Coach to Author

 Hi Everyone,

If you're interested in writing your coaching book could you please complete my short survey. This is new it now allows for contact details. Thanking you in advance.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/896VJSQ 

The Writing Well

 Hi Everyone,

I help entrepreneurial coaches write books by working through their fears of being creative. I teach coaches the tools to unblock the things stopping them from writing and connecting with their creative selves.   

I help coaches write books so they can tell their life story and grow a more engaged audience.

I help coaches write their first book and get published so they can share their message with more people.

I help coaches overcome writers block and fear so they can write their first book and spread their message further.

Please if you're interested could you please take 2 minutes to complete my survey below:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/896VJSQ

Spring has Sprung

‘If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Spring has arrived the last hurrah of Winter, and our spirits awaken, from a long Winter’s slumber.

Branches that were days ago bare start to bud with new growth, and birds sing with new purpose.

Even in the times we’re experiencing, we feel the stirrings of hope, and renewal.

Over the long Winter season, we sowed soulful seeds of gratitude, order, simplicity, and harmony into our lives.

Now its time to harvest an authentic gathering of contentment, and abundance.

‘Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the sense but the soul.’

– Oscar Wilde

 

Karen Gribbin 
https://www.instagram.com/studiocone10/

We can now interpret, and experience the world through our senses. Our ability to smell, taste, hear and touch.

More and more we need to look after ourselves. Go for the walk, eat a good breakfast, stop rushing around, take time to think and rejoice in the small things.

For the next two weeks, I’m asking you the pause a moment each day and marvel at the natural gifts given to us.

Today, I ask that you look at the blue sky, hear the birds sing their love songs, and let the fruits of the earth linger on your tongue, reach out and embrace those you love, or if this is not possible in person, given them a call or send them a message.

Ask the Spirit to awaken your awareness to the sacredness of your sensory perceptions.

Don’t be too busy.

Don’t put it off.

'To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exit, that is all.'  - Oscar Wilde

If we can’t give ourselves even an hour per day to ourselves, then we need to rethink what we are doing to ourselves and our relationships.

Karen Gribbin https://www.instagram.com/studiocone10/

Take time to have coffee with friends, cooked breakfast on Sundays, curl up and read a book. Care for yourselves. 

Live, don't just exist. 

Where Do We Get Ideas?

 Are you sitting there looking at a blank page? Yes, I mean You, who are reading this.

 If the answer is Yes, then stop right now, staring at a blank page will not help, if you don’t have a story idea.

We expend to much anxiety over finding a great story idea.

Karen Gribbin https://www.instagram.com/studiocone10/

"I have nothing to write about.”

 “I got nothing exciting to say.”

“I don’t know what to do to develop an idea.”

 I’ll let you into a secret, there is infinite material for stories, it needs not be new or different, and can be developed in any manner of ways.

Experienced writers find ideas from just about everything around them, and so can you.

We pull ideas from dreams, conversations, observations, images, newspaper items. Café watching doesn’t only give you characters, story ideas can come from there as well. Music themes, walks in the country, sentences from other books.

You could even mine taste sensations, a lost memory, a train trip in winter, journaling, or 500-word exercises.

Many of my own ideas come from smaller writing exercises or newspaper headlines, or a combination of two or more situations, that come together at right moment.

Karen Gribbin
 https://www.instagram.com/studiocone10/

Writer’s ideas often sit dormant for years until, that right moment comes along.

Always write down your ideas, when you think them, you may never use them, but they’ve arrived, believe me when I say ‘they won’t come again.’ Write, write, write.

New writers are often told to ‘write what they know,’ which is fine up to a point. Certainly, write about your own experiences and familiar subjects, yet understand they may not be interesting to your reader.

You ‘ll certainly need to use your imagination to develop drama, actions, and conflict into your stories.

Another mistake new writers make when drawing on experiences is they report what really happened. No one wants to hear what really happened, your readers want to see what happened.

Show not tell. Your readers are intelligent people, they can tell their own stories.

For me a story/novel needs to take me out of myself to another world, another life, another year.

What I want in a novel is the escape, the tears, the empathy with characters. All these emotions are more important than the telling.

Below is a list of idea sources.

·         Newspaper headlines/items

·        Conversations

·         Walks in the country

Karen Gribbin https://www.instagram.com/studiocone10/

·         People’s mannerisms

·         Anecdotes

·         Images

·         Paintings

·         Music

Try any of these ideas and see what you can do with them. Set yourself a task to first write 500 words, you’ll know by then if you want to expand the idea into something bigger.

STRETCHING YOUR MUSCLES

Here we are in August 2021, and New South Wales, Australia is in lockdown. Covid keeps drifting back like a bad smell.

Sick of looking at the same faces you say, just try living on your own. I’m so totally sick of the sight of my face.

All that aside I assume everyone has been taking their daily walks to get their hours of outdoor exercise as allowed. 

Nothing open, nowhere to go, unless you want to shop for food, and if you’re like me, grocery shopping’s hardly stimulating. 

With all this extra time on our hands (excusing those who are home schooling of course), this is the perfect time to stretch those soft flabby muscles.

Don’t get all indignant about that comment, my muscles are just as flabby as the next person’s. 

What I’m talking about is our writing muscles. Especially the ‘little grey cells,’ as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot often quoted. 

There must be millions of Covid stories out there, and this would be a good way to actually record a historic event in our own time. 

Dystopian civilisations come to mind stretch that imagination muscle with a fictional community or society that is undesirable or frightening.

The recent Sydney and Melbourne riots come to mind. A future where unreasonable anarchists are the order of the day. 

There’s a lot of plots out there just waiting to be brought to life, by guess who, that’s right little old YOU. 

As I’ve said before, the best way to know what you want to write is by reading other authors that interest you. Take note of their genre, their characters, the structure of their plots.

Ecclesiastes said, ‘… there’s nothing new under the sun,’ and I’m not advocating plagiarism, but
looking at the structure/process, and there are different structures for each genre as a rule.  

Reading other authors will give you an idea of how to develop your own voice, and writing style. 

I have a few things on the boil myself at present. 

One of those goals is to develop a ‘Creative Writing’ Course, leading up to ‘Writing Your Novel.’ 

Exciting times. Watch this space.

Welcome to 2021

Here we are in 2021. How many of you doubted we'd ever see the back of 2020, yet here we are, with panting breath, waiting for whatever 2021 throws at us. 

Because we are all feeling the New Year fibes, all starting over shiny as new pennies.  I thought I’d talk a bit about finding time to write. 

Remember when we discussed making it a habit of writing 500 words per day for seven days culminating with 3500 words at the end of the week. We decided that this exercise would not be re-read or edited in that week, it was pure writing. 

Here we are again. Travelling in Australia.
In May 2018 I took a sabbatical to Uluru. It's a trip I'd always wanted to make. 

The desert is a mesmerising place, the red soil/sand, the landscape, a sight to be seen, and it stretches for miles. 

Characters - Good or Bad we need them

 

When most people talk about character they mean the subtle inherent differences between us all, the good, the bad, the caring, and our personality traits.

 

Slip of the Tongue

 The studio door crashes back against the wall and standing in front of her is enthusiasm incarnate.
      Jackson’s, eyes crinkle in all the right places, and his tanned masculine body stands panting from his run up the stairs, his dark hair array, and a smile that could light the night sky.

Delicious Delectable Description

The last thing you want your Readers doing is skipping great tracks of your story because your ‘description’ is long and boring, and likewise, if you use description to pad out your word count, then it will be a foregone conclusion; your Readers, will get plenty of exercise, skipping pages.

 

Travelling in Australia

I've always loved travelling, and while I've travelled overseas, I've missed doing that of late, before Covid, my planned 2020 trip was time spent in Africa. Unfortunately, its back on the wish list, but not forgotten.

In saying world travel is fine... my own country Australia is a pretty schmick destination in anyone's book.

The beaches are stunning, the wildlife astounding. We have hinterland, bushland, rain forest, and deserts that stretch as far as the eye can see. 

It's Time

Hello Australia, as we rage towards the silly season I've had the thought the usual Christmas has not as yet taken place, not even started to pace itself out. 
The stores are...Empty.

A Sun Burnt Country

The sound of the ultralight buzzed like an angry Nat, skimming across the barren landscape like a bird of prey. 

Rick was now only 100 km from the east coast, all was dry or burnt, no rain had fallen for a few years, which meant no regrowth either. Although, he could see evidence of new fire storms, he really wondered what was left to burn.

The Novel Begins

Motivation is one of the biggest killers to a good writing schedule. If you listen to the greats there is no tried and true way of keeping the flow going. Some authors write in the mornings, some in the afternoons, and then there’s the night owls that write all night. 

Writing in 2020

 

Here we find ourselves in November 2020, with Christmas just round the corner, and my novel is still waiting unfinished.

At present my mojo needs a good kick start, an electrical current to head out onto the writing highway. You may think I’m being a bit too hard on myself, considering I’ve completed two AWA courses Blogging for Beginners and How to Get More Blog Readers.

Let’s take a closer look.  Am I being too hard on myself?  Not at all, because while I’ve completed the above courses, they are in reality, exercises in procrastination.  

My voice is quite clear in my ears, 'Once I finish these courses, then I’ll have more time to write.'