Posted on Friday, January 29, 2016

Bring The World A Bestseller: A Writing Guide: Part 3

People are always asking about writing their own books. It seems rather simple, doesn’t it? You get your laptop, open Word and off you go. A few pages in, you start to question your story. “It’s not very good, is it?” you say. You start to wander away from the story, and suddenly you’re on Google, reading about the 2005 election. You have lost the vitality you need to keep to write a book. This is the first of a five-part series on publishing a book. We are going to go over a few goals, a few settings and a few ideas that will help you get that book finished. This week, we will be looking at some ways to help you research your book.

More Research. Better Research

It has been said that too much knowledge is never a bad thing. I think that applies to writing books, too. You will be read by readers from all over the world and from all walks of life. You just never know what little added bit of information will turn a reader onto your book. They may have hated everything about it—until they read your beautifully put together, realistic fishing scene.

No Loan Needed

Your book is about Tokyo? You can’t afford to get there? Try finding someone who lives there and ask them all the questions you can think of. You learn more from asking questions than you do from visiting. If your subject is historical—read the books, visit the museums, check out the Internet. You don’t need to go back to ancient Rome to write about it.

The Web Has It All

The Internet can be the greatest resource a writer could ever ask for. You may have to know what to look for—but once you tap into what the Internet has to offer, you may never need a book again. How do you treat a gunshot wound? Look on Google. How can a computer break down? Look on Google. What happened on the 12 July, 1975… Google it!

Don’t Overdo It

Have you ever read a book and found yourself reading tedious descriptions? I’m sure you have. That’s a case of a writer forcing his knowledge on you. Knowing information and knowing how much to share are two different things. You don’t need to tell the reader constantly that the U.S.A. is the United States of America. See?

Dr. Princess Fumi Hancock, DNP, MA, BSN
Your Vision Midwife, Lifestyle Entrepreneur
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Posted on Wednesday, January 27, 2016

It’s Warrior Wednesday and This Is YOUR Day…

“When you wake up, you know there’s something to be done…”

fear1 Which day should I choose to change my life? I was asked that once. Everyone wants to change something. The clothes they wear, perhaps the friends they choose to have, and don’t forget that we are changing inside our bodies on a daily basis. Is there really a better time to change than right now?

I don’t think so.

The changes we make now will allow us to live differently in the coming days. Why wait when you can have everything you want right now?

Yet, do we all know what we want? The best way to really find out what we need is to sit down and think about what we can accomplish. Then you have to ask yourself—what should I accomplish first? What can I do today?

I decided to put together four techniques I have used to help change my life on a day-to-day basis.

What Can I Change Today?

Can you start a chain reaction by taking that call with your boss today? How about decluttering that closet? What about taking that first step outside? Is there something you can do today that will impact your tomorrow for the better?

Help Your Neighbor

Your changes don’t have to help yourself. You can make a difference today by changing the life of someone else. How can you be of service today? Does that person need some help with their yard? A friend to talk to? Change your life by changing the life of someone else, on a daily basis.

Give Me an M… Motivation

Change of any kind takes motivation. Try writing down the things you can do NOW to change your life. What can you do? Wake up earlier and start the day with a smile? How about tackling that awful job first? Motivate yourself with a list you can tick off and put paid to, and then look at all the changes you made.

Don’t Worry… Be Happy

We’d all like to change everything that needs changing within minutes. Wouldn’t a magic wand be nice? Well, think about it—it wouldn’t actually be that great. You’d be bored within moments with nothing to aim for, no achievements to, well, achieve… Take your life in your hands, and change it on a daily basis. Soon, you will be able to look back at all the good things you’ve done and all the great achievements you’ve made. But be sure to make these changes at your own pace.

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Posted on Monday, January 25, 2016

Holding Back The Fears: Conquering Fears: Part 4

fear11 The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. They suffer from terrible fears when they try to better their lives. Inner fears like frustration, failure and lack of confidence allow some to be talked out of success by their own demons. These fears control the lives of many people but can be conquered. This new series of blog articles is all about fears that will hold you back—and how to conquer them. This week we will be looking anxiety.

There’s always something out there trying to scare us. If you listen without really thinking about what you’re being told, it’s quite easy to become scared. For some, this means hiding away from the world. For others, daily life becomes a struggle.

Panic!

The negative results of panic can be seen every single day. People get upset, overreact and make more out of a problem (or a perceived problem) than there really is. Frightening yourself beyond the real need to deal with a problem puts your body into a fight-or-flight situation.

Emotional Panic

This can create a shutdown of feelings; it can leave you in a constant state of shock. You don’t think clearly; you don’t make good decisions. You can’t remember things very well. You cannot accurately assess a situation.

Overcoming Panic… You CAN do it!

The Signs of Panic

You feel panic coming on… A racing heartbeat, a flushing feeling in your face, mental confusion, shouting, saying unreasonable things, or just saying whatever comes out of your mouth without thinking about what you are saying. You are more than likely in a state of panic.

Deep Breathing

Deep breathing has been proven to calm your body by burning off the adrenaline that’s been released in panic. Slow down, clear your mind and count to ten. Focus on thinking clearly, factually, and do not react emotionally.

Responsibility

Are in you in immediate danger? If you’re not, then whatever has set you into a panic is probably not as urgent as you think. What scares you? Discover what it is and jot it down. Once you know what sets off your panic—you can start to combat it and think clearly.

Check the Facts

Yes, you may be worried about what you saw on the news. Killer bees, bombs, natural disasters, whatever. But is it really a problem? Is it really an epidemic? If you are in a panic over the news, you should consider the source. Just because the National Enquirer says that Bill Clinton has five days to live, it may not be true at all. In real terms, you should look at the facts, too. Is your boss going to fire you? Probably not—but if he does, he may have lost a very talented human being.

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Posted on Friday, January 22, 2016

Bring The World A Bestseller: A Writing Guide: Part 2

once upon People are always asking about writing their own books. It seems rather simple, doesn’t it? You get your laptop, open Word and off you go. A few pages in, you start to question your story. “It’s not very good, is it?” you say. You start to wander away from the story, and suddenly you’re on Google, reading about the 2005 election. You have lost the vitality you need to keep to write a book. This is the second part of a five-part series on publishing a book. We are going to discuss characters today. If you have having problems with your characters—read on!

The Character Thinks…

The easiest way to develop your characters’ relationships is through introspection. The best authors are able to have their characters challenge their own feelings, realize their own bonds and question their decisions. Why does one character hate another character? Why are they rivals? What would change that dynamic?

Flaws… We All Have Them

Authors argue about this all the time, but the best authors, in my opinion, give their characters strong opinions. Is having a strong opinion about something a flaw? Yes. It can be. But flaws are what makes us human, and making your character as human as possible will bring your character to life.

Groups and People…

People behave differently in groups. You can see that when you hear about mob behavior on the news. People’s decisions can alter on a dime. Non-violent people become violent. Violent people find religion, and so on. The relationships between individuals in a group are varied and make for fascinating character development. Think about it… Are you different now than you were at school? How did you behave with your friends, as opposed to the way you behave by yourself?

Befriend ambiguity…

Writers can spend pages explaining things. One of the most over-explained things is relationships. Leave it alone, and let the reader’s mind take over in the vagueness. Don’t over-explain and kill a scene with too many words.

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Posted on Wednesday, January 20, 2016

It’s Warrior Wednesday and Negativity Shouldn’t Stop You… EVER!

“The negative person only sees their own faults in everything you do…”

Have you ever run into a person who only ever has negative things to say? Do you find yourself drained by their attitudes? Do you find yourself feeling uncomfortable? Unhappy? I think we have all felt this way in our lives. We have had to deal with people we find to be completely against our own grain. This week, I want to talk about how you can stop yourself being sucked into the negative web these people weave.

Making the decision to exclude these people from your life may be hard to do. They may be a parent. A sister. A brother. You can’t always extricate them from your life. But it is important for you realize that you cannot make them positive—you can’t change their outlook on life. You can only work within their realm to try and keep yourself from being made miserable. You have to make a choice. Can you counter all their negativity with your own positivity?

I decided to put together four techniques I have used to protect myself from negative people. There is no one way—but these ways worked for me.

Try Start a Conversation with a Positive

Heading into a conversation with negative thoughts about this negative person will, by default, make you miserable, apprehensive and absolutely open to their negativity. Try thinking of some positive aspect of your meeting with this person. Perhaps compliment them when you meet? Try not to allow them to focus on the negative, either. Keep things bright and happy.

Gather Good Friends and Feed Off the Positive Vibe

Many of us go into meetings with negative people feeling dread. Try to even this out by meeting with people you like beforehand. Let that positive vibe carry you through your meeting with the negative person. Don’t let them get you down. Remember the good times you’ve just had with your friends.

Be Sure to Set a Time Limit

While planning your routine, try to make meetings with negative people as short as possible. This way, you can keep the meeting to whatever you are meeting about and delay any negativity. This will allow you to get things done quickly so you can leave.

Find Out Why This Person Is Negative

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s not. In the world in which we live, it’s easy to forget about others and the way others feel. Spend a little time thinking about what could be making this person so dour. If you can find a reason behind their persona, you can understand them better and perhaps not allow them to get to you quite so much.

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Posted on Monday, January 18, 2016

Holding Back The Fears: Conquering Fears: Part 3

The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. They suffer from terrible fears when they try to better their lives. Inner fears like frustration, failure and lack of confidence allow some to be talked out of success by their own demons. These fears control the lives of many people but can be conquered.

This new series of blog articles is all about fears that will hold you back—and how to conquer them. This week we will be looking at the fear of being successful.

A Fear of Not Being Able to Cope with Success

Success is infinitely more complex than failure. It’s more comfortable to stay in a very familiar place, even if that place isn’t what you think you want it to be. Success, however, means going into new territory. You are putting yourself out there to be scrutinized and criticized, and exposing yourself to new demands and pressures.

It’s only human to wonder whether you will be able to meet the challenge, and only natural that a small part of you would rather not take the risk.

Fear of Selling Out

Some creative personalities have a very tough time dealing with success. You want to succeed, but you don’t want success at all costs—especially not the loss of your artistic integrity.

This is a very common fear for those who make their living from their creations. Additionally, you will have to deal with the fact that whatever choice you make—whatever success you achieve—someone, somewhere will be thinking and saying unkind things about you. There’s always someone telling the world that you sold out.

Fear of Becoming Someone Else

Successful people are put on pedestals in our society. You may wonder if others won’t like or recognize the “new,” successful you. That idea can be frightening.

This fear does make some sense. If you were satisfied with the person you were before finding success, why would you want to change? But it’s a fallacy to believe that you have to change just because you found success. Change is good, but it doesn’t mean you have to change everything.

Defeating Your Fears

Success can be scary, but the human mind is a strong thing, and if you had the grits to make it—you will have the grits to survive it. Remember that you have many resources at your disposal. During times of doubt, remember that calling on those resources will help give:
• A boost to your confidence
• A bigger, more powerful network
• A healthier bank balance
• A growing reputation that opens new doors

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Posted on Friday, January 15, 2016

Bring The World A Bestseller: A Writing Guide: Part 1

Small Steps

500 words per day is plenty. John Grisham began his writing career as a lawyer. He got up early every morning and wrote one page. You can do the same.

Have an outline

Write up a table of contents to guide you. Then break up each chapter into a few sections. Think of your book in terms of beginning, middle and end. Anything more complicated will get you lost.

Have a set time to work on your book every day

If you want to take a day or two off per week, schedule that as time off. Don’t just let the deadline pass. And don’t let yourself off the hook.

Choose a unique place to write

This needs to be different from where you do other activities. The idea is to make this a special space so that when you enter it, you’re ready to work on your project.

Staying accountable

Have a set word count in mind. Try to think in terms of ten-thousand word increments, and break each chapter into roughly equal lengths. This is a rough guide that should help you make your mind up about how long the book should be.

10,000 words: a pamphlet
20,000 words: short eBook or print book
40,000–50,000 words: good-sized nonfiction book
60,000–70,000 words: longer nonfiction book
80,000 words–100,000 words: typical novel length

You Have a Deadline…

It can be a word count, percentage of progress, whatever you’d like. Just have something to aim for, and someone who will hold you accountable.

Get early feedback

Nothing hurts more than writing a book and then having to rewrite it because someone didn’t like it. You could have sent it over for feedback a long time ago; but you didn’t, so you have to do endless rewrites. At the same time, try not to bug everyone to give you feedback. A writer endlessly looking for hints of greatness can soon lose a few dozen friends.

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Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2016

It’s Warrior Wednesday and Dreams Are Your Best Friend…

“Let yourself be whatever you dream of being…”

The most valuable thing a human being has is aspiration. This is what allows us all to do all the wonderful things we can dream of. Now many people dream, but I’m not sure if they dream big enough. I think dreams should be the biggest things we have. If you want to achieve something—aim to achieve something so big that you can’t imagine what it will be like. Then work your way towards that dream by aspiring—aspire to be an actor by joining an acting class. Aspire to be in real estate by taking the course. Dream, aspire and achieve.

Know exactly what you want. A dream starts with clear goal in life.

Don’t be afraid to have a daydream about your dream — imagine what it looks like, how it makes you feel and who it brings into your life. Feel the life that you will have in the future.

Try to create a dream board and paste pictures, words or articles of anything that represents your dream onto it.

Write the story about your dream. Record your dream and listen to it at night as you try to get some sleep.

Don’t let failure get you down. Nobody knows the future and that failure could very well lead to an even bigger dream, or life.

Talk about your dream using positive words as if you believe and expect it will happen. Truly believe and expect your dream to happen.

Tell others about your dream. You never know who can help you on your journey.

Believe that you deserve your dream to come true.

Imagine how your dream will help others. What will it allow you give back?

Always try to have constant gratitude for all the ups and downs on the journey towards your dream.

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Posted on Monday, January 11, 2016

Holding Back The Fears: Conquering Fears: Part 2

The only thing normally holding many people back—and away from their dreams—is themselves. Last week, we discussed how crippling a lack of self-confidence could be to the person who dreams of success. This week, we are going to talk about another major problem many people find themselves facing: a fear of failure.

A Fear of Failure

To really get to grips with a fear of failure, we first need to understand what “failure” actually means. We all have different definitions of failure, simply because we all have different benchmarks, values and belief systems. A failure to one person might simply be a great learning experience for someone else.

Many of us are terrified of failing, at least some of the time. But fear of failure, which is also known as “atychiphobia,” is a little bit different. It’s when we allow that fear to stop us doing the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals that it becomes crippling.

Fear of failure can be linked to many causes. For instance, having overly-critical or unsupportive parents. Because they were routinely undermined or humiliated in childhood, they carry those negative feelings into adulthood. This is one of the most common causes of “atychiphobia.”

Experiencing a traumatic event at some point in your life can also be a cause. For example, say that several years ago, you gave an important presentation in front of some very important business colleagues, and you performed poorly. The experience might have been so terrible that you became afraid of failing in other things. And you carry that fear even now, years later, even into your old age.

Overcoming a fear of failure is something you can never totally rid yourself of—and you shouldn’t try, as it is important for you to realize that in everything we do, there’s always a chance that we’ll fail. Facing that chance, and embracing it, is not only courageous – it also gives us a fuller, more rewarding life.

If you are afraid of failure, you might be uncomfortable setting goals; but goals help us define where we want to go in life and what we want to achieve. Without goals, we have no sure destination, so to really get to grips with your fear of failure, I would suggest sitting down and making a list of some small goals you’d like to achieve. Make them slightly challenging—but be sure to make these first steps “easy-wins” that will help you boost your confidence.

Try to make your goals tiny steps on the route to a much bigger outcome. Don’t focus on the end picture: getting the promotion, or graduating with honors. Just focus on the next step: introducing yourself to your professor, having a casual chat with your boss, and talking to the guy in the cubicle next to you. That’s it. Go for it.

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Posted on Monday, January 11, 2016

David Bowie Dies at 69! A Legacy Lesson for All! Princess of Suburbia Chimes In!

David Bowie Dies at 69! A Legacy Lesson for All! Princess of Suburbia, Dr. Princess Fumi Hancock, Chimes In!

I woke up to the sad news of David Bowie…Dies at 69! Understanding how his family may be feeling as I had just lost a brother barely 6 days ago, my first inclination was to find out what legacy he left behind. While many may be stuck on how he died, I have a different view about it. I shared this on my periscope broadcast today (CLICK HERE).

Many who follow me on periscope (@PrincessinSub) and BLABTV (www.blab.im/PrincessinSub) know how passionate I am on the importance of writing our Legacy Statement and allowing that legacy statement to point us to our true calling or passion or life purpose, as you may call it. David Bowie exemplified that.

photo by_Adam-Bielawski

Here is why:
(1). Every media outlet I turned to this morning said one great thing about his legacy: that he was “a master re-inventor and a compassionate business man.” This is a legacy his family should be incredibly proud of. It was amazing that not many talked about how much he made but more on the lives he impacted while he was with us. This is a legacy worth celebrating for generations to come.
(2). Another media outlet talked about the fact that he was someone who tried things and when it didn’t work, he knew when to let go, then re-invent his life purpose. Because he was great at it, his music cut across generations. While many artists in his generation may have faded away, he remained known. He was also a family man, who kept his family as private as he could.
(3). Once he re-engineered his life purpose, he worked at it. As a matter of fact, David Bowe’s last music was released last week, few days before he turned 69.

Here is a question for you today, if you took your last breath today, what would your legacy be?

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