When it comes to motivation, my blood curdles every time I hear the word, incentivize.
Motivation comes from within. No-one is actually motivated (incentivized?!) by some external force – moved maybe, but not motivated.
To get noticed on social media, words are not enough; even pictures are not enough. You need more than pictures to get and hold people’s attention. You need moving pictures.
And we’re not talking about black and white Charlie Chaplin movies, we’re talking talkies.
TikTok.
In the face of this daunting market-place for books, most Canadian writers don’t realistically expect to become rich and famous, nor even become ‘best-selling authors’; they just want to be read. (I suppose that might be said of all writers. How many aspiring American authors also live in obscurity, their books languishing in their closets, unsold, unread and unloved.)
If I was to be a real author, not a closet pretender, I needed to sell a lot more of my books.
Despite my reservations, and fear, I wanted to get wider exposure. I wanted affirmation. Endless ego needs may have been at the base of all this, but if I wanted exposure, I had to promote my books. As any author, successful and otherwise, will attest, the better mousetrap gets no attention by itself.
Writing the Dynamics of Management, Mastering the Intangibles of Influencing Others, took ten years, or more – five to get started, two to actually produce
Writing, in the beginning, was merely an occupational necessity. I was an H.R. Professional. I wrote letters, memoranda, policy papers, employee handbooks. I suppose some
What makes for effective writing style? There may be a number of objective criteria for what satisfies the characteristic ‘effective’, but the answer must also
If you have the idea that I was/am an academic pedant, you would be wrong. At least I hope you are wrong. I am a
I never took a writing course. There was a basic styles handbook in university, and I’m sure I had marginal feedback from various TAs who
How many of you have thought, ‘maybe I should write a book’? If you’re reading this blog, I suspect, most of you. Everyone has a
Travels with Myself (with apologies to John Steinbeck, or should it be Graham Greene?) is the story of my journey of discovery, to find myself
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