Blog: Mel's Muse - Archive for November 2008
Assertiveness Training: Ten Tips To A Stronger You
Posted: Saturday, 29th November 2008
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 PROBLEMS
A number of years ago, I found myself going through a particularly difficult period of life. My daughter had died in suspicious circumstances, leaving a baby of eighteen months. My husband’s business was ailing, so I had to give up my career as an author and take on an administrative job to help keep us afloat.
Articles on related themes: Self Help; Assertiveness
Bereavement Poetry: Crossing The Bar By Alfred Lord Tennyson
Posted: Friday, 28th November 2008
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 fed and settled and she had checked on the
boys, she looked out an anthology of English poems she had been
given as a schoolgirl. Steve, who had been clearing up downstairs
whilst she had seen to Erin, had not yet come up.
Articles on related themes:
Bereavement
Successful Step Parenting: Do You Know What It Takes?
Posted: Wednesday, 26th November 2008
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 conversation that ensued, he asked me if I knew of anyone who might argue the case against. I’ve had to say that I don’t.
STEPFAMILY PROBLEMS
My book was based on personal experience, but also included a number of case studies: people my second husband and I interviewed for the book.
Articles on related themes: Forgiveness; Self Help; Family & Parenting; Bereavement; Stepfamilies
Poetry For Grief - In The Silence Of Friends
Posted: Tuesday, 25th November 2008
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 admirable concern.
Articles on related themes: Bereavement
Writing Your First Novel: How Viewpoint Affects Show & Tell
Posted: Sunday, 23rd November 2008
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 may even apply that knowledge in such a way that it may become learned behaviour. But a novel, as I’ve said before, is about people.
Articles on related themes: Writing & Publishing A Book; Viewpoint
Fun Christmas Quiz
Posted: Saturday, 22nd November 2008
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 December
So I’m going to run this Fun Christmas Quiz for a month 22nd November to 21st December. And as Christmas is a time of giving, guess what? Once again I’ll be giving a copy of my novel A Painful Post Mortem to the winner.
PRIZE
A Painful Post Mortem is a contemporary love story with a difference, because it’s also a ‘who-done-it?’.
Articles on related themes: Fun & Competitions
Coloured Christmas Lights Eclipsed By Child In The Manger
Posted: Friday, 21st November 2008
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 a business trip to the West End to meet with the American agents of the music publishers for whom we work.
SHOP TIL YOU DROP
Now I have to admit that when it came to shopping genes, my mother and eldest daughter hogged the lot.
Plotting Stories: Off-Topic Blogs May Be The Best Growing Medium For Your Budding Novel
Posted: Wednesday, 19th November 2008
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 blogging four months ago, I’ve had just short of six thousand page views, from forty-eight countries around the world, including places like United Arab Emirates, Croatia, Peru, China, Indonesia and even Afghanistan, in addition to the more obvious UK and USA.
Articles on related themes: Plot; Writing & Publishing A Book
Do Grief & Loss Conform To A Pattern?
Posted: Tuesday, 18th November 2008
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, of course, is one of the purposes of such rites of passage. Funeral services help us through the initial stages of shock, grief and loss by concentrating the mind on the details and ritual of the event.
THE SENSE OF LOSS IN BEREAVEMENT
But they do little to prepare us for what is to come.
Articles on related themes: Bereavement
How To Hook Your Reader: Starting Your Story
Posted: Sunday, 16th November 2008
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 an author, which of your characters are going to be conveying your story. You know, too, that right from the outset, you have to hook your reader.
Articles on related themes: Writing & Publishing A Book
Youngest Child In The Family: Paragon? Or Pain?
Posted: Friday, 14th November 2008
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 a study on the concept of the youngest child in the family.
Articles on related themes: Family & Parenting; Life, Faith & Other Stuff; Self Help
The Right To Die; The Fight To Live
Posted: Wednesday, 12th November 2008
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 DIGNITY
Hannah Jones, the thirteen year old, has had leukaemia since the age of five, and chemotherapy to treat it has left her with a hole in the heart. Three operations to fit a pace-maker resulted in a collapsed lung. She is a sick girl, for whom a heart transplant offers the only hope.
Articles on related themes: Life, Faith & Other Stuff
Fiction - Main Characters And How To Choose Them
Posted: Monday, 10th November 2008
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 novel, and in particular, the importance of identifying all the main characters in your book.
FICTION – MAIN CHARACTERS
This need to identify which of your characters is going to advance the plot of your story is crucial.
Articles on related themes: Writing & Publishing A Book; Character
Animal Rights Stuff
Posted: Saturday, 8th November 2008
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 at Whitehall thinking about? And why are we paying them to do it?
I have loved all my pets and wept at their demise. There was the thrill of finding kittens born in my bed when I was a schoolgirl.
Articles on related themes: Current Affairs; Life, Faith & Other Stuff; Occasional Silliness
Healing And Forgiveness
Posted: Thursday, 6th November 2008
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, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester who forgave her husband not only his affairs, but also his death on a mountain in Wales. In the same week, the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and Cabinet Minister, Peter Mandelson, showed us all (seemingly) how to forgive and forget in political circles.
Articles on related themes: Self Help; Life, Faith & Other Stuff; Books, Reading & Words; Forgiveness
People Pleasers: Managing Conflicting Priorities
Posted: Wednesday, 5th November 2008
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, I suspect, that must be familiar to many politicians, and not a few parents.
Articles on related themes: Self Help; Assertiveness
Writing And Publishing A Book: Ten Tips Before You Begin
Posted: Monday, 3rd November 2008
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: Well he hasn’t told me!
I’ve come across many people who believe they can do something similar when writing and publishing a book. They may be writing a self help book or a novel. They may believe that what they have written – or plan to write – is exactly what the world is waiting for.
Articles on related themes: Writing & Publishing A Book
Making Funeral Arrangements
Posted: Saturday, 1st November 2008
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 finding a funeral celebrant, they are less likely to dwell on their own distress.
This post is part of a series, each of which links to the previous one which, in this case, was: Dealing With Denial, Grief & Anger Following Bereavement. Today's post deals more with the practicalities than emotions.
Articles on related themes: Bereavement
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