Why I probably haven't been writing

Wow, it has been about a year since I last posted to this blog. And here I thought that by now I would have something finished and published. Not so much!

I often struggle with getting my words and stories out of my head and onto paper. There is no shortage of ideas. I can see storylines from start to finish. I can envision characters as if they were real-life friends with whom I had just had a casual dinner. They just stick in my head. Some kind of fear appears to be the barrier for their dismissal from my brain. Why is this??

Today, I had an epiphany. After four years of waiting, one of my all-time favorite novels was finally on sale for Kindle. I have read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier dozens of times. I have seen the movie just about as many. Both the book and the movie are family favorites. I remember a sort of phone chain that existed along my father's side of the family, any time that the movie was going to be on TV. I own multiple copies of the book, including one version that ties into the movie. 

When my father was in a coma four years ago, I tried to keep his brain engaged by talking to him and reading to him. I really wanted to read Rebecca to him, but didn't want to spend $8 for a Kindle copy to read on my phone. I settled for Jane Eyre, instead. (Another family favorite.) I have kept my eye on the book, occasionally checking on it, but it has always been expensive.

FINALLY, today, it was on BookGorilla for the lovely sale price of $2.99. I immediately snagged it. I settled into my friends' pool and opened it up. 

...Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again...

Immediately, I was swept away.

I read the first few chapters while soaking in the pool and hot tub. I savored every single word as if it were a sweet morsel of decadent dessert. I found myself getting emotional. Then, I sent my best friend the following text:

I know part of the reason I don't finish my stories. Because my words will never achieve the poetic perfection and imagery of people like Daphne du Maurier.

She totally understood and doesn't blame me. I want to put out the best of me.

I love many contemporary authors. I realize that I would also be a contemporary author. People such as du Maurier, Austen, and the Brontes lived in a completely different time period. Perhaps that has something to do with why their words are so much more eloquent. I still think that good writers today should be able to have their own spin on this style of writing. That's what I want to do. I want my words to evoke images and emotions as they are woven together. I want my words to stand the test of time. I want people to read them again and again. Perhaps I have placed the bar a little too high for myself. That is a fault of mine, yet a fundamental part of who I am.

So, how do I fix this? I really don't know. I already read constantly. I do write a lot, as I pen reviews of the books that I read. I know that I need to write my other stuff on a daily basis (or on some other regular schedule). I don't always have the time, nor the inclination to do so. And, I now realize, that I don't have the faith in myself to do it, either. I guess I need to get over myself and just start getting stuff out there. We shall see how this goes.

#FeaturedFiverr Memorial Day Weekend Sale!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Most of you will be out there celebrating with loved ones. I will be remembering those who served and who are lost, but while working.

Take advantage of my workaholic state this weekend! Any Fiverr book/author promotion gig ordered between now and 11:59 PM EST on Monday will get a FREE bonus gig extra!

Order a gig and get your cover as a blog ad in the sidebar for a week or a bonus five daily tweets for free!

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Win a Kindle Fire from Winsor Hoang, author of 'The Bull, the Bear, and the Baboon'

Product Details

Paperback: 302 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (September 20, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1484888987
ISBN-13: 978-1484888988
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches

Description:

Why do 90% of the people who start trading FX lose money?

‘World-class traders, trainers and authors’ have spent many years exaggerating, misrepresenting, advocating techniques that no one could ever master, and taught out-of-date, worthless techniques is why. Adding to the fact that new traders trust “experts”; they attend “free” how-to-trade FX seminars offered by self-described expert traders; they buy books that “reveal the secrets” of successful traders and eventually have to learn a lot of hard lessons of big money losses.

This book will arm you with the knowledge you need to avoid the fate of 90% of new FX traders and in turn, big money losses.

How can I be so sure? I was one of the thousands who graduated from the school of big losses. The only thing I became an expert in was losing money. I paid for courses, bought and read books, and purchased a number of software systems when I first became an FX trader.

I only wish is that this book had been available then, being armed with these lessons and those learnt from others' experiences. I would have saved thousands of dollars of hard earned money, years of time, and trouble at home.

This book details the experiences of seven of us who believed the experts. It reveals the ways FX trading experts misrepresent their success, why the methods they teach don't work for traders. Reading this book before you spend anything on “expert” training, you’ll know what questions to ask, how to get to the truth, how not to get taken by disreputable trainers, and how you can more likely become one of the 10% of new FX traders who actually make money.

After two years of planning, writing and editing, utilizing Winsor Hoang’s 15+ years’ experience in the forex market as well as drawing on the experience of others, this book is able to identify the lessons learned and ways to be more aware of the pitfalls of investing in a competitive forex market.

With so many “experts” in the market, taking peoples' money and offering nothing of value in return, this book provides a wealth of knowledge that every new investor should know when entering the forex market!

The Bull, The Bear, and The Baboon offers an insight into the currency trading market through the eyes of seven people, each with a different reason for becoming a trader. Their individual stories and the ways in which they interact and influence each other provide the reader an eye-opening portrayal of the trading world.

Both entertaining and informational, this book reads like a suspense novel and, at the same time, offers practical advice to both the novice and experienced investors. It is a captivating narrative story in what is typically a nonfiction, educational genre.

Inspired by the overwhelming number of swindlers that fool the average individual entering currency trading, this book is written for mainstream audiences, weaving very real trading cautionary points into the technical pitfalls, disciplines, and psychologies related to trading.

Buy on Amazon

Harry, a stock broker who lost everything in the dot com crash, turns to foreign exchange currency trading where he quickly learns there is more money in training than in trading. Selling students dreams of independence and wealth, and selectively showing his own trading history, Harry is again living the high life. But, seven students soon realize that Harry was selling lies, and everyone will have to pay the price – including Harry.

The Bull, The Bear and The Baboon looks inside the currency trading market through the eyes of seven people, each with different reasons for becoming a trader. Their individual stories and the ways in which they interact and influence each other provide the reader an eye opening portrayal of the trading world. Both entertaining and informational, this book reads like a suspense novel and, at the same time, offers practical advice to both the novice and experienced investors. It is a captivating narrative story into what is a typically non-fiction, educational genre.

Ron, an entrepreneur and self-made multimillionaire, needs a new challenge. Michelle, an unemployed, recent college graduate is seeking income. Joey, a compulsive gambler, sees a new game he can play from home. Each succumbs to Harry’s sales pitch and enrolls in a course that will change their lives – and the lives of four others who band together to form the “Gang of Seven.” The Bull, The Bear and The Baboon recounts each person’s situation, examines the reasons their trading strategies failed, offers specific steps that investors should take to avoid losing all their money, and outlines a trading edge to significant profitability, even when one is right only half the time.

Inspired by the overwhelming number of swindlers that fool the average individual entering currency trading, this book is written for the mainstream audiences, weaving very real trading cautionary points into the technical pitfalls, disciplines, and psychology related to trading.

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About the author:

Winsor Hoang is the founder and CEO of CTS Forex, and is also a registered Forex commodity trading advisor (CTA) with the National Futures Association (NFA) offering managed account services to high net worth individuals with a minimum account of $50K. Winsor is the author of “The Bull, The Bear and The Baboon – FX Lessons Learned the Hard Way." Using his 15 years of automated system design as a professional electrical engineer, Winsor has successfully transitioned to systematic trading development. Winsor started researching the FX market in 2003 and founded CTS Forex in 2007, specializing in the systematic trading of the EUR/USD currency pair. Winsor has nearly two decades and more than twenty thousand hours of trading experience. Not all of Winsor’s twenty thousand hours came without their challenges, losses and learnings though. Throughout this process, Winsor and those around him had some very interesting and varied experiences with their introduction to FX trading from many “experts” around the world. In his book, The Bull, The Bear and The Baboon, Winsor shares his lessons learned to help others avoid the same pitfalls he and others experienced.

CTS Forex actively works with several high profile mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and computational finance specialists at the University of Calgary and other leading institutions to develop reliable and robust trading systems. Joint FX research has also produced several academic papers that have been published in first-class international scientific journals such as Journal of Mathematical Finance (JMF), Elsevier Procedia Computer Science Journal, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Journal, and International Conference on Computational Science. CTS Forex uses an automated, statistical, risk-managed FX trading system that produces profits with just 50 percent winning trades. CTS Forex's systematic trading has the advantage of imposing strict risk discipline, avoiding emotionally induced errors, and capturing profitable opportunities. Automated trading has proven to increase portfolio returns by removing the need for 24-hour monitoring of international markets, overcoming the effects of human emotion and eliminating costly trading pattern inconsistencies.

If you are interested in more information about our Managed Forex accounts, please call CTS Forex on 1-888-260- 3939 or contact us at info@ctsforex.com.

The author is giving away a kindle fire 7 inch tablets for a reader. Fill out the form below to enter. a Rafflecopter giveaway

'Unlocking the Social Potential in Autism' by Karina Poirier

To your dismay, your child has received a diagnosis of autism. Along with this alarming news comes the barrage of emotions that suffocates you like an avalanche— denial—confusion—depression—guilt. You want to fix your child; you have a million questions; and you want answers immediately. Autism is a journey in which the child and her family navigate challenges and experience achievements along the way. To guide you in this rewarding journey, Dr. Karina Poirier offers her expertise in this book that parents will find incredibly useful.

In this book, you will find the answers you’ve desperately been seeking. Dr. Poirier has provided in simple, easy to comprehend language, an overview of child development, a descriptive explanation of how autism affects each developmental area, and guidelines for advancing your child’s functioning in all developmental domains. You will appreciate the multitude of hands-on, full-color sample lessons for teaching social and emotional skills, language, problem-solving and decision making, and play skills to children with autism.

Publisher: Social Cognition Publications | Irvine, CA Color: Full-color illustrations Pages: 300 ISBN (Print): 9780988798205 ISBN (Digital): 9780988798212 Available: March 2014

Available at: http://www.socialcognitionpublications.com/

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Improving social and communication skills in children with autism

Dr. Karina Poirier, author of Unlocking the Social Potential in Autism, says that understanding a child’s unique needs is the key step to dealing with concerns and developing their strengths.

“Bring everything into the light. The worst thing you can do,” she said, “is to ignore the issue. Parents can help their children learn how to communicate better and develop social skills that will help them thrive later in life.

Get help early, identify the specific issues you are facing, ask questions, learn everything you can, and devise a concrete and detailed strategy for engaging your child so key skills are developed and strengthened”.

Here are her answers to some key concerns that parents of a child with autism are faced with.

Q: My child can sit through a learning task on the iPad or television; however, he becomes restless and fidgety when working with a teacher. Why?

A: Your child’s attention system is reactive. Consider how much children learn from viewing television. Teachers struggle to get children’s attention when an activity does not include the sensory kaleidoscope children are used to receiving when sitting in front of the television.

Key Action: Children must be taught at an early age how to develop the mental tools (attend, remember, think) to engage in deliberate and self-directed learning experiences with an adult’s guidance.

Q: My child does not respond appropriately to mood changes in others (e.g., when a peer’s mood changes from happiness to distress). Why?

A: Your child may be lacking the ability to read nonverbal cues. Children with autism often have impaired ability to read, interpret, and process social and emotional messages. Children who are unaware of others’ thoughts and feelings risk not developing the sense of self.

Key Action: Treatment to teach the child the emotional codes that are part of the social experience. The child needs to develop the ability to understand other peoples’ emotions from their facial expression, tone of voice, and body posture. The child should be taught to recognize and interpret how people around him think and feel.

Q: My child has difficulty with describing his/her day at school, recounting an experience, or relaying a message. Why?

A: Delayed recall skills utilize episodic memory. Episodic memory allows us to remember past events and share these events with others. In other words, it is how we engage in reciprocal conversations with others. Episodic memory produces a conscious awareness of events that have occurred at any one time; it enables people to remember what happened to them in the past or to conceive the future.

Key Action: Effective treatment is required for the child to learn about memory strategies and to practice remembering. Through repetition, the child develops not only better recall of past events, but also the skills to communicate the memory of the event to peers or adults during a conversation.

Q: My child is verbal and has good command of language; however, he has trouble initiating conversation with others and taking turns during a conversation. Why?

A: Children with autism have difficulties in social initiation and social-emotional understanding. Engaging in a reciprocal conversation with others requires the development and interaction of memory, information processing, and expressive communication skills—all of which are pervasive deficits of children with autism. It is not that these children do not desire involvement with their peers. On the contrary, they do have the desire to be socially engaged with others; however, the dilemma lies in the fact that these children lack knowledge of social norms.

Key Action: Effective treatment that emphasizes social norms and rules, and teaches children how to process social information by distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information in a social situation. Initiating and maintaining a conversation requires a person to have social knowledge, which is knowledge of event schemas.

Q: How much play time is appropriate to include in my child’s learning routine?

A: For a young child, teaching through play is extremely important. Play gives children something to do with their ample free time; it also serves the important purpose of honing children’s physical, social and emotional development. Play does not occur spontaneously in children with autism the way it does for typical children.

Key Action: Investing significant time teaching through play focuses the child on developing fine and gross motor skills, interpreting the social cues of other children and adults, and responding to those social cues appropriately. Play can be used to develop the ability to interact with, explore, and, ultimately master their surroundings. Play is an essential part of the learning process, and its ability to mimic real-life scenarios makes it an ideal way to stimulate overall development.

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About the author:

Karina Poirier, Psy.D., BCBA-D

Dr. Karina Poirier is the Director of the Center for Social Cognition , a board certified behavior analyst at the doc-toral level (BCBA-D), and a certified cognitive educational therapist. Her clinical practice is devoted to providing outstanding individuals and group therapy that improves social and cognitive outcomes for individuals with autism, ADHD, Traumatic Brain Injury, and related disorders.

Learn more at www.drkarinapoirier.com.

ONLINE RESOURCES

http://www.drkarinapoirier.com
http://www.facebook.com/CenterforSocialCognition
http://www.twitter.com/SocialCognition
https://plus.google.com/+Centerforsocialcognition/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2hZCpP_TDdGzWxrREAbJ4w

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Full week off means it will all be done, right?

I have had this entire week off from school. No, it isn't a massive snow day collection. My corner of Upstate New York has actually been just on the edge of the Polar Vortex that keeps swooping down upon the US. We have only had two days off for extreme cold. One of those days, we were the only school in the area that closed. (Perks of a private school!)

This is Presidents' Week. While most of the nation celebrates on Monday, we take off the entire week. It is also known as Winter Break. And just like every other break, I had these grandiose plans of getting the house completely cleaned and organized, and finally finishing one of my stories and/or books.

Did I achieve my goals?

Pffffft. HA! Same disappointment as every other break.

No, I take that back. I did actually accomplish some things. I have actually been ahead of schedule on most of my book blog posts, instead of rushing to get them done the night before (or really stinking early in the morning). I've gotten in some reading of choice, instead of only mandatory book reviewing for book blog tours and publishers. I racked up tons of points on all of those fun sites that let you earn Amazon gift cards. (Want to know which ones I use? Let me know and I will share links!) I even managed to clear out about a third of the bathroom. (It's huge and has a ton of built-in storage that I regularly misuse.)

Oh, and I sent out four stories to be edited and proofed.

Granted, they are all shorts, BUT I still did it. I have only ever had friends and family read them, to give me their initial feedback. One is a children's story that I wrote last summer. One is a short story based on the theme "Love Gone Wrong" that was quite possibly going to be in an anthology that fell through. Two other ones are little romantic ditties about couples finding each other. 

And now I await a professional's opinion. Yes, this is someone who actually edits for a living and has been doing so for years. Yes, I have read books edited by this person. I can tell the difference between authors' works who have used her for some books, but not on others. I trust her completely.

So, now I take a deep breath and I wait. And perhaps feel a little more inspired to work on some other stuff in the meantime?

Chapter book spurt

Finally! The muse has been striking! Around New Year's, I came up with an idea for a chapter book series. It's got some educational value to it, but should also hopefully be entertaining, as well. I managed to outline the premise, as well as prospective titles. I even started doing tome research.

Of course, I was going to blog about it, to let you all know, and then didn't have a chance...

I managed to get a couple of pages written in that book and then let it go for a bit. Today, I felt like I needed to do something productive before watching the football championship games. I opened up the laptop, thinking I would work on the book I had started during NaNo. Instead, Beth and Derek were calling to me.

My fingers flew across the keyboard and now I can say that the first two chapters are complete. I also was able to figure out the missing piece of the quest. I knew there had to be something for which they were searching, just wasn't quite sure how to go about it. I'm excited.

Now, I definitely need to do some more research, to make sure my facts are correct, before I keep on writing. I hope I can do that part soon! And, in the meantime, perhaps some of those other stories will also yell in my ear.

'Writing Habit Mastery' by S.J. Scott $0.99 Countdown Special 1/13-1/19

LEARN:: How to Forever Eliminate Writer's Block and Write THOUSANDS of Words a Day

Do you struggle to write every day? Many people dream of becoming a successful author, but can't *find* the time to write. The truth is this: Great writers don't have more time than you do. They make time to write. Not only do they make time, they also follow specific routines that help them avoid writer's block altogether.

By developing the "writing habit" you'll have the confidence to sit down in front of a computer every day, knowing the words will come.

YOUR GOAL:: Write 2,000 Words a Day -- Every Day!

One of the key factors to effectively developing ANY habit is choosing a specific, measurable goal. So if you want to become a prolific writer, then you'll need to choose a specific word count for each day. While I *suggest* 2,000 words as a goal, you can pick any number that fits in with your busy schedule. You might choose 500 or 1,000 words a day. Or, you might have more time than I do (or write faster than I do) and choose to write 3,000 or 10,000 words each day. The important thing is to establish a daily word count goal and then stick to it.

In "Writing Habit Mastery" you'll learn how to incorporate writing into your daily routine. What you'll get is a strategy and list of tools that will help you develop a sustainable writing habit and demolish writer's block.

DOWNLOAD:: Writing Habit Mastery - How to Write 2,000 Words a Day and Forever Cure Writer's Block

"Writing Habit Mastery" contains a step-by-step blueprint of habits and routines you can use to develop this routine.

Inside this guide you'll learn how to:

• Establish the PERFECT writing routine and environment
• Find the time to write--even if you have a full-time job
• Minimize distractions and interruptions
• Crank out PUBLISHED works on a consistent basis
• Create an energized state where you're ready to write
• Make money from your completed books or screenplays
• Follow a simple seven-step process that prevents writer's block

You can write thousands of words every day. All you need is a strategy to develop this habit.

Available on Amazon

S.J. Scott believes that the way to improve yourself is to set achievable goals and develop daily habits that move you towards these outcomes. That's why he publishes actionable books that help you immediately develop positive habits.