Beth Greenslade's Blog, page 88

How To Overcome Doubt

Whether you’re successful or unsuccessful, doubt is something we all have to face in our life.

When you’re trying to attain a greater life than the one you’re currently living, you’re going to encounter doubt. I want you to understand that doubt is normal. It’d be weird if you never doubted yourself. But just because you doubt yourself doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it.

The thing is, if you continue to doubt yourself for too long, eventually you will believe it. I don’t want to see you get to that point in life.

There is one simple cure to doubt, and that’s taking action. When you’re taking action, you won’t have time to think whether or not you’re going to fail. The worst thing you can do is give yourself free time. Free time is the enemy because that’s when the doubt creeps in.

When you take action, you see results. When you see results, it’ll be hard to doubt yourself. And the more results you see, it becomes an addiction. An addiction to winning.

The only reason you’re doubting yourself is because you haven’t put in the work. When you don’t put in the work, you should doubt yourself because you’re doing nothing to advance yourself.

If you come home from work and going straight to watching TV, how are you not going to doubt yourself? But what about if you came home and took action? It doesn’t even have to be massive action, it’s small steps added up over time that’ll allow you to get to where you want to go.

Doubt should never stand in the way of accomplishing your dreams. Because the more action you take, the ‘luckier’ you get and you won’t have room to doubt yourself.

Overcoming doubt is as a simple as taking action each day.

When the thoughts of failure creep into your mind, substitute it with action and you won’t doubt yourself anymore!

 Trevor Oldham

The post How To Overcome Doubt appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Why You Need To Create A Vision Board

It’s one thing to picture your goal, but it’s another thing to see your goals in front you. When you’re trying to attain a life greater than the one you’re living, you need to create a vision board.

What is a vision board? It’s a collection of photos posted on a poster board.

What type of photos? These can be your ideal house, car, the person you wish to date, body, basically anything you want to see change in your life. You can get these photos from magazines or from online.

The key to a vision board is you want to place it somewhere where you will see it every day. By seeing your goals and what you want to achieve each day, you’re more apt to attain your goals. I like to place my vision board at the end of my bed so when I wake up, it’s the first thing I see in the morning.

It’s easy to write goals. But how many times have you written your goals and never been able to accomplish them? By seeing your board each day, you’re more likely to put in work that’ll help you reach your goals.

I’ve never been as fired up emotionally than when I created my vision board. When you put what you want to accomplish on your board, it will help ignite a fire inside of yourself.

When you set to create your vision, make sure you set an adequate amount of free time for yourself, this isn’t something you want to rush. By taking the proper time, you’re ensuring yourself you’re creating an ideal vision board.

As time goes on, you will need to adjust your vision board. You should want to be adjusting your vision board because that means you’re achieving the goals you set for yourself.  

With your vision board, and when you’re viewing the images and affirmations placed on the board, feel as though you’re already in the future!

By creating a vision board, you will accomplish your goals!

 Trevor Oldham

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Writing Your Life Story? Here’s How To Get Started

If you think your life would make for interesting reading then turning it into a story or writing a memoir can be an exciting and rewarding challenge.

Writing your life story, however, may not be as easy as it seems. On the one hand, you’ve got all the material there, and you’ve got an inside perspective to everything that happened - making it easy for you to tell the tale from a unique point of view.

However, you still have to work hard to get your audience on board, and once you get started you’ll soon realise it’s not as easy as simply transferring all your old diaries onto a Word Document!

If you want your story to be read and appreciated by others, there are lots of things you need to think about.

Here’s how to get started.

Get everything down

In the beginning, you just need to get everything down. Don’t worry about timelines, continuity, or even making it sound that good. Just literally jot down or map out all the significant parts of your life that you want to include in your book, and then begin to flesh them out.

Get organised

Now it’s time to get organised. Think about how you want to present your life story. Will events unfold chronologically? Or will you group parts of your life together according to particular themes? Decide which direction you want to go in and start organising your content to begin to shape your book.

Be honest

When it comes to writing your life story you should be honest with your reader, and yourself too. Tapping into raw and often brutal emotions and memories is often the way to get the best material, and though it might seem painful and scary, will make your book resonate with more people and your bravery will be admired.

Do your research

Just because it’s your stories and memories doesn’t mean you don’t have to do your research. You’ll no doubt write about other people in your memoir, so, where you can, make sure you talk to them, discuss the memories or versions of events you have and see if they match up.

Consider the reader

Remember that it is essential to consider your reader at all times. What may seem interesting and significant to you might not be so much to them - so always think about how to tell your story as if you were hearing it for the first time and didn’t know any of the people or the history behind it. How can you make your story have an impact on people? How can you make them care?

Use poetic licence

Sometimes the need to embellish certain aspects of a real-life story becomes apparent, and that’s OK. If you want to get creative and change the outcome or the unfolding of specific events you, the author, has every right to do so if you think it will please your reader and make for a better tale. However, just remember that if you are positioning your story as a work of complete truth you do need to be careful here. If your readers find out you have twisted certain events or haven’t been completely honest, they could end up feeling cheated and let down.

Writing your life story can be hugely cathartic, and rewarding and can be a great way to become a successful writer too. So if you think your life story is worth telling, follow the tips above and get started today!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

The post Writing Your Life Story? Here’s How To Get Started appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Stuck For A Good Character Name? Try This!

Great character names will stick in a readers head and will seem to fit perfectly with the character you are carrying around in yours!

Naming your characters should be easy, you created them, and you know them inside out after all. However, many authors struggle to find that perfect name for the characters they’ve created, and the pressure of naming their characters can sometimes mean writing grinds to a halt before it has even begun!

If you are struggling to find the ideal names for your characters, take a look at these tried and tested methods.

Try a pun

A pun can work really well and is a fun way to hint to the reader what they can expect. A character with a surname Black or Moody, for example, might be dark and brooding. One with the surname Sunny or Flowers could be delicate, lighthearted and positive.

Use alliteration

First name and surname alliteration always deliver a catchy and powerful impact. Keeping names short and sweet has a similar effect. They also give your characters a slight superhero vibe. Peter Parker, Victor Von Doom - you get the picture!

Check out meanings

Another excellent way to give your readers a little insight into your characters is by giving them names with meanings. Check out some meanings of names and then give your character a prophetic one. Estelle or Stella, for example, could be the name of your star character or someone who loves to be the star or the show. Samael is a name, according to Jewish myth, for the grim reaper so this could be apt for a character who is evil or destructive in your story.

Reflect their personality

Whatever you do, try to pick names that well reflect your character's personality. If your character is upper class, spoilt, seductive, and glamorous, calling her something like Jane Smith won’t sit right. Similarly, if your protagonist is a cheeky chap who was brought up on the wrong side of town calling him Huebert Sidney-Carter won’t work either!!

Use baby books

Baby books or baby naming websites are a great resource if you are stumped for a great character name. Here you can find thousands of names and name meanings all in one place.

Check out your favourite authors

If in doubt take inspiration from some of your favourite authors - pay attention to their carefully chosen character names and try to decipher what methods they have used, and why they work so well.

Use the dictionary

The dictionary can be a fun and useful aid when it comes to choosing your character names, Simply open it at a random page and check out some of the words and their meanings - you are sure to come up with something unusual and fitting eventually!

Remember you can always change them!

At the end of the day, writing your story is more important than naming your characters, so if, for now, you are finding it a challenge to get your characters names right, don’t worry. Just call them anything you like for the moment, and you can always come back to it and change them once you’ve written your story down.

So there you have it, next time you are finding it tough to pick the ideal name for your characters, try the above, and you are sure to find one that fits them perfectly in no time!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

The post appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How To Keep Going When You Feel Like Giving Up

When you feel like giving up, I want you to remember who was watching. Think of all those people who are doubting you. Sometimes you need more motivation than what you have inside of yourself. That motivation comes from recognizing everyone in your life.

There are certain events or people who have shaped your thinking and beliefs. Maybe you went to start a business and someone told you it was a stupid idea. And you believed them and for what? Never let someone who has done nothing tell you how to do anything.

Just because someone told you that you can’t do something doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish it. Instead of letting their negativity affect you, use it as motivation. I don’t care who you are, there has been someone who has doubted you on your journey. How great would it feel to prove them wrong?

Besides trying to prove people wrong, think of your kids, your wife, and even your future grandkids. Would they be happy with the life you’re living? All it takes is one decision for yourself that can impact future generations.

When everything seems to go against you, think of those who love you. Because if you give up, you’re letting them down and I don’t think you want to let them down.

People don’t expect you to become successful. They’ve been taught their entire life to be average. If you feel like giving up, they’ll tell you it’s okay and try to bring you back down to mediocrity. Don’t give into them. Understand you’re better than that.

If you continue to put in the work repeatedly until you succeed, you will not have any regrets at the end of the day. The one thing I can guarantee you is if you give up, you’ll always live with regret.

When you feel like giving up, remember those who doubted, those who love you, and that you only have one life!

 Trevor Oldham

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Should You Base Your Book On A True Story?

When it comes to writing a book, many authors wonder how much of ‘themselves’ they should put into it. We’ve all been told that ‘writing what you know’ can be helpful, and that by drawing on our own experiences, history, emotions and way of viewing the world we will end up writing a much more authentic, believable and relatable piece of writing.

However getting too bogged down in the ‘truth’ of our story can also lead to difficulties. For a start, much of what happens to us in our everyday lives is fairly mundane, and as we go about our day to day business, we are hardly inspired to write down everything that we see and do. If we only allow ourselves to write what we know, we could end up with a very dull book indeed.

However, everyone has stories to tell, and often our greatest ideas flow from the meaningful events in our lives and how they have affected and changed us.

There is sometimes a fine line between a novel and a memoir, and you should be clear about what kind of story you want to tell before you begin. If you are actually writing your life’s story, a memoir, you should stick to the truth. You can be creative about the way you allow the events to unfold but making up things that didn’t happen is not a good idea. A fictionalised story, however, is a different matter altogether, and this is where things can get interesting!

There are many advantages to basing your book, at least in part on a true story, and these are the things to remember:

You have the freedom to rewrite history.

The wonderful thing about basing your book on a true story is that it doesn’t have to have the same outcome. You can keep it as close to the truth as you like, or you can change the details to tell it in another way - it’s completely up to you.

You can be as creative and imaginative as you like

As with any piece of writing you do, creativity is your friend.

You don’t have to make all parts of your story realistic, let your imagination run wild and mix up real-life elements with fantastical ones to make your story really exciting!

Writing down your most life-changing and powerful moments can be cathartic and enlightening.

Re-living past events, particularly those that had a profound effect on you can help you work through things that perhaps you had kept buried for a long time. Doing so and being in control of how you tell these stories can be very therapeutic indeed.

By including true stories in your novel, you are connecting with your reader on a deeper and more personal level.

Telling a story that holds an element of truth makes it even more exciting and special. If your story is in some way truthful, it can be a way of inviting your readers in and offering a deeper more meaningful piece of writing that could truly touch and change them too.

Remember - the truth is subjective anyway!

Writing your book based on a true story can be an exciting and freeing experience for any writer. So next time you are thinking about ideas for your next book, delve into your memories and see if there isn’t a great story in there just waiting for the opportunity to be told!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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Why Failing Can Lead To Success

Most people are afraid of failure when they shouldn’t be. People let failure dictate how they live and by doing that, they never reach their full potential. In fact, failing leads to success.

I understand failing can be scary. You’re normal to think you shouldn’t want to fail. However, those who are successful are failing every day. That’s one of their secrets to success.

When you go through school, you’re told failing is bad and become discouraged from it. You take on this notion that failure is bad or you’ll be looked down upon if you fail.

What most people don’t realize is that failure will get you one step closer to success while also allowing you to become resilient. If you’re not failing, you will never get ahead.

I want you to understand that the person who fails the most and doesn’t give up will be successful. How? Because if you continue to put in the work no matter what happens, eventually you will achieve success.

Failure isn’t sexy. No one likes to fail. If you get back up after each failure, it will pay dividends.

If you’re not failing, how will you ever know how far you can actually go? Each of us has so much potential that never gets realized. You can achieve your wildest dreams if you’ll just allow yourself to fail.

When you achieve your desired success, how much sweeter is it going to be than if it was handed to you? By failing, your achievement will feel that much better.

Think of anyone who has become successful whether that’s Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison. They both failed, and they were never perfect but they let their failures take them to their greatest achievements. If they gave up at the first sight of failure, we would never know their names.

When you start on the path of failure, realize that you’re one step closer to success!

 Trevor Oldham

The post Why Failing Can Lead To Success appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Quick Writing Exercises You Can Do On The Go

When it comes to writing, we should all be open to learning more, whether we’ve been writing for years or we are just starting out. Learning new techniques, experimenting with new ideas and trying to absorb as much as we can about writing will help shape us to become better writers in the future.

However, for many writers finding the time actually to write is challenging enough, let alone having time to school themselves of the finer art of writing itself. We want to learn, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

That’s why we’ve got to find ways of dedicating ourselves to improving our writing without committing long periods of time to doing so.

These writing exercises are therefore the ideal compromise. They are quick and easy to do and perfect for writers with busy lives who feel as though they are always on the go.

Let’s take a look at some of them:

When you’ve got some time spend a few minutes writing down character names, places, actions, and motivations. Then pick, at random, one of each and put them together to see what you’ve got. Do this a few times and write any ideas down that seem to inspire you.

Write down your characters name. Now you have to pick character traits that they have by using words starting with each letter of their name. For example, Anne might be, antagonistic, naughty, nervous, elusive. Do it with each of the characters in your book to get to know them better.

On a piece of paper write down ten verbs in a list. Draw a line down the middle of the paper and then write down ten nouns. Then pair up the two to make some unusual and exciting descriptions that you can save to use in your writing later.

If your travelling somewhere (except in a car!) pick a person, you can see and firstly describe what they look like. Then describe who they are, where are they going, why are they going there and so on. Make up little stories for different people you can see as you continue your journey.

Have a go at word association. Write down any word you think of, and then write another word that links to it and keep going. Really let your mind be free and allow yourself the write the absolute first thing that comes into your head. Do this for five minutes without stopping and then read back over what you have written, picking out any unusual or arresting phrases or links which you can use at a later date.

Allow yourself to look around for 30 seconds, wherever you are. Then, without looking up, write down everything you saw, being as descriptive and detailed as you can. This exercise is excellent for training yourself to pay attention to what’s going on around you and to notice the little things.

These quick and simple writing exercises are great to do when you are short on time and can keep your creative brain engaged as well as inspire you to write more. So next time you have a spare 5 minutes, why not give them a go?

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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Quick Fixes To Improve Your Author Blog

An excellent author blog is a great way to raise your platform, to look professional and to reach a wider audience of potential readers.

Of course, creating an author blog takes time and effort, and trying to find ways to continually improve your blog and reach as many people as possible will help to ensure you are getting the most benefit from it.

So what are the things you can do to make your author blog better?

Put posts out regularly.

Regular posting is a great way to help build up your readership. If a person stumbles upon your blog and likes what they read, but then realises you haven’t actually written anything new in months, they aren’t going to bother coming back to it. Try to post at least once a week to keep content fresh and exciting.

Invest in a good design.

A good blog and author website design don’t have to be expensive, but making sure your blog is eye-catching and reflects your author brand is an effective way of showing readers what kind of content they can expect and that you are a professional too.

Make it easy to like, comment and share your posts.

The more your blogs are shared and the greater interaction you’ll get from readers, and the more the popularity of your blog will increase. Make sure you’ve made it easy for readers to share your blogs and leave comments on them too. Don’t forget to promote your blogs on your social media accounts to increase awareness and build up a following.

Pick relevant topics and keep them short and sweet.

Give careful consideration to what you are writing about. Think about who your target audience is and the kind of things they want to read. Planning your posts and producing engaging, helpful, entertaining content will increase your readership and the success of your blog.

Don’t make your posts one big sales pitch.

While it’s OK to promote your work occasionally, don’t make that the sole or even primary focus of your blog. If all you’re doing is promoting yourself, you’ll turn potential readers off, and they won’t bother returning!

Proofreading and formatting

Don’t get lazy with proofreading, editing or formatting your blog. Use a clear, pleasant font, do a spelling and grammar check and make sure it is in the best shape possible before you publish. It’s your reputation at stake after all!

Flesch-Kincaid Score

Remember, writing a compelling blog isn’t about trying to outwit your readers. While it’s great to make posts informative and helpful, it’s a good idea to pay attention to your language and sentence structure. Don’t over complicate things. Most people want to read something quick, easy, entertaining and straightforward so keep your posts to the point and use everyday language.

These quick fixes for your author blog will help you make the most of it and help it become successful. A good author blog should see you reach more readers, get more interaction, and ensure your author brand and personality come across too, so it's well worth doing right!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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Inspiring Reasons To Keep You Writing

All writers go through periods where they feel a little demotivated, a little uninspired to write. It happens to all of us at some point, and for some of us, it’s a recurring thing!

However, when we are feeling down about our writing, it is important to try and get back on track as quickly as possible. The sooner you get back to your creative, passionate and energetic self the better. After all, it’s your writing that will suffer if you don’t.

Sometimes all we need is a little reminder of why to write in the first place! So if you are in need of a writer's pick me up, take a look at these inspiring reasons to keep on writing!

Writing is relaxing.

Once you get into the writing zone, your brain shuts off from everyday life and the stresses, strains and pressures of it. The more you write, the more you can get rid of anxieties and worries and really let go.

Writing is cathartic.

Writing enables you to lose yourself in another world. It also helps you find ways of expressing things and exploring your emotions which can be superb for your sense of wellbeing and peace.

Rejection is a badge of honour.

Don’t worry about rejection, in fact, look forward to it. Getting rejected proves you are a real writer, so wear that badge with pride!

There are so many publications out there just waiting for you to get in touch.

Just because some publishers have turned you down, you shouldn’t give up. There are hundreds of thousands of different publications out there; you will find the right one for you!

You don’t need to be a flawlessly perfect writer all the time.

Writing isn’t about being perfect. You are allowed to make mistakes. You are allowed to write something that is a bit rubbish!

The more you write, the better you’ll get.

If you stop writing you’ll never improve.

There is always time to write.

You can always find 10 minutes to write, no matter how busy you are. Find them and get going!

Your never too old or young to write.

You can start writing at any age, don’t let anyone hold you back or tell you otherwise!

Your writing could change the world.

You never know who is going to read what you’ve written. No matter the topic if you write something that resonates with people you could end up having a massive influence on them, and your writing could eventually change the world!

Your writing could change your life.

You never know what’s around the corner when you write, and you’ll never know until you try.

Whatever happens, if you are following your dreams you are on the right path. If writing is your passion, then write - you can’t regret something or think it’s a waste of time if deep down you know it’s what you were made to do!

So there you have it if you ever need a reason to keep writing, or some motivation to help boost you when you aren’t feeling great about how your writing is going, take a look at these inspiring reasons, and you are soon to get back on it once more!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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