You maybe know me to be a loner, so this topic may surprise you. Collaborations and partnerships - if chosen properly - can offer enormous added value. Preferably to ALL parties involved. The best partnerships are win-win-win situations. How do you recognize such opportunities and how do you create such a collaboration?
In recent weeks I was on the road without a laptop for the first time in perhaps ten years. Kind of like a vacation, although I don't actually do that. The idea was to recharge in nature, the implementation was ultimately quite hard hiking in the French Alps :) And how good it did me to be busy with my body instead of my head! It did take me a lot of effort to let go, to switch. Do you recognize that? Because it actually didn't work out well at all; I am in the busiest time ever, with all new plans and projects. Below some inspiration, ideas, and tips.
I met Anne in 2015 when I hosted my writing retreat in Mallorca. Anne joined the retreat with the intention to write more blogs. At home - being an entrepreneur and mother of two kids, one of whom is epileptic - she found very little time to focus. She was looking to find some space to write. Her poignant blogs about her family had become quite popular and appealed to a wide audience, not just to mothers like her. Anne's positive outlook on life and honest stories about her son’s illness inspired many. My workshops on book writing during the retreat inspired Anne so much that instead of writing more blogs, she actually turned them into a book...
When I started to publish my own books, I made lots of mistakes. The biggest fail was trying to design a kick-ass cover myself. What I didn't know is that it's not all about how good a cover looks, there's much more to it.
There we are. I've been 50 for a few days now. It's official. It's a bit weird because I still feel like I am 35. I put on some 'serious' clothes this morning for my Zoom calls. Let's see if it makes a difference? In this 'inspiration shot', I offer you some insights from 'the fifties' and an update about the birthday gift I gave myself: an olive grove in Puglia...
“The tragedy of life is that you live it start to end, but you can only understand it in reverse. One way to at least overcome this when writing a book is using the reverse writing method that Esther explained during her workshop..."
Have you ever heard of ‘The Hero’s Journey’? It is the storytelling principle that guides most fairy tales, Hollywood movies, and good books. It is the key to delivering better stories for your book, speech, presentation, training, movie, ecourse, social media, or other copywriting. In the departure part of the narrative, the hero or protagonist lives in the ordinary world and receives a call to go on an adventure.
Storytelling is a valuable tool for both fiction and non-fiction writers. Whether you are writing a thriller or a management book, you can learn from other authors. Also, speakers, trainers, coaches, and entrepreneurs can greatly benefit from these techniques. In this blog, I share Barbara’s success story.
Many writers struggle to bring their story to life. Either they splurge too much, too fast, or the build-up of their narrative is too slow, and their readers lose interest. Their characters and dialogues are not lively or realistic enough. As I wrote and published more books, I learned to manage the pace of the story and to make my characters into real people, with both positive and negative traits. I also learned to liven up my story with direct dialogue and quotes.
At age 40, Esther Jacobs writes a letter with wise lessons to herself as a teenager. What did you want to know when you were so young? Part of the book by Steven de Jong and Viola Welling.