35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 4: That creativity thing: myth, magic or something else entirely

I will not give myself out as an expert on creativity, but this subject is close to my heart (it is my blog theme for this year). It describes the essence of what we as writers aim to achieve: a creative life. Creativity comes in many forms, but for a writer the words are our paint brushes and the computer screens our blank canvasses.

If you are fortunate enough, to be able to either write/paint/design or do some other creative activity full-time, count your blessings. On the other hand, if your daily slog is as non-creative as mine, the time I spend writing becomes that much more of a blessing. Like the quiet of a country garden after hours of listening to the grind of heavy equipment.

I don’t need particular quiet, or a specific kind of music to be playing while I am writing. In fact I do prefer some background noise, as it helps me to focus and think. Some people prefer music, others want complete silence around them, but I think we all want the same thing from our inner self – a chance to the creativity flow.

For some it comes easier than for others, but in that I have a firm belief: the more you practice, the easier it will become. You have to keep your hand in, in a matter of speaking. While I love writing, I also like to paint and sketch. I take a break once a year from writing, but never from doing something creative. It is then that I dig out my pencils and paint brushes. For the first few days I feel rusty and stiff, as if I have never held a piece of graphite in my hand. Then the door springs open as the skills return and the lines or brush strokes flow as if I had never stopped. Yes, I do prioritize my creative activities, but time does not allow me to do much more than write at any given time.

Is living a creative life a myth? I don’t think so. Neither does it require a magic wand to make it happen. I feel that a creative life is a deliberate choice, whether as a paying job or as a serious after-hours activity. Writing for me it is not a hobby, because I make sacrifices to write. I have hobbies, but I only indulge in those when I have time or an opportunity with other people to enjoy them.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 3: A picture says more than a thousand words

Photographs and graphic images play an important role in a self-published author’s life. While you may not be a photographer, it is important to understand why these requirements must be met. Let’s start at the beginning.

As a self-published author you have control over all aspects of your brand and you need to make sure that the quality of your brand is of the highest standard. When it comes to photographs of yourself for profile pictures on social media sites, or author biographies for blog posts, make sure the images are of high quality and give you a professional image.

It does not matter if the photographs you use are not posed, but they have to be full face on, and not your dog or cat. Yes, we are all sensitive about the way we look, but your audience would rather see you, than your pet pig’s face.

And no, selfies do not qualify. Get a professional photographer to take a handful of images of you that you can use. If you don’t know a professional photographer, or cannot afford one, ask a friend with a good camera (a digital SLR or bridge-SLR) to take the photographs of you. Remember these are not happy snaps, so ask a friend that understands the basics of lighting and composition of portrait photography to take them.

The same applies for your book covers. High quality images. In most cases the publishing site will also specify the minimum and maximum size that the book cover image has to be. Make sure you read these rules before you use any images from the web. Beware of copyright infringements. Just because the image is on the internet, does not imply that you have the rights to use it for commercial purposes. Even if you make the book free of charge, it is still a commercial application.

There are many sites that sell images of the right quality, so investigate those and buy from them. They are not as expensive as you might think.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 2: Measure Yourself

image © Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Do you set goals for yourself? In your job? In your hobby or sport? You should do the same for your writing. It is easy to come up with excuses not to write, sometimes it is so easy it is shameful. But it doesn't have to be that difficult to write if you set means to measure yourself. There are several ways to do that and many applications to help you do that. Don't have one of the apps available? That is another excuse!

Set yourself a target for every day. If you choose to set a minimum word count target, and it has to be the minimum, then write with software that helps with that. All the word processors, and some other more simple applications, will do that for you. It is a matter of one or two mouse clicks and you know how many words you have written.

Does that feel like too much pressure? Not sure how many words you can write each day? Maybe you are a slow typist and it feels like a mountain to climb if you set a target that you think everyone else can achieve in a matter of minutes. Then set yourself a time limit - not a word target.

Take an old fashioned egg timer, no fancy mobile phone or computer app to distract you, and set it to fifteen minutes. And then you write! The number of words are not important. The time you sit and write - and you have to write - is your target for the day.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why don't you pop over and leave a comment?

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 1: My Challenge

I don't consider myself impulsive, in fact as an engineer I am one of those people that tends to overthink rather than jump in. Upon occasion, I do step out of character and boom!
I did that about three days ago when I saw the link on Facebook, and two minutes later I enrolled into the 35 day blog challenge. You would think considering my ten-hour workdays, freelance commitments and working to finish a non-fiction book, I would have thought twice about taking part. Second thoughts did come though, but not to withdraw, instead I got a brainwave. Rather like that little light bulb you see popping up in cartoons when a character gets an idea.
I have a blog post list which I drew up early in the year, but have done only a few of the posts I had planned. Thirty-five posts are a lot to manage for someone who barely makes the one post per week schedule. While I was staring at a blank page (yes, I do my blog planning on paper) that light bulb moment happened. Why not do two things at the same time?
I have to finish the book - it is aimed at the writer and in keeping with the theme of the challenge - and I have to write the posts. Since this thought happened, I had often wondered why I had not thought about this before. The creative brain seemed to have been constrained too much by the rational brain of late. I say, no more.

So here we go! Challenge accepted! Thirty-five days of posts and thirty-five days of writing to complete Indie Author: The Good, the Bad and the Hard Work.

See you tomorrow!

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Pop over and leave a comment!

Reading and Writing...away from Home

Instead of posting in Linzé's Mischief today, I decided to add a post to show you some photographs. Enjoy!

Sunday 30 August 2015 (21h05):

Boesmansberg Guest Farm - our home away from home

Being away from home isn't always easy, especially if it for work. The travel, the long days, the difficulties when things don't go as planned. But sometimes there is a weekend in-between the work days where you can recharge your batteries, like we did this weekend.
Yesterday, a few of my colleagues and I went to a local church fete. It has literally been years since I had been to one of these things, especially in a rural area. Back home our local fetes in a big city, are not the same as I remember from being a child in a small town in rural South Africa.
Prieska, in the Northern Cape province is as rural as you can get. It is the closest town for many of the farmers in the area, and while it has no mall (local joke) it has three of the major supermarket chains represented, the major banks and a co-op or two, everything a farmer needs.


Not the heat they had predicted!

I had a good chuckle when I Googled 'Prieska mall' and actually got four hits! Trust me, there is no mall in this town.
On our way back to the guest farm, we had a good laugh. We cruised the CBD of Prieska, had to search for the venue of the fete, and drove all of 2.6km in the process! Back home the closest shop is 2km from my home, and the closest mall (yeah, a real one) 5km away.I love small towns, but living in a big city sure does have it benefits.

The Orange River flows past Prieska

The closest city is Kimberley, and an almost four hour drive away. Local businesses, such as the guest farms of the area, get their products delivered from Kimberley, since it is more cost effective.

The week ahead sees the second stage of our testing that is planned. While the weather prediction says high temperatures are on the cards, we have been having cold and rainy days. We can still test if it rains, but it's not comfortable working outside, especially when it's cold and windy on top of that.
I finished reading the third book in the Antique Mystery series by Eileen Harris. The review of books the last two books will see the light of day, once I get back home.
Today had been a quiet day, although the wind is howling like mad at present. I spent the day writing, and it was good to get a few hundred words done. I haven't been able to do that the past week, and will probably not have a chance to write again until I am back home. Such can be the life of a writer with a full time job!
On that note, I wish you a successful week.

Creating Dangerous Characters - reblogged post

The 10 Secrets Of Resilient Characters

'Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.' ~Josephine Hart

The key to surviving in this world – and any fictional world you create – is resilience. It is not the strong who survive, but those who can weather change, because life is nothing but change. You do not need to be braver or bigger or louder. You do need to be able to bend with the wind, get up when you fall, and move forward when it seems impossible. This resilience strengthens you emotionally in either a positive or a negative way, and allows you to continue.

This is why your two most important characters – your protagonist and your antagonist – need to be resilient. Resilience is neither good nor bad, which is why it works for all characters who have goals and the desire to achieve them.

Are your main characters resilient enough for your story?

Resilient characters:

1. Accept help when they need it
2. Adapt to change
3. Learn how to cope with setbacks and disappointments
4. Focus on finding ways to get around problems, rather than on the problems themselves
5. Make mistakes and then learn from them 
6. Learn to accept constructive criticism
7. Make the most of their strengths
8. Recognise their weaknesses
9. Recover from failure and rejection
10. See the bigger picture in challenging situations

We do not enjoy reading about static characters who are trapped by their thoughts and circumstances. We want them to find that self-belief that forces them out of the prison of their heartaches, tragedies, and even the limitations of their victories.

So dare to create dangerous characters who have more moments of strength than moments of weakness. We love characters who are strong enough to withstand anything we throw at them - these are the characters worth rooting for.

Reblogged from www.writerswrite.co.za

This could be Heaven, or this could be Hell… - Guest post by Francis H Powell

The most leading question most people ask themselves on a daily basis must be…what happens to us after we die? Many religions lead people to think, if they lead a good life, they will go “to Heaven” or if they lead a bad life…they will end up in Hell. Hell is perhaps a good way to keep people on the right road, and a good stick to beat them with, should they go astray.
With my story “Cast from Hell” the last story in my book of short stories “Flight of Destiny” I written a tongue in cheek story about somebody who is rejected by Hell for being too good…they die a middle aged man but are sent back in the body of a woman, in her twenties, replacing the soul of a woman in a coma.
At the start of my story, I envisage what Hell is like and what the devil’s modern day preoccupations are. The Devil’s heyday was the middle ages, a time when superstition reigned and the church had a vicelike grip on the population. My vision of what Hell is like in the modern day era is far from being like Dante’s inferno…This is my description of hell…To my surprise, there was no evidence in Hell of people being grievously punished. The slothful were not being goaded with burning coals. The gluttons were not being tormented with thirst and hunger. There were no hedonists being bathed in burning pitch and stinking brimstone, or envious individuals howling with grief over that which they could never possess. The proud were not being brought down. The covetous were not being denied. In fact, the damned seemed to be living in a modicum of comfort. I never detected any weeping, wailing or gnashing of teeth. The place, called by some gehenna, the bottomless pit, was admittedly no holiday camp, but things there had grown shoddy and dysfunctional.
My description of the “devil” is one worn out over a period of time, a devil that has become “insipid” and unimaginative and I make the point that the world's leaders have usurped the devil’s job with their ineptness, lies and monetarily-advantageous wars. Watch the news and we can see Hell is clearly on earth, for many wretched souls.

In my story I take a quick glance at what Heaven might be like…in comparison to Hell…I took a last look survey of Hell. It looked like a vast airport terminal: vacuous, tedious, and hum-drum. By now I couldn't wait to leave. By contrast, I have often tried to imagine Heaven. To me it would be one long party in a great vivant night club, not unlike this second life to which I was now looking forward to I closed my inner eye as instructed and waited while Charon transported me to earth's dimension. Apart from the cliché images of Heaven, those pearly gates, streets of gold, winged angels and the Righteous, with their bodies made perfect and immortal, singing the praises of God forever, what are people’s visions of what Heaven is like? Also what kind of existence would this constant praising of God be like anyway?
One of the plus points of Heaven would be according to many the fact that witnessing the torment of the damned will be one of the joys of paradise. This seems a strange notion.

Peter Bell the Third by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Hell is a city much like London – / A populous and a smoky city; / There are all sorts of people undone, / And there is little or no fun done; / Small justice shown, and still less pity." Shelley's Hell bears a close similarity to Regency London. "All are damned – they breathe an air, / Thick, infected, joy-dispelling".

Huis Clos/No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
"L'enfer, c'est les autres." A valet leads three characters to a windowless room, which is Hell. To what torment are they condemned? Each other's company. In the course of the play, the characters probe each other's sins and bring alive their guilty memories. "There's no need for red-hot pokers."

About the Author

What better way to put all my angst into short stories. Born in a commuter belt city called Reading and like many a middle or upper class child of such times I was shunted off to an all-male boarding school aged eight, away from my parents for periods of up to twelve weeks at a time, until I was 17. While at my first Art college through a friend I met a writer called Rupert Thomson, who was at the time in the process of writing his first book “Dreams of leaving”. He was a bit older than myself, me being fresh out of school, but his personality and wit resonated, despite losing contact with him. I had a stint living in Austria, where I began writing. It wasn’t until I moved to Paris, that my writing began to truly evolve. I discovered a magazine called Rat Mort (dead rat) I sent off a short story, in the hope it would match the seemingly dark world the magazine seemed to embroiled in. I got no answer. Not put off I sent two more stories. Finally I got an answer. It seemed the magazine editor was a busy man, a man prone to travelling. It seemed my first story really hit the right note with him. His name was Alan Clark. I began writing more and more short stories, some published on the internet. A bit later my anthology Flight of Destiny slowly evolved, published April 2015, by Savant publishing.