July Update

Blog Posts

How to give an elevator speech
Use a technique taught by Hilton Johnson to deliver the premise of your business, product, or service in two sentences, also known as an elevator speech.

Government image sites
Below is a list United States government image sites. In addition to specific image sites, many government agencies also have Instagram and Flickr accounts.

Write your book in a weekend, Part 2
This post is based on notes from a couple of different webinars I attended in 2009 and 2010.

Be willing to learn
Never quit learning - Be willing to learn.

Free image sites
This post is a review of several free image sites.

Master your tools
Never quit learning - master your tools

Find answers on the Internet
Never quit learning - find answers on the Internet.

Made to Stick - reading notes
This post is a summary of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

Read a book monthly
Never quit learning - read a book monthly.

Writing 365

I have been faithfully writing every day. As of yesterday, my word count is 320,576. At the beginning of the year, I wasn't sure if I would achieve 365,000 words by the end of the year. However, instead of focusing on the end of this journey, I have kept my focus on the goal of writing at least 1,000 words per day.

Since I have been recording the number of words written for each category for each day, I am able to analyze writing patterns throughout the year. Below is a chart which shows how many times I wrote in each category by month. I did not include the journal category, as I have written consistently every day. On some days I wrote more than one entry for the ebook category.

June Update

Blog Posts

Jim Rohn's 12 Pillars of Success
This post contains a brief biographical sketch of Jim Rohn and his 12 pillars of success, based on my notes from a webinar.

Can you be a successful writer and work full-time?
Anthony Trollope was a novelist during the Victorian era. He worked full-time for the British post office and wrote prolifically.

Poetic Form - Interlocking Rubaiyat
A centuries-old poetic form, the interlocking rubaiyat is a fairly straightforward form used by Robert Frost and others.

Eighth Grade Bios
A collection of eighth bios of students who matured into successful adults.

Jim Rohn on Journaling
The introduction Jim Rohn included in his journal.

Notes on Thinker Toys
This post contains my notes from 2009 on the book Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques by Michael Michalko.

Questions to ask
Two lists of questions are included in this post. The first is a list of biographical questions when pulling out family history or conducting an interview for historical purposes. The second list is a series of questions to ask when networking with others.

Writing for your life - book review and notes
This post includes a summary of Writing for Your Life: A guide and companion to the inner worlds by Deena Metzger. My notes from when I read the book are also included in the post.

Writing 365

I am happy to report I have passed the 75% mark of 273,750 words! Of course, my true goal is to write at least 1,000 words per day for 365 days, result in 365,000 words. Half-way through the year, I believe I can safely say that I will exceed this total number of words. My average is around 1,500 words per day.

May Update

Blog Posts

Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln is probably one of the best known speeches in the history of the United States. Written for the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the speech is only 271 words in length and probably took 2-3 minutes to read.

Stock Video Sites (Free and Paid) Reviewed
In this blog post I review several stock video sites including VideoBlocks, ShutterStock, iStockPhoto, VideoHive, XStockVideo, Videezy, Videvo, and StockFootageForFree. Four of these are free.

Apple iMovie Book Trailers
Use Apple iMovie to create dramatic trailers to promote movies, events, and books.

App Review for Writing on Your Phone
This post review different apps for writing on the iPhone. Apps discussed are Notes, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, and Google Docs. 

Dale Carnegie's Secrets of Success
The link in this post displays a list of tips from How to Win Friends & Influence People and How to Stop Worrying & Start Living.

Hero's Journey
Hero's Journey Story Structure using The Tale of Peter Rabbit as an example.

Best Seller in a Weekend - Webinar Review
Best Seller in a Weekend is the business of Alicia Dunams. This post is a review of a webinar I attended.

Another Set of Mental Jogging Prompts
More brainstorming prompts from the book Mental Jogging by Reid J. Daitzman.

Ultimate Video Bundle - App Review
The Ultimate Video Tools bundle consists of several utility apps to assist with converting images and GIFs to video formats. Most of the apps offer the ability to use music from previews on iTunes.

Writing 365

You can view my weekly update from April to compare my progress during the month of May, which is displayed below. I continue to meet my daily writing goals, but my writing interests continue to evolve. I am less regimented than at the beginning, as I now work towards a goal of 1,000 per day, and write in whatever categories interest me on a particular day. With the exception of journaling, which I write every day, the other categories (books, devotional, and blog posts) vary from day to day.

Weekly Update Apr 15-28

Blog Posts

Story Structure: Dan Wells
In this post, I share about another story structure you can use for writing fiction, structuring presentations, and telling true stories.

Presentation Rehab Tip #4 - Use a 1-page List of Talking Points
When giving a presentation, use a one-page list of talking points instead of a word-for-word script. This applies even when presenting virtually.

The Calf Path
The Calf Path is a poem by Sam Walter Foss, an American poet.

Andrew Mayne's Twitter Promotion Ideas
This post lists some of Andrew Mayne's Twitter tips for book promotion.

Writing 365

The chart immediately below this paragraph displays my progress over the past four weeks. In looking at this detailed view you can clearly see the variation from 8,500 (Week 14) to 9,800 (Week 17). However, in my normal weekly summary chart the variation across the weeks is significantly less visible. Despite the variation, I exceed my goal of writing 1,000 words per day, a total of 7,000 words per week.

I have been excited this week because I am nearing the halfway point in terms of achieving 365,000 words. Within the next couple of days from this writing I will pass 182,500 words. I can't rest, though, because my goal is a daily writing goal that will cumulatively result in a large number of words, not just a total word goal.

Bible Project

In the last couple of weekly updates I skipped the Bible Project portion of the update. Thus, my results look improved when comparing the Previous OT and OT data lines. For some reason I found myself bogged down in the book of Judges, but pushed through. The next book in sequence, Ruth, is a short book of only four chapters. Now 1 Samuel is about 25% completed. Still, there is a lot more to come, as the completed writing thus far represents 33% of the total verses in the Bible.

Weekly Update Apr 8-14

Blog Posts

Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was written by Beatrix Potter in 1902. Potter incorporated Peter Rabbit into later stories as well. The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a great example for illustrating various story structure models.

Short run Book Printing
This post provides links and descriptions of websites with short run book printing services.

Use Google Forms to Create a Tracking Log
Google Forms is an easy and free way to create tracking logs and surveys you can access from your smart phone.

Writing 365

In a couple of future posts you will read about some of Andrew Mayne's tips. Mayne is a television personality and author. One of his tips is to use the phone for writing activities. In thinking about this, I decided to migrate all of my writing for the Writing 365 Project (where my goal is to write 1,000 or more word per day) from Microsoft Word and Apple Pages to Google Doc. While Word and Pages are great programs, the display of Google Docs is ideal for various screen sizes.

As a result, I have gone mobile this week. I used my iPad significantly more than in past weeks and also used my iPhone to write a few sentences here and there throughout the day. I must say, it is convenient to simply reach in to my pocket, grab my phone, and start writing. I don't even have to retrieve my laptop or iPad. Typing on the phone is still challenging for more than a couple of sentences, but I am going to experiment with the Siri voice dictation options.

I have been using a writing form that I created using the instructions above to enter the number of words completed each each. I later transferred these to Excel in order to create the summary chart below.

Weekly Update Mar 18-Apr 7

This is another "weekly update" that covers several weeks.

Blog Posts

Presentation Design: Before and After
This is a real example of how slides can be redesigned to appear more visual in nature.

Classes That Mattered
What classes from school were helpful over the years? This is my list.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
Review of How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.

Webinar Review: Micro-Coaching
Micro-coaching takes the successful elements of formal coaching and applies them to situations where a more immediate result is needed.

Travel Math
Use TravelMath.com, an online app to find cost estimates, distances, and information about destinations, including the closest airport.

Great Circle Mapper
This is the second in a series of posts on travel-related websites. The previous post focused on TravelMath.com, while this post is about a fun mapping app, Great Circle Mapper.

Writing 365

I recently spent three days out of town. Unfortunately, my schedule was such that I was unable to meet my goal of writing 1,000 words per day. I still wrote some words, but fell short of the goal. However, as soon as I returned home, my output returned to the usual average of around 1,250 words per day. The dip in the chart below represents the week when I was out of town.

In my last update I shared briefly about a book project which affected my Writing 365 project. Just as I am back to reaching my daily word goal, I also am back to writing in the four categories of journal, devotional, e-book, and blog post. For the first part of the year I faithfully wrote in each category every day. As the year has progressed my focus has been on the word count, writing in journal faithfully and writing with more flexibility in the other categories. It is still early in the year (just passed the 25% mark), so my plan may continue to evolve.

Weekly Update Feb 19-Mar 17

This weekly update is really more of a monthly update. As you can read about in the Writing 365 section, I took a slight detour to become involved with a special writing situation. This resulted in a suspension of my usual writing tasks, including blog posts. Fortunately, I try to stay 1-2 months ahead in writing posts, so this detour did not result in many missed posts (except weekly updates), but my list of scheduled posts has diminished, and I must now get back on track!

Blog Posts

A reality show with real consequences
The quadrennial race for President of the United States is a reality show, but with real consequences for the world.

Massive list of story prompts, Part 2
This is the second post of lists of story prompts. Find a category and pick a work. Take a few minutes to recall a memory centered around the word. Write a story about what you remember or an incident you experienced.

So you think you can write
Harlequin, the premier publisher of romance novels, provides several resources for authors as well as submission guidelines for each category of romance.

Presentation rehab tip 2: write the purpose
This is Tip 2 of several tips to create presentations and deliver them more effectively. This tip today is to write down the purpose of your presentation.

Combine multiple Excel worksheets into one
In this post I share about a project where I needed to combine multiple Excel worksheets into one using Visual Basic coding. The code combined 66 worksheets into 1 containing the entire King James Version of the Bible.

Today
Does it matter how you view a situation?

Tales of a dog named Sex (Dear Abby column)
This is a hilarious story about what happens when a dog has a peculiar name, "Sex."

Presentation rehab tip 3: don't use a script
When presenting, avoid using a script or reading the text displayed on the slides.

Writing 365

Since the beginning of 2016, I have been attempting to write a minimum of 1,000 words every day in the categories of a personal journal, daily devotional, e-books, and blog posts. For the most part, as I have previous reported in weekly updates, I have been able to remain on track.

In February one of my daughter's teachers and I had a conversation about old religious texts. Mr. C told me about a book written in the 1600s that has never been published since. As it is in the public domain, I located a PDF copy of scanned microfilm and began the process of converting the book into a modern publication. The first step in this effort was to type the text into an electronic form. I paused my regular writing (except the daily journal) to focus on typing in the words from this 400-year old book. Because this special project is still writing related, I counted the number of words I typed each day.

As a result, by word counts for the last three weeks have been considerably higher than previously. I am happy to say that the book is now in an electronic form. I now have moved on to other aspects of the book, which I will write about in future blog posts.

Bible Project

The Bible writing project, where I am writing out the entire Bible, was also largely suspended while I focused on the special project. I am currently working in the book of Judges, chapter, where Samson's girlfriend is pestering Samson into revealing the true source of his Hulk-like strength. If all goes as planned, I should be done with Judges by the end of March.

Weekly Update Feb 19-25

Blog Posts

VideoScribe Anywhere Whiteboard Drawing App
Animated whiteboard drawings are popular. This post features an overview the VideoScribe Anywhere whiteboard animation app.

Massive list of story prompts, Part 1
Books of lists are popular. This post features lists from various writing books to use as prompts for writing stories.

Writing 365 Tracking - Behind the scenes, Part 2

To help with my project of writing 1,000 words per day in 2016, I use a Microsoft workbook to track progress. In this post you will see how I created the various measurements.

Writing 365

In the book 11.22.63, by author Stephen King, the protagonist was introduced to a time portal by a cafe owner who discovered the portal. The cafe owner asked the lead character, Jake, to travel back to 1960 - the time portal only went to this one specific date - and hang out for up to three years to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. One of the phenomenon Jake experienced was push back from the universe whenever he tried to alter significant events.

This week sort of felt like that to me. I feel tremendous forces at work trying to prevent my writing at least 1,000 words per day. A couple of times during the week I wondered, Do I really need to do this? Can I make it through? However, I pushed myself to write, and successfully met my daily goals.

Bible Project

In order to track my progress in writing out the entire Bible by hand, I added a new bar line on the chart to display progress from the previous chart. Thus, I can easily see I only completed two chapters for this week under review. This serves as gentle reminder for me to pick up the pace. I'd like to complete at least three to four chapters every week.

Weekly Update Feb 12-18

Blog Posts

Presentation Rehab Tip 1
This is Tip 1 of several tips to create presentations and deliver them more effectively.

Writing 365 Tracking - behind the scene Part 1
To help with my project of writing 1,000 words per day in 2016, I use a Microsoft workbook to track progress. In this post you will see how I created the various measurements.

Writing 365

After a one-day slip last week when I did not complete my daily goal of writing 1,000 words, I regained the momentum this week, maintaining my average of around 1,250 words per day.

However, I realized my output for blog posts appears to be considerably less than for the other categories, at least for the week under review. I can see I need to resume writing a post every night, or at least more regularly throughout the week. If I wrote at least 250 words for blogs each night, the weekly total would be 1,750 words.

Summary for Feb 12-18
Blog Post: 1,059
Devotional: 2,338 words
eBook: 3,013 words
Journal: 2,354 words

Bible Project

The Bible Project, where I am writing out the entire Bible by hand, also progressed along at the expected pace. The lengths of each book and chapter vary. Even the verses themselves are inconsistently determined. Monks in the Middle Ages first developed the current structure of chapters and verses. While helpful for study and group activities, chapter and verse determinations seem rather arbitrary.

In the book of Joshua, for example, there are a series of verses with only three city names per verse. However, in other books, a verse might have 100 words. In writing out the book, I have also encountered many situations where the flow of a story is cut by a chapter break. It is unlikely a new structure will ever be developed, but perhaps it is time after hundreds of years.

When I first started with Genesis, I preserved the verse structure. About half-way through Deuteronomy I moved to a narrative structure using paragraphs, as defined by the version I use, the New King James Version.

Weekly Update Feb 5-11

Blog Posts

What I learned from the circus
What can you learn from attending the circus? Here's my list.

Variation on mind mapping, Part 2
In this second of two posts, I review the Mindly app, a mind mapping tool based on a concentric circle design.

Writing 365

Yesterday was the first day in 35 days when I did not meet my daily goal of writing 1,000 words. I spent the day traveling, with little downtime to finish my writing tasks. The only writing I completed was my journal entry. However, as a result of the activities of the day, I had a longer journal entry than usual. In situations like this, I believe, the best thing to do is keep moving forward. I would like these days to be few and far between, but recognize that things pop up from time to time.

As a whole, the week was successful because I wrote over 7,000. Additionally, from the perspective of progress, a yellow dot on the chart means at least some words were written. The conditional formatting status indicators in Excel are extremely convenient for creating visual cues to assess progress.

Bible Project

The Bible Project, where my goal is to write the entire Bible by hand, proceeded well. I completed 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. These are short books requiring only a week to complete all three books. I am currently on Chapter 5 of Judges. Judges is an action packed book with many lessons. The pattern of the book is a pattern of apostasy and worship, repeated for each judge appointed to lead Israel.

Weekly Update Jan 29-Feb 4

Blog Posts

Variations on Mind Mapping, Part 1
In this first of two posts, I review the Cell Storming app, a visual brainstorming tool similar to mind mapping.

Webinar Review: Create and Use Object Lessons
This post is a review of the webinar Aha! Some Object Lessons presented by Becky Pike Pluth and sponsored by Training Magazine Network.

Writing 365

The Writing 365 project is progressing well. Thus far, I have surpassed my daily writing goal of 1,000 words per week. This week under review has been the best yet: 9,571 words! In some upcoming posts I will share a behind-the-scenes look at the Microsoft Excel workbook I use to track my progress. I also created a formula to estimate how many total words I will have by 1-1-2017 based on my average words written per day. If I stay maintain the average of 1,250 words per day, the total number of words may be closer to 456,000 words rather than 365,000. It always surprises me to see how a relatively small number of words per day can accumulate to such a large total.

Bible Project

When I started the Bible Project, to write out the entire Bible by hand, my goal was to write a minimum of ten verses per day. For the most part, I been able to consistently achieve this goal. This week I completed the book of Joshua. There are 25 books that comprised 80% of the words in the Bible, and Joshua is one of these. Before starting on Judges, another book in the 80% group, I decided to visit the New Testament and write I, II, and III John, small books just before the book of Revelation.

In my writing of the Gospels, I decided to group Matthew, Mark, and John together, so that Luke and Acts, both written by Luke, could be in the same volume. As a result, a few pages remained in the volume containing Matthew, Mark, and John. Since the apostle John wrote the Gospel of John as well as the epistles of I, II, and III John, I felt it appropriate to write them in the small space in the Gospel volume.

Weekly Update - Jan 22-28

Blog Posts

Webinar Review: Shortcut to Creativity
This is a summary of a webinar on creativity. The webinar was based on the six thinking hats developed by Edward De Bono.

Creativity Blogs to Follow
In this post is a list of creativity blogs I follow on a regular basis.

Genius Scan App
Use the Genius Scan app to scan from anywhere and share the files as images or PDFs to the cloud or others.

Writing 365

With an end-goal of writing 365,000 words in 2016, my daily goal is to write 1,000 words per day. I exceeded this goal every day this week, setting a new record of 1,840 words on January 27. Although writing blog posts is one of my four categories of writing - the others are journal, devotional, and e-book - I have decided to post less frequently rather than daily. This simply means I will need to write more words per day in the other categories if I don't write a blog post. I also hope to write longer posts, perhaps splitting up the writing over multiple days.

At 1,000 words per day, the target for January was 31,000, which I exceeded on January 27.

Bible Project

As I wrote last week, I am still trying to incorporate action on the Bible writing project into my daily routine. I completed three chapters this week. Currently I am working on chapter 22 of Joshua, almost to the end of the book.

Celebrate

It doesn't seem possible that I have already been writing consistently for a month. January seemed like it went by quickly. I am happy to have reached the first month milestone.

Weekly Update - Jan 15-21

This week went by quickly. Because Monday was a holiday, I enjoyed a three-day weekend. I wish I could say I was more productive as a result, but at least the week itself was, for me, a successful accomplishment of my writing goals.

Blog Posts

• What's in my bag?
• Webinar review: Talking about change
• Create blog headers using Canva
• Flickr and creative commons

Writing 365

This week was the first with all green indicators for daily progress. Using Excel conditional formatting, I created a rule to change the indicator from red to yellow when any words are written for a specific day, and from yellow to green when the 1,000-word threshold is crossed. This week also marks by highest number of words written on one day, 1,739 words on the 18th.

In the My 500 Words challenge, I wrote over 500 words per day, but stopped writing when I reached my goal of 60,000. For the Writing 365 challenge, my goal is to write 1,000 words per day for a total of 365 days, slightly different than just writing 365,000 words. The cumulative total will, I believe, be over 400,000 words. For me, the key is to continue a daily writing habit.

Bible Project

Since initiating the Writing 365 project I have not spent as much time on the Bible project, writing out the Bible in it's entirety. I am still working to find the time balance to keep the momentum going here as well. When I conceived of the Bible project, my goal was to write a minimum of ten verses per day. Most of what I'm writing about now is the plot map of the tribes of Israel; the texts mostly contain geographical markers. Once I can press through the middle part of Joshua, the story aspect of the Bible picks up again.

Habits

I have often read that engaging in the same activity for 21 days locks it in as a habit. While there are other factors to consider before something becomes a habit. As I have been writing daily for 21 plus days, at least one milestone has been reached.

Weekly Update - Jan 8-14

After viewing the blogs of others, I have been inspired to include a weekly update of blog-related activities. While this may be helpful for others, I hope that it will keep me motivated to continually writing regularly.

Blog posts

• iOS Text to Speech Feature
• Behind the scenes: Text to Speech Video
• Book List 2015

Writing 365

One of my goals for 2016 is to write 365,000 words, 1,000 words per day. I have completed two weeks of writing everyday. For the most part, I have consistently met my goal. I created a tracking workbook in Excel where I record:

• the week number
• date
• number of words
• category of writing (blog post, journal, e-book, devotional). 

From these four data fields I can easily calculate a variety of measurements and create the chart below.

Bible Project

Another long-term project that I have been working on since 2014 is writing out by hand the entire Bible. I started with Genesis and completed several Old Testament books before switching to the New Testament. I am currently back in Joshua. The chart below compares the Old and New Testaments by chapters completed. Looking at this, I feel a little overwhelmed by how much is left. However, several book have short chapters, so it may not be as challenging as it could be.

Consistency

For both of these writing projects, the key is consistency of regular daily effort. In September, 2015, I wrote about this idea in a post titled, "The start of every journey." While the Bible project has been ongoing for several months, the Writing 365 project is new for 2016. However, it has reminded more than ever of how important it is to work incrementally but regularly towards goals.

What goals have you set for 2016? How are you doing two weeks in to the new year?