The problem with creativity and writing as with any other field of human endeavour, is self sabotage. You don’t believe you can do it, you don’t believe you have it in you to be creative, you don’t believe that ideas will come… You get your wish.

A part of your mind that doesn’t believe that it’s possible interacts with your subconscious and makes it impossible for those ideas and connections to be released from the deepest part of your mind. This is why I’ve discovered that it is crucial as a writer to programme your mind to accept that you are creative and it is possible.

Once you do that you can fully believe it is possible and allow the ideas and connections to rise up from the lowest level of your brain. Self belief is a huge part of the process. This is the thing which isn’t spoken of at all in any books about creativity that I know of and yet in my experience it’s the fundamental thing which separates truly creative people from those who merely have the desire but no way to take it further.

The magic of certainty is that you believe with total ease that an idea will come and that certainty ensures that the ideas will come. Uncertainty is born of a lack of practice. The more you write, the more you get ideas, the more you expect those ideas will arrive just in time.

oOo

The script is finished and the audio recordings are underway. This means the launch of my audio course for creativity, Writing Fit: Creativity Coaching for Writers, is imminent.The course contains 10 audio modules and 10 alpha technique sessions covering all aspects of creativity, programming your brain for creative work. I’ve written the course modules, wrote and recorded the music, read the modules, and created a whole new sound design for the alpha techniques. It’s all coming together brilliantly. It’s been 10 years in the making and over a year in production but, finally, it’s nearly ready. A lot of the delay has been me just wanting to get it right, but also I’ve had some interest from publishers and I’m trying to find the best fit. It’s a slow process.

If you want me to let you know when it’s ready to actually buy, subscribe to my newsletter on this link and I’ll keep you in the loop. This is a unique product, and I know you’re just going to love it.

Talk to you soon

Phil

You see, I’m not big on resolutions, because I think many people use New Year as an excuse to set themselves unfeasibly huge goals, or worse still arbitrarily schedule piffling personal habit removal (smoking, eating, bell ringing) which could be done at any time. Either way I’m not comfortable with the idea I might be trying to artificially introduce major change based solely on the change of year from one to another. People want to make a splash, a fresh start. I don’t see New Years that way.

I see them as a refocussing exercise. A necessary housecleaning process. A meditation on your goals, wants, needs and mission in life. I have this ritual at New Year and on every birthday. It’s like if you work for yourself where you are rewriting your business plan on a regular basis (which I also do) where you reassess where you are going and if the plan you had for getting you there is still valid. It’s like that, a combination status check, refocus, new thought, and meditation on your possible futures. It’s checking to see if you are on track, seeing if you have old stuff in your mind and work that need to be cleared out.

This year I have a few things on my mind, things I want to achieve and ways I want to grow.

1. Finish the novel
my novel has been on hold since I started prepping the Creative Genius Programme and once that’s finally finished and on sale I’ll have to forget all the excuses and get on with the book. On the up side, having had so much time away from it I can read the existing first draft chapters with a fresh eye and make some informed choices.

2. Finish the screenplay
same applies for the film I want to write and eventually direct. Although this has been pulling me away from the CGP work on a regular basis. I have a better excuse with the screenplay because against my own advice I have no clue where I’m going with it, it’s just kind of evolving. I can write the novel and plan the screenplay.

3. Market and Launch CGP
I’ve spent the best part of 2011 making my creativity training technology CGP ready for launch, and the best thing I can do is make sure as many people as possible see it. If nobody knows it exists then what’s the point, right? Plus I mean to make CGP and the company I’ve created to market the technology a success in 2012, a viable business and career. It’s going to take a lot of work, but I am so into the task I have a real shot at making that happen.

4. Make a Film
I am a filmmaker after all and when is the last time I made a film? I am getting the bug again and I know that I don’t want 2012 to elapse without making a proper film with actors and a small crew. I miss being on set so much sometimes it actually hurts.

5. Make Time for Me
All this working is going to have a hit on my personal development if I let it. I need to ensure I have time for meditation, exercise, health maintenance and other things which inform and empower me. Relationships, children, household environment and other personal things must not suffer because I want to be a success.

oOo

As I said I am getting very close to launch of my online course for creativity, Writing Fit, will be on sale very soon. If you want me to let you know when it’s ready for you, subscribe to my newsletter on this link and I’ll keep you in the loop. This is a unique product, and I know you’re just going to love it.

oOo

Recommended Reads
The Wealthy Writer by Nick Daws and Ruth Barringham

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this is truly wonderful book, containing a lot of insider information I wish I’d known before I tried making a living writing online. There’s a section on writing for the Internet, and how you become an online copywriter. It goes into the intricacies of writing to a style, but also really meaty technical tips like the best practice for including keywords for SEO etc. He talks about house style, personality and tone, but he also gives some wicked advice about compressing your thoughts and keeping it simple, punchy and impactful. There are sections on creating and maintaining your writers web site, writing articles for article hubs, and selling your services as a freelance on job auction sites. Then there’s blogging. Also the chapter on writing and selling information products, also known as eBooks, which is actually literally the best piece of writing on this subject I have ever read. It was bang on. Add to that the articles about affiliate networks, VRE, promotion, AdWords and a mass of other superb nuggets of wisdom from Nick and his co-writer Ruth and you have one of the biggest and best writer training products you can get. As I’ve said before Nick is one of the few writing coaches whose work I really respect, and on the strength of this work, Ruth is also one of my new favourite teachers.

Most other ebook writers give you a 50 page cut and paste fest full of decent but unoriginal material and charge the earth. In my experience Nick does the exact opposite of that. This book is no exception, a huge 259 pages of densely packed professional advice to get you on the road to being a professional, and yes, wealthy writer. To purchase your own little piece of heaven follow this link. You won’t regret it.

See you soon,

Phil

But I am if I’m honest sappy and sentimental. It’s an age thing. I love the old Christmas specials you used to get on TV when I was a kid; shows recorded in high summer, featuring men in festive jumpers singing by a Christmas tree in a studio, surrounded by adoring dancers wearing skimpy Santa suit bikinis, all of them gradually being buried under a rain of expanded polystyrene bobbles. Ah a traditional TV studio Christmas!

And being off school for a few weeks, getting up in the morning and playing Lego and Action Man (UK version of GI Joe) or both, and watching the stream of Tom & Jerry cartoons and Laurel & Hardy shorts that passed for children’s TV back then. Dressing the plastic tree with last years decorations, untangling the old fashioned incandescent string of bulbs, one of which was always broken and prevented the string lighting up, prompting you to fiddle with a flimsy wire and bulbs plugged directly into a mains electricity socket. Ah health and safety freedom!

And going out to play in giant snow drifts, free from the modern buzzkilling paranoia that it was caused by global warming, and even when it snowed everything kept going, even if the the snow got to be 10 feet high, cars and trains still moved along through the trench dug by the snow plough. Ah the bulldog spirit!

And oh how we loved the end of year top 10s and 12 tips articles. How I miss those… in fact I wish I could do one of my own. (Cue the music)

On The GDW of Christmas
Old Phil South Gave To Me…

12 Be Authentic
Let your stories be authentically YOU. Tell YOUR story, not an autobiography necessarily, but let your story be about what YOU are about.

11 Be In Flow
Let yourself be in a state of relaxed awareness, let the ideas out. Go from idea to idea smoothly and without effort.

10 Catching Ideas
Ideas are like skittish little silver fish. Don’t spook them, say softly “Hi little guy” before quickly snatching them from the water.

9 Have Desire
You won’t catch any fish if you don’t want to enough. You have to fish, you have to dip your lure in the water to catch something. Fish don’t jump out of the stream and flap to your door.

8 Meditation
I recommend all writers, dammit, all artists of any kind of art, meditate on a daily basis. It cleans the mind and relaxes you enough to go fishing for ideas.

7 Please don’t force it!
Let your thoughts out onto paper, never try to force them out. It really doesn’t work that way. Practise letting them out and you’ll get good at it.

6 Use your senses
Hone your senses, stimulate them daily, it gives you more sensual details for your writing and activates your creative brain.

5 Things to SAY!
If you have nothing to say don’t say anything, that’s what my father used to say. Don’t start writing till you have something to say. You might want to have more than one thing to say, too.

4 Don’t seek Fortune
You might get it by selling your book but don’t go into the writing process wanting it because it will spoil your aim.

3 Don’t seek Fame
You might get it by selling your book but don’t go into the writing process wanting it because it will spoil your aim. Is there an echo in here?

2 Just Enjoy
Just go out there and play your natural game. Enjoy the process of writing, enjoy describing your fictional world. Have fun while you write it or nobody will have fun reading it.

1 And be sure to finish FIRST DRAFT!!!
If you are distracted into doing anything which is not getting your first draft finished (once you have your story planned out of course), stop it NOW and get back to work. Finishing a first draft quickly and without fear is the primary characteristic of a soon to be successful writer.

Merry Christmas from GDW and a Happy New Year!

oOo

Oh and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention in passing that my online course for creativity, Writing Fit, will be on sale in 2012. If you want me to let you know when it’s ready for you, subscribe to my newsletter on this link and I’ll keep you in the loop. This is a unique product, and I know you’re just going to love it.

oOo

Recommended Christmas Reads
I’m currently enjoying PENTECOST by Joanna Penn, which is a much more exciting and gritty read than I was expecting from Joanna. Why?

Okay how to put this delicately… it’s not that I’m sexist because despite my age I’m really not, ask anyone. But you know, this kind of sprawling, globe trotting, religious themed, action adventure thriller is historically the province of men; retired marines, mercenaries or CIA analysts. Or Dan Brown. It’s what you expect. And Joanna is, self evidently to my well trained eye, a woman. So then my not entirely foolish expectation when perusing her first novel was of something a little more, you know, delicate in character. I’ve watched the videos on her blog and my expectation was preset by my experience of her happy video interviews with authors around the world.

But wow, beneath her pleasant and chirpy demeanour lurks the black heart of a terrorist interrogator, a fearless adventurer. She kills a nun in cold blood in the opening, burns her alive, and that’s just for starters. It’s a surprising and thrilling read and contains more than its predicted ration of shocks. I won’t tell you anything more about the story (I’ve already said too much) I’ll just let you be surprised and consumed by it as I was. I will say if you enjoy Mr Brown and his ilk and are tiring of their formula, Joanna’s entry into the genre is a breath of fresh air. Well, slightly stale air from a cobwebby, underground hiding place of some dark religious secret. But, you know, air. And her female protagonist is strong, clever and resourceful, but not in a cheesy Tomb Raider way. More like Indiana Jones than Lara Croft. And deep joy I hear she’s working on another book in the series!

I found it really enjoyable, and while it’s of course very cheap on Kindle or other ebook readers, having read it on Kindle for iPad I fully intend to buy it as a paperback book in the new year for the moment I inevitably re-read it. Yeah I still read actual books, and re-read things I’ve already read. What of it? Sue me.

If you like the sound of PENTECOST, you can get it on Kindle on Amazon UK, or in Paperback. Change the .co.uk to a .com for the US version. Enjoy!

my way or the Hemingway

There are those that think that to be creative and write dark heroic suffering prose you have to be suffering. Au contraire. The suffering person isn’t creative. Well, the suffering person is just a person with the brakes off so if they are creative it’s almost by accident.

Same goes for being creative under the influence. Because some of your heroes were heavy drinkers or dopers doesn’t mean you have to be to see into their world. People under the influence are just people with the brakes off. Break down your inhibitions and you do stuff you normally wouldn’t do. That’s not to say you have to be wasted to be creative. No in order to be creative you just have to tap into your creative source, your subconscious.

I’m not a party pooper, I like to have fun and drinking is fun, but I’m here to tell you I know more creative types who wasted their lives trying to find creative inspiration at the bottom of a bottle than I do successful professional writers. And they went through a lot of bottles looking for it. Intoxication doesn’t make you more inspired. Drugs don’t make you more creative. They just make you think you are.

You don’t need to suffer to write about suffering, you just have to understand suffering. Let your characters do the suffering so you don’t have to.

oOo

Oh and don’t forget Writing Fit will be on sale in 2012. If you want me to let you know when it’s ready for you, subscribe to my newsletter on this link and I’ll keep you in the loop. This is a unique product, and I know you’re just going to love it.

oOo

Recommended Reads
Now you know as well as a writer I am also a hypnotist. If you didn’t you do now. I use it a lot in my creativity coaching, and one of my favourite hypnosis books, well I suppose its an audiobook, is Igor Ledochowski’s “Conversational Hypnosis”. It’s a kind of retooling and updating of the kind of hypnosis that the great grandaddy of hypnosis Milton Erickson used to do. It’s old school, but in a very real sense it’s new school as well as Erickson’s work was also the basis for what they call NLP. Igor’s programme takes you through all the stages of conversational hypnosis, that is to say hypnosis you do to people while talking. There is no official “trance state” but the person you are talking to is hypnotised. They just aren’t aware of it. This isn’t some creepy mind control thing, and it’s almost impossible to use something like this for evil ends, but it does make you more persuasive in conversation. Thinking about language in this way makes you a much better writer, trust me. If you don’t believe me have a LOOK.

My second tip is the excellent “Writesparks!” software by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ. (As WC Fields would say, what a euphonious appellation!) Using this software you can generate over 10 million starting points and kick offs for your work. I really like this program, and the only downside for me is I’m a Mac user and I have to run an emulator to use it, but it’s a great program and I am all about having options. For music I use about 4-5 different pieces of software to jog my creativity. On the writing side I have “Writesparks!” and a few other things including a program by Joe Vitale for generating Hypnotic writing, that is to say copywriting which is more compelling because it’s hypnotically based. That said Joe’s program is not for every situation. Shery’s program generates plot points and randomises characters and starting lines. It’s brilliant. It’s not the best looking program, but give me a tool that does the job and you can skip the paint job, you know what I mean? Check it out HERE.

Let’s talk soon.

This is the trouble when you try and be wacky. Or try to be authentic. Or try to be something you are not. It’s an amazing thing but you know the way to make your ideas fit together? Be authentic. If you are in the proper creative state and you let the ideas flow rather than force them out then they have a unity you don’t get from desperate randomness.

But then authenticity, being yourself and not trying to be something you are not, is the cornerstone of all good writing. Scratch that – it’s the cornerstone of all good art, full stop. You have to be real, you have to be you. Don’t try and be a sci-fi author if you don’t read it. Don’t try to write a young adult book if you are just doing it to make money. Don’t write literary novels just to win the Man Booker prize.

Don’t jump into a foxhole with a load of other writers, and do wizards or vampires or middle aged newly divorced women finding love while selling their marital villa in Provence… Find a niche for yourself. CREATE ONE! And for goodness sake write what you write to please you, a fan of your own genre, and if you are authentically someone who writes philosophical science fantasy mexican wrestler novels, then do that.

Don’t do that last one, that’s my niche.

oOo

Writing Fit will be on sale in 2012. If you want me to let you know when it’s ready for you, subscribe to my newsletter on this link and I’ll keep you in the loop. This is a unique product, and I know you’re just going to love it.

oOo

Recommended Reads
Now you know as well as a writer I am also a hypnotist. If you didn’t you do now. I use it a lot in my creativity coaching, and one of my favourite hypnosis books, well I suppose its an audiobook, is Igor Ledochowski’s “Conversational Hypnosis”. It’s a kind of retooling and updating of the kind of hypnosis that the great grandaddy of hypnosis Milton Erickson used to do. It’s old school, but in a very real sense it’s new school as well as Erickson’s work was also the basis for what they call NLP. Igor’s programme takes you through all the stages of conversational hypnosis, that is to say hypnosis you do to people while talking. There is no official “trance state” but the person you are talking to is hypnotised. They just aren’t aware of it. This isn’t some creepy mind control thing, and it’s almost impossible to use something like this for evil ends, but it does make you more persuasive in conversation. Thinking about language in this way makes you a much better writer, trust me. If you don’t believe me have a LOOK.

My second tip is the excellent “Writesparks!” software by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ. (As WC Fields would say, what a euphonious appellation!) Using this software you can generate over 10 million starting points and kick offs for your work. I really like this program, and the only downside for me is I’m a Mac user and I have to run an emulator to use it, but it’s a great program and I am all about having options. For music I use about 4-5 different pieces of software to jog my creativity. On the writing side I have “Writesparks!” and a few other things including a program by Joe Vitale for generating Hypnotic writing, that is to say copywriting which is more compelling because it’s hypnotically based. That said Joe’s program is not for every situation. Shery’s program generates plot points and randomises characters and starting lines. It’s brilliant. It’s not the best looking program, but give me a tool that does the job and you can skip the paint job, you know what I mean? Check it out HERE.

Let’s talk soon.

What is it?

As I’ve said before I’ve been working on this project for a long, long time, as it was always my intention to use the techniques I use with my students to form the basis of a writing course, but it’s become a lot more than that. And I’ve made some surprising and wonderful discoveries along the way.

I mean what if I was to say to you I could teach you the REAL secret behind every bestseller? Sounds intriguing doesn’t it? But it’s true.

I’m not talking about the things talked about in most writing courses, like how to write viewpoints and scenes, how to write good dialogue, how many pages you should write or how to keep track of all those characters. That’s not what separates bestselling authors from the rest of us. Over the years I read just about every writing course on Planet Earth and I have to say while they were all helpful in some way none of them really got down to what I was interested in. How humans create things in their mind and put them on paper. Everyone tells you what people who write books do, nobody tells you how to do it, dream a story up in the first place and make sure the ideas all get onto the page.

All bestsellers, all Man Booker prizewinners, all writers who write words we love to read, they all have something in common and I know what it is. After decades of reading and research and pondering and writing, and after thirty years as a professional writer, I finally have my answer. The key to creative genius. I feel like I’ve been on a quest and come back with treasure. But I have my answer. The thing that all successful and creative writers share. The secrets behind creative genius.

Creativity is not a job it’s a lifestyle.

I’ll be honest with you, it’s not easy, it’s not a magic bullet, it’s not a 5 step programme. (Actually you could call it a 10 step programme but that’s not really the point.) It is an accumulation of everything I know about writing and creativity and how it works. It’s something we all have inside and I’ve discovered how to activate it in you.

I’m very excited, because as far as I know nobody is doing it in quite this way, it’s pretty much unique and it’s not just about how to write a bestseller, because there is no formula for that. Bestsellers have luck on their side. But it is a way to give you the same internal resources that all the writers you love had when they wrote their bestselling books. It’s not about money really, it’s about learning the right mindset, it’s about teaching yourself to mine the bottomless well of ideas you have inside and getting those ideas out. It’s about reprogramming your mind and rewiring your brain. (Don’t worry there’s no surgery involved.) It’s about training yourself to use your mind freely, releasing the creative energy we unconsciously keep locked up in our brains, it’s about setting free your own voice and giving yourself access to your unlimited pool of ideas, forever.

Singers don’t force their voice out, they let it free. A song isn’t sung by brute force, it’s allowed to soar. Creative writers are no different.

Oh and something else, I know so many people who are writing a book, sometimes more than one, and the one thing they not doing is writing. I ask them why and they come up with all manner of reasons why they want to write, and what they do and don’t want their book to be. The more I talk to writers the more I realise that everyone thinks about writing the wrong way. It’s so simple to do it right, but so easy to fall into the trap of doing it wrong.

Lots of teachers and gurus tell you how to write, at least they say they do, but they stop short of actually telling you how once they have run you through the mechanics of writing. No training about the inner game, the internal process. This is why I famously say most writer training is training you to type, not write.

After my research I finally have the internal process figured out, I’ve isolated it and found a way to teach it. Sounds like a huge task, but I promise you it’s true. I’ll teach you the process from start to finish. From having the desire to do something, through ideas and how to have them, how to nurture your ideas and make them grow, to how to write and keep writing and feel no fear, all the way up to how to know when you’re finished. And I’m putting it all into a product you can really use.

I’ll be using some techniques which, yes, at first you might be a little bit skeptical of, and they are unusual to say the least, but I’ve been working on these techniques and refining them for years. They are based in some very ancient mind programming tricks, which I’ve updated with some high tech wizardry and I’ve tried as far as possible to be more scientific than mystical, but you’re going to have to trust me and go with it if you want the results. It seems odd at first, but experience shows once the people I teach get into it they love it and find it easy and empowering. It’s powerful, it’s usable, and it’s not available anywhere else.

Writing Fit will be on sale in 2012. If you want me to let you know when it’s ready for you, subscribe to my newsletter on this link and I’ll keep you in the loop. This is a unique product, and I know you’re just going to love it.

oOo

Recommended Reads
The Wealthy Writer by Nick Daws and Ruth Barringham

Speaking of products you can use, I’ve been happily plugging “The Wealthy Writer” to my students for ages, and I should mention it to you too. I may have mentioned it in passing before but I’ve just re-read it and it’s a truly wonderful book, containing a lot of insider information I wish I’d known before I tried making a living writing online. For starters what I love about Nick’s work is that it’s so readable. Seriously I mean it’s freakishly easy to assimilate. Reading him it all sounds so stupidly easy, like you knew it already but you were just waiting for him to remind you. I’m not joking.

At the beginning there’s a section on writing for the Internet, and how you become an online copywriter. It goes into the intricacies of writing to a style, but also really meaty technical tips like the best practice for including keywords for SEO etc. He talks about house style, personality and tone, but he also gives some wicked advice about compressing your thoughts and keeping it simple, punchy and impactful. (Gosh, is that a word? Not according to my spellchecker.)

There are sections on creating and maintaining your writers web site, writing articles for article hubs, and selling your services as a freelance on job auction sites. Then there’s blogging. As my kids would say OMG. I wish I’d read this chapter before I set up my blog, as it would have saved me literally weeks of wasted time making avoidable rookie mistakes. Also the chapter on writing and selling information products, also known as eBooks, which is actually literally the best piece of writing on this subject I have ever read. It was bang on. Add to that the articles about affiliate networks, VRE, promotion, AdWords and a mass of other superb nuggets of wisdom from Nick and his co-writer Ruth and you have one of the biggest and best writer training products you can get.

I know I just got through telling you that most other writing training is rubbish, but when I said that I wasn’t talking about Nick, and besides he teaches a whole different area to me. I do creativity and he does hard information about being a working writer. Listen now I mean it, Nick is the real thing. He’s one of the few writing coaches whose work I really respect.

Most other ebook writers give you a 50 page cut and paste fest full of decent but unoriginal material and charge the earth. In my experience Nick does the exact opposite of that. He always overdelivers and packs his books with USABLE tips that you can actually take and use. The advice is practical, real world based and clearly sourced from personal professional experience. He pours his heart into his work and you can tell immediately he’s talking from his own knowledge and written it down personally. This book is no exception, a huge 259 pages of densely packed professional advice to get you on the road to being a professional, and yes if you do it right, wealthy writer.

Ok I’ve gushed enough, take it as read I can’t recommend this highly enough, although as you can see I’ve tried. To purchase your own little piece of heaven follow this link. You won’t regret it.

See you soon,

Phil

Which one do you think I am? It’s possible you might assume I am the latter, and if I’m honest I have to admit I started out that way. I had an urge to be a writer but I was totally focussed on the outcome of being rich and famous. It wasn’t until later in life after having a little fame and fortune I realised that fame is not all it’s cracked up to be and fame for its own sake is ultimately useless, and actually kind of embarrassing. Witness all the people in the public eye who are famous for nothing but being famous.

I soon realised that authenticity and honest aims of being good at what I do are worth a lot more to me than money I didn’t really earn and fame I don’t deserve. Writing a good book that has something to say is its own reward. But yeah we all have to earn a living, so of the three types of writer its better to be the middle one, someone who earns a living through something they love.

Let’s face it you have to love writing if you want to earn your living doing it. You’ll be doing it all day and sometimes it won’t be as fun as you’d like. I worked as a writer for almost 30 years and there were days I hated it. But it’s like being a doctor, they earn a lot of money but you have to put up with a lot of other people’s pain and suffering.

So how do you earn money writing and feel good about yourself at the same time? I read a lot, as you know, and a lot of things I read to help me be a better writer are not your obvious writer coaching books. I read a lot of self help books, not because I’m broken and need help, but because I like to know how people think. Along the way I’ve found a lot of terrific books and authors who truly have something to say about the human condition. One of these is Napoleon Hill.

You might not know his name but he is one of the great granddaddies of self help and success literature. He wrote his famous book “Think and Grow Rich” in the 1930s, and it’s still as relevant today as it was then, especially its perspective on success in the face of an economic depression (what financial people like to call the “downturn” to minimise any thoughts about anyone being responsible for it). I loved the book so much when I first read it I bought a beautiful black leather bound volume with gold edged pages to enhance my reading experience and give the book the respect it is due in my life. Also it kinda looks like a bible and when I get it out people are sometimes a little bit freaked out by it, like I’m going to start preaching, and I love nothing more than subverting people’s expectations.

So I would highly recommend that you seek out a copy of “Think and Grow Rich” for yourself and see how many ideas it has about personal growth, running a business, thinking about your own success as holistic whole, and give you tons of ideas for stories based on the case studies and other things he talks about in the book as examples of lives that went badly but ended well.

Oh yeah and because I like you lots I have something for you, a free rare set of CDs of Napoleon Hill talking about his ideas in person at a seminar in the 1960s. It’s chock full of great stories and powerful ideas about success and personal growth. I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think.

Napoleon Hill – In His Own Words
(free CD set for GDW readers)

Download the full CDs by clicking here OR listen online below.

Disc 01

oOo

Oh and while I remember it I’m having a worldwide winter season sale on my books on Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon DE and all the others it propagates to. I reduced the price to just 99 euros/cents for the Winter. (For some reason in the US they are showing as $1.39 but I suspect that’s because I’m looking at them from the UK and they are adding VAT.) Why am I doing this? Well I figure it’s cold and nasty out, people are going to need something to read. Plus I want to get my ideas out to as many people as possible and like I say money is not totally the aim here, so to reinforce that if you email me a receipt from Amazon for a purchase of “Let’s Write a Story” or “Writing Better Movies” I’ll send you a free eBook copy of “Think and Grow Rich” in the eBook format of your choice, PDF, epub, Kindle, whatever. I will also do this EVEN if the receipt is not your own but from a friend.

See you soon.

It’s true what he says, people always tend to give up just before they get good. Don’t ever let that happen to you.

And let me know what you think about this in the comments below. Do you have anything to add?

oOo

By the way I’d be delighted if you’d visit Amazon UK or US and look at my books on Kindle. They’re not expensive and contain a lot of really useful information about ways you can become a better writer, whatever your genre or interests. I also create a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics which I would love you to subscribe to here. It’s free and I’ll be releasing information about the “Writing Fit” course here first, so sign up and I’ll even give you some free tools right away. Yes, I’ll take your email address but send you about £15 worth of free stuff. I promise not to misuse your email address, I will only use it to contact you, and I won’t sell it on. Look, I get as much spam as you do, if not a lot more, I know the value of honouring your trust.

All the best

Phil South

The tests stimulated “divergent thinking” and other problem-solving skills, which were then scored on four scales:

1. Fluency. The total of “interpretable, meaningful, and relevant” ideas generated.
2. Flexibility. The number of different categories of relevant responses.
3. Originality. The statistical rarity of the responses.
4. Elaboration. The amount of detail in the responses.

Now that all sounds very dry, and there’s a good reason for that… it kind of is. But what I draw from these arguably arbitrary tests is the following:

Creative people are fluent, flexible, original and elaborate.

That sounds right to me. Creative people are “in flow” as I call it, a state of heightened awareness where they are able to flexibly make connections which are authentic to them, and then extrapolate or elaborate on them, in other words improvise.

Creative people have gotten used to being in a state of flow, where ideas come to them seemingly from nowhere. They have what you’d call a facility for ideas.

Like all things to do with the human body, and the brain is part of the body, it’s a supply on demand scenario. You need stamina, you get stamina, you don’t demand it by sitting around on your butt all day playing XBox, you don’t get it. Same is true of creative thought. If you demand ideas all the time you get ideas all the time, the gate is open and the ideas flow.

One thing that creative people do not do is strain. They make it seem effortless, and you know why? Because it is effortless. People who aspire to be creative try so hard to be creative, they make random connections which don’t work, they sweat and strive and try… and nothing comes. Because they are forcing it. Creativity is a natural process and you have to unclench.

You don’t get creative leaps by forcing the issue, you get creative leaps in the same way you get good at bench pressing weights or running or using parkour to leap from one building to another; you practise. You get used to how it feels and you know the feeling when you have it. What creative people do is get themselves into a mindset of creativity, because they’ve done it lots before and they know where to go.

If you want to be creative, you don’t need to force it out, you just need to learn how to let it go.

oOo

The first UNIFIED FIELD Creative Genius Programme “Writing Fit” is currently being built and I’m very excited about it, and as much as I’d like to tell you all about it now, I really can’t. All I can say is that I’m doing some very cool lessons and exercises and I think you’re going to love them.

Meantime I’d be delighted if you’d visit Amazon UK or US and look at my books on Kindle. They’re not expensive and contain a lot of really useful information about ways you can become a better writer, whatever your genre or interests.

Oh and I create a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics which I would love you to subscribe to here. It’s free and I’ll be releasing information about the “Writing Fit” course here first, so sign up and I’ll even give you some free tools right away. Yes, I’ll take your email address but send you about £15 worth of free stuff. I promise not to misuse your email address, I will only use it to contact you, and I won’t sell it on. Look, I get as much spam as you do, if not a lot more, I know the value of honouring your trust.

All the best

Phil South

Every once in a while I let you know what I am reading, and there are two reasons for this. One it lets you know that I read, and I read a lot. Writers read. Some writers I know say they don’t read because they don’t want to plagiarise someone elses work or base their ideas and stories on someone else’s thoughts. Well actually the thing is, and this is a little bit mean but it’s true, the people who say that usually could USE copying someone else’s work for a while. Seriously, they are deluding themselves that creativity and being a good writer comes out fully formed after years of thinking by sheer force of personal brilliance.

Poppycock.

Good writing comes from the same source as good driving or good tennis, lots of passion, lots of practise and if you are lucky once you are good you might show a little brilliance.

Second reason is I want to suggest the things I am reading to you because I think they are pretty good. And the third thing is it’s easy to do… Wait, I only said two things, forget I said that.

First thing on my reading list at the moment is Deepak Chopra’s“Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul”. Now this sounds like a lot of stodgy philosophy and religious claptrap but I assure you it’s not. Chopra is a doctor and a scientist and although his ideas might be construed as belonging in the “mind, body and spirit” section of the book shop, I promise you it’s a really very accessible read. Chopra makes a living describing the most complicated ideas in the universe in a friendly avuncular fashion and if you don’t know his work you should give him a try. Even if you’re not a believer in anything, an atheist or agnostic you can still read this book, because even if you don’t believe in a soul doesn’t mean that is not an interesting exercise or topic of discussion. Most of the book is about the mind, the body, quantum physics, Ayurveda, and all manner of other traditionally incompatible things. It’s a big meaty chunk of a book which takes time to read because you have to keep putting it down and pondering the significance of what you just read. Either you will come away well informed and with lots of interesting questions, or it will change your life and introduce you to a whole new way of thinking about things which you formerly were unaware of.

Next is another book which you might find disturbing if you are of an anti-spiritual bent, but again I assure you it’s worth the effort if you are open to new ideas. David Lynch semi-autobiographcal “Catching The Big Fish” talks about his life, his art, and his dedication to meditation and consciousness, all wrapped up in the usual David Lynch style. The book takes the form of a sequence of sometimes only thinly related chapters; sometimes about life in general, sometimes about his life specifically. He takes the oppotunity of talking about his life to go into how he got into meditation via the Transcendental Meditation movement in the 70s, and how he hasn’t missed his two daily meditations, 20 mins in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon, ever since. As an advocate of meditation myself I could only nod sagely in agreement through the passages in the book about meditation and its effect on creativity and, well almost everything else. But there are lots of other wonderful parts to this book. If you’re a Lynch fan you will be in heaven, but if you are not so much of fan, and many people I know are very much NOT, then this might not be for you. (He’s a great divider, like Marmite.) If you are not fussed either way about Mr Lynch then more so than any other book in this review, it really could go either way… I myself enjoyed it immensely, and especially as I bought it as an audiobook with Lynch reading it himself. As a filmmaker I loved all the descriptions about how he got into film making as an extension of his surrealist painting. Wonderful, illuminating, inspiring but mercifully short.

Something else I think might sort the men from the boys or the sheep from the goats is the next book I’m reading. Philip K Dick’s “The Man In The High Castle”originally published in 1962 I think. The Japanese and the Germans won WWII and they divided America up between them. The plot is very hard to summarise, but it’s a political story with a thread of personal stories woven into it. Philip K Dick was a fascinating writer and a troublesome man. He was a science fiction writer, of that there was no doubt, but he was a spectacular creative genius and philosopher who just so happened to pick science fiction as the platform for his ideas. He always examines interesting questions about identity, what it is to be human, and what challenges we face in the wider world. I read and reread a lot of Phil Dick partly because he’s hugely entertaining but partly because I figure if I can understand how he does what he does then it will make me a better writer. I’m still trying to figure out how he does it. A lot of the stuff he writes is silly, filled with in-jokes and strange character names. But somehow he makes it work and I think it’s because he is always wonderfully, powerfully authentic. He was strange, even some would say insane at times, but he was always 100% authentically himself. That’s something we should all aspire to be.

Another thick meaty book is my next selection (again as an audiobook), “What The Bleep Do We Know” a book based on the film by William Arntz, who co-directed the film along with Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente. The book of the film and the film itself contains a selection of somewhat fruity, I want to say “kooks”, but don’t let that put you off. Once again I say to you be open to ideas and ignore the fruity excesses of the kooks and cherry pick the bits you want to use. It does contain a lot of information I’ve never seen or heard of anywhere else and as such is a useful and informative piece of entertainment. Entertain and inform, that’s the aim, right? The movie and book cover the connection between consciousness, the mind, and the material world and how what you think affects the material world. In this way it’s kind of similar to “The Secret”, but the reason I give this one more house room than “The Secret” that there’s a lot of careful explanation of some basic quantum physics principles. Now here’s the thing. This movie taps into the heart of what skeptics called “quantum mysticism”, where the vague and unexplained nature of some areas of quantum physics gives rise to people applying it any way they like. Now I agree with a lot of what they say here (not withstanding the credibility of SOME of the people interviewed) as some of it is on shaky ground, BUT a lot of the people they talk to are experts in quantum physics and consciousness and you could do a LOT worse than listen to what they have to say.

“The Code of Influence” by Paul Mascetta is an audio course in influence and persuasion. Why would you read something like this as a writer? In fact why would you read any of these books as a writer, what do they have to do with writing? Well this book is a case in point. Writing is all about understanding. That’s right, understanding. You understand how your characters would feel if they were real flesh and blood people, you describe a world where people want things, have hangups, relationships, dramas, make huge mistakes and have dreams. Why would you NOT read these kind of books? In this book Paul Mascetta, a tough talking sales guy from Brooklyn talks to you about how you influence other people to do what you want them to do, buy a product, an idea or you as an employee. He covers a lot of different areas in pursuit of this goal and does it very well. He’s incorporated a lot of different disciplines here and the whole is better than the sum of the parts. I learned a lot about sales and a lot about human nature.

I read a lot of other books and audio courses this month, because I’m writing my own course, but these were the ones I liked the most and had the most information in them. Why am I not pimping links to Amazon or web sites where you can buy these things? Because I’m not doing this to sell you books and cop a percentage. I’m doing this because I’m sharing my process so you can get something out of it. If you really want the books you can look for them online really easily anyway, just google the names and you’ll find them. I recommend them all so take your pick.

Here’s the take way: cultivate a habit of learning as much about human nature, how the mind works, how relationships can be fixed and how lives can go wrong and you will never run out of material for your stories and colourful details for your characters.

oOo

The first UNIFIED FIELD Creative Genius Programme “Writing Fit” is under construction and I’m very excited about it, but as much as I’d like to tell you all about it now, I really can’t just yet. All I can say is that we’re coming up with some very cool materials at the moment and I think you’re going to love them.

Meanwhile do me a favour and swing by Amazon UK or US and look at my books on Kindle. They’re not expensive and contain a lot of really useful information about ways you can become a better writer, whatever your genre or interests.

Oh and I create a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics which I would love you to subscribe to here. It’s free and I’ll be releasing information about the “Writing Fit” course here first, so sign up and I’ll even give you some free tools right away. Yes, I’ll take your email address but send you about £15 worth of free stuff. I promise not to misuse your email address, I will only use it to contact you, and I won’t sell it on. Look, I get as much spam as you do, if not more, I know the value of keeping a relationship happy.

All the best