The Ten-Minute Blogger

A couple of years ago, in my post “How do I Find Time to Write Every Day“, I was bemoaning the fact that I was finding it difficult to find the time to write something for my blog. I still have that problem but at least I know that there are ways of dealing with it. Another difficulty I sometimes have is knowing what to write about. That issue is easily solved. I only have to look at my mission statement on my “About Jeremy” page to remind myself of what this blog is all about.

But the main issue I still have is finding the time to put into practice what I have learnt about creating and maintaining a successful blog. However, I have just recently read an article in Writing Magazine which explains that you can develop a writing habit by spending just ten minutes a day – every day – creating something for your blog, novel, short story, magazine article or poetry collection. It can take up to 21 days to form any new habit, so for the first few days the routine will be quite difficult to maintain, but it is important to keep plugging away.

It might be helpful to set targets. For example, I have found Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog extremely useful in this respect, because Darren sets you daily tasks to be completed. However, if you’ve only got ten minutes a day to spare, you can take 31 weeks or 31 months to complete the course. The important thing is that you must spend at least ten minutes every day in order to create your new writing habit. It is probably best if your ten minutes are at the same time each day – perhaps first thing in the morning or last thing at night. I shall be finding my ten minutes during my lunch break.

My goodness! Is it that time already?

It’s Time for a Revamp!

I started this blog just over two years ago so I think it’s about time I started making a few changes to it. It won’t be a complete redecoration, but more of a spring clean (or should that be an “autumn tidy-up”?).

I have already made a few tweaks – for a start I’ve inserted a link to my photo gallery on Flickr – and the blogroll will undergo some tidying up fairly shortly. But the major change is that this blog will now focus solely on the business of writing, editing and proofreading, with a few funnies thrown in to keep you amused.

To deal with my spiritual life as a member of the Bahá’í Faith I have created another blog – The Tiverton Bahá’í. However, this website is still under development and over the next few months I will be spending some time providing content that is worth reading and worth your while revisiting the site for. But in the meantime you might like to visit some of the other Bahá’í blogs and websites that I have created links to in The Tiverton Bahá’í blogroll.

Negotiating a Price: The Vendor–Client Relationship

The relationship between a vendor and client can sometimes be quite fraught, especially when negotiating a price for a job. Watch the following video. Has this ever happened to you?

Aargh! Twitter is Taking Over my Life!

I’ve recently started using Twitter to promote my business and to network with other business people after being introduced to it by Thomas Power  and Mark Shaw at Ecademy. I’ve found it a very useful tool, so much so that I’ve effectively stopped using Facebook. But I found Twitter  so addictive that there was a danger that it would take over my life. However, there are plenty of tools and advice available to help prevent this from happening.

For example, Tim Ferriss has written a post on his blog in which gives you five tips on “How to Use Twitter Without Twitter Owning You”. His first tip is not to post and read tweets at the same time. I’ve followed this and his other advice and found that I don’t waste valuable time using Twitter.

Here is some advice of my own. On Twitter, it seems that it is very important to get as many followers as possible. To do this manually is very time-consuming, even if I use a “personal assistant” such as Mr Tweet. However, Gary McCaffrey has developed Tweetergetter, which automates this task so efficiently that every day I am notified (by Twitter) of about half a dozen (or more) new followers, without any effort on my part.

The problem then is to respond to these people to welcome them and thank them for following me. Luckily, there is another tool, called TweetLater, which allows me to automatically send a welcome message to all my new followers and to automatically follow anybody who follows me.

Another trick is to choose just one application to send, view and manage all your tweets – and stick with it. I started using Tweetfox, which is a plug-in for the  Firefox browser and which regularly notifies you of any incoming tweets (and allows you to post tweets) while you are using Firefox. However, I sometimes found it unnecessarily obtrusive and even more annoyingly it used up too much memory or bandwidth that it prevented me from viewing Google images and video selections on YouTube. It even prevented me from accessing my own blog here on WordPress. So I uninstalled it and now use Tweetdeck which in its latest version has the added advantage of allowing me to update my status on Facebook at the same time as I post a tweet.

There are dozens of other Twitter applications to explore and over the next few months I shall probably be trying some of them out. When I do, I will endeavour to give my opinion of them in another post.

Lloyds TSB Bank Launches New-style Cashpoint

Soon to appear on a high street near you!

Prime Minister Announces New Logos for Banks Bail-out

When Self-Publishing Becomes Vanity Publishing

Writers amongst you may remember that, last autumn, the people behind the publishing website YouWriteOn announced that they would publish, free of charge, 5,000 titles in time for Christmas. You may be interested in learning how things worked out. If you visit Jane Smith’s blog at The Bookseller.com you can do just that.

It’s not a pretty story. In “Should you write on?” Jane makes it clear that in this case there was a fine line between self-publishing and vanity publishing. She reports that some authors now deeply regret ever getting involved in the YouWriteOn scheme. It seems that few writers who signed up for it will sell more than a handful of copies of their respective books; and although it was claimed by the publisher that one title had sold “more than 1,000 copies”, it later emerged that these had been sold direct to the book’s author.

In her follow-up post, “How self-publishing really works“, Jane explains the difference between self-publishing and vanity publishing, which is very informative and any new writer who wants to self-publish their first novel should put this article on the top of their required reading list. It certainly opened my eyes to what really goes on in the world of self-publishing, and it gave me the names of a few companies that it might be best to avoid, or at least approach with caution.

However, read Jane Smith’s articles for yourself and come to your own conclusions. I, for myself, will be adding her blog to my list of must-reads and I will report back on any further items of interest that I find there.

Some Essential Tools for Twits

I’ve just become a bit of a twit. No, seriously, I’ve joined Twitter recently and I’m having fun finding my way around the site and exchanging “tweets” with my “followers”. As a result of one of these tweets I’ve submitted an item to Twittertitters (now called “Tweehee“), who are producing a book of comedy writing to be sold to raise money for Red Nose Day 2009.

However, to make the best use of this social networking site you need to install some additional applications, of which there are hundreds to choose from. So where do you start? Don’t worry! There is plenty of advice to be found on the Web. I came across a blog article written by Kalena Jordan who recommends “16 Must Have Tools for Twitter Users“. And if, like me, you are a member of Ecademy you can join the Twitter Club, where business people who use Twitter as a promotional tool provide advice to other Ecademy members.

If you want to follow me on Twitter I can be found here. Must go now, There is a whole lot of twittering going on that I want to catch up with.

Are Banks Right to Turn Down Overdraft Requests?

Just before the New Year, my local newspaper published a letter from a woman who had been waiting in a queue at a Tiverton bank and who had overheard a conversation that a polite, elderly gentleman was having with one of the cashiers.

He was asking for a £10 overdraft because he had no heating at home and needed to top up his “heating key”. Unfortunately he was short of money because he had just paid his newspaper bill, which had been more than he had expected. He was obviously known to the bank and had an account there but the cashier explained to him that there was nothing that she could do. In reply, the elderly customer kept on saying that he would have no heating over Christmas and that he would pay back the £10 after the Christmas break because he was expecting to receive a cheque. He also asked to speak to somebody he knew at the branch, but was told that she wouldn’t be able to help him either.

The woman who related this story expressed her embarrassment at witnessing this situation and explained that, as the pensioner thanked the cashier and started to walk away, she had felt moved to leave her place in the queue to press a £20 note into his hand.

On the face of it, it looks as though this story could have come straight from the pen of a modern-day Charles Dickens, with the miserly attitude of the bank and its employee making them the villains of the piece. But once I started thinking about it, I got the feeling that the bank cashier probably did the elderly customer a favour.

Unplanned overdrafts, such as the one that the customer was asking for, invariably incur substantial bank charges. For simply going overdrawn by £10, the pensioner could have been charged a monthly fee of about £15, together with a daily fee of about £5 for every day his account remained overdrawn. So, if he had waited for his cheque to arrive at the end of the Christmas (and New Year) break, and taking into account the time it would have taken for the cheque to clear, his initial £10 overdraft could have become £100.

Can you imagine how upset the woman, his Good Samaritan, would have been had she realized that. Then the letter to the press could have been complaining about how he had been overcharged! Which letter would you have preferred to read? I know what my answer would be!

Are We Responsible for the Crisis in the Retail Sector?

With the demise of Woolworths still fresh in our memory, perhaps we ought to take note of a an open letter to customers that was written by a member of staff in Edinburgh and distributed throughout the rest of the Woolworths branches in the United Kingdom just before Christmas. It read as follows:

Dear Customers,

While writing your 30-per-cent-off cards with your 30-per-cent-off pens, and wrapping your 20-per-cent-off toys and 50-per-cent-off gifts in your 30-per-cent-off wrapping paper, surrounded by your 30-per-cent-off tree and decorations, eating your 10-per-cent-off chocolates, listening to your 10-per-cent-off CD, while your children play with their 10-per-cent-off  console games, wearing their 30-per-cent-off clothes, with your table laid with your 20-per-cent-off dishes and cutlery and later tucking up in your 20-per-cent-off bedding, reading the latest 20-per-cent-off novel, spare a thought for the Woolworths staff who have given 100 per cent to the very end.

When we do buy heavily discounted goods from shops such as  Woolworths, Zavvi, Marks & Spencer and so on, we tend to forget that these discounts are cutting into the retailer’s profit margin, which affects their ability to pay the rent and rates, their staff and their suppliers of not just the goods they sell but also of lighting and heating. If such discounting leads to a discounting war between rival retailers there are sure to be casualties, with the less-profitable stores going to the wall and customers losing a certain freedom of choice of where to shop. Several major retail chains in the United Kingdom are rumoured to be on the brink of going into administration or even liquidation – the actual number changes from day to day but it is believed to be about twenty. And all because customers have an insatiable desire to buy goods at the cheapest possible price! We will only have ourselves to blame if  our high streets and “shopping centres” become ghost towns and we are forced to buy everything online via the Internet. Do we really want to buy everything from Amazon!

Meanwhile, it is reported that Iceland are hoping to acquire about fifty Woolworths stores. Let’s hope they run their frozen-food business better than they run their banks!