C. McNair Wilson's Blog, page 3

���When you wish upon a star ... make it a good one.��� ...

���When you wish upon a star ... make it a good one .��� 

~ Jiminy Cricket

 :: what's brewing? ::  

TEA WITH McNAIR ...Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. Choosing to live a consciously creative life, again. Start by grabbing a copy my latest book,HATCH!  ���the first book in a trilogy on creativity.
Download a FREE PDF of the fully-illustrated, complete first chapter of HATCH! here: HATCH-SAMPLE. 
The TWO best ways to get your own copy of HATCH! :: GIVINGTONS.com "The Generosity Shop" where a portion of every purchase will be donated to a charity YOU designate. (Get TWO copies: a friend will "borrow" it and you'll never see it again.) Click book cover (left) to enlarge and enjoy then fine print. You can purchase autographed/personalized copies of HATCH! ($5 off Amazon price), for friends and co-workers HERE. (When you purchase 2 books, get a third copy "HALF OFF.")

WATCH my full, TED Talk "Recapturing Your Creative Spirit" TEDx Denver. Also, catch my three minute introductory video, "How a Trombone Can Change Your Life?"   HERE . 
 Book No.2 in the HATCH! trilogy is in the works and will be available by Summer 2017.

 

CAFABC88-D233-3991-5E30-DED0BF1FFD92
1.03.01

���Leave the gun, take the cannoli.��� ~ Clemenza, "The...

���Leave the gun, take the  cannoli.��� 

~ Clemenza, "The Godfather"

 :: what's brewing? ::  

TEA WITH McNAIR ...Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. Choosing to live a consciously creative life, again. Start by grabbing a copy my latest book,HATCH!  ���the first book in a trilogy on creativity.
Download a FREE PDF of the fully-illustrated, complete first chapter of HATCH! here: HATCH-SAMPLE. 
The TWO best ways to get your own copy of HATCH! :: GIVINGTONS.com "The Generosity Shop" where a portion of every purchase will be donated to a charity YOU designate. (Get TWO copies: a friend will "borrow" it and you'll never see it again.) Click book cover (left) to enlarge and enjoy then fine print. You can purchase autographed/personalized copies of HATCH! ($5 off Amazon price), for friends and co-workers HERE. (When you purchase 2 books, get a third copy "HALF OFF.")

WATCH my full, TED Talk "Recapturing Your Creative Spirit" TEDx Denver. Also, catch my three minute introductory video, "How a Trombone Can Change Your Life?"   HERE . 
 Book No.2 in the HATCH! trilogy is in the works and will be available by Summer 2017.

 

CAFABC88-D233-3991-5E30-DED0BF1FFD92
1.03.01

���If you don't want to be in the CIRCUS stop acting like...

���If you don't want to be in the CIRCUS  stop acting like a clown.��� 

~ Anonymous

 

:: what's brewing? ::  

TEA WITH McNAIR ...Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. Choosing to live a consciously creative life, again. Start by grabbing a copy my new book,HATCH! 
Download the FREE PDF of the fully-illustrated, complete first chapter of HATCH! here: HATCH-SAMPLE. 
The TWO best ways to get your own copy of HATCH! :: GIVINGTONS.com "The Generosity Shop" where a portion of every purchase will be donated to a charity YOU designate. (Get TWO copies: a friend will "borrow" it and you'll never see it again.) Click book cover (left) to enlarge. You can purchase autographed & personalized copies of HATCH! ($5 off Amazon price), for friends and co-workers HERE. (Buy 2 books and get a third copy "HALF OFF.")

WATCH my full, TED Talk"Recapturing Your Creative Spirit"TEDx Denver. 
And catch my three minute introductory video, "How a Trombone Can Change Your Life?"  HERE. 
 

 

CAFABC88-D233-3991-5E30-DED0BF1FFD92
1.03.01

���That���s the whole thing with creativity, you know, ...

���That���s the whole thing with creativity, you know,

if there���s something new to do out there, why not give it a try.��� 

~ Marc Davis, Disney Legend

  Animator & Imagineer

 

:: what's brewing? ::  

TEA WITH McNAIR ...Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. Choosing to live a consciously creative life, again. Start by grabbing a copy my new book,HATCH! 
Download the FREE PDF of the fully-illustrated, complete first chapter of HATCH! here: HATCH-SAMPLE. 
The TWO best ways to get your own copy of HATCH! :: GIVINGTONS.com "The Generosity Shop" where a portion of every purchase will be donated to a charity YOU designate. (Get TWO copies: a friend will "borrow" it and you'll never see it again.) Click book cover (left) to enlarge. You can purchase autographed & personalized copies of HATCH! ($5 off Amazon price), for friends and co-workers HERE. (Buy 2 books and get a third copy "HALF OFF.")

WATCH my full, TED Talk"Recapturing Your Creative Spirit"TEDx Denver. 
And catch my three minute introductory video, "How a Trombone Can Change Your Life?"  HERE. 
 

 

CAFABC88-D233-3991-5E30-DED0BF1FFD92
1.03.01

��� free Q+A with me & your team

"When is the best time to do a seminar with my staff (team, department ...) on creativity?"

This question arrives via email, face-to-face at conferences ... a LOT. The answer is always, "I'm available next week. In fact, I was available LAST week."

NOW you can have me interact with your group ... FREE, and LIVE. Here's how.

Buy ten copies of HATCH! for your staff, department, project team, or... and get a FREE 45 min. Q&A with me. Buy the books all at one time, shipped to the same address, at $5 off the cover price (as seen on Amazon) and I will do a 45 min open session with your group LIVE via Skype.

This will work BEST if you give your team/group a full month to read, digest, and discuss HATCH! so the questions can be geared to your current projects or other group-specific concerns.

I can always tell by the first few question whether they���ve read the book. I want to take you deeper. This can even be me helping you work through a current project. Your choice. Once you receive the books give the group notice that, in a month (no less) they will have a chance to interact with "the author" LIVE. Then, email me���when everyone has read the book���to set up a time that works for all of us.

��� Consider having one or two sessions with your group in advance of our live Q&A to discuss their reactions to HATCH! and scratch out a rough outline of the best use of our time together during the Skype session.

Yes, I know you could buy 10 copies of HATCH! on this site by getting 3 sets of 3 books���@ $50 set���plus one more book at $20 for a total of $170. But that would NOT include the FREE Skype session.

Questions? Email me :: BigDesk@McNairWilson.com

YES! I will sign all ten copies and inscribe them to each member of the team. Please submit (first) names with your order. (First names make it more personal.)

Link to my online store: www.cmcnairwilson.selz.com

---> For INTERNATIONAL orders (including Canada) please email me for shipping rate.

Onward,

McNair

 

 www.cmcnairwilson.selz.co

"The more I know about people, the more I like my dog." ...

"The more I know about people,  the more I like my dog." 

~ Mark Twain

 

:: what's brewing? ::  

TEA WITH McNAIR ...Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. Choosing to live a consciously creative life, again. Start by grabbing a copy my new book,HATCH! 
Download the FREE PDF of the fully-illustrated, complete first chapter of HATCH! here: HATCH-SAMPLE. 
The TWO best ways to get your own copy of HATCH! :: GIVINGTONS.com "The Generosity Shop" where a portion of every purchase will be donated to a charity YOU designate. (Get TWO copies: a friend will "borrow" it and you'll never see it again.) Click book cover (left) to enlarge. You can purchase autographed & personalized copies of HATCH! ($5 off Amazon price), for friends and co-workers HERE. (Buy 2 books and get a third copy "HALF OFF.")

WATCH my full, TED Talk"Recapturing Your Creative Spirit"TEDx Denver. 
And catch my three minute introductory video, "How a Trombone Can Change Your Life?"  HERE. 
 

 

CAFABC88-D233-3991-5E30-DED0BF1FFD92
1.03.01

�����new book on the way, meanwhile ...

"Can't count how many times I've gone back to HATCH! for myself and then there's the times I've talked about it with others exhorting them to create and use their God-given giftedness. Book #2, the "adventure" continues, count me in for a pre-sale and recommendations to others. Thanks for your encouragement to not settle for beige-ianity, keep up the good work!"

~ Jim Tice, HATCH! reader

As I am writng, imagining, editing, tossing out what doesn't fit the objective of "Book No.2 (NOT the title)" I hope you will spread the word about HATCH! to any who have not yet read it. Tell them they can (and so can you) purchase signed copies directly from me (and I will write the name of the person ordering it or to who it will be a gift.) And they're $5 off the Amazon price. (Buy 2 and get a third copy HALF OFF.)

Thanks for any assistance you can be to support my Summer of writing. The new book is about understanding, accepting, and relaunching your own creative spirit. It's based on my TEDTalk, "Recapturing Your Creative Spirit." (See link above)

The title of the new book will be announced when we launch the pre-sale special ... whenthe writing is complete and the production process begins.

Onward!

��� pre-pre-sale of my new book

THANKS TO ALL who have emailed, texted, etc. to say you're eager to support my NEW BOOK by participating in the "Pre-Sale." However, that will not launch until I've completed my FIRST DRAFT (when I KNOW there's a book!) The pre-sale will not happen, probably, until end of Summer ... sooner, if I can. I work on it DAILY.

Meanwhile, you can support the "BOOK No.2 (NOT the title) Project" NOW buy purchasing copies of "HATCH!" or three (buy 2, get 3rd book HALF OFF) for friends, co-workers, grads headed to college who could use a creative boost, or grads entering the work force. Everyone knows someone who could use a creative shot, poke, encouragement, but hasn't read "HATCH!"���yet.

At the very least I'd ask you to encourage friends to grab "HATCH!" for Summer reading:
��� Post a short review on YOUR Facebook page ...AGAIN
��� Post the "HATCH!" cover or snapshot of your copy of "HATCH!" with all your colorful highlights and marginal note in you BLOG. (see photo, at right, from reader )

��� Send a good word to your Twitter-nation (copy & paste or scribble your own thoughts): " NEED A CREATIVE BOOST? Grab a copy of "HACTH!" by former Disney Imagineer McNair Wilson https://cmcnairwilson.selz.com "
THANKS FOR ANY ASSIST YOU CAN BE - I'LL KEEP WRITING. If you liked HATCH! ....the new book is better! (IMHO) It's a PIP!!!

Signed copies directly from me at $5 off Amazon price: https://cmcnairwilson.selz.com

�����a word about our future, from the past.

 

OPENING DAY of DISNEYLAND [ 17 July 1955 ] Disney Imagineers designed TOMORROWLAND to reflect how they imagined (guessed) the world might look in 1985. Orange you glad they were wrong?

Ten years and five months later, in the Sunday comics (26 December 1965) the strip Our New Age suggest the future might look like this ...

One of the subjects I am "playing with" in my new book [Book ���2 (NOT the title)] is how each of us "feels" about the future and our place in it. More specifically, how are your preparing for a future you imagine, are excited about, or fear���even a little.

What are you doing to create your own future, no matter what the rest of us are up to? Collaboration, alliances, communities, associations, partnerships are all great ways to bolster you place in the Tomorrowland we will all live in. (Except the cave-dwellers of the Montana Canned Food Nation.)

In 1962, when President Kennedy met Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus, creator and "author" of Our New Age, he told the University of Minnesota futurist, "���The only science I ever learned was from your comic strip in the Boston Globe.��� (Fortunately Al Gore didn't have a cartoon strip back then.)

The Smithsonian did an article about the strip and the lightyears-ahead-of-the-rest-of-us doctor on their website���Smithsonian.com���way back in 2012. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/1TPudhW

Meanwhile, our question for today:

��� Are you excited about or a little fearful of the future? And...

��� What are you doing to prepare for life in your Tomorrowland?

( Notice, in the strip below about air pressure and the possibility of harnessing it for flaoting/flying vehicles, that the artist places a tiny sketch���in the upper left hand corner���before the strips masthead, of a ... do you see it?)

 

��� book no.2 (not the title) progress report

Can you keep a secret? I need to know that I can trust you to tell only your closet 1,000 friends? I am working FERVENTLY, feverishly, and fast on "Book No.2 (NOT the title)" in my HATCH! Creativity series���"A FOUR Book Trilogy." 

Latest development: Looks like I have found a way to use the word "Adventure" into the SUB-title. (It actually works quite well with the theme and mood of the book. It portends a particularly fun section inside. It is also a paean, an homage, to one of my three favorite projects I worked on directly while I was at Disney Imagineering: the now legendary and, alas, defunct (destroyed) Adventurers Club. So, "mums the word"[1]  Shhhhhh! I am bent on trying to finish "Book No.2" in time for a pre-Christmas release. This is assuming I will again, as with HATCH!, be self-publishing this next entry in my creativity series. As such, we are planning a pre-sale of the book (to help pay for the not-insignificant costs of production.)

This will be a direct pre-sale, through my online book store���www.CMcNairWilson.selz.com���not a "Kickstarter" campaign. (But I am thinking about some special incentives for those who order first. PLUS, you can be certain the pre-publishing price will be reduced from the cover price (a.k.a. the Amazon price.) In fact you can still get signed and inscribed (to any friend you name, including you) copies of HATCH! for $5 off the current Amazon price. And when you purchase two copies you can get a third book HALF OFF! Just hop over to www.cMcNairWilson.selz.com.  HATCH! is the perfect gift for a grad headed to college or into the workforce to have a head start on the competition in brainstorming and playful teamwork.

I have been working on this new writing "adventure" since before HATCH! was release in September 2012. The new book is the one book I have wanted to write for more than twenty years! I just could not figure out how to put into words that would be as inspiring, playful, and ... adventurous as the message. The OBJECTIVE of this book, the why I wrote it,  is to inspire the reader to understand their own original, "factory installed:, creative spirit. I tried like heck not to deal with that subject in HATCH!, knowing I was going to do this next book. But throughout reader comments on Amazon, and in your emails, blog posts, and even snail mail letters (keep 'em comin') you said HATCH! inspired your own creativity.

The basis for the new book is my TEDTalk, Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. (Follow the link at the top of this blog to see the online video���75 minutes!) It is my most f-f-f-frequently requested presentation as a keynote address at large corporate conventions. (I have even delivered it at several not-so-huuuuuuuge events.) I always tailor the content to the group I am with. That's great fun.

Customizing it for Salvation Army (Monday in upstate New York), Farmers Insurance lawyers (Wednesday in Las Vegas), and a writers conference (Thursday in Colorado Springs) is my adventure. That was an actual (though not typical) week I had last year. So, it occurred to me, as I was playing with the content, visual layout, and title/sub-title of this new book,

"I try to make my life an adventure. How do I encourage others to that as well?"

BAM! Suddenly "adventure" became a key solution, for now, to the conundrum of crafting a playful, yet clear and communicative sub-title for the book. In non-fiction, typically, the sub-title is a way to tell the reader what the contents and purpose of the book are. Several author friends have shared that when they were wrestling with their publisher over the book title that the author wanted, the resolution was allowing the editor to have more input on the subtitle. On HATCH!, we had, as reader will recall, rejections from EIGHTEEN publishers! [2] One editor, at one of the top publishers (in New York City), loved HATCH!, but hated the original title.

When I submitted the manuscript, HATCH! was titled, Donuts On the Moon (the title of chapter six in HATCH!) She said "I don't get ... and neither will anyone." But she did say, "the subtitle helps, a lot." The subtitle on "Donuts ..." was and had always been, Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer. But that is a description , not a title.

The working title for this new book was a long time in coming. For now I love it. AND ... it has a title just as goofy and a little mysterious as Donuts On the Moon. But I believe I have found a way to tell the story from whence the title emerges, right up front. For the longest time I felt pressured (by friends, fellow authors, fans of HATCH!) to come up with a one-word title for Book No.2. Everyone meant well, I'm sure, but I finally decided, and began telling everyone, "I don't have a title, yet. I am waiting for the right one to emerge from the writing." Almost everyone asked, "Will it be another ONE-WORD title. Pressure ...pressure. Some of my favorite books have weird, mysterious, what-the-heck-is-that-about titles. Like, Gordon MacKenzie's Orbiting the Giant Hairball. And a playful, though helpful subtitle: A Corporate fools Guide to Surviving with Grace. (BTW, grace is my favorite word.) So, not pushing myself to nail down the title to an unfinished book and allowing the possibility that the title might be more than one word, allowed me to settle into the writing of the book and wait for the title to show up in tis own good time. 

It did!

SO ... now I must get back to the real work of writing the book I have been yammering on and on about for more than a thousand words! Pray for FOCUS!!!! I will not sacrifice quality for speed of completion. I don't think I will have to. I will be posting excerpts here on the old "Tea Blog" throughout the Summer and the usual alerts with links on my three Facebook sites, Twitter (@McNairWilson) and smoke signals for friends here in Colorado.

I posted a preview of this new book as a two-page spread from my sketchbook ... way back in August of 2013 HERE. 

 I Need You Assistance 

In the middle of all this I need to pack and MOVE. I'd like to stay here in Colorado (Springs area) if possible. I would LOVE to find a house-sitting opportunity or two, to save some money while I write & edit over the next few months. Hint, hint. If someone has (or knows of) a "prophet's quarters" above a garage, or guest house at the back of their mansion, or small cabin in the far corner of a camp or retreat center ... I'm quiet, clean, and fun to have around the campfire or dinner table, now-and-then. My needs are simple: bedroom, office (could just be the big table in the dining room or kitchen), bathroom, and a closet for my togs.

If these accommodations are temporary, I'd bring a couple of boxes of resource books and art supplies and throw my furniture into storage. The key is saving money while not traveling & speaking for 3 to 6 months.

I am also creating a new images, based on HATCH! for t-shirts, mugs, and messenger bags that will be AVAILABLE SOON when I re-launch my CafePress.com store: McNair's Curiosity Shop.

Meanwhile, grab a few autographed copies of HATCH! from my online store ... www.cMcNairWilson.selz.com ... where you can also order the electronic version ("eHATCH!") available for all formats. Please let me know, A.S.A.P., if you have or know of possibilities for Summer quarters of a not-yet-world-famous author. Spread the word.

 Thanks, as always, to all who have shared this blog and my books (all my out-of-print books are available, cheap, on Amazon), and those who have posted reader reviews! ( Or are about to as soon as you finish reading this.) Go now ... HERE.

Footnotes:

[1] mum's the word - "Seal up your lips and give no words but mum." Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2, Act 1, Scene 2

[2] Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time received TWENTY-FOUR rejections when she first submitted it in the early 1960's. It is still in print and in scores of languages. Then, in 1999, Time magazine selected Wrinkle as one of the three best children's books of the 20th Century! (Along with Charlottes Web and The Chronicles of Narnia.)