creativity creative side
Book Writing, Updates

Sharing Your Creative Side

Part of the Creative Ways with Money philosophy is knowing your own strengths, skills and resources and then finding creative new ways to share them with others. In the book, we do this through finding our life’s purpose (our Ikigai), knowing what’s real and what’s not, and applying our strengths to business or online income streams. It seems everything is changing at the moment and many of us can’t figure out what to do with our time. Remember that we don’t just create in a vacuum. We must look at what is real right now and set an intention for ourselves. Here is one personal development author’s take on it: “Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart truly desires must come to…
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writing coach partner
Book Editing, Book Writing

A Writing Coach is Your Accountability Partner

Just having a partner to share your goals with increases the likelihood that you will achieve them. It gets better… when you hire a good writing coach, getting to your goal is even more probable. Marie Forleo says having a partner takes your chances to up around 85%. While the writing and research work is up to you, it’s been said by a known authority that if a writer makes their writing goals public, they will be more likely to achieve those goals. A lot of us spend our spare time without thought to our big goals. In fact, we could do plenty of writing if we just get off our darn phones! That is, get off scrolling through news feeds–and allow a modicum of time to research real news stories and the odd inspiring article. There’s also a lot…
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rich retirement

Want a rich retirement? You need creative money ideas!

There’s nothing that makes me madder than some journalist rabbiting on about sacrificing lots of salary into superannuation. Well, that is all very well if, a) you are employed; b) your employer is amenable to that; and c) you make enough money that you could easily miss 5 or 10 percent of it. But what about all of us in business? What about those retiring now? I don’t expect that people earning $120,000+ per year are going to be that interested in my 2020 book, Creative Ways with Money, and that’s absolutely fine. I’m writing it for people who are trying to manage on an average income, have fun, but also creatively earn more. These are the battlers who get caught in the headlights of spruikers. These are the smart ones, who are servicing others, building businesses, and rarely put…
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Setting Goals for authors

Setting Goals: Are you Doing it the Right Way?

If you take the step of setting a big goal that excites you, you’ll at least be putting it into your vision. But some stab at a goal without really considering all the factors. Are they aiming correctly? In 2003, I had two goals:  meet a man and write a book. I had a list of desired attributes and my write a book goal was written on a piece of paper, taped to the wall. Since dating and this blog have little in common, let’s quickly move to the book goal. What happened? By 2005 I was madly writing it. The resulting book was tiny; just 46 pages, but the underlying goal motivated me to bumble along the path. I wanted to finish and quickly; I had our baby crawling around, getting into things!  With a cover by a local…
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creative nonfiction book writing
Book Writing

Revealing Truth in Creative Nonfiction Writing

There’s a certain kind of authentic voice and language that connects to your emotions, that you might find in outstanding creative nonfiction books and some self-help books. If you want to know what creative nonfiction is, it is the gripping, narrative style of writing but telling a factual story. Like any other skill, I believe you can learn to write in a more ‘raw and real’ way. Although at times I struggle with this myself. So push aside the academic ‘balanced view’, stamp down your prim English rules (occasionally), and let’s get to their hearts and minds. Raw and Revealing Recently, I was critiquing and editing a spiritual self-development book which contained many unconventional ideas. The author was obviously well-read but there were few references or evidence to back the ideas. This was more of a choice rather than an…
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publishing books professionally
Book Writing, Self-Publishing

Dip your Toe in… or Immerse in Publishing Books

This post is about how you cut your book success off at the knees when you don’t commit to the publishing process. It’s also about ensuring professional quality in all books you write. Freight Train truth coming… Publishing an eBook on Amazon and talking about it on a small blog will not lead to many sales, keynote invitations, Joint Ventures, or podcast invitations.   Look for opportunity, not problems… While you can’t get an author platform just by publishing on Amazon, there are other ways to share your message and achieve success. Did you see the hardback, High Performance Habits?  I saw the picture of Brendon Burchard in front of these amazingly impressive books of around 300 pages. Look at the cover design – simple with just two colours, large letters, impactful. A hardback like this gives a great first…
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