I had the great pleasure yesterday of being interviewed on the Waking Passions show by the wonderful Lillian Ogbogoh about my new book on light bulb moments
You can tell the skill of a good interviewer by what they get out of their interviewee. I don’t think anyone has ever extracted so much information out of me in just an hour.
Thank you Lillian for such an enjoyable chat …
You can listen to it here …
and the two visualisations I mention during the show are here
I’ve just been honoured by becoming a series author on this marvelous site The Creativity Portal
I came across it a few months ago and added it to my wish list of places I’d like to be able to post. Imagine my surprise when Creative Director, Chris Dunmire, replied to my email saying she’d love to have me on board.
The site is full of the most amazing free advice on all aspects of creativity – from tips on relatively conventional themes of writing, music and art through to the more eclectic disciplines of origami, mandela making, macrame knotting and even exploring Bonsai & Suiseki trees.
I am doubly honoured to be writing on the same portal as luminaries I’ve admired from for many years like Eric Maisel, Tony Buzan, Edward Glassman and SARK – check out the list of all the authors here …
I’ll be writing a series of articles on what stops, encourages and generates light bulb moments on demand.
– these are of course all subjective perceptions and can be dealt with and removed relatively easily.
In this series of short blogs, I’ll explain a little about why and how these issues manifest and give some simple tips to get around them.
The Fear of Ridicule
This is really common. The best way to avoid being ridiculed for your creative output is not to generate anything at all. Our unconscious minds protect us from harm by inventing loads of ways for us to avoid being ridiculed.
Signs that this is happening in your life are:
Procrastination
Being a busy fool
Loads of half written manuscripts, unfinished sketches or musical samples
A classic trigger for this might be a teacher marking down an essay you wrote at school or you forgetting your lines in a school play. I did this in a nativity play and got demoted from Jesus to an innkeeper and then from an innkeeper to an angel without wings on the back row of the chorus.
As a knock on result, I used to have a repetitive dream of freezing as the lead guitarist on stage when playing with Pink Floyd or The Who. Since I eventually played a solo classic guitar piece at a local arts centre, the dream has not returned. When I released the audio version of my first book, I allowed that classical guitarist to come out to play.
or artist communities like the appropriately named FoundMySelf
or why not sell your art using sites like ImageKind ?
So, in summary, there has never been a better time to flex your creative muscles … so get creating and posting, you never know who might spot your nascent talent …
P.S. some of these links are blatantly self-promotional – please add your examples below and links to any sites you use !!
P.P.S. For cases of deep trauma though, these techniques might not work so do get in touch as this is what I specialise in dealing with.
One of the best things about being an author is getting to talk to other authors – especially those writing in a similar field to you.
One of the writers I have admired for many years who has been really generous with reviews of my books is Steve Taylor.
Even more of a coincidence is that we’re both Manchester lads exploring consciousness and what it means to be human.
So I was thrilled to speak to Steve recently for my Moments of Light show on Barefoot Radio about his new book, Out of Darkness. Naturally, we covered the others too … namely The Fall, Making Time and Waking from Sleep.
Many of us go through life feeling we have much to offer but we somehow miss the mark. Our brilliance is not appreciated – our just rewards don’t seem to come our way.
Lucy Whittington has found her ‘thing’ and that’s to help others find theirs. I know how well what she does works as she nudged me up the ladder by quite a few notches in my thinking last year. My sights are not only much higher and my feeling of self-worth stronger but I am also much more confident and focused than ever nowadays.
Listen to my latest Moments of Light show on the Barefoot Broadcast to hear how you too can go about ‘finding your thing’ and fulfilling your destiny delivering what you were born to do.
If you thought Twitter was a fad or a nuisance, let me disavow you of that notion – it is a pretty useful tool for both business and pleasure and it’s here to stay.
For one, I have had direct business solely from Tweets and found the most perfect iPhone app developer from a single Tweet – I think you will agree, that is a pretty useful use of a few seconds of my time.
By osmosis, I’ve learned how to make Twitter work for me and how not to get addicted to it. You would think there’s not too much to it – it’s only 140 characters after all – how hard can that be?
My old guitar teacher told me, “It’s not the notes but the gaps in between.”
Well my world has just been turned upside down and exploded this week after I downloaded the iPhone app version of 140 Characters: a Style Guide for the Short Form by Dom Sagolla – one of Twitter’s progenitors.
I was glued and read it in one sitting.
Not only is the book one of the best manuals you will ever find for using Twitter properly but Dom is one erudite and intelligent chap. His understanding of human language, semantics and communication is outstanding.
I so wish I will be able to write a book as intelligent as this one day.
The iPhone app version of the book is pretty neat as it is embedded with rich hypertext to take you right to the resource, people and example tweets that Dom refers to. You can even interact with the content which incidentally is updated regularly too.
The book is full of brilliant humour (or is that humor) too of how to and how not to Tweet. There are some real corkers and my Tweet stream might become a whole lot more interesting as a result of reading it.
Dom is one Twitter expert who really does know his stuff – he was there from the ground up and user number #009. Once you read this book you will be able to spot the real gurus from the fakes, also rans and wannabees.
His vocabulary is also amazing and I was reaching for my dictionary app more than once.
If you still don’t want to read the book, here’s a quote from the book to summarise its essence.
“Do fewer things better”
The book is a snip at only $4.99 for the iPhone but well worth the $12 or so if you want the print version.
As a result of reading it, I for one am now not hanging about on my next book – it’s going to come out this year – in print and as an iPhone app in this form as I am inspired now more than ever to do fewer things even better ….
I am really thrilled to have had a new logo designed by Jackie Newman of BooDesign.
The brief was to create something simple and elegant that I could use on the web, in pop up banners that summarised both what I do and what I write about.
At the same time, I took a much overdue step and renamed my company which was called Shere Solutions to Tmesis Ltd.
Shere Solutions was formed in 1996 to deliver IT and business consultancy and was not really relevant to the work I do now.
Tmesis incidentally is the only word in the English language that begins with “T” and “M” and means to put a word inside another word like “abso-blooming-lutely”.
I chose Jackie for the brief as I specifically wanted two things over and above her talent as a design – namely objectivity and elegance.
I am so pleased with the result and something very subtle that came from it … including the company banner for letterheads etc.
The main banner of “tomevans” is perhaps obvious …
… in the strapline of ‘whole brain thinking’ combined with ‘whole mind connection’, Jackie unconsciously embedded a whole stream of multiple ‘tmeses’ – OK maybe there are two words that begin with “T” and “M” if you count the plural 😉
So what we have embedded in the logo is also …
‘Brain Thinking Whole’
‘Thinking Whole Mind’
‘Connection Whole Brain’
… and another friend of mine also pointed out that Tmesis is also short for “tom he is”
Soulwave tells of a fictional account of a possible near-future for the Earth and humanity. It is a sober reminder of how life on this planet is special and to be treasured.
It tells of a world where the ice caps have melted, the population has renormalised and of the cosmic joke to end all cosmic jokes – as far as humanity is concerned.
It’s written to inspire people to look up in wonder and amazement and to treat every day as if it is your last. We are only here and alive by the slimmest of chances and margins. This we must be eternally grateful for.
This is a sample from the novel of the same name that is being published in 2012.
– or it is also available for your iPhone and iPad if you want a copy to keep and take around with you to share with others
Here’s a short ‘read’ for the weekend – I say ‘read’ as this one’s a listen !!
This is the first in the 100 Years of Ermintrude trilogy which you can listen to for free – it tells of the life of a woman backwards – it is poignant and thought provoking.
“Stunning. I cried. That’s all !” said one man about it.
“You’ve captured the zeitgeist of every age,” said another.
– or it is also available in text and with audio for your iPhone and iPad if you want a copy to keep and take around with you to share with others
I had the great pleasure yesterday of being interviewed on the Waking Passions show by the wonderful Lillian Ogbogoh about my new book on light bulb moments
And you can read the first one here …
Many of us go through life feeling we have much to offer but we somehow miss the mark. Our brilliance is not appreciated – our just rewards don’t seem to come our way.
If you thought Twitter was a fad or a nuisance, let me disavow you of that notion – it is a pretty useful tool for both business and pleasure and it’s here to stay.
So just 30 days ago, I elected to start the Ultimate Blog Challenge and do a blog a day for 30 days.
