time

Affirmations - Louise Hay by JCT(Loves)Streisand*

Of Marriage Proposals, Regret and Capital …

by JCT(Loves)Streisand* One day while visiting home in North Carolina–I had married and was living in Boston–my mother, while picking out a dress to wear to a funeral commented that she had refused her first proposal because the man who had requested her hand did not, she believed, own enough financial capital. Financial capital for […]

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Of Riding Ellipticals, Counting Minutes, and The Challenge of Parenting …

Like the teacher in my psychology program who said that the hardest thing about parenting was the time required, I find that I never have enough.

Mothering three daughters, seeing to my husband, or rather attending our marriage, along with my work as a psychotherapist, and writing novels proves daunting.

I count minutes in much the same way that I count calories.

Frustration continually arises as I reprimand myself for lack of efficiency.

“I’m working as hard as I can,” I say to myself.


But am I working smarter?

I do not know.

Personal experience has

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Of Life, Revelations, and Our Differences That Bind …

Not a day has passed during the three weeks since posting my last blog that I have not felt guilty for failing to hold to my schedule of blogging.

It is a promise I give to myself, and a responsibility I maintain as a published writer.

The nagging feeling that has haunted me now abates as I write this post.

But what occurs when life happens and disrupts our goals and the tasks we have set our energies to?

What do we do when

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Of Writing, Solitude, and Pieces of Heaven…

The life of a writer is one of solitude.

We are either writing–or thinking (pondering) that which we have written and/or hope to write.

That I read your comment last week soon after my essay posted, but am just now responding evidences that we all have less money than time.

Or should I say,

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Of Writing, Time, and The Realities of Publishing…

The reality of publishing is that it is difficult to make a profit in this business.

And why does one want to make a profit?

Because editors need to be paid, it takes money to print copies of a book, and most importantly, authors need food, shelter, and health insurance, none of which are cheap, if we are to write entertaining stories.

When publishing companies agree to print book, the writer must deliver and on time, lest the publisher demands

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Of Time, Authors and the Common Ground of Promotion…

During a recent discussion, Attention Self-Publishers, at Definitive Serious Writers at LinkedIn, an author lamented the difficult task of finding the time to both write and market their work.

Promoting and marketing one’s work as a writer or novelist, how best and most effectively to do this, and remained focused upon the writing of your books–that which you must to promote if it is to sell– sits at the heart of what authors–both self and traditionally published–presently grapple.

This aspect of writing and selling one’s work forms the common ground on and about which authors on both sides continually gnash our teeth and rub our palms.

All the traditional authors whom I have interviewed on my blog talk radio show, Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters, express dismay, and challenge not always about the necessity of promoting one’s work and self, but rather, how to find the time to both promotion while one also writes, revises and edits our books.

Time stands as a writer’s most precious commodity. We all know how the Internet can devour that

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Of Time, Human Imagination, and the Gift of Self-Publishing…

I recently read a discussion, Attention Self-Published Authors at Definitive Serious Writers Group at LinkedIn, on the stigma self-publishing bears and that many self-published authors perpetuated by not giving enough attention to the quality of all aspects of creating a well-written narrative and packaging it in enticing aesthetics.

I turned to self-publishing because I am a wife and mother and needed adequate time to write and refine my book.

My first publication, a collection of short stories, served as my MFA thesis and was published in 2007. Two years year after earning my MFA in Creative Writing, I wrote a novel.

On seeing the manuscript lying on the coffee table in the study my husband lifted and read it. “This needs to be published,” when he reached the end. My husband is not a writer and has the patience of an ant.

He’s what I would define as typical and no less demanding reader who wants to be taken away. My husband is a sharp thinker.

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