Thursday 12 September 2019

Should You Or Could You Be a Writer?

We’ve all heard of the expression “Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda.” It’s what we say to people who have lame excuses for not doing something.

And this is also appropriate for you if you’re not writing.

Shoulda - This is when you’ve wasted time when you shoulda been writing. It can be when you let yourself get distracted by other things instead of getting your writing done. Or when you wasted time by prioritising other things/people.

Coulda - You coulda got your writing done but you didn’t think you were good enough or motivated enough or dedicated enough. Sound familiar?

Woulda - Well, you woulda done your writing if only other things hadn’t happened or something else hadn’t come up, or if you had the time, or if you weren’t so busy…

All these things are weak excuses. They’re not reasons why you aren’t writing every day, they’re just a bunch of Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda.

What it all comes down to is whether or not you really want to be a writer.

And if you do, then the time to start writing is now.

Dream Life Mastery
How to Achieve Exceptional Wealth
A Step-by-Step, Done-For-You System
https://ruthiswriting.com/links/dreamlifemastery.html



Wednesday 11 September 2019

3 Steps to Living Your Dream Life as a Writer

It’s so easy to dream about becoming a successful writer. You imagine yourself gliding into your home office, dashing off another bestseller, and still have time to go out for dinner in the evening.

Wouldn’t it be great if it really happened that way?

The reality, of course, is really different and there are so many things that can stop your writing dream coming true and here are just 3 of them.

1. Time To Write. No matter what you do, you never seem to be able to find the time to actually sit down and write. You may even begin every day with good intentions, yet time eludes you and before you know it, the day’s over and you haven’t written a thing.

2. Others Not Supportive. If there’s one thing that I learned early on, it’s that others won’t support you when you want to be a writer. And the closer you are to them the more resentful they seem. My family and friends are the worst and none of them will even discuss my writing, even though I’ve been earning my income from writing for years.

3. Guilt. It’s all too easy to feel guilty about wanting to write because you always feel that you should be doing other things. It’s probably because writing seems selfish because it’s something that you need to do alone, without anyone even speaking to you. And it doesn’t help when others are unsupportive because it can make you feel like you have to write in secret.

  But you really shouldn’t let any of these things stop you because we all have time to write if we prioritise it instead of trying to fit it into our spare time.

We can also ignore everyone who doesn’t support what we want to do. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying to spend less time with them and more time writing.

And stop feeling guilty about writing because it IS important to you. Knitters don’t feel guilty about knitting, gardeners don’t feel guilty about spending time gardening, and artists don’t feel guilty about wanting to paint or draw. So why should you feel guilty about wanting to write?

The time to turn your life around and live your dream life of being a writer is now.

https://ruthiswriting.com/articles/2019/dream-life.html



Tuesday 10 September 2019

Getting More Writing Time Than I Wanted...OR...Be Careful What You Wish For

A couple of weeks ago I announced that I'd been not doing much writing lately... well none really, but that I was finally getting back into writing regularly.

And I kept telling myself that I needed to get more time with my backside firmly planted in my writing chair and that until I spent enough time writing, I wasn't going to get much done.

So I kept doing that visualization thing where you picture yourself in your mind doing what you wish you were doing.

And guess what?

It worked. Just not in the way that I wanted it to. Not at all.

You see, last month I was suffering from some kind of flu virus and I ended up with the worst cough I've ever had. It went on for over 2 weeks and I was coughing really hard, day and night. In fact, I was coughing and coughing until I choked.

And it really started to hurt my back and my sides which gave me trouble sleeping too, once my cough subsided so that I could sleep. But eventually the pain went away, except for my left side where it continued to hurt and I started to think I'd pulled a muscle or something.

And then last week we had a spell of really warm weather, so my husband and I decided to open the PVC blinds on our verandah. He clicked the spring on the right that was holding down each blind and I clicked the one of the left and then we lifted them one by one. Until we got to the third one...

I bent down to click in the spring and SNAP! I felt a searing pain in my left side and felt something grinding inside.

It was awful and it rendered me hardly able to move. I spent the rest of the day laid up in bed, taking copious amounts of pain killers. The next day it was no better so I went to the doctor and guess what? I'd cracked a rib.

So now it's been nearly a week and I'm still laid up in bed, but at least the pain isn't as bad as it was. At first it hurt all the time no matter what I did. But now it stops hurting if I sit still. And I've gotten used to the painkillers so they don't knock me out and make me sleep all day anymore, like they did for the first few days that I took them.

So you see what happened? I wished for more time to write and now I've got all day every day. Only it's not what I wanted at all. In fact, I have even more waking hours in every day now because I'm lacking exercise so I'm not tired at night so I'm up late all the time. Well, I say up, but I'm actually in bed the whole time.

So the lesson from this is, be careful what you wish for.

On the upside, it gives me plenty of time to pursue my Laptop Lifestyle.












Tuesday 3 September 2019

An Expert's Advice on How To Beat Writers' Block Instantly

I was recently listening to an interview with one of the Titans of Copywriting, Gary Bencivenga. And in case you've been living in a cave and have never heard of him, he is known as the best copywriter in the world and began working in direct response copywriting in the 1960s. Sadly, he no longer works in the industry, but he and inspired taught thousands of marketers during his long career.

Anyway, in this interview he was talking about what to do when you don't have any ideas about what to write. He said that copywriters often have this problem because their work begins with getting ideas of what to write about before they can promote a product.

Anyway, what he said was that whenever you don't know what to write or are stuck with writers' block, all you need to do is start researching and that is guaranteed to get you started. He said that research is the answer to writers' block as well as helping find all the information he ever needed.

But then I got to thinking about where to start researching?

Well, the obvious choice is to do a general search on the topic that you want to write about. Just go to one of the search engines and type in a question or a keyword and see what comes up in the results. Sometimes, the search engines prompt for subjects that are already searched for often.

Another way to do it is to go to an online book store (or magazine site) and look to see what other writers are writing about on your topic. You can easily browse the TOC (Table of Contents) of a book to see the subjects of the chapters they are including in their writing.

And then there are also forums and social media which often show up what is trending or what is popular. They can also show you exactly what questions people are asking about right now.

So if you're feeling stuck and don't know what to write, start doing a bit of online research and before you know it, you'll have so much information and you'll feel motivated to write.

Goodbye Writers' Block
How to Be a Creative Genius and 
Have an Abundance of Ideas 
Plus the Inspiration and Motivation to Write
https://ruthiswriting.com/books/WB.html