Writing From Your Heart Online Gathering - Week 2

So thankful and delighted with this week's speakers for their wit, wisdom and generosity.

Elizabeth Marshall stepped in at the last minute for a speaker who had to reschedule and gave us gold nuggets galore about the importance of creating deep connections. Since she's worked with some of the top authors it pays to take notice of her. If she's good enough for Michael Port, Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki, who am I to reject her advice!

Derek Rydall offered such a strong and honest message he had one of my friends saying 'yes that's me and I need to change, NOW!' I love Derek's concept of Emergineering. It's back to allowing our message to come out, not forcing them.

Amethyst Wyldfyre challenged us on our responsibility to stand up and be clear in our message - the one only we can offer.

All offered nuggets and the calls, and generous gifts.

Still time to sign up and receive the gifts. The replays end Sunday 4th November Midnight Pacific Time.

www.writingfromyourheart.com

A creativity walk

I'm planning a new book and recently I felt quite stuck with trying to work out the structure. In the past I've noticed how acivity helps, gets the oxygen flowing through the blood cells.

So despite the black clouds I made for our nearby nature reserve, Attenborough. As well as being stuck with the book, I almost became stuck in the real mud walking round.

With me I took a digital cassette recorder, such a gift for writers, and as well as recording some of my thoughts, recorded some of my impressions as I walked round.

At the unpromising beginning with diggers churning up the path.

listen to ‘Creative walk Part 1’ on Audioboo

Further on in the walk when I got distracted by a heron

listen to ‘Creative walk Part 4’ on Audioboo

Back to the start

listen to ‘Creative walk Part 6’ on Audioboo

I enjoyed the experience. It worked and I could recommend any writer trying it if it isn't already in your tool kit.

Alan Plater

I watched Alan Plater's last play, Joe Maddison's War, on television last night.

It had all of his trademark quirkiness and compassionate observation.  We've owned the Beiderbecke Trilogy for years and return to it whenever we want something that offers a sense of the ridiculous and wonderful characters.

This week my sister and I are making our annual visit to Scarborough for the jazz festival.  I never had the privilege of talking to Alan Plater but I saw him in action at Scarborough a couple of times.narrating tales of unsung heroes of jazz with his usual humour and passion.

His recent death robs us of a superb writer and we'll be the worse for not having his wry humour to draw on.

Writing business: how it grows and changes

I set this blog up earlier in the year to have a place for longer posts rather than the short punchy entries I make in Writer's Little Book blog.

Now I'm changing the way I do things and it set me thinking how my business is changing.

Like any small business, when you start it's a temptation to take any work because you need the income.  Sometimes that leads you to disaster if the client is wrong for you or they don't appreciate what you do. 

I was lucky that I attracted some great clients right from the word go.  But even then there's a change in the way you view them.  Like many writers I prefer to have a mixture of what I'd call bread and butter work and the more challenging projects.

Eventually it's the challenging projects that provide more growth and development as a writer but they can take your business in a different direction from what you'd expected.  When I first started I thought I'd be writing a lot of sales letters.  Which didn't happen but I did work on many websites which are themselves a form of sales letter. 

Then I was asked about books.  Helping people write them that is... which put me in a bit of a panic because I'd never done it before.  But I reasoned that I hadn't done a lot of other things before so it could be learned.

Having brought my first book project to a successful conclusion, it whetted my appetite for more.  And I found myself being asked by more people about writing books.  How you do it, how you start, how you stop and how to get over those writer's blocks we all fear.

What I love is to help someone take action and create something that had only sat in their imagination before.  Of course we'd all love an instant best seller, but it often doesn't happen like that.  But I do believe the mere action of putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard kicks off a process that can lead to all kinds of things beyond the act of writing.

So my business has changed and is changing.  I'm emphasing what I can do to help writers.  Next month I'll have a new website that will be branded under my own name.  And that will open more door to me.

I'm taking over to the new site all the Writer's Little Book material and it will offer a full range of services to writers.  There are some exciting developments coming along with the possibility of having videos of interviews with writers on the site as well as more guest blogs.

It's a development that has me buzzing and I'm looking forward to sharing what I find out with you.