Ray's Blog: November 2008
Assertiveness Training: Ten Tips To A Stronger You
I’ve written, previously, about people pleasers and how we can go about managing conflicting priorities in specific situations. We talked about our need to expect respect, and how to promote dignity. Today I want to write about the art of assertiveness as a life style choice.
TAKING ON OTHER PEOPLE’S PROBLEMSA number of years ago,...
Posted at 18:18pm on 29th November 2008
Bereavement Poetry: Crossing The Bar By Alfred Lord Tennyson
In the following excerpt from my book, A Painful Post Mortem, one of the characters, Rosie, has been asked by her father to read a poem at her sister's funeral. Curious to remind herself of the long-forgotten verses, she looks out an old book before she goes to bed.
When the baby had been...
Posted at 21:50pm on 28th November 2008
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Successful Step Parenting: Do You Know What It Takes?
I’ve been asked by BBC Radio 5 Live if I would take part in a debate, arguing the case for the premiss Can A Step Parent Take The Place Of A Real Parent? The e-mail was from one of their producers, who said he’d found my book, Stepfamilies on a Google search. During the telephone...
Poetry For Grief - In The Silence Of Friends
Not everyone experiences the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance; and even if they do, they may find that they occur in a different order. But frequently, at just the point when we most need them, our friends seem to melt away. They have supported us in the early days with...
Posted at 17:39pm on 25th November 2008
Writing Your First Novel: How Viewpoint Affects Show & Tell
An understanding of how to use Viewpoint correctly is crucial to the success of writing your first novel. A history book may tell you about a particular event, or period in time, on either a personal level or a grand scale; a text book on psychology may inform you about behaviour; a self-help book...
Posted at 15:05pm on 23rd November 2008
Fun Christmas Quiz
In all this gloom and doom of recession, when everything’s going down, down, down, I thought it was time we all looked up, and had a bit of FUN.
QUIZ - 22nd November to 21st DecemberSo I’m going to run this Fun Christmas Quiz for a month 22nd November to 21st December. And as Christmas...
Coloured Christmas Lights Eclipsed By Child In The Manger
How long before 25th December should Christmas decorations go up? Every year it seems that they’re earlier and earlier. Especially shopping centre Christmas decorations. But this year, instead of being a cause for complaint from me, their premature appearance last week, in London, was a bonus, when my other half and I had to make...
Posted at 10:09am on 21st November 2008
Plotting Stories: Off-topic Blogs May Be The Best Growing Medium For Your Budding Novel
One of the benefits of modern technology is that, as a writer, you have more information at your finger tips about who is connecting with your blog personality, and which content for your blog attracts most readers, than ever you could in the real world. So it’s exciting to know that, since I began...
Do Grief & Loss Conform To A Pattern?
This article was revised and updated on 28th July, 2010
One of the most shocking aspects of attending the funeral of someone you loved is the sense of desolation you may feel afterwards. Everything in you has been working towards this moment, to such an extent that it has emptied your mind of everything else. This,...
Posted at 14:13pm on 18th November 2008
How To Hook Your Reader: Starting Your Story
Revised & Updated:
10th August, 2010
Right! You’re sitting in front of your computer to begin your novel, and you’re raring to go. You’ve read my article, Writing & Publishing A Book: Ten Tips Before You Begin, and identified your readers, as well as Fiction: Main Characters & How To Choose Them, so you know, as...
Posted at 18:04pm on 16th November 2008
Youngest Child In The Family: Paragon? Or Pain?
Where, in birth order, do you come among your siblings? Are you the youngest child in the family? Do you see yourself as different to your brothers and sisters? Are you aware of a gulf between them and you?
Having previously written about eldest child syndrome and middle child complex, today I’m going to begin...
The Right To Die; The Fight To Live
On the day that the news broke of the British teenager who has chosen to reject a heart transplant, an e-mail arrived in my in-box from a young woman who has no such choice. Both stories are incredibly moving.
THE RIGHT TO DIE WITH DIGNITYHannah Jones, the thirteen year old, has had leukaemia since...
Posted at 11:57am on 12th November 2008
A Painful Post Mortem - Humour, Pain, Characterisation, Existential Angst
I received this book as a birthday present after seeing it reviewed somewhere I can't now recall...sorry. Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed...yes, enjoyed it. It has everything...humour, pain, characterisation, existential angst...the way you write about Faith and God is just incredible and has really helped me at a difficult time....I am pregnant...
Posted at 19:29pm on 11th November 2008
Fiction - Main Characters And How To Choose Them
Revised and Updated: August, 2010
Last week, in Ten Tips Before You Begin, I wrote about the necessity for you, as an aspiring author, to identify your readers before you begin to write your book. That advice holds true whatever the genre in which you are writing. Today, we’re going to concentrate on writing a...
Posted at 15:51pm on 10th November 2008
Uv Readers' Group - Soul Survivor By Philip Yancey
Following a number of apologies, nine of us met in The Library, including three men this time! Celia (who was unable to be with us on this occasion) had, at my request, compiled a list of questions pertaining to the book – partly because I was tied up with work / being unwell /...
Posted at 13:39pm on 10th November 2008
Animal Rights Stuff
This surely has to be the stuff of comedy? I mean I know we, in Britain, are a nation of animal lovers, but do we need a whacking great document telling us how we should look after them, with a threat of a £20,000 fine if we stray from the guidelines? What are these people...
Posted at 15:40pm on 8th November 2008
Healing And Forgiveness
An article in The Times, last month, contrasted, without condemning, the reactions of two families who have recently been in the news. First was the story of the two young boys killed by footballer and drink driver Luke McCormick, whose family was unable to forgive him. And second was Carolyn Todd, the widow of Michael,...
Posted at 18:46pm on 6th November 2008
People Pleasers: Managing Conflicting Priorities
Trying to please everybody frequently results in pleasing nobody - least of all yourself. The old maxim: You can please all of the people some of the time; some of the people all of the time; but you can't please all of the people all of the time is one,...
Posted at 14:12pm on 5th November 2008
Writing And Publishing A Book: Ten Tips Before You Begin
Revised and updated August, 2010
BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING AND PUBLISHING A BOOK
I remember reading, many years ago, of someone famous – a well-known pop singer – who told a story of a woman who had written to him saying: God has told me I’m going to marry you. To which the singer replied:...
Posted at 16:33pm on 3rd November 2008
Making Funeral Arrangements
It’s a paradox, but there is a sense in which planning a funeral is a positive and constructive experience. Although not intentionally so, making funeral arrangements – whether for burial or cremation – is a welcome distraction from grief and loss. As long as those who are bereaved are actively contacting funeral planning services and...
Posted at 18:18pm on 1st November 2008
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