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Writing, Book Reviews, Web Development, and Entrepreneurial Pursuits |
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Hello & Welcome to FKhat's Blog! Here be my travails as a writer, aspiring author, Web Designer and budding Entrepreneur. Here be my treasure of book reviews, writerly advice gleaned from books, web, and personal struggles. There will be resource discovery announcements, and general knowledge share. The XGC rating is for the occasional swear word and scandalous topic. I read and write on a variety of genres and interests. I haven't found much XGC material related to Programming, Web Development, or Entrepreneurship, but the adult fiction market is rife with sex, violence, and other shocking material or language. My favorite subjects for reading and writing: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Adventure, Entrepreneurship, Programming, Web Development, Documentary. I am also pursuing a career adjustment to Entrepreneurial Money Chasing Web Developer and Writer. As such you will encounter the occasional HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Design beasty cluttering up my writing blog. I am over-employed, so it is going to be a long journey to get from here to there. Wish me Luck! Good Luck and Good Writing. ~ Faith Frequency: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday Personal WC Daily Goal: 1000 words BICHOK: (B)utt (I)n (C)hair (H)ands (O)n (K)eybaord! |
| Train Your Mind to Give You What You Want, Including Ideas Hail and Well Met! Last week I shared how I keep my own ideas, but where do you get them? Do they float through the air like fairyflies, barely out of reach until you wrench them from the air, crushing their little wings until they give you what you want? Do you lure them out with sweet words and candy? Do you coax them through a tangled web into your waiting trap and use their gnawed off paws? Or do they club you over the head and demand your attention, their time on your page? Are you a planner, designing them from a blueprint doing point a through z until it’s done? Are you a shaper, taking the raw nugget of an idea from random generators and hammering it into shape until it begins to resemble what you need? Do you bet on voodoo, lucky socks, and idea generators? Do you participate in daily pencil sharpening rituals? Incantations built word on word, until the static builds a sudden strike of genius onto your page? Or do you walk the other way, teasing ideas out like cats, playing coy and hard to get until its sitting in your lap purring? I personally have ideas bombarding me all the time. The hamsters are happy to provide, might blow up if they don’t. Stories are everywhere for me. I dream them, I ruminate on half heard conversations, I play with what ifs, why’s and hows, after all wouldn’t it be neat and exciting if a dragon invaded downtown and started flaming all those unhappy/angry commuters that clog up MY bus? Wait! No! I’d be trampled in the stampede, and crisped! Maybe eaten!! My most prolific source of stories and the loudest voice my muse uses is though nightmare. When I am stressed I have nightmares that would make Freddy and Jason pee themselves. Bright, vivid, too real horrors that leave phantom teeth marks tingling along my body. Growing up I had nightmares all the time. I would wake screaming until my mom threatened to take me to the doctor. I learned to stop screaming. If they can’t fix my ears, no way were they getting near my brain. I also learned how to defuse and often prevent the nightmares. I would tell myself stories and change the endings until they were no longer so terrible and frightening. I would drift off to dream on the stories I spun. When I was older, I discovered I could use books to keep them at bay. Anything engrossing would spill over into my dreams, and as long as I stayed away from horror books, probably wouldn’t come bite me. But, if it did, I could spin a story from its carcass and drift off to dream something better. I wouldn’t recommend nightmares or learning how to ‘not scream’, but, if you have them use them. Lemons and such. What is important is that I trained my mind, I found techniques that worked, and I practiced them until it worked, until I could quite literally do it in my sleep, and kept practicing until it became like breathing. Automatic. You do it or die. What we are all seeking isn’t a specific all encompassing answer, it isn’t a trick, or easy. But it isn’t some complicated hoodoo that costs money either. What it is, is a simple formula of HOW TO FIND YOUR OWN ANSWER to a very complex question to make change and get results. The answer when found, is consistent. It is repeated endlessly by published Authors, wealthy Businessmen, charismatic Politicians, famous Actors, Diet Religious and Business Gurus, Musicians, Con Artists, Problem Solvers, Match Makers, Language Collectors, Memory Masters, Olympians, Artists of every stripe, and is practiced but seldom realized by every person that can read or write. The answer has been hinted at, baldly spoken, but most often laid out in inspirational anecdotal stories, and milked for every penny anyone can get out of it: You too can learn to INSERT YOUR NEED HERE (i.e.: generate ideas on a regular and consistent basis, build wealth, become charismatic, charm ladies, get published, learn a new language, make millions, play guitar like a rock star, be an evil genius, etc., etc., etc.). The Question: How can I cultivate my mind to give me what I want? The Answer: Your mind and its imagination is a very powerful and versatile muscle you must direct and train to do your bidding. HOW: Decide what you want Find a technique that works for you Practice it until it becomes a part of you Practice more Keep practicing FOREVER, or until you die. Your mind is a muscle that needs a treadmill and some serious gym time to work it into the shape you want. You can even use an exercise that doesn’t come easily, doesn’t seem to fit, and practice it until you bulk up and it shapes YOU into being a proper vessel it can flow through. Our minds are so powerful, they can and will carve new pathways if they can’t utilize existing ones. I would still advise you to at least try to find one that works with the existing you. It will not only be easier to get where you want to be, but if it isn’t fun, if you aren’t regimented into military-like discipline, you just won’t do it, can’t stomach it, would rather clean your closets, toilet, or toenails first. You simply won’t go to the gym/keyboard/chalkboard/sketch pad, you will abandon it. You will find reasons, or reasons will find you, to do anything else. But if you do find you need to use an uncomfortable technique, you have some options: 1. Keep at it until it shapes you and you develop that military-like discipline. Military-like discipline itself being another mental muscle to bulk up on, that you can apply to every other area of your life. 2. Try another technique to practice. 3. Find something worse and more painful to practice at so this practice becomes the choicer practice. (Dieters have been told to try dog food upon occasion, as a diet and general FAILURE stick) 4. Change practice venue (outdoors, indoors, museums, trains, anything not blue...it can trick your mind into thinking you have given it something ELSE to work on) 5. Cultivate a trigger (danger alert: don’t make it too complex or weird, you may need to use this skill trick where people CAN see you, and you may find your mind becomes fixated and WONT work without it) 6. Do a complimentary exercise (you want to generate story ideas, but it isn’t coming, you like drawing, so start pumping out sketch ideas, one after the other... or you have to build reports at work, start generating ideas for reports, how could you use that filing you have to do for your report...same/same, one strengthens the other) You know what? Do this anyhow, find other ways to support that initial drive, keep hitting that muscle. 7. Take a short break and try again. Discipline and persistence may also need to be bulked up to support the muscles you are working on. These too can be worked at in complimentary exercises, like: resisting that extra potato chip, charging it when you know you shouldn’t, one more Facebook surf, that every five second phone check, etc. practice practice practice. 8. Find a support person or group. 9. PLAN TO FAIL ALOT, plan accordingly with plan b, c, d, and keep at it. 10. Reassess regularly...maybe weekly or monthly, are you seeing progress? Are things a little easier? Are there other actions you can use to reinforce your efforts? We do this with all the bad habits in our life without ever thinking about it, isn’t it about time you used it for the good stuff? What are you waiting for, go get it! ~ Faith ********** Next Topic: Practice exercises: Where and how to tap, trap, and steal ideas. (my apologies, I realized that the how and where, were just practice reinforcement to a much bigger question of how to get my mind to get me what I want: Ideas consistently and regularly) ********** Frequency: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday Personal WC Daily Goal: 1000 BICHOK: (B)utt (I)n (C)hair (H)ands (O)n (K)eybaord! |
| How do you keep your ideas Hello Hello Hello! I was going through my Story Library and wondered how everyone else keeps their golden story ideas that just can’t be worked on right away? Do you keep, as I do, a library of writable ideas? I flesh mine out as much as possible, it takes about an hour or two to really flesh it out (longer if it is a truly splendiferous idea), and then I stash them away to play with later. I keep these ideas in a library, complete with a Catalog (master reference list). The library entries are named by date of idea or record (yymmdd) - Title - Descriptor (If title doesn’t ring enough when looking back). I then have a “Story kit” file that I drop the original info into and rename when I move it from the Idea Library into the WIPS room. My WIPS Room has its own naming convention too. In the Catalog, I keep entries in a simple numbered list, separated out by year: ###. TITLE - Note (Date). Both the Idea Library and WIP Room are referenced in the Catalog. I keep both a paper and a journal, both paper and digital. I convert the paper to digital about once a quarter. monthly if I am overly prolific. (I type faster, paper's too slow for me.) Everything is written in basic MS Word, and kept in a simple file tree on a mini-DS card that is permanently inserted into a portable SD reader. I take it everywhere with me. The drive is cheap, replaceable, and the iOmega brand survives my daily commute to and from Cubeland. I have a spare that is replaced asap if the main dies. I use Allsync (freeware) on my PC to back it up on the main hard drive (lesson learned after the “Chair” incident where I ran over my card, quarterly backups are not enough for an active writer, causes extreme case of writer-rage when lost). The ideas that are kept are just the ones I think worth keeping and exploring. Of those, only the ones I am able to catch the spill before they depart make the list. They can be slippery and short lived if you don’t write them down right away. Fortunately many come back for a visit and I can catch them then, usually when I am working on something else. Current Idea Collection: Since 2004: 154 2012: 10 How about you? Do you keep just titles like Ray Bradbury? Do you just focus on the work you are currently on and build ideas around your publishing/story needs? Are they dreams you keep in a dream diary? Do you collect stories like shinies in a massive paper horde you browse through and count words? Do you collect words, images, or puzzles that lead you to stories? Do you cut out or print headlines and biographies? How DO you hold onto the really good story ideas you can’t work on right now? Keep Writing ~ Faith ********** Next Topic: Where and how to tap, trap, and steal ideas. ********** Frequency: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday Personal WC Daily Goal: 1000 BICHOK: (B)utt (I)n (C)hair (H)ands (O)n (K)eybaord! |
| Where are you going, and how do you get there? Good Afternoon & Happy Thursday from Cubeland! I hope everyone had a wondrous Holiday! I didn’t get my word count yesterday. The muse had a story in her teeth but she needed some more input. I found what she needed, but I also found some very interesting conspiracy theories out there. Wow, the amount of detail and material some of these conspiracy theory people produce is amazing! One of the projects I am working on is a money making blog. I know, I know, sounds so smarmy doesn’t it? Maybe money-grubbish? But it’s not, not really. It’s practice. You see, when I decided to change my career and reorder my life to move forward instead of coasting along the bottom. It is much harder than it sounds and can be quite painful to pull it off. To get anywhere though you need to do some soul searching. First you have to know where you are at and where you are going. Going nowhere faster, isn’t progress no matter how much it feels like it. 1. What do I want? 2. What would it take to get from here to there? 3. Will it be worth my time, effort, and money? Will it still be a good idea years from now? 10? Will it still be fun? 4. Do I want to work for someone else and the illusion of a steady paycheck or strike out on my own in free fall? 4. What am I missing? What am I not doing now that I wish I could? Goals: 1. Be home more! Life, cats, and Husbands take more than a minimal amount of care and attention. I feel like I am never home. Never get to do the things I want. I commute over 30 miles one way just to get by. It wears on you after a while. 2. Act instead of React: I want to stop being chased around by outside “necessity”. This includes bills, chores, dependents, pets, etc. Rush, rush, rush. From the time I get up and rush to work, until I rush home, and rush to bed. I am chasing money, spending time. I rush to get the money, and rush to get the money to the creditors, and I find faster and better ways to rush the food to the table. I don’t sleep or sleep well because of all the rushing. You can see me stumbling off the bus downtown with all the other Starbucks zombies. I used to raise guppies when I was a kid. The first batch I got three of them, two pretty blues and a red. They did fairly well… Until I put in a couple of neon tetras in the tank. Those 5x little tetras were vicious. Before the week was out they had harried the guppies a little mouth nip at a time until they had no fins and died! Sometimes, I swear I feel like those guppies sometimes! The only sure fire cure for this?: Consciously plan and prepare….everything! Stop and think about what you are doing instead of just doing. Be stubborn. Your family and friends mean well, but they usually don’t stop to ask why they do things either, they are just following along to. It is some serious effort to order your world if it doesn’t come as a natural part of your personality, but without it you end up with no fins! 3. Sustainable. Can I make enough money to cover my bills and keep the cats in food and litter? What if the economy tanks and leaves us in the crapper and we run headlong over a fiscal cliff like lemmings? Can I still put bread on my table? Food in the bowl? How about next year with no raise? 5years? Ten? 4. Give Back. I want to be in a position to give back and pay forward. To make the world a better place. There is so much ugliness and darkness in the world. Human beings have spent hundreds of thousands of years in barbarism, preying upon their neighbors, the tribes, clans, families, villages, etc. run by the biggest, baddest, and meanest. Sometimes the cleverest, but not usually, and not for long. (Do notice there are different words for sly cleverness and intelligence in almost every old language). Depending on which school of thought you harken from, humans have been around for tens and more probably hundreds of thousands of years. How many of those have seen any semblance of civilization? Two thousand years ago we had what many still think was a golden age. The Roman Empire stretched across the globe, and lasted for a thousand years. One of mans greatest achievements and “civilized” accomplishments. Some of what they did, what they discovered the thought up, we are still trying to figure out! And we are still living in its giant shadow today! But if you read between the lines, look under the gold leaf, check behind the glitter and gauze, it was one of the most brutal and vicious inventions of all time. Built on lives, lies, flesh, brutality, and Mob rules. They had slaves and worse. There were even Sewer Slaves! (Slaves whose job it was to ferry up and down the rivers of liquid shit to ensure they kept flowing.) This was the job for the lowest of the low to be replaced as they fell into the sludge succumbing to the poisonous fumes! Their bodies sank into the sludge as another took their place, unless they were the one being dragged into the muck by their shared chains. And there were always more slaves, more people to conquer, more lives to feed the machine. If your family ran low, you could just buy more or BREED more or some extra coin. (Or be sold as one if you didn’t pay your bills, or your husband, father, brother, or other patriarch didn’t pay theirs!) Everyone NOT roman was less. Everyone not roman was a future servant of the empire. At one time, this was “civilized”. The alternative was usually worse and shorter lived. This is a short step back for us from where we are, and an even shorter one into predator and prey. We should all be helping us move forward one little step at a time, because if we fall, that ledge below us is much less civil, and the one below that even more, until we are all happily back to take or be taken, kill or be killed. Personally, as a free woman and potential chattel, I am all in for upward and onward, even if it is just a baby step or two. Freedom is never free, and never forever. We must continue the march and be ever vigilante. The biggest, baddest, and meanest want their spot back! 5. And finally: What do I currently have that I could use to further my goals? This last question took me a while. I was stumped. I have a lot of skills, and varied knowledge because I collect both like Shinies. But are they worth anything? Can I market them as is? Should I offer a service? Product? Ideas? Find another J.O.B.? Is there anything I do now, can do now, or create now that can make money, give back, and help keep moving me towards my goals? What needs can I fulfill? What knowledge can others use? What tools have I made someone out there could use? Fortunately for me Web Design and Web Development require lots of web play. What I finally came up with as a starter project was a blog idea. I decided on a little money making exercise I practice regularly myself. This would allow me to practice my Web Development page building, and the content creation skills to populate it, and I get regular blogging practice to set the habit. The blog itself would let me try out the various monetizing techniques I have been learning about, how to setup and maintain a blog, a site, feedback, design, comments, linking…the whole nine! Woot! I can give back, move forward, practice, and try my hand at indirect money streaming! Even better its something I already do, I just don’t share! It’s how I mine for ideas, so wont be a big stretch to come up with material! That’s win win win! What ideas do you have that can move you forward in your life? Career? Writing? Or better yet…Writing Career? Cheers & Write On! ~ Faith WC: 1397 TODAYS WC: 2193. Blog (1397 )+ The Kings Return (796) Next: How do you keep track of your stories? PS: Once my evil plan is up and running, I will announce and share. Until then: MY IDEA! Mine! Good Advice: Never share ideas you plan to keep or use! Poachers are always faster than we are! Frequency: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday Personal WC Daily Goal: 1000+ words / Achieved + made up for yesterday! BICHOK: (B)utt (I)n (C)hair (H)ands (O)n (K)eybaord! |
| It is Good To be Back! Good Afternoon & Merry Christmas Eve! Hello, Hello, Hello! It has been a while! Life takes the most unexpected turns. My life has taken so many surprise turns in the last few years, that I'm surprised I squeezed in any writing at all. (I have! Honest!) Just not here, and not on the planned schedule. This last year has seen the most radical changes, starting with deciding to live my own personal mantra: "Act, Don't React!" Life will keep pushing, keep taking until you stand up and tell it no! Grab it by the horns and PULL DAMN YOU! Make that beast go where you want it. It usually costs you, may even be a rather dear and painful chunk of flesh. But if you want to step out of the madness-go-round, you just have to step up and do it. Good news during all this change, I got married this last October to my sweety of 12 years. Cheers and Good Writing! ~ Faith |
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