Monthly Archives: February 2015

…there’s NUTHIN wrong with continually challenging yerself… regardless of whatever career path/vocation/profession comes along… and there will inevitably be times that feel more comfortable than others regarding yer progress… for quill-scrapers, the Emotional Swingometer of how yeez feel about yer WURK can reach both ends of the scale several times in the same day… ‘I LUV my book/I hate my book/I LUV my book’ syndrome is common… I’m sure yeez’ve all experienced it… I’ll hark on about sum’thing I’ve quoted often in this Blog page… if yeez think yeez can be successful, yeez are prob’ly right… if yeez think yeez cannot be successful, yeez are also prob’ly right… it’s an easy choice… if need be, discipline yerself not to read early reviews of yer masterpieces… good or bad… they are both seductive… wait until a bunch of them have accumulated over time… the trend will be apparent then… in business over several decades, I’ve been in privileged positions of managing and running teams from small groups of people, to medium sized divisions, to entire corporations… and always, always, always, I looked for the volunteers for the tough assignments… the ones whose hands went up when asked, ‘who’d like a shot at this?’…

…the confidence factor is paramount in all areas of living… believing things are possible… making stuff happen… refusing to accept initial setbacks… the same philosophy applies to yer writing… practice is good, more practice is even better, constant practice is best… good authors become great authors through continuous on-the-job learning… improvement… usually incremental gains rather than phenomenal victories… by the way, rejection slips from Agents/Publishers are par for the course… and often these are more judgemental of the person turning yer manuscripts  down, rather than of the material itself… as Master K. Rogers hints in the clip above, …Authors, if yeez don’t believe in yerselves, how do yeez expect others to believe in yeez?… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…there are many things which yeez are aware of, which once seen, can never be unseen… in the same vein, there are things and incidents which yeez witness, which once witnessed, can never be unwitnessed… I bring yeez a story, a true recounting of one such phenomenally unforgettable passage from about 30 years ago… the location is the Far East, in Hong Kong to be precise… I lived and WURKED there at the time, and was appraised of this by a close friend, who couldn’t contain himself with it… he was a member of the Hong Kong Wine Society… now, I personally have NUTHIN against people who fancy themselves as true oenophiles (wine buffs, Mabel… wine buffs)… as a side issue, I’ve never quite understood how with a single sniff at a rotting cork yeez can divine the origin, vintage (wine-age?), maker, address of the grape-seed supplier, names of the guys who plucked the bottles from the wine trees, and how many cheese sandwiches they ate during the growing season… but, seemingly, yer true experts can do all that…

…then there’s the other sort… the wannabe wine snobs… the Chardonnay Charlatans… the Medoc Mountebanks… the Savignon Shamsters… yeez’ve all seen them… well, one such interloper was a notorious keep-on-turn-up-regardless-er… the lady wife of a prominent British society family in the colony… and sadly, her strongest suit was the frequent uber-indulgence in the contents of the wine bottles rather than the delicate tasting of them… the occasion referred to above involved a weekend trip by the Wine Society to what was then the Excelsior Hotel in Macau, a forty-minute jet-ferry ride from Hong Kong… two full days of activities culminated in a formal wine-tasting with a panel of judges, of whom our hiccupping heroine was the first in the line at the table… the deal was quite straight forward… a line of glasses of wine were arrayed in front of each of four judges and they were tasked with choosing the ‘best’ one…

…the lady had slugged generously on each of the selected wines and slurringly declared that the best was undoubtedly Glass ‘E’… consternation briefly reigned… as each glass was actually numbered ‘1’ through ‘4’… she had failed to notice that every glass bore a large letter ‘E’ on the side… this by dint of the fact that they belonged to the ‘E’xcelsior Hotel… cheeeeeeeeeeeers! …. see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…ev’ry once in a while along comes a story that makes yeez believe there’s still hope for the human race… yeez may think I’m biased as it emanates from my home town of Glasgow… but it’s no secret, the folks of that great city are the warmest hearted people yeez’ll find anywhere… enjoy the clips and the story:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/feb/20/celtic-fan-jay-beatty-goal-of-month

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!

…the ultimate readership for all we quill-scrapers may include other Authors, but generally, the majority of those buying/downloading our wee masterpieces are just—readers… however, particularly for newbies, or any of the rest of us trying to ‘build the platform’ of meaningful relationships, this ol‘ Jurassic suggests we look closer to home… ‘home’ in the sense of the vast universal Internet ‘house’ in which there are ‘many mansions’ filled with our fellow scribblers… ‘home’ in the sense of people who care for our literary careers and well-being… ‘home’ in the sense of unconditional, non-competitive support for our labours… and so often, that all starts even before we sell a single copy of our tomes… I learned very early in the sojourn onto the self-publishing arena the phrase ‘paying it forward’… and I LUV IT!… what began as a hard-nosed commercial decision, pitched simply at an effort to develop more sales outlets has morphed into an ocean of wunnerful pals…

…and it applies not only to the good folks ploughing the solitary furrow of self-publishing, but to any writer engaged in the SOSYAL NETWURKS… I ‘pay it forward’ in my own small ways these days, principally now coz I enjoy doing so… I ‘pay it forward’ by downloading other authors’ books, on average about one per week, and I prefer to select newbies, as I know how valuable that backing was to me when I first ventured on here… I ‘pay it forward’ by doing regular reviews for others on the Great God Amazon pages, remembering to post on both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com (they don’t automatically cross-register) and on Goodreads… also, I ‘pay it forward’ by responding as much as I can on other people’s blogs—comments, Guest Posting and such… oh, and by the way, I also try to find time to write novels… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…

ALL MY BLOG POSTS ARE FREE TO SHARE OR RE-BLOG SHOULD YOU SO WISH—BE MY GUEST!