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When I was young I loved Formula one.

I used to get up early to watch qualifyings and races all over the world, thought I didn't always stay up for the whole event!

Anyway I knew that Damon Hill was the best driver, he probably wasn't actually the best but he was British so that was good enough for me. And one day I met him.





Well I say I met him, I went to the British Moto show and he was there! I remember getting all excited, getting an autograph on a picture of him with his car. I don't think I can remember everything I said to him, as I was very young, but I hope that I encouraged him for the coming season.

Fans are great, they can really encourage you on, give you new ideas, or even point out where you've been going wrong. They are a great remedy for trolls, of whom there are numerous.

In fact there is a great piece of writing advice to work out your writing voice. Imagine the person you're writing for, your fan, and write just for them. Write what they're interested in, what they need to hear, what will change them.

This has been one of the exercises I've been going through recently. Imagining "the fan" I want to write to but I realised...I've actually met some fans.

• When I was writing a political blog I met people and had people contact me who had read my political ramblings writings.
• During the recent conference in Prague I met some people who were familiar with my teaching blog and had even downloaded my handout before I gave my presentation.
• Even from my personal writings I've had friends comment on stories, events, and reflections they've read and enjoyed [the most revealing fact about my writing is how episodic this feedback is. When I read something great on a blog I always try to comment, or speak to the person, it certainly let's you know you're on the right track]

I guess really my dream fan is someone like this

• Doers and not just readers or speakers. In fact they have a wealth of scars from getting things...not quite right
• Sceptical but optimistic, They see potential flaws in plans or arguments but get excited about things anyway
• Creative and expressive, They love to make new things and not just consume things.
• Encouraging, No matter how off track/bad you get they always spur you on. 
• New things Excite them, and yet they know the value of the tried and tested.

I wonder how like you these ideas are? 

Jeff Goins book review

I can't quite remember how I first heard about Jeff Goins but I remember very quickly getting hold of a copy of his E manifesto "The Writer's Manifesto."

It immediately had an impact on me and caused me to take some risks, write for myself more, not publish something, publish others and generally shook me up, pushed me around and left me facing a very different direction.

When Jeff put out a request for people to write a review of his new eBook I jumped at the chance!

Before your first book and Every writer's Dream are two books about getting published and yet they are very different.

Before your first book 

Focuses on the first stages of getting published. Pitching and idea to a magazine or blog.  Having read a lot of Jeff's stuff before and, to some degree or other, thinking that I knew everything about getting published I found this book a great joy and surprise.

It was a very practical, step by step guide that looked at some common errors and mistakes people make when trying to get their first articles published. What's more, it even included some sample pitch letters to pepper publishers with.

I have no doubt that Jeff learned many of these mistakes the hard way and so it is great that we don't have to.

Although I had no extreme desire to have a magazine or guest blog article published prior to reading the book, I've decided to really test Jeff's advice and see what I can get published.

Every Writer's Dream.

I wonder if this book really should be called, Every artist's dream as it really can apply to more than just writer's and I am sure many other creative people could take practical applications from the book.

Every Writer's dream looks at the goal of getting published in full book form. That's not just a blog post, magazine article or chapter in a book but your own book. And best of all, this can all be done without having to make the pitch that takes up the attention of Before your first book.

In all honesty getting published is a thought that I had dwelt on at various times and I even completely failed attempted to write a novel during November last year.

In addition, I have been working on a couple of book ideas for the year and reading through Every writer's dream helped me both gain practical insights into book publishing and in inspiring me to push on with the hard task ahead.

That's not to say it's all good news. Jeff certainly warns about the hard time to come.

All in all both books really gave me a stronger desire to write, encouraged me to push on in hard times and gave me a lot better guidance and direction as to how to go about it.

All in all I would certainly recommend them even if you have no desire to get a piece of writing published but just want to carry on writing you day to day blog. 


They cost $4.99 and you can buy them here.

My Aims for 2012

In all honesty I have had a hard time pinning down my Aims for this year, This isn't because I haven't know what I've wanted to do in fact there have been some goals that I have been certain that I wanted to do. Unfortunately I fell in to the trap of planning.

It is without doubt easier to plan what you should do than to start doing it. In fact the longer you plan the better excuse you have for it not happening "well the plans aren't ready yet."

However:

 A good plan violently executed is better than the perfect plan.

Inspired by a post this morning which has helped refine my thinking I decided to drop some of my many many aims and instead focus on a few constant aim. A few mile posts for the year and also to have an experimental aim each month. Something to give a go at.

Thus I'll be open to any options during the year and yet committed to the long haul too.

So without further ado here are my mileposts.

1. To write an ebook 
2. To write another album of 12 songs, 1 a month
3. Complete a half marathon in the Summer
4. Change job
5. To buy only 10 new things this year*

*this doesn't include replacing broken things, or expendables such as food or toiletries. It is luxury things such as a new guitar/computer etc all the things I don't need but want. In some ways the exceptions should make this very easy, however I like the number 10

These are my long term goals.
Each month I will:

1. Improve my Russian via completing my Russian course book, attending a Russian discussion club once a week and spending an hour studying a week.
2. Improve my Teaching Via completing my two IH courses, continuing blogging and the 30 goals challenges.
3. Improve my writing via continuing the two blogs, writing an ebook on teaching dyslexic students English as a foreign language. 
4. Write 2 songs a month
5. Follow my Asics training schedule. [so I can complete my half marathon aim]
6. Fast 1 a week [starting with a once a month, then twice etc]
7. Complete daily bible in a year readings via YouVersion. 
8. Host a party [and find a reason for hosting a party.]
9. [This space is open in case there is a goal I wish to add later. Perhaps an experimental goal.

So finally all I have is my experiment for the month.

I will meditate [Using some guidelines set out in celebration of disciplines] each morning. 


So in total I have 9 goals for each month (one changing each month) and some long term achievements to aim for.

note: I will add more details on how I will complete my goals soon. 

You win some you lose some

I love setting challenges.

It's great when people engage in them take part and do something they may never have done. 

However there are two things that aren't great about challenges.

The first is when people don't really take up your challenge. You can have a great idea, set it out in nice format but for some reason people don't take it on. There can be a whole host of reasons and there are certainly ways to get an idea to stick more but for sometimes even good challenges fail.

The second is when you accept a challenge and fail it. It can really hit hard and take the wind out of you. Sometimes you may not want to try another challenge again because the risk of failure can seam too greate and not worth the energy to try it. 

This has happened to me, I have completely failed the writing an E-book in a month challenge. 

To be fair I only decided really to go for it a few nights before and then didn't properly plan when I would actually write anything. Not the best way to start or plan to go on. I did somehow actually manage to start writing and at a fair pace. I really enjoyed the experience. 

However then I came down with a cold. A silly stupid little cold. Well that was it. My energy went and every evening when I wasn't spending hours struggling to plan lessons I was asleep or simply blowing my nose. After about 2 weeks of this I realised how far behind I was...and I left it at that relisation. I took no action as I had other things I needed to do. 

And so now there are under 7 days left in the month and to write some 10,000 words, edit them and publish them [and do my day job] would be neigh on impossible. [unless i find a way to not need sleep]. Am I upset about this? Yes However I'm still glad I accepted the challenge. I would never have thought about writing an e-book and what I needed to do if I hadn't.

I would never have learnt these lessons for next time. And I will now know how much effort is involved and more critically approach such a challenge next time. 

One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is "I'll probably fail/do a half attempt so why bother?" when really it stops us doing anything. Sure it may be very poor but everyone need to produce poor things to produce something good. 

So you can expect a new challenge from me soon and I do hope you accept it, suggest it to other people and aren't afraid to give it a go, possibly fail, But Possible Succeed! 

Challenge Write an EBook in November

There are actually a couple of Ebook writing challenges for November.

From http://comerecommended.com

One fiction [Thank you Mr Copy blogger]

One non fiction 

It's up to you which you choose but I'm currently thinking of at least giving it a shot! I may fail but hey there is no loss there is there! It starts tomorrow so you don't have long to weigh up your options.

So who is with me.

How does a writer seek inspiration?

I recently wrote about the importance of seeking inspiration for overcoming writers block and I thought perhaps it was time to write a bit about how we should seek this inspiration, and specifically how I seek this inspiration. Of course depending on what you write about [fiction/non-fiction] will determine how useful these things are.

There is a quote I often read online from Stephen King which goes

"There are two things a great writer does, write and read."

 It's true, exposing yourself to different writers will have an impact on you and helps you encounter ideas. Within this there is a two fold element.

The first is to look at what topics they are writing about, is this something you could write about? what topics do they deal with? What perspective do they offer on this? What do you think about this? [Note: don't commit plagiarism. You know where the boundary is I don't need to say anything else.]

The second is language analysis and taking good elements of writing from other writers. Look at what tricks they are using in writing, are they sticking to the grammar rules? How are they breaking them? What Lexis do they use? Are there any words you don't know? How often do you encounter them? Can you work them out from context? How often do they use adjectives and adverbs? etc.

Next look beyond books.

What can you take out of songs, pictures, experiences, dreams?

For me personally I write about my faith, my life in the Ukraine and teaching.

For my faith the biggest sources are prayer and reading the bible. Whenever I am doing these two things I notice that it is much easier to blog. [That is not to say that If i'm not blogging then I'm not praying/reading the bible, though it is quite possible, sometimes I just don't have time.]

My life in the Ukraine is pretty obvious how it is a source of inspiration.

As for teaching sometimes inspiration comes from teaching a lesson and learning something from that, sometimes from a training session, reading a book, reading a blog or just a conversation with a friend. What I've noticed is that teaching seams to inspire me in other areas too. Sometimes I think about how this can be applied to my faith or to my other hobbies.

Who am I writing (songs) for?

Continued from yesterday:

A few years back I wrote songs.

They were for no one except myself...and maybe God.

Sometimes I share a secret ambition that other people would hear them and think they were amazing and tell me so. However in general these songs were written just for myself and for no one else.

However I went to university and something changed. I stopped writing songs.

Well more precisely I stopped finishing writing songs, I could come up with a little riff or chorus but I couldn't advance.

I'm not sure why exactly but at the same time I started to do some open mic nights at university and also found myself leading worship for the CU on a few occasions. So playing music became public for me.

Maybe I decided that my songs weren't as good as the professional musicians songs that I was singing [and they weren't] or maybe it was something else but I could no longer write a song.

And so this continued and I basically gave up trying to write songs. Until this year.

This year I set myself the challenge to write a song and put it up for public display to explore this side of me again. But I haven't and it has really frustrated me that I can't seam to finish/like anything that I write, certainly not enough to put it on the internet.

And so I read these things and realised that I have been trying to write songs for the wrong people...basically you. Really I should just write songs for me again, like I used to.

They may suck but they will be for me and to be honest that is all that matters.

So I may put some songs up on here...I may not. If I do then they'll probably be really bad but hey they'll be something that I've done.

Who am I writing for?

It is amazing how many coincidences you can sometimes have in a day.

Today my friend Andrew Brims wrote a blog post about the need to take a rest from busyness, especially online and issued a reminder that to be creative we need to apply ourselves to make this happen.

Just before this I had found a link to a person who had given away a free E-book on writing online (and all I, or you, had to do was sign up to receive his blogs weekly update. Bargain!) It was amazing how it seamed to speak and challenge me about my own creativity and motives.

A while back this blog was a political blog, sometimes pulled a few hundred visits ever day with it's various snipes at different political views and issues in the local news. I even moved across to Blogger to try and actually make some money out of this.

Fast forward to a few months after the election and when I moved across to the Ukraine and I realised that I had lost something. The joy of getting views had turned to the pain and lament at the lack of views I now received and my inability to write about UK politics due to the fact that despite having the internet at my fingers I was increasingly out of the loop and unable to make wise or insightful comments on the issues of the day [partially due to lack of time, partially through a sense of political disenchantment and wondering what I actually did think/feel in the current political climate.]

So I stopped.

I changed and started writing for the pure joy of writing [and the desire to keep people back in the UK up to date with what I was doing.] Writing became fun again although the monthly updates of blog stats and similar continued the reason was less for me after all I could see these without sharing them] and the fact that I would now at best get a couple of hundred page views a month and mostly from the same people didn't matter. I enjoyed writing and trying to write in a new a different way.

I think. and I hope you agree that my writing has actually improved during this time period. There is certainly a lot more of me held within the text that you see on the pages now. But I guess that is for you to decided.

The really interesting thing is when you compare this to my attitude to music. {to be continued)

Writing Pains

Writing can sometimes be somewhat of a duel headed beast for me. On the one hand the actual process of writing can feel highly liberating and bring a sense of freedom I seldom find elsewhere. As I hammer the keys on my laptop and explore my thoughts, recent events in my life and share interesting facts I have found it can release a great joy from within. However the other head of the beast is the one that quickly follows the release of the written work.

As soon as the “Publish” button is hit on the blog page the first seed is sown and my doubts start to bubble up from the within. “Was there really any point in writing that?” “Will anyone like it?” “what will people think about me for writing that?”

These are usually only small thoughts but certain events can cause the seeds to blossom into full blown feelings of low self confidence. Someone telling me they read my blog recently, or a comment appears on the blog, or even something as little as noticing someone has visited from somewhere I don’t know [and thus I don’t know them, what would a strange think about what I’ve written!].

This experience is of course not limited to written works but to all sorts of creative things. Just before the Holiday I sang a song for the schools Christmas party. Although I have sung at open mic nights and other similar events many times before, my stomach was still turning like a butter factory. Straight after I finished all I wanted to do was to go to a corner and just act like nothing happened at all.

It appears that within me there are two forces competing with each other. The first loves do creative things and Loves to hear people compliment me for them [and perhaps really wants to be praised as well]. The other, meanwhile, hates to step out in a crowd and be thought of as different (at best) and bad at whatever I am doing (at worse).

And so that brings us nicely to all things blog based and in particular the first of one of my 2011 aims. Bellow is the first of the songs. Admittedly this isn’t one I really wrote. The words and foundation of the song was written by my friend James Townsend during our gap year in Leeds, However I have arranged it differently so it kind of counts…

Perhaps I have chosen this because it is the easiest to do [during this very hectic month] or maybe it has more to do with the slightly increased shelter for this, my first recording of singing online! Whatever the reason I hope you enjoy it.