Travel advice

Two good pieces of advice

"I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

Joan Didion

 

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”

Albert Camus

No one else is quite like you

Worth remembering especially when you get discouraged.....

Learning by living

Eleanor Roosevelt was married to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and served as First Lady during his three terms--from 1933 until 1945. Her husband died in 1945. When she married him, she found herself thrust into the limelight of politics and political society, which at first made her uncomfortable, but which she learned to master with time and experience. I recently finished her amazing book You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, first published in 1960 when she was seventy-six years old. She writes from the heart, in an candid and straightforward way, about the following: • Learning to Learn • Fear—the Great Enemy • The Uses of Time • The Difficult Art of Maturity • Readjustment is Endless • Learning to Be Useful• The Right to Be an Individual • How to Get the Best Out of People •Facing Responsibility • How Everyone Can Take Part in Politics • Learning to Be a Public Servant.

The first thing that struck me was that her wisdom and advice are every bit as good as, if not better than, most of the advice proffered by self-help books authored by psychologists or psychiatrists with years in their respective fields. Why? Because she not only talks about the fears and lack of self-confidence that she had to overcome in order to become a public person, she says flat-out that we must do that which we think we cannot do. We must face our fears if we are to grow and evolve as human beings, if we are to live an honest life. She also talks about the importance of being useful and embracing politics and public life. She stresses that we must take an interest in politics as the citizens of a democratic nation; that is our responsibility as free people. We must not stoop to cynicism and negativity when we talk about politics and politicians; they are important for the future of a free country.  She is a wonderful role model for a successful and honest life, for both women and men. Her advice is relevant for both genders. But I would absolutely encourage young women to read her book, especially in this age that defines a person’s worth mostly by whether they are good-looking or not. Eleanor Roosevelt said about herself that she knew that she was not the most attractive woman in her family already when she was a child; it never stopped her. Young women especially need to hear this, because there is too much emphasis in today’s world on having the perfect face and figure, often at the expense of cultivating one’s intelligence, wit, and talents.    

Eleanor Roosevelt was an honest, intelligent, introspective, persevering, patient and empathetic woman, who made a real success of her life in spite of the many difficulties she faced. I found her advice quite straightforward, no-nonsense, honest and helpful. She really did 'learn by living', and that is the message her book imparts. It's possible to grow and change with experience, if you tackle the challenges that life tosses you rather than evade them. She was way ahead of her time in terms of how she lived her life and how she looked at her life as a woman. I recommend this book if you want wisdom that will actually help you as you make your way in this life.

What M.Scott Peck Said

M. Scott Peck (1936-2005) was a psychiatrist and the best-selling author of a terrific book called The Road Less Traveled. I read it during the 1980s and it had a profound effect upon my life in terms of helping me deal with my life at that time and in making some necessary changes. I recommend it because it contains some real wisdom and advice on how to deal with life and its trials and joys.While Peck himself didn’t always live up to the high ideals he espoused for others (he didn’t always practice what he preached), he was an inspiration and a man of wisdom, perhaps all the more so for his failings and weaknesses, and he shared his wisdom and thoughts in his writings. 

·         “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. ”

·         “The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”

·         “Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.”

·         “Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”

·         “Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.”

·         “We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”

·         Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. ”

·          “The difficulty we have in accepting responsibility for our behavior lies in the desire to avoid the pain of the consequences of that behavior. ”

·         “Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity. ”

·          “You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. ”

·         “It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. ”

·          “If we know exactly where we're going, exactly how to get there, and exactly what we'll see along the way, we won't learn anything. ”

·         “Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.”

·         “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

·         “There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realized you have not lived.”

Some wise words about fathers

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, so in honor of my father (who passed away in 1985) and of all the other fathers I know who work hard at doing the hardest job of all—parenting, I am posting some inspirational words about fathers and fatherhood. I was fortunate to have had a very close relationship with my father, one that started when I was very young. We shared a love of books and literature that has stayed with me my whole life, and I will never forget our discussions at the dinner table about everything under the sun. My father was my friend as I grew into adulthood; I know that I lost him all too soon. He never got a chance to see how my life changed, nor did he ever get to meet my husband or my stepdaughter. Nevertheless, I know he is watching over me as he always did when I was a child, and I am grateful for the time I did have together with him. He taught me to appreciate the time we have together with our loved ones, that we don’t have them with us on this earth forever, so we should not take them or our time together for granted.

·         It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
~ Anne Sexton

·         He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.  ~Clarence Budington Kelland

·         A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.  ~Author Unknown

·         Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name.  ~William Wordsworth

·         Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!  ~Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836

·         Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.  ~Ruth E. Renkel

·         A father carries pictures where his money used to be.  ~Author Unknown

·         It is much easier to become a father than to be one.  ~Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man, 1994

·         The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and by posterity.  ~Jean Paul Richter

·         Any man can be a father.  It takes someone special to be a dad.  ~Author Unknown

·         The greatest gift I ever had
Came from God; I call him Dad!
~Author Unknown

·         I love my father as the stars - he's a bright shining example and a happy twinkling in my heart.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.  ~Author Unknown

·         You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

·         Why are men reluctant to become fathers?  They aren't through being children.  ~Cindy Garner

·         Fathers represent another way of looking at life - the possibility of an alternative dialogue.  ~Louise J. Kaplan, Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978

·         There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.  ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

·         There are three stages of a man's life:  He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn't believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus.  ~Author Unknown

·         Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.  ~Bill Cosby

·         When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.  ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Mark Twain but no evidence has yet been found for this 

What Georgia O’Keeffe Said

Georgia O'Keeffe was born in 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She is one of America's most important modern artists, well-known for her bold, beautiful and colorful flower paintings. She had some important things to say about art, courage, being an artist and being a woman. She died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an area of the USA that she loved, in 1986.

·         Making your unknown known is the important thing.

·         To create one's own world, in any of the arts, takes courage.

·         Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

·         I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me -- shapes and ideas so near to me -- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

·         When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

·         I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

·         I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

·         I think I am one of the few who gives our country any voice of its own.

·         One cannot be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

·         One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

·         Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realize that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary.

·         I found I could say things with colors that I couldn't say in any other way -- things that I had no words for.

·         I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do -- no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?

·         I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.

·         I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

·         The days you work are the best days.

·         You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

One Door Closes, Another One Opens

After the turbulence of last year, I made the decision that 2011 was going to look very different than 2010. And so far I can report that 2011 is turning out to be different than 2010. I am trying to live each day to its fullest (even though I am tired in the evenings these days and end up falling asleep on the couch instead of finishing off a project or two). I am trying to walk away from incendiary situations, trying to keep a lid on my anger and my irritation, trying to take good care of myself in all ways, trying to be happy and trying to be cheerful for others. I’m trying to be nicer to my husband instead of taking my irritation with workplace situations out on him (but I require the same from him, just to have the equal balance—we’re both trying). I am trying not to get dragged down by hopeless work situations, even though it would be easy to hit the bottom again from time to time. I have extricated myself from useless and time-consuming activities, from trying to change the world with people who haven’t the foggiest idea about what that means or what’s involved. I am trying not to cast whatever pearls I own before swine. I am trying to let go and let God as the saying goes, trying to not wall myself off when sad times hit, trying to reach out to others who are going through tough times, trying to remember that life is short and that every minute counts. When you remember that life is short, you live life in a more aware manner. Not everything that happens has crucial importance for your life; some things just happen, the world is sometimes unfair, people are sometimes frustrating and rude, but better times do come. They do. Doors close, opportunities disappear, but new doors open and new opportunities appear. My mother always used to say this. It appears that she was right about a lot of things, but I didn’t give her the credit she was due when I was younger, when I thought I knew best. Ah, the arrogance of youth.   

The key point is that I am trying, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. I realize that I have taken failure so seriously, when in fact failure is a part of life. It balances out success—the yang to the yin. I cannot believe sometimes that I didn’t learn this lesson sooner. I mean really, who am I to think that I would be spared, when people a whole lot smarter and better at things than me have failed? Failing means to have taken a risk, so I can comfort myself with that. Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. I have written about this in an earlier post, but it is true. Trying is what is important, whether or not success is the result. And by success I don’t necessarily mean achieving wealth and fame (although they are of course nice). It is enough with personal satisfaction and happiness, with the knowledge that one has achieved something that one has set out to do. That is immensely satisfying.

I send out small hopes and prayers into the universe on a daily basis. I won’t say what they are, but they are not selfish prayers. I hope and pray for others as much as I do for myself. I believe in the power of positive thoughts and hope that the prayers will be answered. We just never really know quite how they will be answered. But life and the universe have a way of providing opportunities and answers. I see that now. One of my little prayers has been answered recently--I got a few answers to some questions that have been causing my soul some amount of searching. A new small door has opened. I am entering it and have decided to follow the path that lies beyond the door. I’ll be writing more about that path as time goes on.  

Some wise words about mothers

·         A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.  ~Peter De Vries

·         The phrase "working mother" is redundant.  ~Jane Sellman

·         The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh

·         I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all my life.  ~Abraham Lincoln

·         Sweater, n.:  garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.  ~Ambrose Bierce

·         Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness.  It's the men who are discriminated against.  They can't bear children.  And no one's likely to do anything about that.  ~Golda Meir

·         The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.  ~Honoré de Balzac

·         All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.  No man does.  That's his.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

·         Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
~William Shakespeare

·         When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts.  A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.  ~Sophia Loren,Women and Beauty

·         Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.  ~John Lancaster Spalding

·         Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.  Everything gets reduced to essentials.  ~Meryl Streep

·         I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         [A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.  ~Emily Dickinson

·         A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving

Little pearls of wisdom

I am recommending this article 'Don't get emotionally mugged' written by Martha Beck which showed up on Oprah.com on April 28th of this year. It had a lot of interesting things to say to me and I don't hesitate to recommend it! 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/04/28/stay.good.mood.o/index.html?iref=obinsite

I also recommend another article by the same writer: 'The Cure for self-consciousness' that also can be found on Oprah.com  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Cure-for-Self-Consciousness/1 and which was originally published in Oprah magazine in July 2007.  

There are a lot of self-help books, magazines, articles, shows, and advice out there. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is a huge job, but well-worth it when you find some quality advice. These two articles ‘speak’ to me because the author seems to be genuinely interested in making life better for her readers, and because you get the feeling that she’s been there, done that and learned from it. And what she learned was valuable enough to share, and since she’s a good writer, she can communicate it well. And anything that can make our lives better or change our attitudes for the better is something I want to share with you.

Enjoy………..

What Mother Teresa said

At Easter time, I am reminded of the words of Mother Teresa. She had a lot to say about living in the modern world, about loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted. At mass this past Sunday, the priest spoke about the very same things, and talked about the heavy crosses that many people in our society live with each day—depression, loneliness, unemployment, a demoralizing job, family problems--the list goes on. The priest meant that these conditions are our chance to share in the cross of Christ, and while that idea is very unappealing—to have a cross on our shoulders weighing us down that may ultimately lead to our demise--the fact remains that this is the human condition from time to time. I find some reassurance in knowing that my faith is founded on the suffering and death of a man who cared for others. His life was remarkable; the circumstances surrounding his death were not. He was treated as a common criminal and left to die, and before he died, he struggled with not wanting to fulfill his mission here on earth. How many times have we had that feeling ourselves? How many times have we wanted to run away from our problems, from unhappiness, from depression, from heavy responsibilities, from unpleasant situations, from unpleasant people? How many times has it been hard to smile after being pushed down one more time, after being trampled on one more time? How difficult it is to smile in the face of injustice, abuse, and ridicule. And yet there are people who do this every day. Get up and keep on going. Smile kindly and accept what others would not accept. Are these people crazy? Do they have something to teach us? Even Mother Teresa knew that most of us could never live her life. She was adamant about starting at home, that we had to learn to love the ones we live with before we could go out into society to do the same. Her wisdom is timeless and precious and too important not to share again. I read her books when I was younger, and here I am many years later, and her words make even more sense to me now.

·         Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

·         Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

·         Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

·         Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

·         I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

·         If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

·         If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

·         If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

·         Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

·         Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

·         Peace begins with a smile.

·         We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

·         Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

·         Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

·         Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

·         Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

·         Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

·         We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

·         Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

·         The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

·         The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

·         There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

·         Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

·         There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

·         We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

·         Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

·         We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Advice about writing from Cory Doctorow

An interesting article about how not to get distracted while writing by the writer Cory Doctorow. I tend to agree more with him than with Jonathan Franzen, if for no other reason than Cory's life seems to be more like my own, filled with interruptions and distractions at work (while I am doing my scientific writing) and filled with daily-life things when I am at home. I do as he does--I find at least a half hour each day to write--in most cases a blog post, but sometimes a poem or the beginning of an essay or a story. His philosophy of writing one page a day works for me. But he is remarkably productive as a full-time writer. I am just writing in my free hours outside of my regular job and manage one blog post per day or every other day. I wonder what it would be like to be a writer full-time. I'm betting there'd be lots of deadlines and that the occurrence of writer's block might hit more often than one would like. Writer's block has happened to me a few times this past year and it's not pleasant. It feels like everything has dried up and that there aren't any more ideas and that there never will be. Of course this is not true, but it feels that way when you are experiencing it. The best thing to do is to just relax and do something else--take a walk, read a book, watch a good movie, have a good conversation. In this way, your mind gets stimulated again and then it's possible to be in touch with some new ideas. There has to be inspiration. If you write, you cannot live in a vacuum, cannot seal yourself off from the rest of the world all the time. But it helps to have some alone time when you are actually writing and need quiet time. But some of my better poems have been written on subways, trains and buses, in the midst of throngs of people and lots of noise, because I was watching the life outside the windows go whizzing by and it triggered a thought which then triggered another thought. And so it goes......

Here is the link to Cory Doctorow's article:
http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

Enjoy.

Rules of writing according to Jonathan Franzen

I was surfing the internet the other day and I found these rules of writing if you want to be a writer. They made a lot of sense and it’s not hard to imagine that Franzen (a best-selling author) wrote them because he also has experienced the problems associated with not following them. So I am posting them here as guidelines—for myself and other budding writers. The biggest problem with sitting and writing is to do just that—to sit and write. And not get distracted—by the ping of your email box as it accepts a new email or by the urge to visit all the social media sites that your emails continually inform you about--that so-and-so has posted this or that on his or her wall. It is SO easy to get distracted. So #8 for me makes a lot of sense, followed by #2.

1.       The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

2.       Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.

3.       Never use the word “then” as a conjunction– we have “and” for this purpose. Substituting “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many “ands” on the page.

4.       Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.

5.       When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

6.       The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more auto biographical story than “The Metamorphosis”.

7.       You see more sitting still than chasing after.

8.       It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

9.       Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

10.   You have to love before you can be relentless.

Publish Your Book using CreateSpace

I thought I would talk about how to self-publish your book if you want to try this publication route. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but since I have done it once with good results I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. For starters, you learn the entire process of not only preparing your book for publication, but also marketing it once it is ‘out there’ for sale. The online publishing world is a fascinating place! All the things you learn along the way about how to sell your book are of course what you would pay a publisher to do for you and your book. But think of how valuable it may be to learn those processes yourself.

If you’ve written a book and you want to try your hand at self-publishing, I recommend CreateSpace (www.createspace.com), not only because I’ve worked with them and am pleased with the results, but mostly because this company is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. Why is this good? Because once you have completed the requirements for publication on CreateSpace, your book can be set out for sale on Amazon.com at no cost to you. If you are a new author your chances of getting your first book published via a major publishing house are probably close to null. But ok, let’s say you’re lucky and your first book gets published by a major publishing house—then you may not need to read this post further. But for the rest of us who believe in our work and who want to see it out there in print, CreateSpace is the way to go. It’s a very easy website to use. You set up an account with them and prepare your book on your very own ‘dashboard’. CreateSpace will assign an ISBN number to your book. The preparation steps are clearly outlined in a kind of ‘checklist’ format—in essence, you can only proceed to ‘b’ if you have finished ‘a’, and so forth. They require the uploading of exactly two files in .pdf format—your text file and your book cover file. The latter must be prepared according to a template provided by them that you can download with instructions. I worked with a designer on my first book who prepared my book cover for me according to this template, and she did a great job. CreateSpace also offers free tools to prepare your book and ready-made book covers that you can use if you don’t work with a designer. Once the book was complete and ready for uploading to their website, I uploaded the text file and the book cover file, and waited no more than a day for them to get back to me with the message that a proof book had been created that I had to order and review carefully in order to make sure that it was satisfactory to me. The cost of a proof book was minimal. At no point along the way did I ever get the feeling that I was being ‘scammed’. My intuition told me that this was a good company to work with and it is. Once you approve the proof book, your book can eventually be sold via both CreateSpace on your own ‘eStore’ and on Amazon. I love Amazon for many reasons (it’s a great online bookstore and so much more), but it is also a company that is very generous to budding authors. The great thing about having your book sold on Amazon is that you can create an Amazon Author page that allows you to provide as much or as little information about yourself as you wish. Additionally, if you write a blog, you can feed it directly into your Author page (as I now do), thus generating more publicity for your writing and/or book. CreateSpace will publish your book only when it is ordered, that is, it is a ‘Print-on-demand’ company, and here is where the savings to you come into the picture. There are no requirements for hundreds or thousands of copies of your book to be produced upfront as would be the case if you worked with a major publishing company. CreateSpace states this clearly—that you as the author do not have to worry about ‘inventory or minimum orders’. The only real costs involved are the payments you make when you order copies (as many or as few as you wish) of your book for yourself and family or friends. And because you are the author, you pay much less to order your book than others will pay. You also get to choose how much you want your book to sell for (the list price). CreateSpace makes its money by keeping a fair share of the royalty you will get for each sale, but you can also increase your share of the royalties. There are two publishing plans within CreateSpace that deal with this topic, the basic plan and the Pro plan (slightly more expensive)—but you get to keep a larger percentage of your royalties by signing up for the Pro plan (the cost is minimal and it’s worth it).  I recommend it also because when you order copies of your book you pay less per copy than you would with the basic plan and also because this plan increases the extent of distribution to other book sellers.

If you want to market your book once it’s available for sale, I recommend that you send out a press release describing your book and its date of publication. I used www.prweb.com and was very pleased with their services. They offer several different packages that involve the use of different multi-media formats (online press release, podcasts, etc.) for press releases, but I went with the basic package (online release only) and it was well worth it. I also set up a simple one-page website to market my book, and spent some time learning simple web design (thanks to Microsoft Office Publisher) in order to achieve this; the only expenses involved with this aspect are the website hosting costs. There are a number of web hosting sites and I hesitate to recommend one simply because there are so many out there that offer very good packages at similar prices.

Of course it took some time for me to learn how to use all of the different online sites available to help an author publish and market his or her book, but once I did, I didn’t look back. The costs involved are minimal and the crash-course in the use of different online sites is challenging and fun. I don’t think I spent more than about three hundred dollars to publish and market my first book, and that included the designer’s fee, signing up for the CreateSpace Pro plan, ordering a proof book, ordering several copies of the published book, website hosting, and one press release. I’ve more than recouped my initial investment. If you’re a new author, you may want to choose this publication route at some future point and I can only say—go for it, you won’t regret it.  


Addendum 29 January 2015--I can now recommend Weebly for both web-hosting and website-building. It offers both for free, but if you want to obtain statistical information about your website traffic and get an idea of who is accessing your site, you will need to pay for that information. You can learn more about it all at www.weebly.com. And as far as book promotion, using social media (e.g.Twitter) is an excellent way to promote your book and an eventual author page on Amazon. 

The Art of Boating. Attempts at a definition---by Trond Stokke

From time to time I will post articles and/or poetry written by guest authors on ‘A New Yorker in Oslo’. Today is one of those days. I am pleased to post the following article entitled The Art of Boating--Attempts at a definition, written by my husband Trond Stokke. He is and has been an avid boatman for many years, and we have spent a good many summers cruising the Oslo fjord and exploring the coastlines of Norway. I’ll let Trond tell you more about boating.

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The “art of boating” does not necessarily mean good seamanship or great navigation skills at sea, although these are large parts of the total package. It means more something like “having a good time and feeling good in your boat”. It’s advantageous to have your own boat, or to own one together with a friend, to fully develop this “art”. Lots of people think that it would be nice to be out in a boat on a nice and sunny summer afternoon. However, there is so much more to boating.

First, even in Norway, the season for boating lasts from March to November. If you have a boat with protective plates in the front to protect your hull from being cut in two by the ice (“ishud” or “ice-skin”), there are no restrictions if you want to go fishing in the middle of the winter. Just bring your sweater. Spring provides us with a number of nice and sunny days, excellent for boat trips. In the autumn, when it’s getting darker in the evening, you get to test your night sailing abilities, navigating by using the light houses, and in modern times, also by using a GPS.

Second, to master the “art”, you need to take thorough care of your “beauty”. Yes, your boat is not only a “she”, she’s also a beauty… (Sorry ladies, the boat could in principle be a “he”, but that’s not how it evolved.) If you don’t love your boat, sell it or get a new one! In the spring, you’ll need to sand it, paint it, lacquer it, water it, and put on the bottom paint before it’s afloat. Some years you may need to change planking, or a deck, or something that you didn’t know about till you’d bought the lady. (Most readers have now figured out that I’m the owner of an older wooden boat. However, much of the same goes for more modern glass fiber boats). This work, although sometimes physically tiresome, should not appear to be a bother. If it is, again, sell the boat! 

Third, enjoy being in the boat, whether it’s for repairs, or if you just want to hang around in the harbor. Sometimes you’re alone, and that feels pretty good! (I’ll come back to the fact that you need to be able to maneuver and take trips with your boat alone also.) Other times, some of your good mates will stick around, and often this could lead to get-togethers in one cabin or another, typically accompanied by a beer or an “anchor-drink”. Under such circumstances, you’re going to learn as many different ways of taking care of your boat as there are participants. It is well known that every captain has his own way of doing these things. God forbid that you use Epifanes lacquer instead of Benar, for example! These advices, though, are mostly given by the retired sailors sitting in the shade of the winter storage area in the spring before you put the boat on the water. If they don’t wear black captain’s caps and have long grey beards, forget about it… Seriously, you ought to figure out your own way eventually, or you will be entirely confused. For those of us who do not own a house with access to a garden or a sunny balcony, being in the boat is a great substitute even if you never leave the harbor. Likewise, if you don’t have a cottage at the seaside, your boat may serve this purpose, especially if it’s about 25 feet or larger and has berths. There’s nothing like waking up to the sound of the waves hitting the hull.

Last, but not least, the art of boating is about how you master your boat at sea. This may look easy and relaxed when the skipper is experienced, but don’t get fooled! Behind every good and efficient move at sea, there are several disasters. The saying goes that there are two kinds of captains: the ones who’ve been on the rock, and the ones who will run their ship on the rock. I’ll use docking as the first example of “the art of boating” when you’re actually at sea. The skills required will of course be slightly different whether you have a sailboat or a motor boat. However, coming onto the pier will not be very different, although some tough guys in sailboats will lower the sail exactly at the right time when they take the final swing to align the boat correctly. Then the boat slides in to a perfect halt and the skipper can just fasten the ropes by leaning over the side of the boat. Since I have a motor boat, I’ll not be in the position to impress all the spectators in this way. (Yes, there are always a lot of people watching you when you’re docking. The more difficult, the more people will be around! Women get impressed if it works fine, men will verbally notify you if it goes wrong. In the latter case, your wife will also suddenly disappear and can later be found hiding in the cabin). However, what all of us need to do is to prepare beforehand. Fenders out, ropes ready and fastened on the boat, and clear roles for the crew. And remember that there is one captain on board, and his word is law. All such maneuvers are even more important to prepare for and master if you’re alone. That’s exactly why you need to train on your own. Docking is a small, but important part of boating. Most of us have seen, or experienced, lousy work at this stage. It’s simply embarrassing to need several attempts to reach land, and even more so if you have to give up.