Thursday 27 September 2012

Why this won't bring in £4500pcm.

When you start blogging--and this is where most bloggers give up--the early days of blogging is mostly a labour of love.

If you have a good content strategy and enough information to get your readers coming back for more, your blog will slowly build a fan-base.

Allow your blog to grow organically, like a vegetable garden and over time the rewards will come.

You may have noticed I don't have Adsense. I personally think it's too early to even think of monetizing your blog. It's a case of sitting back and telling stories.

I belong to an old school of thought that believes slow and steady wins the race. In other words, just don't expect overnight success. Or £4500pcm: it doesn't happen like that.

Tonight's story: a lone Stormtrooper rides off into the distance with his two companions to become gold prospectors in the Yukon. Unprepared for the harsh realities of the cold, how will they manage? What will they do for money? More importantly, will they make £4500pcm?





Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Pretoria Rd,London,United Kingdom

Tuesday 25 September 2012

How Your Local Coffee Shop Can Help You Stay Creative.


Sometimes it is good to take a break from the workplace. You wonder that because you have been working hard, you cannot "find the time" to be creative.  

Maybe you can't, but that's because you're not MAKING IT HAPPEN. You need to make it happen in order to be creative. Even five minutes will suffice. After all, big oak trees were once little acorns. 

Let's take the example of a coffee shop. Buy yourself a coffee and a chocolate muffin. Sit back and relax: you deserve it. You have worked hard. You have earned it. Maybe workplace has made you worry about your artwork or your writing. In the coffee shop, you will find little gems to inspire you.

For instance, you could:

1. Outline what you like about your coffee shop. Why do you like to come here?

2. Outline what you hate about your coffee shop. What sort of things make your blood boil? 

3. Study people in the coffee shop: maybe there is a woman talking to herself in-between sips of coffee. Why does she talk to herself and what do you think she is saying?

4. Watch dramas unfold: maybe a love relationship is breaking up? Maybe a mother is reprimanding her adult daughter for borrowing money from a loan shark.

5. Plonk a toy dinosaur next to your coffee and take a picture.

Now you've got five things you can do: the first four are little gems you can take away to use as story prompts later on. Or maybe you can just keep them in your notebook for a later date.

There are other opportunities/happenings in the coffee shop. Maybe confidence tricksters visit and try to trick baristas out of money. The possibilities are endless.

In that half hour (at least, I am assuming it is half-an-hour), you have MADE TIME TO BE CREATIVE without worrying about finding time to be creative.

It's called being productive. It's fun when you enjoy yourself and enjoy the work in the coffee shop.




Saturday 22 September 2012

Ten Ways To Remain Creative


1. This is probably the MOST important: ALWAYS carry a notebook and pen. This is vital if you want to record your ideas or write stories. You don't need an expensive notebook. A 99p notebook will do fine. You don't need an expensive pen. A biro or a roller ball pen will be fine. Or a pencil, for that matter--Captain Scott of the Arctic/Antarctic wrote his letters using a pencil.

I carry an A6-sized notebook and roller-ball ink pen. I cannot abide biros. The most important thing is to write using a pen you are comfortable with. In fact, do carry more than one pen. I carry three pens in case one pen runs out of ink--easily done.

2. Read everything, whether it is newspapers, magazines, journals, comics, books of different genres, poetry, cereal boxes etc. Read voraciously so you may learn about the world, so you may learn new things, and you find humour in the least expected of places. Obituaries, for example can reveal some interesting insights about the lives of men and women.

3. Watch foreign films and quality documentaries: these can be very meaningful and tell a story that can be heart-rendering and very moving, sometimes not necessarily with a clear-cut ending. Blockbusters don't provide that.

4. You are an artist. You deserve the best. You need quality sustenance to nurture your talent. It is not a good idea to live on the cheap or compromise on quality. For example, if you are going to have a sandwich or make someone a sandwich, make a really good one using home-made bread and rich ingredients. Show people what you are made of. After all, you DO want your sandwiches to be the talk of the town, don't you? Regarding drinks: if you are going to have cola, don't buy supermarket cola: go for an international brand (unless you do like supermarket cola in the first place). When you live like a king or queen, your talent will unleash itself and soon you will create amazing works of art. Look after your body and the rest follows.

5. Keep yourself clean and your workspace tidy. You may be an artist or a writer, but you also need to maintain a professional appearance. For example, when you meet others at parties or gallery openings you will meet people that will show an interest in you. Conversations may spur you to write something your notebook afterwards.

6. Write about five things that happened to you at work today and explain what was so terrible about them. Who was the villain? Was it your boss? You could incorporate these incidents into a later story.

7. Count your blessings. Ask yourself why you are lucky to be alive. Ask yourself what you give to your friends and what they give to you in return. Try to remember the name of the kindest person in your life and write about him or her.

8. Get a pet--a dog, cat or gerbil. If you are an artist or photographer, then you have a life subject that will happily offer you numerous sittings forever (as long as you feed them!). Human models can be an expensive business; and not everybody likes human subjects. Dogs and cats as subjects sell well.

9. Get some rest. Sleep is important. You should not shirk on your sleep. A dog makes a great afternoon nap companion; and moreover they warm you up faster than any old radiator. To recap: all you need is a sofa, woollen blanket and dog.

10. Visit new places. It's all very well visiting your local coffee shop every day, but as an artist and writer you should visit places you have never been to before. For example, old cemetries with overgrown plants. Bring a camera. And take your dog with you. Love and companionship is important.

Saturday 15 September 2012




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

One Way of Making a Card

Method: Garden with flowers and one dinosaur.

Difficulty level: beginner.

Supermarkets sell plastic dinosaurs at extortionate prices. You do not need to be paying this kind of money. Instead, visit your local charity shop and you may find a few retailing cheaply.

Now, assuming you have your dinosaurs, plonk them in the garden next to a flower and take various pictures. All done in two minutes!





Location:Rydal Rd,London,United Kingdom

Saturday 8 September 2012

What You Should Know About Good Storytelling

First of all, the secret behind good story-telling is: don't write something lame. Make your story interesting. Write a good story with a twist. Write about the unexpected. After all, the reader has paid money or visited the library to get your book.



"I'm coming...ready or not!!..."

So...don't write something lame. Why not? Well, it's boring. I remember my English teacher saying to us, "write something funny. I could do with a laugh...."

No, my English teacher wasn't Miss Krabapple. She wasn't pining over broken relationships (or maybe she was), but she did sound despondent. She spoke with little will-power. She was devoid of energy as if a drug trip had slowly worn off.

She must have got bored of reading dull and uninspiring stories. Who can blame her for wanting something funny? Maybe her salary wasn't enough to make her smile, so she took solace in reading?

Reading is an escapist past-time, so you...as the writer have a duty to make the story as exciting as possible. Otherwise your book will end up in the bin.

Everyone has a story inside them. A favourite genre of mine is the confessional story. These make inspiring stories. For example, you could write about how you stole a needle and pricked each and everyone of your parents' contraceptives, and nine months later, your little sister was born.

That was a story a friend told me. She would tell me how--as a child--she would spy on her parents' nocturnal activities and wanted to add more spice or danger. Fair enough, I suppose.

A great story, nonetheless. I say great because we, as people, are interested in other people and what they do in life. We hope they are living a worse life than us because then, we can take pleasure in their misfortune.

This is called Schadenfreude. We don't wish to know or be reminded how bad our lives are. We want something to take us away from our own pit of misery and look at others'. Maybe that's what my English teacher meant?

Tuesday 4 September 2012

How to come up with story ideas using sheer coincidence as a prompt.

The writer Paul Auster keeps a notebook about the coincidences he has encountered in his life. Then he uses them as story prompts. In fact, he has (to my knowledge) used two examples to weave a story.

Now why can't you do the same?

Write down in your notebook, a list of coincidences that you encounter. For example this may involve bumping into an old school friend while travelling in Uganda. Or you may be a police officer that arrests a prostitute who used to be a colleague.

Give it a go. You never know, something may come of these story ideas.





Location:Rydal Rd,London,United Kingdom

Sunday 2 September 2012

Some advice for artists






"You don't have to re-invent the wheel every time you do something new--choose a core pattern that works, then focus your time and energy on making something people find remarkably useful."

Josh Kaufman: The Personal MBA

Very good advice. There is much more in Josh Kaufman's excellent book, The Personal MBA. A very good book, I strongly suggest that you buy it. I cannot recommend it enough...and it is also very entertaining. It's one of the few books I've enjoyed reading this year.