Chris James's Blog, page 30

It works for me: Alan Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking

Today it’s six months since I last smoked a cigarette.  The cough I used to have is a distant memory, I enjoy breathing properly again, I’ve saved a fortune, and I feel better than I have in years.  And it’s all thanks to Alan Carr and his book.  If you’re struggling to finally free yourself from the foul monster of nicotine addiction, then click that link, order the book, and when it arrives sit down and read it, from start to finish.  Yes, you’ll need an ounce of belief – you’ve got to want to quit.  But if you really do want to quit, no other method will actually make it this easy, to the point where you spend most of the time having forgotten you ever smoked, and then when you do remember you used to smoke, wondering why on earth you engaged in such a costly, foul and dangerous habit.

I did have increasing reasons to quit.  I’d smoked for 30 years, with quite a few breaks when I tried gum/patches/willpower – all of the methods Carr so brilliantly debunks with erudite precision.  Here’s a picture my youngest daughter drew for me a few years ago, which I kept (and still keep) sellotaped on the door to the cellar, the only room in the house where I used to smoke:

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You’d have to have heartstrings of steel for them not to be tugged a little by such a picture.  Then, late last year, I had an unsurprising warning when I went for my annual health checkup.  After Googling the problem and talking to a doctor acquaintance who’s spent some time on those hospital wards which they call ‘Smokers’ Death Row’, it was a short step to getting Carr’s book.  I read it as Christmas approached, and stubbed my last cigarette out on Christmas Day.  This photo shows the shelf immediately above the desk where I write.  I keep Carr’s book there (usually spine out) in case I need to reread parts of it, but to be honest, I haven’t opened it for at least four months, probably longer.  It works for me.  If you want to quit smoking and be free of it once and for all, maybe it will work for you?

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Flowers!

My head is still very much buried in the WIP, so here are a few pics of the garden, which the wife always makes look quite fantastic at this time of the year.  I had wanted to write a comment piece about the UK election this week, and how Teresa May must have read Donald Trump’s best-selling book, How To Ignore All Objective Facts and Live Inside Your Own Delusional Bubble in the Public Eye, but I still can’t make sense of any UK PM who would blow £130 million of taxpayers’ money on an election she didn’t need to hold, merely to lose her majority.  However, the vicious, rabid right-wing UK media did get one thing right: they warned their readers they risked electing a shambolic coalition of terrorist sympathisers, and that’s just what they’ve done.  Nevertheless, it would be quite mean of me to point out that from the international perspective, after Brexit last year, this week the UK managed to shoot itself in the other foot.  This is all just too, too British.  Right, back to the WIP.  Hope you like the photos – laters!

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Cotton Grass!

Not sure which type of cotton grass this is, but on a bike ride in the forest today, we came across a marshy, boggy, soggy sort-of lake (erudite description, eh? *cough* *choke*) that was covered in this, the bright white of the cotton grass contrasting wonderfully with the verdant greens in the rest of the forest.  Still no time to chat, peeps, as head is very much in the WIP (when not cycling in the forest, helping my kids revise for exams, doing a crushingly dull full-time job, etc. etc.) – laters!

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Spring: A further update

Have to post these few pictures for you: this week the rhododendrons and the hawthorn tree burst into flower, we’re munching our first radishes of the season, Only Son has had to mow the lawn twice, and the garden feels incredibly alive now.  I’m far too deeply involved in the WIP to add anything else today, let alone actually write something erudite, so the pictures will have to do:

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At the zoo

It’s Youngest Daughter’s name’s day tomorrow, and when I asked her what she’d like, she asked for a trip to the zoo.  Seeing as she’s my youngest and she’s shooting up way too quickly for me, I think I’d better enjoy these trips while she’s still interested.  No time for chit-chat this time as I have a WIP to get on with, so here are some pics from Warsaw City Zoo today – hope you like them.

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Self-publishing via Word and Createspace – page setup

Meeka's Mind

This is the second post in this series and this time, I’ll be showing you how to setup your Word document to match the Createspace template for your chosen trim size. If you’ve forgotten about templates and trim sizes, you can find the post explaining what they are, why you need them and where to find them…here.

Right. So in this post I will assume that:

you have typed up your manuscript in Word or in a Word compatible format – e.g. Rich Text Format or .rtf for short.
you want to change that manuscript to make it compatible with Createspace so the printing process goes smoothly
you have decided on a trim size
you have downloaded the appropriate template [from Createspace] specifically for that trim size
you have looked at the template but did not change any of the settings

If any of these assumptions are incorrect…

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