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Tag: motivation

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November 30, 2016
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Bleed on your page!

hemingway

As a musician, artist, writer, poet. There is one thing and one thing only that you need to do, to be good
Its bleed.

Bleed for your music. Bleed for your art. Bleed for your craft.

It doesn’t matter how. All that matters is that you do.

People won’t respect you otherwise. People won’t listen to what you have to say. I don’t know how but they always know. If you’re not singing your heart out, if you’re not writing from your soul, they know.

Don’t tell me how. It’s just one of those things in life.

It’s ingrained in human psychology. Since the dawn of time we have sat round the fires to listen to songs and stories, we have danced to the beat of our hearts.

From father to son. From mother to daughter.

Generation after generation.

We have been swayed and moved by emotion. Emotion is in everything we do. It’s like a toxic drug that people can’t get enough of. Its why we fall so heavily into addiction.

Be it sex, drugs, work, they all give some sort of emotional reaction. Humans are emotion, by their very nature. Emotion should never control you, because that path leads to doom. To darkness. And before you know it, you are doing something that you never thought you would, and you can’t look in the mirror because you’re scared, of what may stare at you back.

But as a creator you can harness that energy like lightning to do amazing things.

Shackle it and imprison it for all to see and hear. So generation after generation can enjoy and live through it.

I enjoy nothing more than something that moves me. Something that touches my heart and soul. It makes me want to create. It makes me want to be better. It makes me want to inspire.

That’s your job as a creator.

Thats the only thing that you should ever be concerned and worried about.

Have you bled enough?

Have you inspired and awe struck. Have you shackled your words so future generations will feel it.

If not.

Then why not?

Posted
October 17, 2016
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Sunrise

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As I sit here on this beautiful beach in the med, I can’t help but be taken back by the power of the ocean. It’s simple rhythmic sounds of the waves coming in and going out.

Coming in and going out.

Nothing could be more calming to the soul than the music of the ocean for me.

To someone else, it may be the stillness of the mountains.

Or the whiteness of fleshly dropped snow.

But whatever it is that relaxes your mind and makes you one, I suggest that you at least do it once or more a year. Just to settle those nerves, just to relax those doubts.

Posted
September 26, 2016
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Endurance

endure

 

Lately, things have been difficult in regards to this business.  I won’t say I was depressed over it, just……

Annoyed.

We live in a world of what appears to be fast results and fast outcomes. Where if your overweight, it should come off in six weeks. And if your poor your pockets should grow as quickly as snapping your fingers.

But life doesn’t work like that now does it. I wished it did, honestly I do. But hard work is the only thing that will get you to where you need to be.  But more than hard work, you need something else to get you across that finish line.

 You need to endure.

You need to grit your teeth and weather the storm. It may haul you to and forth. It may bring everything you love crashing down around your ears.. But if  you don’t endure until the black clouds pass and you can feel the kiss of the sun on your cheek, then all your hard work will be for nothing.

I was a late bloomer to this game. I didn’t know what I wanted until I hit 25-26.

Before that I was aimless.

Before that I wanted to do a host of things that really didn’t match with my capabilities.

Maybe I should have pursued them further. Maybe I should have stayed on course, till that boat bought me to a different shore.

But none of that really matters now.

The past is the past.

The future is still unwritten.

Only the present counts. Only the present matters.

Now I have embarked upon this goal of being a best selling author. Of being a household name. Of making a full time living from this. I don’t want to stop till I reach that destination.

I believe that I can do it.

I know I can do it!

I just have to be patient.

What really matters now is how much I can endure.

The more I chase my goals and dreams, the more I am starting to see how much of a necessary that this quality is.

I can’t let my foot off the gas. I can’t drive leisurely to my destination. I need to use every ounce of drive, passion, motivation, desire and I have to get me there.

Then and only then will I get where I need to be.

But even then, that may not be enough.

I know one thing though, if it kills me I will become a full time author by Dec 31st 2017.

Just you watch me!

Endurance

Posted
September 12, 2016
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Greatness!

greatness-intro2-e1375122918208

 

As an artist you could not wish for anything more. The lure of having your name spoken in the highest regards among your chosen peers. The acknowledgment, frame, and power that greatness brings.  It is so tauntingly glorious to taste that fruit, that men would give anything to chase after that bite.

Who wouldn’t give anything to attain that goal?

Many won’t.

And even fewer will reach their desired goal even if they set on that path towards it.

Some will stop at the first pebble in their shoe and go no further.

Others, will overcome the first few hurdles and keep at it until they declare that life has gotten in their way. These folks are the ones that wait by the path and taunt and mislead you. Like sirens out at sea they will always steer you wrong.

Not because they want to do you harm oh no.

They believe that they are looking out for you. By telling you all the reasons why they failed, they hope that you don’t reach to high above your station. You don’t aim for that goal. Because like them you too shall fail.

They allow fear and pain to of failure to stop them from continuing on.

When drunk, they will proclaim loudly that if live had given them a break then they would have been where so and so super star is today.

If live had only given them a break.

If only….

The last group of people that you will meet or see on this journey to whatever you which to obtain, are the quiet souls that keep their head down and keep pushing on. They say little. Do much. And sometimes they may reach greatness. Many times, they won’t.

And that’s the scariest thing about the journey in and of itself.

There  is a higher chance than most that you won’t reach that mountain peak.

You won’t pick that hanging fruit onto of the mountain and look across the plains below you while you bite into it. Reflecting back on the journey and everything that it threw your way.

Writing this, part of me is scared. Most of me is excited.

I am a strong believer that if you do whatever your craft is enough times. Then your will bound to reach some sort of goal, acknowledgment, acclaim.

Being praised by people is not what drives me.

No.

Its reaching the top of that mountain. Since I could remember people of have told me I couldn’t do this or that, and just pushing forward to prove them wrong is more victory than I could ever want.

Now is that unhealthy?

Maybe.

But it’s my why.

It’s what fuels me.

It’s what drives me.

When I have overcome, smashed, destroyed that hurdle, then my goals will change.

But for now, that’s the mountain I want to conquer.

That

And becoming the greatest writer that ever lived.

Becoming the greatest writer that I can be!

Listen, if I publish a hundred books before I am dead, one is bound to be a best seller.

That’s all anyone ever needs.

Just one shot.

One chance.

One hope.

Posted
September 2, 2016
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Goals!

Hello good people.

I wanted to talk about something that has helped me become a more efficient person. And in that regard a better person.

It’s goal setting.

I have always been one of those people that never set a deadline or goal to accomplish anything. I did what I had to do and prayed and hoped for the best. Now this will get you some of the way. It will. But what ends up happening is that you have so many things going on at once, that things slip through the cracks.

You start to forget things. Newer, fresher ideas, take over old ones and before you know it you’re in a contstant wheel of motion, not getting anywhere far.

This is where goals come in.

Goals! Wonderful goals.

If you have not tried it, trust me give it a go.

If you can’t finish that novel.

Setting a deadline and goal to accomplish it will help.

Can’t seem to lose weight.

Set small goals to help you get there.

Can’t seem to save money.

Yet again, set small goals to help you get there.

Now you! As the goal setter must do two things too make sure that this shit works.

First and foremost.

You must breakdown your big overarching goals into smaller bits. Want to loose 100 pounds in 6 weeks.

Not really going to happen.

Change that goal into I want to loose a pound a week for the next 53 weeks, that is more manageable. Then just carry that goal over into the next year and mission accomplished.

Second you must write down and review your goals more than three times a week. I would say everyday. But we both know that’s not going to happen. Even I only review my goals four times a week at most.

What I will say that I do though is visualise those goals.

Just sit back during your day for 5-10 minutes and envision yourself going through what you have set out.

See yourself 100 pounds lighter.

See yourself with that finished manuscript in your hands. Feel the weight of it in your hands. Let the smell of the paper that is on print embrace you.

Say your goals out loud to yourself and reopen your eyes.

Believe that they will come true and pretty soon they will.

Until next time

Good Morning

Good Evening

Good Night

Posted
May 23, 2016
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Stress

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Stress all affects us in different ways. For some it prevents us from accomplishing our goals or dreams. For others, it can push us to even greater heights than where we currently are. But to a person, everyone has stress in their lives or will do at some point.

It’s how we deal with it that matters.

Being a part time writer, with everything else going on is a pain in the ass.

Getting from part time to full time is my goal. Getting there is the biggest hurdle I think, I have faced in my life. Writing for me comes easily. I know that may stick in anyones throats, that suffers with writer block, but it does. You either write what you love or don’t.

It’s as simple as that to me. Writers block comes from shame.

Shame that you’re not good enough.

Shame that people will hate your work.

Shame that you are baring your soul for people to see, and they may not even be bothered.

No writing was never hard for me, because I never gave a fuck what people think or say. When it came to writing. Because I have an ego when it came to writing. I have a chip on my shoulder to prove to everyone that I am good enough. To prove to everyone that a dyslexic kid, who couldn’t read and write till he was in his early teens, can write a good book.

It was never shame that I felt when I wrote. It was anger. Anger which I used to push me to greater lengths and greater strides, when it came to writing.

No it was never shame that stressed me out when it came to writing.

It is everything else which comes from being a self published author.

Marketing

Ad Copy

Email list building

Facebook Ads (which I still have yet to do)

And the endless other bullshit that you have to deal with, when you’re running a self published author business. Now I know some self published author’s love having all that control. They love being in charge of their domain and I do to.

But…..

If When I make it big and some publishing house offers me a big contract, am talking millions and millions here. Then I may take them up on it.

I may not.

But when I dreamed of becoming a writer, doing all this other shit wasn’t in the plans. I envisioned myself sipping cocktails on a sandy beach, swinging in a hammock, typing out my next novel.

But alas, you have to dig the dirt for the ground before you lay the swimming pool.

Anyway, sorry for the rant guys. Just feeling a little stressed.

Can you tell?

Until next time.

Good Morning

Good Evening

Good Night

Posted
May 16, 2016
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Failures

Failure-Celebrated

I have failed a lot in my life.

Shit

Thinking about it now, my eyes grow moist at all the failures that I have gone through and not learnt from. I am a hard headed stubborn bastard, who sometimes needs to go through a experience more than once so it sinks into his head. And I know that is a major fault of mine.

I know it’s stupid. Its something that I am trying to change.

Learning from your mistakes is important, but not making any or seeing them ahead of you so you can sidestep them is even better.

This year I have tried my upmost to stop making mistakes.

And you know what.

I failed miserably..

We are only five months in this year and the growing list of mistakes I have made keeps on growing, and growing, and growing.

But last night, I battled with myself and stopped myself from making one.

I TOOK CONTROL AND STOPPED.

Now this isn’t going to be a speech about, motivation or achieving your goals or any of that bull. Its just one man’s thoughts on how we are all human. It’s just one man’s thoughts on the struggle it takes to change yourself.

This year my goal was and still is self-growth and change.

I accomplished a lot last year. But it was with 60% of my overall effort. Everyone else looking from the outside in, would have been amazed at what I had accomplished. But honestly. It was easy.

It was easy to write a book. It was easy to learn about this how self-publishing business. It was easy to get all my ducks in a row.

But what isn’t easy, is knowing within myself that I could have done better. I could have archived more. I could have grown more.

So as the new years starts proper, none of this January business. I have made a promise to myself that I will attack it like it owes me money.

An in a lot of ways it does.

Remember that what you do, is a lot more important than what you say.

I just have to remember that myself sometimes.

Until next time

Good Morning

Good Evening

Good Night16

Posted
May 9, 2016
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What did I learn from completing a book series.

I treat this blog, the same way I would treat a dairy. So a lot of the words on this blog, website, page, are a lot closer to me than they should be. Half of the writing population will bare their soul out in their work. But even less than that, will bare their soul on outlets like this.

I understand why.

10Your time writing blogs, could be better spent writing novels.

And

Yes

That is true.

But like I said this blog for me, is more of a personal diary than anything else. So I write on here when I need to get things off my chest, thoughts down on paper, that sort of thing.

So today I am going to talk about what I learned from finishing my first series.

The Fallen Angels Series contains 2 novellas and 2 novels.

From the get go, I can say without a doubt that I should have just done a trilogy and been done with it.  I think doing that hurt sales and more importantly pissed off readers.

For that I am truly sorry. Lesson learnt.

The second thing that I should have done is learn about the craft of writing more. I am a doer. I jump into something with both feet and only learn how to swim, when am rapidly sinking to the bottom.

I should have taken a few months out just to read books on the wonderful world of craft.

But I didn’t.

Not much I can do about it now.

And last but not least I should have plotted out my story more. At least have some sort of idea, about what my story was about.

Instead I just said to myself, I want to write a story about Angels, and I just did it.

The characters, the plot, the story line, just came as I wrote.

It was  the most pantser’s, pantser’s book that has ever been written.

But a story did come out of it.

Apart from all the negatives above I did some things right.

I stuck to my guns and wrote Two hundred and Ten thousand words.

I found out that if I wrote everyday a book would come.

I didn’t do anything by half measures. I got the best of everything that concerning my books.

From the best editor that suited my style.

From the best cover designer, that bought my dreams alive.

To the best proofreaders, that caught stupid typo’s that I just plain couldn’t see.

I invested everything into those books and for that I can hold my head up high.

It still doesn’t feel real to call myself a author.

But people have officially paid me for my books. So I guess I can.

Do I wish that my first series sold better.

Yes.

Will that stop me from writing another.

No.

Till next time folks

Good Morning

Good Evening

Good Night

Posted
March 31, 2016
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What nobody tells you about writing, and why it can suck

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Everyone thinks that creating great art is easy, and it is, when you know how to do it. But what everyone leaves out is how do you get to the place where it becomes easy.

Writing, painting, music.

They all take time and discipline to develop the right brain patterns, so you can easily flow into creating something great. Without practicing for hours, drilling and drilling your chosen profession, then you will always fall short.

I heard a great saying the other day on a podcast, where the guy was a martial artist and he said to get better was like walking in a field of grass. To begin with the path that you choose is hard to follow, and difficult to cross, as the way is blocked by unruly grass. But after days and weeks and months of taking the same route, you have now formed a footpath, that is bare of all grass and roots, and is easy to follow to the destination that you what to get to.

And I believe that is true with anything you want to get good at, you need to create that path way through your brain till its beaten down and worn smooth by use.

What you don’t want to do, is take the path that everyone seems to take. You start out taking one route then, a few weeks later you switch to a different path, then a different path. Until the first one that you originally used, is now overgrown and hard to use.

Be consistent!

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Be deliberate, in everything that you do!

If you choose to write for an hour, then fucking write for a hour. Don’t sit at the computer, but spend twenty minutes writing and forty minutes fucking about on the net. The net is your biggest roadblock to success. It has taken me years to realise that, and if you are like me, I know what you will say to yourself.

I can stop surfing whenever I want to. But how wrong I, and you are.

Whenever I use to hear about people spending five hours a day watching TV. I would always think fucking losers. But man, if I didn’t spend more than that just watching youtube, reading blogs on writing, listening to podcast on writing, and just all around time wasting. Then I would chalk it up to more than five hours a day. Although I wasn’t wasting my time in front of the idiot box, I was still wasting my time in other ways.

And this brings me on to my second, piece of advice. To be good at anything you have to suck at it first. I remember my first piece of writing I did, and I uploaded it onto a writing forum a few years ago. It was filled of holes, spelling mistakes the whole shebang. I got pulled to pieces on there, if it was a real room and not just a chat room, I would have been laughed out of it. The words and comments won’t all that helpful, which is pretty surprising now, when I am in a number of writer forums and indies are anything but friendly. But I must have just stumbled on a negative bunch of writers, who knows. But anyway, I nearly left there feeling rejected, if it wasn’t for this one solid gold piece of advice.

It went something likes this.

Your writing is utter shit …. But it has promise, keep at it and maybe down the years you will fulfil your dream of becoming an author.

If it wasn’t for that woman’s one piece of advice I would have never continued on. I would have stopped at the first hurdle.

So to anyone reading this, I will simply say. Everything you write for the first year or two will be shit. Utter horse shit. But don’t despair, all the greats had to go through the same thing. If any say they didn’t, then they are simpy lying to you.

Remember.

To do anything well, you need to put in the time!

One way or the other.

Until next time dear reader

Love and Peace

P.S Buy my shitttt!!!!!

Posted
March 21, 2016
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Mindset

                                       Mindset_Master_System

 

Something that I have been playing around with a lot, regarding improving my writing, is mindset.

Now whenever someone says mindset, or mindset training everyone gets there back up and pulls a face. (It’s the face of someone, that smells a fart but can’t place the source.) Anyway, I am always looking for ways to improve my craft so I can give the reader a better experience and one of the things, that I think many writers are missing out on, is mindset.

Not just writers but everyone can improve their life, gain more confidence, earn more money, just have a better quality of life.

I got into improving mindset, kind of the same time that I took my writing seriously. I love listening to podcasts, and I can’t remember who’s it was now either London Real or JRE, but whoever it was they were talking to a guest of theirs at how much mindset had improved their life and, how they would recommdend it to anyone. Like many times in your life, it takes a few times for you to hear good advice for it to finally set it in.

But after hearing it from more than one source, and from many people I admire, I finally took the plunge and thought, lets give this a go.

Now it didn’t improve my life straight away. If you are looking for a magic pill, like the one in the movie limitless, than this is not it.

What it did do was slowly over a long time, improve my life in small increments.

I have read such books as, Think and Grow Rich, Chimp Paradox and 12 steps a champion, which helped greatly. Not to only see what I was doing wrong, but to point me in the direction of other great books that they recommended I read. From their it was like pulling on a string and unraveling, everything that I thought I knew was the right way to think. It  went so much deeper than just thinking positively.

I learned how to stop negative thoughts, before they start. Everyone talks to themselves weather, they admit it or not. What you say in those moments have a greater effect on you than you then know.

It should be to view the world differently, and the rich don’t get rich by luck or because they have rich friends. They got their by hard work, and grinding it out.

I learnt the friends you keep, may destroy your life. And you can only grow, by the who and what you surround yourself with.

After reading those few books and so much more, it has expanded my knowledge on everything. It has made me take courses that I fought I would never take, its made me want to  go to seminars, and it’s also made me what to become a better person, each and every day.

Now you may be reading all this and thinking, that’s good, but how will that help me become a better writer, musician, wife, husband, whatever.

Well for me, when your focused and know what path you want to take then everything else comes pretty easily.

The new found purpose will drive you when, the going gets tough and you want to quit. It will make everything so much easier to deal with and handle. Now am not saying their won’t be days that your just sucking ass.

Trust me those days, will come often. And they will come right after you’ve had your greatest day normally, and it will punch you so hard in the mouth that it will leave you stunned and bleeding.

But what a better improved mindset shows you. Is that, it’s how you deal with that horrible day that matters.

Unless you are dead, or in a coma, there is always a way to learn from any mistake and grow from it. All it takes is for you to leave your body, and detach yourself from the event to see what worked and what didn’t. After that you just move on from it.

Mindset is the key, to anything you want to accomplish. I just wished I learnt about it sooner, it could have saved me years in wasted time.

Until next time my friends.

Love and Peace.

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