and follow the authors on Facebook and Twitter

Unconventional Writing Techniques – A Good or Bad Idea?

Robert L. Bacon — Sun, 29 May 2011 07:00:07 +0000

Writers are always trying to distinguish themselves to get noticed. And this is especially true for anyone who is vying to gain the attention of an agent or publisher. For this reason they often see unpublished drafts with all sorts of writing anomalies. The question is, does this help or hinder a writer’s chances?

Let’s Look at the Past

Anyone who read The Sound and The Fury for the first time had the displeasure of reading contractions both with and without apostrophes. This made a complicated story even more difficult to deal with. Considerable debate continues to rage over whether this was the result of shoddy work on the part of the publisher or Faulkner’s choice of style. Whatever the reason, this slowed down many readers until they got used to the technique.

Various writers have used the same style, and other than the word “can’t,” which can be a problem if the author then refers to someone speaking in cant, or “wont” if the writer wants this to mean “accustomed,” there aren’t too many issues with a “dont,” etc. Although I can see situations in which “Ill” could be a problem if the speaker wasn’t addressing a medical condition. With all the scenarios facing a writer trying to attract a publisher, is nuanced writing (if it can be called that) going to help?

Some Successful Writers Have Used the Em Dash Instead of Quotation Marks

Most notable of late was North Carolina professor Charles Frazier’s critically acclaimed Cold Mountain, which was also well-received by the general public. It required a few pages to get used to the style, but I think it’s fair to state that most people found the format not to be a problem. From our school days, we remember James Joyce also using the em dash, so it’s not that radical. But it takes a very skilled writer to use this technique, since this style doesn’t separate the interior monologue from the dialogue.

Instances are also available of authors who have written dialogue with em dashes and no interior monologue, requiring the syntax to convey the entire meaning of what was spoken. I can’t think of anything that would require greater skill, and I don’t suggest trying this except as an exercise to improve one’s ability at writing dialogue.

Another Technique Involves Apostrophes Rather Than Quotation Marks

I have many Graham Greene novels in my library, but have never liked his use of an apostrophe in place of a quotation mark. I don’t understand how this helps in any way from an artistic standpoint. However, Joseph Conrad, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Kingsley Amis, Ford Madox Ford and many others have used this same format for their novels. Again, I don’t know why, as it just complicates setting off dialogue that is universally delineated via standard quotation marks.

Then There Is the Italics

I don’t know of anyone else who has written an entire novel in italics, but honesty compels me to admit that I once did just that. It was placed inside a substantial bridge of material, and I thought it would work. The book was never published, and I have to think my idea didn’t help its prospects. The reality is that even a few pages of italics grate on the reader. This is often the complaint with stream-of-consciousness writing, and one of the major contentions many people have with The Sound and The Fury, since so much of the narrative is in italics. (Virginia Woolf solved the italics/stream-of-consciousness issue in To The Lighthouse by writing all of the novel in traditional script.)

So, Good or Bad Idea?

If someone stylistically has a Cold Mountain on his or her hip, by all means toss the dice. If a publisher likes the story, he or she might think an unconventional format may even help the work’s prospects with the public. But I honestly don’t see the advantage of trying something dramatically different. After you have six books and a bestseller or two under your belt, write in invisible ink if you so desire, but I think it’s best at the nascent stage to get the odds in one’s favor in every way possible. And this means presenting a manuscript that follows a structural and stylistic model that adheres to the accepted norm. I wrote an article on this subject, Eight Hints to Properly Format a Manuscript for an Agent or Publisher.

Robert L. Bacon is the Founder of The Perfect Write® . New Free Service for Serious Writers! The Perfect Write® is now providing a Free Manuscript Opening-Chapter Critique and Line Edit. Paste the first chapter of your manuscript (up to 5000 words) to theperfectwrite@aol.com (no attachments). In addition to the critique, The Perfect Write® will line edit, if applicable, up to the first three-pages of your double-spaced material also at no charge.

Also Free! Receive The Perfect Write Newsletters that feature articles on writing at a publishable level. Click here http://www.theperfectwrite.com and scroll to the bottom of The Perfect Write® Home Page for the simple two-step sign-up box.

The Good China

A Guest Article Writer — Sat, 28 May 2011 07:02:16 +0000

This Be My Guest Article is by Eric Poole, Author of Where’s My Wand?: One Boy’s Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting.

A while back, a friend of mine told me that her mother’s aunt used to stand in front of the stove, cooking dinner, wearing a full-length mink coat and her best jewelry.

This is my kind of woman. Not just because she sounds slightly insane and obviously doesn’t care if somebody breaks a tooth on a diamond brooch in the meatloaf; but because this kind of behavior represents a “live for today” attitude that I pretty much suck at.

Don’t get me wrong, my furniture isn’t covered in clear plastic (yet). I don’t reuse toilet paper (yet). I do manage to have a little fun. But all too often in my life, I’ve “saved the good china”.

And then, I lost a work friend to diabetes. And another friend’s longtime partner to AIDS. And last week, my partner’s twin brother to liver disease. All of them in their 40′s. All in the space of a few weeks.

And I began to think that life is waaay too short. So maybe I should just go crazy. Maybe I should take a trip around the world or try out for America’s Got Talent or blow all my money on a talking robot.

Of course, I can’t take months off of work to backpack the world. And it’s unclear exactly what talent I actually have. And I don’t really need one more person yelling at me on a daily basis.

Maybe I’m just too practical for my own good. I’ll probably end up in the spirit world going, “Damn, why didn’t I show up at Starbucks in my SpongeBob p.j.’s? Why didn’t I hand out $100 bills at homeless shelters? Why didn’t I rent an Amish buggy to drive to a rave?

Which leads me to a question: What constitutes “living for today”, and what is just plain irresponsible?

Trying to balance having a life of No Regrets with the possibility that you might outlive both your money and your liver is not exactly easy. I’d kinda prefer not to hit my expiration date lying in some gulag nursing home staffed by Nurse Ratched and the guy from Saw.

So what’s the answer?

Maybe Controlled Crazy. Maybe I’ll travel as far around the world as I can get in two weeks. Maybe I’ll try out for a stand-up comedy class at the Improv. Maybe I’ll blow $100 on a talking pedometer.

Hey, baby steps.

Eric Poole, author of Where’s My Wand?: One Boy’s Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting, is a VP of marketing for a major media company and the winner of more than thirty advertising awards. He was once called “the best undiscovered writer I’ve ever met” by Tracey Ullman, an accolade he continues to live up to. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner of nine years.

For more information please visit http://www.ericpoole.net, and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

Book Review: Ain’t No Sunshine by Leslie DuBois (Kindle Edition)

A Guest Article Writer — Sat, 28 May 2011 07:00:46 +0000

Blurb:

WHITES ONLY
Those words adorned every building in Livingston, Virginia during the summer of 1963 confusing and angering a five-year-old Stephen Phillips. Those words told Stephen that what he felt for his colored neighbor Ruthie was wrong. As he grows older, Ruthie becomes the only ray of sunshine in his abusive life and he is not willing to let her go without a fight, a fight that could lead to murder.

This story wowed me. I was immediately drawn in, and the wonderful narration kept me glued. The imagery is strong and the dialogue is believable and engaging. The characters are well developed and I cared about their outcome.

The story begins as Stephen Phillips is interrogated by a badgering Chicago police officer. “Did you do it, Stephen?” The officer places gruesome photos of Reverend Phillips’ bloody corpse on the table, but Stephen refuses to look at them. “Why don’t you look at your father’s mutilated body? Beaten to death with a shovel outside his own home.”

The officer continues asking Stephen if he murdered the man who lay dead in Virginia. The same man who raised and loved him for eighteen years. Stephen replies, “My father never loved me. Never.”

When the officer’s goading doesn’t get the desired response, he attempts another tactic—changing the direction of the conversation to Stephen’s girlfriend Ruthie who sits in a nearby interrogation room.

“Maybe I’ll just have to ask that pretty little colored girlfriend of yours,” he said, staring at Ruthie’s picture and licking his lips.

“You leave her out of this.” My hands clenched into fists.

“I don’t know if I can do that. She seems to be pretty involved.” He kept staring at her picture as he spoke. “Your father is found dead at your home in Virginia and you’re found seven hundred miles away with a Negro whore. I can’t -”

He didn’t get to finish his thought. I leapt across the table and started pounding his face in. Seconds later, I was subdued by several officers. They placed me back in the chair and handcuffed me to the table.

This was getting worse and worse by the minute. I’d gladly go to jail for killing that man. He deserved to die. I just didn’t want Ruthie to get dragged into this. After all we’d been through, at least one of us deserved a chance to be happy.

After the room settles, another officer enters the room. Lieutenant Drake has a friendlier, gentle approach, and Stephen begins to soften.

“Why are you running? You know running only makes you look guilty and I don’t really believe you killed your father. I don’t think you’re capable.”

I stared at him. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. You have no idea what that man did to me.”

“You’re right. I don’t,” he said, trying to hide his surprise at my response. He sat down and crossed his arms. “So why don’t you tell me? You obviously have a story and you need someone to listen. So tell me your story. Tell me everything.”

Stephen’s story soon begins to flow. He tells about Ruthie, his childhood friend, and how their friendship eventually blossomed into a powerful love as they grew—despite the fact that loving a ‘colored’ was forbidden. He remembered staring up at the colored balcony in his father’s church when he was six years old, trying to catch a glimpse of his beautiful Ruthie. He paid for it when he got home with a beating. That didn’t stop his love for Ruthie. He refused to let his father take the one thing in his life that brought him true happiness.

He tells the officer about the lifetime of abuse he, his brother (Matthew), and mother (Marjorie) endured by the hands of the cherished small town Virginia reverend, Theodore Phillips. His father’s explosive anger and violence plagued him every day. After years of violent abuse, Matthew disappeared, and Marjorie suffered mercilessly until becoming an empty shell; but Stephen endured by retreating into that loved part of his heart. The beautiful part that Ruthie filled.

Stephen divulges the many ordeals that cursed his life that led to the day Theodore Phillips died. He reveals the eccentricities, secrets, and atrocities his father kept concealed behind his reverend cloak, and in the end, the truth behind the reverend’s death.

Upon completing this novella, I felt somewhat changed. It is a sad story with victories, and a terrifying tale with soft and loving moments. Such a wide range of emotions that finally left me feeling satisfied—yet not settled.

Review by C.E. Hart. C.E. Hart, a closet writer for several decades, is now knocking on doors, pushing send buttons, and flying paper airplanes into publishers open windows. She writes poetry, memoirs, and short stories, and is currently working on three novels. Her southern upbringing often gives her work a nostalgic flavor; but that’s not to say she doesn’t have a fun quirky side as well. Visit C.E. Hart (aka Nic) on her new author blog http://cehart.blogspot.com and on her quad-authored writing blog http://www.wenchwriters.blogspot.com.

How to Improve your Chances when Applying for Freelancing Jobs

A Guest Article Writer — Fri, 27 May 2011 23:33:40 +0000

With the recent surge in popularity of freelancing websites like oDesk, vWorker, Elance and Freelancer.com, the potential to earn a full-time living from such sites has now become a reality but, with that, comes some stiff competition. Finding freelance work is not as simple as just joining up and throwing a few words here and there on your profile, you need to be pro-active and make an effort to impress potential buyers with your skills and experience. You can do this by spending time filling out your profile and by writing professional and courteous cover letters.

Portfolio

Most freelance websites offer members the opportunity to upload items to a portfolio which showcases their experience. This is important in all categories of employment but, particularly when it comes to design work and writing. Writers can upload PDF files of their articles and designers can upload jpegs or PDFs. If you’re worried about somebody stealing your designs, put a watermark symbol in the background. An empty portfolio sends the message that you’re not really interested in finding work. Why should a buyer blindly trust that you are skilled enough to do your job?

Resume

The resume section of your online profile gives you the chance to put in all details pertaining to work experience and education. This is your chance to shine and tell buyers about any courses you’ve done, certifications you’ve achieved and jobs you’ve had in the past (and what you’ve learned in those jobs).

Overview

If there’s an overview section in the profile settings, this is your chance to introduce yourself and inform buyers in a succinct manner what you can do for them.

Cover Letters

One of the most important components of an online job application is the cover letter. This is what sells your skills to the buyer. You must ensure that punctuation and grammar are correct and that the letter is professional but, at the same time, friendly. Try to resist the urge to cut and paste from one cover letter to another. It’s okay to re-use some sections but try to customize the bulk of the letter to suit the individual job you’re applying to.

Skills Tests

Some freelancing sites like vWorker and oDesk give members the opportunity to take skills tests. If you score well in these tests it gives buyers a good idea of your capabilities and it offers them peace of mind before handing over their hard-earned cash to you.

Keep learning

Just because you’re already a professional doesn’t mean you can stop learning. The internet offers a multitude of wonderful resources to help you learn new skills. Take advantage of these resources and, whenever you have a quiet hour or two, learn something new. Even the skills you are already adept at can be honed further by keeping up to date with the latest technologies and standards.

Increase the odds of getting jobs

Unfortunately, not everyone who advertises job/project openings ends up hiring someone. Some people post jobs and then disappear and never even bother to read the applications. Others post on a multitude of sites and end up choosing contractors on one of the sites you don’t belong to. It takes a lot of work writing cover letters and keeping your profile up to date but it’s worth sending a lot of applications every week to maximize your chances of success.

Article by Darren. Darren writes on the topic on doing people search for free, finding people and reconnecting with them online.

Connecting with Teens in a Small Screen World

A Guest Article Writer — Fri, 27 May 2011 23:09:43 +0000

This Be My Guest article is by Dr. John Duffy, Author of The Available Parent: Radical Optimism for Raising Teens and Tweens.

We are on vacation in Florida with another family. Three young teenagers are on board, my 13-year-old included. A number of times over the past week, I have peered over to see each of their beautiful faces lost in a 3 ½ inch screen: a Nintendo DS, iPhone, iPod Touch, or any other thing!

One might be texting friends back home, another might be selecting a new song, while yet another is playing the latest downloaded game. There they were in the car last night, screens lighting their faces. There they were on the couch, in front of the giant TV screen! Even in bed, all faces illuminated, eyes entranced.

So how is a parent to counteract the draw of the tiny, sophisticated, intoxicating hand-held plaything?

Well, for one, recognize that if you can’t beat them, join them. Whatever it is that is displayed on that tiny screen, your teen is clearly engaged in it. Sit down with her. Have a look at the contraption. Ask what it does — teens love to be teachers. Most importantly, ask what your teen loves so much about it. This is a golden opportunity to connect, to get to know your teen better.

And you might want to write her a clever text once in a while: “How are you?” “What are you doing/listening to right now?” I worked recently with a father who took to writing his daughter an “I love you” text every day. He called me with glee the day he got one back.

You need to know that texting is the preferred mode of communication for many teens, whether we adults want that to be the case, or not.

Also, recognize your own addiction to the tiny screen. What I did not mention above is the myriad opportunity I have had to see adult faces lit up by an iPhone in the past several days. We serve as the strongest role models for our teens. Our screen time is seen as latent permission for their own.

Finally, you might want to engage your teen in a different way. For instance, my wife Julie and I designated yesterday’s lunch as a “No Screen Zone.” We engaged our teenagers in conversation. We talked about music, movies and politics. It was fun, and everyone was engaged and participating.

So make sure you protect some time together where all screens go dark.

© 2011 John Duffy, author of The Available Parent: Radical Optimism for Raising Teens and Tweens

Dr. John Duffy, author of The Available Parent: Radical Optimism for Raising Teens and Tweens, is a highly sought-after clinical psychologist, certified life coach, parenting expert, and proud parent. He has been working with teens, tweens, and their families for more than fifteen years. He has provided the critical intervention and support needed to help hundreds of families find their footing.

He has served as a contributing parent expert for a number of media outlets. These include AOL Health, AOL Parent Dish, Notre Dame magazine, Root & Sprout, bettyconfidential.com, makeitbetter.net, examiner.com, theteendoc.com, Chicago Parent, sheknows.com, Psych Central, Current Health Teens, The Oakland Tribune, and Working Mother Magazine. He has also served as a parenting and relationship expert on a number of radio programs, including the nationally-syndicated Mr. Dad program with best-selling author Armin Brott, and The Lite Show on WNTD in Chicago. Dr. Duffy has also contributed to a number of books, including Living Life as a Thank You (Viva Editions) by Mary Beth Sammons and Nina Lesowitz.

For more information please visit http://www.drjohnduffy.com and follow the author on Facebook and Twitter.

Book Excerpt – Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race by Todd Buccholz

A Book Excerpt Author — Fri, 27 May 2011 22:17:43 +0000

The New Original Sin: Capitalism

In my view, during the twentieth century capitalism became the new original sin. Just as original sin expels human beings from Eden, capitalism becomes the new sin that prevents us from returning to Eden. If we could just expunge the drive to compete, and the desire to acquire, we could finally claw our way back to that noble, leafy, and peaceful place we left behind in Genesis, where we never wanted anything, let alone tried to get it. I will call such believers Edenists. (Note that even atheists can adopt an Edenist mind-set).

When happiness gurus get on a roll, they take individual advice and extend it to all of society: Not only should you take a timeout, but the entire economy should be given a timeout, or the economic equivalent of Ambien. Shut down capitalism and replace it with a kibbutz for three hundred million people. Why? To prevent envy and to drain our competitive juices. The happiness gurus believe that competition is cancerous, eating away at our souls and our chances for happiness. If we could just stomp out competition, we could achieve self-realization and bliss. Rather than relying on policy non sequiturs to achieve happiness, we would be better off dressing up like Druids and prancing around the rocks of Stonehenge hoping that it will help us pay our mortgage bills. (Yes, such tours are available.)

In fact, if you would like to visit an ancient economy stuck in Stone Age splendor, plan a trip to Bhutan. This little nation, with a per capita GDP about equal to the summer take-home pay of a kid’s lemonade stand in Des Moines ($1,400), is tucked in the Himalayas and has swallowed almost all the happiness potions. The king has forsworn gross national product, and instead requires his country to pursue “gross national happiness.” The king banned Coke and Pepsi (so smugglers sneak in the contraband). There is a national uniform for professionals, most buildings look the same, and “tourists are taken to all the same places and served the same food,” wrote one visitor, who couldn’t find Starbucks or espresso but did discover a valuable cache of Nescafe instant packets. Bhutan also mandates Buddhism as a state religion, so no one can be envious of anyone else’s creed. It appears that gross national happiness requires a lot of uniformity and government control in order to beat out the urge to compete.

I admit that now is not a popular time to link happiness with competition. I understand the rage in Western countries against the failings of modern life, especially following the financial market meltdowns of 2008 and 2009. Didn’t hypercompetitive bankers lead to the ruin of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns? Didn’t supercompetitive brokers baying for bucks in trading rooms nearly bankrupt the world? Didn’t reckless oil drillers lead to a devastating spill in 2010? So why not join the globalization protestors and hurl rocks into plate-glass windows at Starbucks? Maybe that will bring us joy. After all, as the financial markets thrash us and threaten our jobs, we are tempted to give up on modern life. So long to 401(k)s, ski vacations, and bucking for that salary hike that I wasn’t going to get anyway. I sometimes wonder if Sarah Palin boasts of her gun skills because she worries that the only industries left in America will be hunting and gathering.

No doubt, amid the financial wreckage, we all felt cheated, by the CEO crooks, the mortgage broker morons, and the short sellers. And we feel a natural yearning to go back to simpler times, to some Eden that exists in our Jungian memory. Maybe throwing rocks will remind us of how jolly we were during the Stone Age.

But “Kumbayah” does not work. Sitting around a metaphoric campfire, holding hands and singing communal songs does not make human beings happy. Sweaty, yes. Sooty, perhaps. But not happy.

More tourists have trampled on Thoreau’s Walden Pond snapping photos than have seriously considered giving up their cell phones to pick berries. We are delighted to try pomegranate juice — in the hope of finding the secret to clear skin and lower blood pressure — but virtually no American will plant his own bush and give up television. We may embrace symbols of a more homemade life, but these are tokens of wishful thinking, not titanic changes of substance.

Are we just selfish hypocrites who have fallen too deeply in love with a synthetic commercial world, with all its gadgets and traffic? Happiness books typically implore us to surrender our raw capitalistic drives, to levy taxes on high earners, and to derail the rat race before the entire world turns into a human-size Habitrail, plastic and pointless. And speaking of a Habitrail, these Edenists claim we are spinning on what has become known as the hedonic treadmill, so that the more we have the more we want. Typical advice: “Don’t worry, be frugal.” Or reach for the Prozac.

In my book, Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race, I take on a seemingly preposterous task, employing the latest research in neuroscience and behavioral economics to argue the opposite: It is the race itself — sloppy, risky, and tense — that can bring us happiness. It is the very pursuit of love, new knowledge, wealth, and status that literally delivers the rush, lights up our brains, releases dopamine, and ignites our passion. Furthermore, I’m going to argue that the cause and effect between competition and happiness is hardwired into everyone of us. Some of the results will surprise you. Competition makes people more fair, and it also makes them taller.

Neuroscientists report that when a person begins to take a risk, whether it’s gambling or ginning up the nerve to ask a pretty girl to the prom, his left prefrontal cortex lights up, signaling a natural high. Alpha waves and oxygenated blood surge to the brain. Sitting alone in a pup tent does not yield the same effects. Likewise, our competitive juices cannot be separated from our desire to learn more. Ironically, those who deride competition are often the first to exalt education. They seem to have images of Plato sitting on a log. I exalt education, too, but it is foolish to pretend that desires do not press us forward to learn more, to gain more knowledge, and therefore to get smarter. The contented do not grow smarter, they grow moss.

The above is an excerpt from the book Rush:Why You Need and Love the Rat Race by Todd G. Buchholz. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Todd G. Buchholz, author of Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race

Todd G. Buchholz, author of Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race is a former White House director of economic policy, award-winning teacher at Harvard, managing director of the Tiger hedge fund, and was a fellow at Cambridge University in 2009. He is also a founder of Two Oceans Management, as well as coproducer of the Tony Award-winning Broadway hit Jersey Boys. A regular contributor to NPR’s Marketplace, he appears monthly on PBS’s Nightly Business Report and his book New Ideas from Dead Economists is used in universities throughout the world. Buchholz has also written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Reader’s Digest. He lives with his wife and daughters in Southern California.

For more information please visit http://www.toddbuchholz.com and follow the author on Twitter.

10 Common Mistakes that Will Kill Your Online Marketing Efforts

A Guest Article Writer — Wed, 18 May 2011 22:26:14 +0000

Within the last few years, everyone has practically jumped on the bandwagon and either started a blog or a website. However, many of realize much too late that they are doing everything wrong when it comes to internet marketing. But hopefully, you will not make the same mistakes if you acknowledge these shortcomings:

You Don’t Have a Self Hosted Blog. Even though Google is very closely associated with Blogger, no one is going to treat you as a professional if you do not purchase a domain name for your website and host it yourself. In this particular case, a Blogger blog is not going to cut it.
Your Website does not look Professional. If you want to be taken seriously on the internet, you have to have a website that looks like it was professionally designed. If you don’t, the competition is going to eat you alive. This is because no is going to continue to visit a website that seems amateurish. Your traffic efforts might get them to your site, but once they see how unprofessional it is, they will not stick around.
You Want to Do Everything On Your Own. This is the reason that you failed in reason number two. You either refused or waited too late to get professional help. There are just certain things that you should leave to a professional. When it comes to internet marketing, the list is long. You will not have enough time to do everything on your own. Get help.
You Don’t Scope Out the Competition. Just like with brick and mortar businesses, you have to know what your competition is doing at all times. Also, remember that you have competitors from all over the world, which means that you have a large amount of competition. You can’t keep your head in the sand and not find out what things they are or are not doing.
You Don’t Use Tracking Tools. Chances are if you are lacking with reason number 4, then you never used tracking tools in the first place. Not only should these tools be used to spy on your competition, but they should also be used to monitor the health of your own website.
You Create Your Website and Sit Back and Wait. Many gurus will tell stories of creating a website and then waiting for the money to just start rolling in. This is not the case. Once the website goes up, you have to start promoting and backlinking in order for your website to be successful.
You Have a Confusing Call to Action. You cannot be shy when it comes to your call to action. You created that website for a reason. You want your customers to do something in particular. If you do not clearly tell them what you want them to do, then they will not do it. Lead the horse to the water and make it gulp up that water. Also make sure that your call to action is in a place that will be seen, which is above the fold.
You are too Cheap to Use the Right Vendors. Stop trying to skimp on everything in sight. This is your business. When you hire professionals, remember that you get what you pay for. Spend the money and make your website grand.
Your Checkout Process is Unclear. If your customers have to think too hard about what to do in order to purchase your products, you will lose plenty of sales. Make it easy for your customers. Don’t make them go all around the world just to purchase an eBook.
You Throw in the Towel Before You Really Get Started. Understand that internet marketing is not something that brings success as quickly as you want it to. You will have to work at it for a while, but success will eventually come.

Brian Waraksa is founder of Raxa Design, a Houston SEO firm. Brian has been in advertising and marketing small company branding since 2002. Feel free to follow Raxa Design on Twitter. Raxa Design, 2100 West Loop S # 900, Houston, TX (832) 429-7292

Touching on What We All Share

A Be My Guest Author — Wed, 04 May 2011 07:00:34 +0000

This Be My Guest Author Article is by Susan Avitzour, author of And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones

I recently published a memoir, And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, about my daughter Timora’s struggle to lead a normal life while battling leukemia, and about my own journey as a mother while she was ill and as a bereaved parent after she died at the age of eighteen. To my delight and deep gratitude, “compelling,” “moving,” and “inspiring” are just a few of the kind words readers and reviewers have used to describe their reactions; many have said they couldn’t put it down – even stayed up all night reading it. I believe this is so partly because I wrote the book straight from my heart, the way I wanted – needed – to write it, rather than thinking about marketing considerations in mind, or obeying accepted wisdom in the publishing world.

Like every other writer, I had to make many decisions concerning the book’s focus and structure, and asked the advice of published authors and other professionals in the literary world. Most said the same thing: that I should write either about Timora’s illness or my grieving process, but not about both, because the two types of memoirs’ readerships (“markets”) are separate. But try as I might, I didn’t see how I could possibly divide the stories. At least on the emotional level, losing Timora has meant that I can only revisit her life – both before and during her six years fighting cancer – through the looking-glass of her death. And how I’ve grieved for her has been inevitably and inextricably colored by the way I lost her – after a long, grueling, and cruel illness. In addition, I felt very strongly that capturing the complexity of my story, and of Timora’s, required more than one literary form. So – again, against some people’s advice – my memoir became the written equivalent of a “mixed media” work of visual art.

My book, then, comprises more than one story, told in more than one literary form. In its first part, I tell the story of Timora’s illness from my own perspective. But because she was also a writer, we hear her voice as well, through some of the poetry she left behind. She wrote this poem, for example, after her cancer relapsed. She’d just gathered all her strength and determination and appeared in one of the many performances she gave in the framework of her high school’s Theater major:

And again came the wave I’d awaited so long
Which I cried for, I moaned, bit my pillow and prayed
It lifted me high, brought me close to the rest
At the very last second before the too late
From the pit, from the suffering, the cold, chilly fear
My heart fainted before it, so glad to be near.
But I really don’t know.
Will it stay after all?
Before me tomorrow is closed, a dark wall.

Part Two, a journal, records my personal, spiritual, and philosophical reflections on Timora’s life and my loss, as well as the turns my own life has taken since she left this world. The journal serves multiple purposes: while it documents my grieving process over the year and a half it covers, its entries are also thematic. Some look back at certain aspects of Timora’s life as a whole; the first, for example, is called “Hair,” and relates her adventures with the first subject most people think of when they hear the word “chemotherapy.” Others follow my own experiences as I struggle to process my loss and how it changed my world-view as well as my relationships with family, friends, and community. Many reflect on the most basic human experiences, such as food, fun, and work – and enjoying life despite its sometimes impossible-seeming challenges.

One of my memoir’s central themes is spiritual. Although deeply rooted in my own religion, my exploration of this theme ultimately brings me to conclusions and insights relevant to all. In some journal entries, I start by examining how the principles and practice of Judaism affected and were affected by my experience mothering a child with cancer, and losing her so far before her time. In “Forgiveness,” for example, I write how Jewish beliefs about Yom Kippur taught me to let go of obsessive thinking about what I might have done differently:

“In this imperfect world, there’s sometimes nothing we can do to get things “right.” I could not have prevented Timora’s illness and death; these things were in God’s hands. And though I might have chosen differently while she was still alive if I’d known then what I know now, God loves and accepts me as the imperfect human being that I am.”

The concept of God’s loving forgiveness is common to all religions, and can comfort any person of faith, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.

I also address more universal questions, including the most perplexing of all: How can the loving God in whom I believe have allowed all this to happen? And, conversely, how I can continue to love God even after all that has happened? Indeed, how can a loving God preside over a world in which people – including millions of children – have suffered and died unjustly since the beginning of human time, and how can any thinking person remain faithful to such a Being? I haven’t found “the” answers to these questions, of course, which philosophers of religion have pondered for centuries. But readers can explore them with me and, perhaps, feel less alone as they grapple with their own.

Writing without a particular readership in mind, then, ultimately produced a book that touches on the deepest parts of what we all share – what it means to be a human being living in a world where suffering and loss are inevitable. This, I think, is why it has interested, and (as I’m told) benefited quite a variety of readers. It’s relevant to bereaved parents, of course, and generally to people who’ve lost loved ones, whether to cancer or otherwise, as well as professionals accompanying the bereaved in their process of grieving. But, providing as it does a model of resilience in the face of the seemingly unendurable, it will also speak to anyone who has struggled with life’s trials and tragedies, and the challenge of nurturing and sustaining the faith and love that are so crucial to our ability to brave them with courage, dignity, and a measure of happiness – even joy.

To learn more about Susan Avitzour, author of And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones, we invite you to visit her site – http://www.fiveyearslater.blogspot.com. To view her full virtual book tour schedule, please visit http://bookpromotionservices.com/2011/01/06/twice-the-marrow-virtual-tour/

Wile for a while

A Guest Article Writer — Sun, 01 May 2011 02:36:58 +0000

Poem by C.E. Hart.

My vacation flew by

Feeling weak all week
I came back with the flu

I lay pillows behind my head
on my bed
and laze the days away

It doesn’t matter
whether the weather
is rainy or not
because I lay in a daze
and dream of days
filled with sunshine

Spurious sol beams shimmer
and surround my soul

Suddenly
my flu blues are erased
by blue skies

My nose knows it’s autumn
but
it senses the scents of summer
in a sense

I am fain
to feign summer warmth
because
I’d rather be wrapped
in rapt dreams
than mourning
this cold and drizzling morning

C.E. Hart, a closet writer for several decades, is now knocking on doors, pushing send buttons, and flying paper airplanes into publishers open windows. She writes poetry, memoirs, and short stories, and is currently working on three novels. Her southern upbringing often gives her work a nostalgic flavor; but that’s not to say she doesn’t have a fun quirky side as well. Visit C.E. Hart (aka Nic) on her new author blog http://cehart.blogspot.com and on her quad-authored writing blog http://www.wenchwriters.blogspot.com.

Book Excerpt – Spinning The Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion by Kendall Coffey

A Book Excerpt Author — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:08:30 +0000

A Media Primer for Spinners

For all the fascination with trials in the court of public opinion, no one really knows how much media campaigns actually affect the verdict. Ultimately, what matters is winning the courtroom battle for life and liberty rather than the contest over the next news cycle. No matter how important publicity may be to clients, the best press releases are written about winning, just as woefully bad news follows defeat. The legendary Johnnie Cochran had the memorable sound bite,”If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” but without the jury’s own words of “not guilty,” his phrase would have been pointless rather than timeless.

That said, even if the benefits of spin are difficult to quantify, there are many reasons to believe they are not illusory. Studies conducted of mock jurors — simulated jurors in simulated trials — suggest that negative news contributes to negative verdicts. And even though real jurors routinely deny that they are media influenced, it is undeniable that cases are decided by jurors who are media exposed. It is neither necessary nor realistic, however, to disqualify jurors simply because they were previously subjected to onslaughts of publicity about a case — the law does not require an empty mind, only one that is open. Although mediadrenched jurors must assure the court that they will be fair and will consider only the evidence and law presented inside the courtroom, those assurances are more comforting when the groundwork for fairness has been laid by balanced news coverage.

Once selected, jurors are instructed repeatedly to avoid media coverage of the case they are deciding. The law assumes that they honor their oath, but common sense says some may not. And even jurors who read nothing about a case live among others who may be reading everything. When a community is buzzing about a trial, no one wants to be remembered as one of the jurors fooled by clever defense lawyers into acquitting a notoriously guilty defendant.

The ears of judges often have chronic buzzing, particularly because they are not prohibited from following the news coverage of their cases. The law presumes that judges will ignore the media monsoons drenching the courthouse and decide every legal issue as if nary a drop had fallen. If we assume, though, that judges are real people who live in the real world — sometimes a world of judicial elections — it follows that they are acutely aware of community feelings about mediaintensive cases. And judges live in more than one community. Most care deeply about maintaining respect from their peers in the courthouse and from the attorneys who practice in the same locale. Because the legal community reads newspapers much more than most, the articles that judges and lawyers will be reading should be balanced as much as possible if the playing field is to be level.

Legal icon Dershowitz recently recalled some advice he received from a local lawyer when he was handling the appeal for convicted wifekiller Claus von Bülow: “The only way you can win this appeal is if these three judges (all male back then) can explain to their wives why they let off a wifekiller.” Absorbing the daunting reality, Dershowitz focused not only on the legal brief but also on facts about the medical evidence that would raise questions in the minds of reasonable readers.

Good press is also a recruitment poster for lawyers, experts, and even fact witnesses. Winnability magnetizes cases. Lawyers and experts may be mercenaries, but even hired guns prefer to be retained by winners. For the top professionals who can pick and choose their cases, many prefer a cause that is acclaimed to one that is being defamed. Even fact witnesses, the main determinant of most cases, can be more effective if they believe their testimony will be featured in a success story. Just as many prefer to join the team with all the cheerleaders, horrible publicity can impair recruitment efforts. (Note: large, upfront payments to attorneys and experts can make even beastly cases seem beautiful.)

Occasionally, the fear of negative publicity can inspire the parties to negotiate a solution before the judicial process reaches its own conclusion. Several years ago I represented a woman who shipped herself to the United States by plane, arriving inside a DHL box. This elegant but — no surprise here — petite client might have had an uphill battle seeking asylum to remain here. In theory, a socalled stowaway is among the least favored of all newcomers for purposes of immigration law. Her case began to attract attention, however, because while gift DHL packages are common, a gift immigrant understandably created a news stir. As press interest intensified over her battle for asylum, we held our fire and postponed the everpresent temptation to trashtalk the immigration service for trying to deport a young woman who was obviously courageous, even if too ingenious for safety’s sake. The government’s press anxieties actually helped us make a deal providing that if the authorities agreed not to send her away, we would keep the television cameras at bay. Along with downsizing our press strategies, we assured the government that our client would travel with passengers rather than inside packages in the future.

The above is an excerpt from the book Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion by Kendall Coffey. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Kendall Coffey, author of Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion

Kendall Coffey, author of Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion, is a former U.S. Attorney who headed the largest federal prosecutors’ office in America, is the founding member of and a partner at Coffey Burlington, PL. Following his service as a U.S. Attorney, he was closely involved with the Elian Gonzalez case and the 2000 presidential election recount. A leading media commentator on high-profile cases, he has appeared on the Today Show, Larry King Live, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Headline News, as well as hundreds of other nationally televised programs.

For more information, view Kendall Coffey’s Web site and follow him on Facebook.

7 “Rituals” for Spring Renewal

A Be My Guest Author — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:00:01 +0000

This Be My Guest Author Article is by Abigail Brenner M.D, Author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life

After a very long and harsh winter, spring has officially arrived. The spring or vernal equinox is the day of the year when light and dark are balanced. True or not, it’s said that on this day you can balance an egg on its end. And by the way, the egg is the universal symbol of rebirth.

Although we still have a little way to go to really enjoy the warmth and light that spring brings, we can begin to think about what we can do to renew ourselves and to better balance our lives. What better time than spring to re-group and re-prioritize, and even re-invent ourselves, and the lives we find ourselves living. Here are some spring “rituals” to help you get started.

1.) De-clutter your living space.

Get rid of anything you no longer need. Here’s the rule of thumb: If you haven’t worn it (or used it) for two years, out it goes. Donate clothing and household items that are in reasonably good condition to an organization or charity and books to your local library or hospital.
Clear out kitchen cabinets of items that have been lying around since you can’t remember when or whose expiration date has long passed. Dispose of medications and first aid products beyond their expiration date.

2.) Clear out mental and emotional clutter.
When we think of renewal we often think of rebirth; something old dies and something new is born. Why not use this season of renewal as a reminder to get rid of things that are weighing you down and sapping your energy?

Allow yourself to let go of the past to make room for new things to come into your life.
Commit to making decisions you’ve been putting off.
Challenge limiting beliefs about yourself and about how things should be.
Think positively. Recent research has shown that we can actually change the circuitry of our brains. When something negative comes up pair it with something positive and stay with that feeling.

3.) Start a Practice.
A new discipline will ensure that you invite mindfulness into your life. A daily practice affords you a “time-out” from your every day routine. This is a gift to your self; a promise to honor who you are.

A spiritual practice such as yoga, meditation, or chi gong are easy to find almost anywhere and relatively affordable.
Another practice that you can do on your own is researching and reading sacred texts from many cultures and traditions. Read them with an eye on universal themes — those things that connect all of us.
Walking is a wonderful way to help your body while clearing your mind. Walk instead of drive. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. And remember to change your route! We all are so programmed to do the same routine every day. Change the scenery, change your perspective!

4.) Begin something brand new.
Focus on spring as a time of new beginnings and resolve to do something you’ve always wanted to do but never felt you had the time.

Assess your health. Maybe it’s time to begin taking care of your self? It’s far better to change the way you live, beginning now, instead of waiting for things to get out of your control. Create an inventory of your health including diet, exercise, genetics, and stress level. Begin slowly, one change at a time, eventually incorporating others.
Explore your creativity. Learn a new language, take piano lessons, awaken the diva within, take a computer class, or go back to school. It’s never too late to fulfill a dream.
Volunteer your time. Teach reading to those who want to learn, become a mentor, or help clean up your community; there are so many ways to give of yourself.

5.) Spend time outdoors.

Plant a garden. If you have no outdoor space, plant an herb garden in your kitchen or plant pots of flowers to bring the outside into your home.
Plant a tree with your child and watch it grow together.
Build a birdhouse with your child and watch the inhabitants come and go from year to year. This provides connection to the earth and continuity in the life.

6.) Take a trip.
This is something to look forward to annually, especially if you live in a place that experiences the extremes of winter. These could include:

A personal retreat away or a weekend that you give to yourself every year to reflect on your life, the past year, and what new things you may want to incorporate into your life moving forward.
A family reunion, to meet extended family at different destinations each year, allows people to stay connected and affords a sense of belonging and continuity for younger family members.
A family vacation can do the same thing for the immediate members of your family. Camping, hiking, or fishing, visiting an historic site, or a part of the country that’s very different from your own can help family members bond and reconnect from their busy, daily lives.

7.) Simplify your life.

Slow down. As life moves so quickly, surrounding us with the constant stimulation of the information stream, we need to find a way to quiet our minds and make quality time for ourselves.
“Downshift“, or streamline your life however you can in order to “upshift” the overall quality of your life. Reorganize your highest priorities and re-evaluate your commitments. What do you value most in your life? How much quality time do you spend with the people and the things you care about the most? What is the best way to use your time to create the life you want to have?

Hopefully, these 7 rituals for renewal will set you on course for a life that is not only fulfilling and meaningful — but fully your own.

Abigail Brenner, M.D., author of Transitions: How Women Embrace Change and Celebrate Life, is a board certified psychiatrist currently in private practices as well as an ordained interfaith minister who helps people design, create, and perform personally meaningful rituals. She is also author of SHIFT: How to Deal When Life Changes, and the co-author of The Essential Guide To Baby’s First Year, to be released April 2011.

For more information please visit http://www.abigailbrenner.com/ and follow the author on Facebook