 
### The Writing Sampler

By

Bryan Cohen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Bryan Cohen on Smashwords

The Writing Sampler

Copyright 2011 by Bryan Cohen

Discover other books by Bryan Cohen:

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34347>

Sharpening the Pencil: <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50078>

500 Writing Prompts for Kids: <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50319>

Writer on the Side: <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52955>

Smashwords Edition License Notice

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Table of CONTENTS

Introduction

1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More

Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life

500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade

Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job

May 2011 Blog Tour

About the Author

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Introduction

I am a big believer in giving people cheap and practically free stuff, especially when it comes to information. Several motivational writers of the past like P.T. Barnum (you know, the circus guy?) made sure that his work was public domain so that anybody could read his tips and tricks about life for free. While I'm not quite ready to enter the public domain quite yet (I might wait until I can purchase my _first_ elephant), I am interested in giving people an inexpensive sample of my work to get a basic grasp on my writing and my philosophies.

_The Writing Sampler_ is a sneak peak of all four of my books on writing: _1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More_ , _Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life_ , _500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade_ , and _Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job_. If you own one of those books, you will be getting a look into the basics of the other three. If you've never heard of me before, then this is your chance to "try before you buy."

I wouldn't call myself an expert in the field of writing motivation, but I'm definitely a student into the destruction of writer's block. When a writer is having writer's block, it's typically easy to see why. It could be the result of emotional turmoil, a malnourished stomach, an unhealthy dose of fear (which I would say is 90% of all writer's block), or any number of temporary conditions. I personally believe that all temporary conditions like these can be demolished by taking care of yourself in one or a combination of different ways.

Prescriptions for Writer's Block

Here are just a few of my recommendations for particular types of writer's block.

Fear: Face your fears by doing what it is that terrifies you about writing. Repeat once a day for thirty days.

Sadness: Focus on the people and things in your life that you are grateful for. Think about your own positive qualities. Smile, laugh and repeat.

Low Energy: Eat some fruits, vegetables and raw nuts to keep yourself fresh throughout the day.

Lack of Ideas: Try out a few of the prompts in the two book excerpts in this volume.

Distractions: Remove yourself from the distractions. Continue writing.

Most of these prescriptions are relatively obvious. Which means that the real way to get through writer's block is: step back, identify the problems, use your brain and then listen to your brain. If I had followed this simple advice when I left college, I might have written a dozen books by now. Thankfully, I stumbled upon it through extensive reading, listening and other types of learning. If you are thick-headed like myself (which is an apt description for me, just ask my friends and loved ones) you may need some more convincing.

The Top 10 Ways to Use These Books

Here is a little "Top 10" list of what I hope you'll be able to do with _The Writing Sampler_. Even if you only use these samples of my books on writing to do one of the ten methods listed, I think that your writing might be better for it. While I don't have a fancy celebrity reading this list, like David Letterman might, feel free in your head to put these words into whatever celebrity voice you wish.

1. Take an Idea, Run with It

This _Sampler_ contains over 60 prompts from my book _1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More_. My hope with these prompts is that you read one of them that can inspire you. I once received a message from a writer who took one prompt and wrote 20 pages right off the bat. I'm not saying you'll be as fortunate, but one idea can quickly lead to others until you have an avalanche of thoughts rumbling down the hill and onto your page. Let me think of the first idea for you with the prompts and then you can do as you wish from here on out.

2. Come up with a Goal or Goals

I include a good chunk of my goal chapters from my _Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job_ and _Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life_ here in the _Sampler_. Why is this topic so important that I discuss it in two of my books? In short, having clear, positive goals dissolves writer's block. Goals provide a direction that can push you past procrastination and fear, the two biggest obstacles to consistent writing. Use the tips and tricks in the _Sampler_ to both create and implement these goals.

3. Create Writing Drills

To become a writer you need to write. If you're out of practice the first thing may not be to enter into lengthy, tiring writing sessions. You may want to wade into the shallow end of the pool by devising a few writing exercising. Try writing for 10 minutes with one prompt each day for an entire week. The following week, try upping the ante to two prompts and 20 minutes and so on. Of course, you don't have to solely use the prompts to create these exercises. Sprinkle them into your drills as you see fit.

4. Write with Kids

This book includes around 40 prompts from my _500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade_. In that book, I suggest that parents and teachers try writing along with their kids using the same prompts. This inspires a sort of "monkey see, monkey do" effect, helping your kids to enjoy writing because they see their mom, dad, teacher, older sibling or guardian doing it. Writing with your kids gives you something to talk about and share together. Also, if you set a time to do it every day or several times a week, it trains both of your brains to get into that writing mindset. If you don't have kids of your own, you can write with a niece or nephew or a student that you tutor.

5. Create a Challenge

I love setting large, seemingly impossible goals for myself to achieve. A few months ago, I set the goal of writing 2,000 words a day for the entire month. I didn't allow myself to take any days off, including the weekends. While some of the days were tough, the benefits of this challenge, which included finishing off three separate books, were indispensible. Try setting a challenge for number of words, how many minutes you write, how many days you write in a row or something similar. You can use the prompts for this purpose or you can use some of the other exercises within for goal-related challenges.

6. A Writing Purpose

In my book _Writer on the Side_ , I talk about how the next logical step up from setting a goal is creating a purpose. Personally, my writing "purpose" is to inspire others from my words to help them to push back any blocks they have created for themselves in their lives. Your purpose might be to create engrossing adventure novels so that people enjoy them. You may want to create a wild, imaginative world so that children will be encouraged to read. Whatever purpose you choose, it is very important to choose one. Write that purpose down and say it out loud whenever you don't feel like writing that day.

7. Life Improvements, Writing Improvements

Personally, I believe that it is silly to think that writer's block and other writing-related difficulties are not connected to the whole life of the person writing. "How to Beat Writer's Block" kinds of books are treating the symptoms and not the cause. If you get your life in order, you are more likely to be an effective writer. I have included some tips about strengthening your life as a whole in this book and they are fleshed out more in _Sharpening the Pencil_. Use these tips to patch up some of the holes in your life and watch your creativity blossom.

8. Write with Friends

This is a great alternative for the "Write with Kids" idea if you don't have any kids in your life. Some people join a writing group to encourage that they get their writing goals completed every week. If there are no writing groups in your area, you can create your own with friends and fellow writers. Try working on the same prompt or different prompts at a given session and make sure to read your writing out loud to each other. As with all other walks of life, strength in numbers can help you to push past the crippling effects of writer's block.

9. Your Inner Child

The excerpt in this book from my children's prompts book _500 Writing Prompts for Kids_ , is geared toward those in elementary school. If you are working on a book that has child characters, these prompts can be used to think like a kid again. Imagine how a child would respond to a certain prompt. This can be a fantastic exercise to ensure that your child characters are realistic. Writing based on these prompts can also help you to remember long-buried childhood memories that can help you to generate new writing ideas.

10. Spread the Word

I once read in Steven Covey's book _7 Habits of Highly Effective People_ that you learn 90% of what you teach. This is one of the reasons I got into writing about writing, because I wanted to make sure I was the most motivated writer on the face of the planet. If you want to learn the skills of a motivated writer, talk about the concepts here in the _Sampler_ with others. Teach a friend who is struggling with motivation in another area. Not only will this make you feel good, but you will help to solidify these concepts in your own mind.

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Thank you for taking the time to check out _The Writing Sampler_. For more information on my books, visit http://www.build-creative-writing-ideas.com. And as always, happy writing!

Sincerely,

Bryan Cohen

Author of _The Writing Sampler_

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LEGAL PAGE

This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give or sell this book to anyone else. If you received this publication from anyone other than Bryan Cohen, Smashwords or Build Creative Writing Ideas, you've received a pirated copy. Please contact us via the website and notify us of the situation.

All contents Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Cohen. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Limit of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher has used its best efforts in preparing this book, and the information provided herein is provided "as is." Bryan Cohen and Build Creative Writing Ideas make no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Trademarks: This book identifies product names and services known to be trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of their respective holders. They are used throughout this book in an editorial fashion only. In addition, terms suspected of being trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks have been appropriately capitalized, although Bryan Cohen and Build Creative Writing Ideas cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark, registered trademark, or service mark. Bryan Cohen and Build Creative Writing Ideas are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Finally, use your head. Nothing in this book is intended to replace common sense, legal, medical or other professional advice, and is meant to inform and entertain the reader. So have fun with the book and happy writing!

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1,000 Creative Writing Prompts

Except from Chapter 7: Literature and Genre

Creative Writing Prompts: Writing

609. Describe the best piece of writing that you've ever constructed. What makes this the best in your mind? Also, write about what you think you would need to do to top it.

610. Describe the worst piece of writing that you've ever constructed. What did you learn from writing this piece?

611. Write a scene or story that is intentionally bad in every possible way.

612. Talk about a time in which someone praised your writing and how it made you feel. Describe the scene and the reactions of anybody else in the room upon hearing these words.

613. You have just won an award for your writing and you must give an acceptance speech that is worthy of your talents. Write your speech in its entirety and include an on-camera interview afterward for good measure.

614. Write a poem or a short story for the love of your life, past or present.

615. Talk about how your writing style has changed over the years. Write the same paragraph in your style from ten years ago, five years ago and from today. If you are especially young, this exercise can be extremely silly and fun :).

616. You have been given a magical pad of paper that makes everything that is written on it into reality. What do you write and what is your reasoning behind it?

617. Imagine a world in which writing was prized above athletics as a worldwide televised sport and you are one of the top competitors. Describe this world and what your "writing workout" would be.

618. How does writing fit into your life? Is it a hobby, a profession, a dream or something else? Write about this priority and if you would like to shift it at some point.

619. You have just had the burst of writing inspiration of a lifetime. You have negotiated your way out of your regular job for an entire week (with pay!) and you sit down to write. Describe your whirlwind of words, what you write about and the repercussions of your finished product.

620. Write the table of contents for your memoirs that you will be writing at the age of 80.

621. Talk about a time when a piece of writing changed you. Whether it is something you wrote or something you read, these words spoke to you and made you a different person. Describe how and why this piece made the world a different place.

622. You were digging around through some old stuff and you found some of your writing from long, long in the past. You cannot even remember writing it but it is truly amazing. Talk about what you do with it, who you show it to and what eventually happens as a result.

623. Guess the five strangest words that you include in your writing that you feel are quite unique to you. Write these words down and talk about how they made it into your standard writing vocabulary.

624. Talk about a time in which someone was overly critical of your writing and how it made you feel. What did you learn from this critique?

625. You are stuck in a room for two hours with the strongest critic of your work of all time. You have a copy of the work that he hates with a passion under your arm and he immediately lays into it. Describe those two hours.

626. A publisher has absolutely fallen in love with your writing. He says that any five books that you wish to publish are guaranteed (with a large advance). What are the five books that you choose: titles and descriptions? Talk about how you decide to write these five "dream" books.

627. Imagine that you have joined a writing group in your area. This group is full of writers from different backgrounds and skill levels. You present your most recent piece of writing to the group. How do they react and what are all of their comments?

628. The writing from your computer's hard drive was somehow sent out to all of your friends, family and acquaintances. This includes the stuff that you're afraid to share with everybody. It's out there and there's nothing you can do about it. What are some of the comments, compliments or concerns that you receive from these people?

629. You receive the beginning of a mysterious story or scene through text message and e-mail. The story is incredibly engaging but the author is untraceable. After weeks of the messages arriving, the author says to have the story published under a fake name and for you to take all of the profits. What do you do?

630. Imagine that you have been transported several centuries earlier without the use of a computer or a typewriter to write your words. How do you stay on task with an aching hand and a leaky quill? What do you write about? Describe the scene in extreme detail.

631. You are in a room with the five living writers who inspire you the most. What do you talk about?

632. You are in a room with the five deceased writers who inspire you the most (go with it). What do you talk about?

633. You live in a totalitarian state in which writing anything too provocative could get you killed. You refuse to take it safe and under a pen name, you write something that shakes the country to its very core. Describe your writing's impact and how the future of the country continues.

634. In an ancient time, you are the personal writer to the King and Queen of your country. What do they require you to write and what is your day to day life like living in the castle?

635. How do you feel that writing will change 200 years in the future? 1,000 year in the future? If you lived during that time, with your predictions holding true, how would you thrive as a writer?

636. Seemingly overnight, the world has become completely obsessed with writing! The economy is now completely focused on writing, both imports and exports. Children have scorned television and Facebook to take up writing. How does this change your life and how does the future play out in this new writing world?

637. What would your writing have to accomplish for you to consider yourself a true success? Describe that accomplishment and where you would go from there?

638. John Milton wrote the epic poem "Paradise Lost" while he was blind. Describe how you would write such a masterpiece with a major disability. Would it be a driving force of motivation or more of a supreme hindrance?

639. Many people say that they've done everything they can when it comes to becoming a full-fledged writer. Write a story about a person who has actually done everything he or she can. This may include submitting manuscripts to publishers, writing an eBook, taking course or anything else you can think of.

640. What is your favorite work of art about a writer? This can be a painting, a movie, a book, really anything at all. Write about how it impacts you as a writer.

641. What is your best quality as a writer and how did it become a part of your writing?

642. What is your worst quality as a writer and how did it become a part of your writing?

643. Name three attributes that you think would make you a much better writer if they were added to your persona. Talk about how you think you could obtain these new skills or traits.

644. Talk about three habits you have as a writer that you feel like you would be better without. How could you get rid of these or how do you think you could turn them into strengths.

645. If you had grand control over time, space and money, how would you change your life to suit your writing? Talk about a day in the life of this new writing-structured existence.

646. What is something in the world that inspires you to write? Why does it have this effect on you?

647. What is something in the world that makes you not want to write at all? What is it about this that makes you stop cold in your tracks?

648. What is the thing that you love the most about writing? Explain how it came to be this way.

649. What is an aspect of writing that you absolutely hate? Is there any way that you could make this aspect more fun and enjoyable?

650. If you could choose someone in history or someone living today to write a biography about, who would it be and why?

651. If you were teaching a child or a novice about writing, what are a few things that you would teach him or her and why?

652. If you could condense what your writing is "about" into one sentence, what would that be? Talk about why this explains your writing to a T.

653. How do you want your writing to affect people? Why? How does it affect people now?

654. Why are you a writer and describe how you came to make that decision about yourself.

655. What kind of writer would you call yourself? A poet? A journalist? Explain the type of writer you think you are and how that affects your writing.

656. If you were incapable of writing, what would be another way that you would express your creativity? Explain a day in the life of this new form of expression.

657. While dreaming you think of the most amazing novel you have ever conceived of. As you wake up, you scramble to a notebook and begin writing. What happens next?

658. Write about five characters that you would like to come to life (that you or someone else has created). Create a scene of these five characters coming together and interacting.

659. Were you ever taught something about writing that you wish you hadn't been? Something that later held you back? Go back to the day you were taught and write a scene about you being taught the opposite.

660. Pick a piece of your writing that will survive forever. What it is it and why do you think the people of the future need this?

661. Talk about a time when the use of substances affected your writing. This can be caffeine, alcohol, drugs or even just an extra large portion of pie.

662. You stumble upon a large pile of papers written by your writing enemy. You find a sheet of paper that heaps a great deal of praise on you and your writing. Talk about finding the praise and what you say to your "enemy" about it.

663. Put yourself in the shoes of a famous writer. What do you do for a day with his or her fans and fame?

664. Re-write a scene from an awful book or movie. Make it better or play up the things that made it awful.

665. Talk about a time when your emotions affected your writing. Did they affect them positively, negatively, subtly or some other way?

666. How do other people affect your writing? Talk about how a different people in your life change your writing after you interact with them.

667. Write a scene that portrays your ideal writing conditions.

668. Write a scene that portrays the conditions that make you not want to write a word.

669. Make a list of five things that you regret not having written about. Write a scene or story about one of them.

670. Write a paragraph or two that you would write to somebody who is down on their luck.

671. Imagine that you have a writing staff that takes care of all the annoying parts of writing. What do you do with the time you have set aside for writing without all of those hassles?

672. Write a piece of satire that makes fun of your own writing. This is a great way to point out some of your own flaws and learn to grow from them.

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Sharpening the Pencil

Excerpt from Chapter 4: Life Goals, Writing Goals

How to Be Successful

A lot of people think that they are complete and utter failures at life. They know that they have a few good things going, whether it's their friends or family, career or money, etc., but they don't feel as though they've been successful with their time on this planet. Many had a plan that they have not been able to implement or that they abandoned long ago. Some are living that plan and yet they still believe that they are not reaching their potential success. How can you reach your lofty expectations without disappointing yourself?

You can't.

That's right, you can't.

Before you get all, "Bryan, when did you become so doom and gloom," let me explain.

Most people have a definition of success that is unfair to them. See, a lot of us are conditioned to believe that success means not failing. The top tier honor students in college and high school think that anything less than an A is a total failure. Many actors and actresses see anything less than a leading role in a play or movie as a complete disappointment. And even some writers I know think that if they haven't been published, sold thousands of copies, and had their book optioned as a movie, then they are let down by their lack of success.

Does anyone else see a problem with this extremely broad definition of failure and this narrow definition of success?

Is all of life some giant difficult class that you need to get an A in to feel good about yourself?

Hell no! The first few businesses Bill Gates came up with were failures, Donald Trump has gone bankrupt several times, and writer Akiva Goldsman won an Academy Award for writing several years after writing one of the worst movies of all-time, _Batman and Robin_. If they had considered themselves destitute failures when they had their major life setbacks, they wouldn't have become the societal definition of successful.

So, what needs to happen for you to not feel as though everything below perfection is failure?

You need to change your definition of success. Here are a few ways to make that happen.

Change Your Attitude

Which of these two attitudes do you believe will help you to lead a happier lifestyle?

1. I am a single person on this globe who only knows a very small percentage of the population and I can't really trust anybody until I get to know them.  
2. I am connected to everybody with a great underlying consciousness. The people I haven't met yet are somewhat like a part of myself and that means I can both relate to them and help them.

Even if you are one of those "people haters" you can probably reason your way to knowing that number two sounds like a pretty good option. We are all in this thing together whether we like it or not. So, we might as well like it!

In Earl Nightingale's "Lead the Field," he suggests a thirty-day experiment in which you treat everybody you come in contact with as the most important person in the world. I attempted the experiment and noticed a big change in how people treated me. Other people wanted to share their lives with me and they wanted to help me achieve my daily tasks. I found myself being more productive because I had the help of everybody around me to succeed with my goals.

After the thirty days, I slumped back into my old way of being and I missed the support. I wanted to go back to treating everybody well but there was something missing. It was a hollow exercise. Sure, in general, I care about people and I want them to be happy, but I was doing this experiment primarily for myself.

I came across an article by Steve Pavlina about a new way of looking at your relationships with other people. His wife had been living a sort of "friendship abundance" principle for many years. It wasn't about treating other people as if they are your friends. It was about believing that everyone is like a part of yourself and that they are a part of you. It's about knowing that you and these other people are connected. Once you believe that all people are connected instead of separate, helping other people and treating them well becomes like helping and being good to yourself.

I wanted to put this into my life. The reason for adapting this way of being was because it was just plain better than what I had previously believed. This way of thinking about people made me want to help them and to feel better about life. Why not implement it? If it didn't work, I could always go back to the way it was before.

Taking part in the experiment was the first step. Reading the article about this new way of thinking was the second step. Learning to implement the principle into my life? That step has lasted nearly two years and I am still working out the kinks :). Since I've made the change though, it has opened up so many possibilities and it has created and strengthened so many of my relationships that I could never see myself fully going back to the way it was.

In changing my beliefs about my connections with people, I feel as though I have become more successful.

Change Your Values

Reading Stephen Covey's _Seven Habits of Highly Effective People_ changed a lot of things for me. One of the changes was the belief that I needed to live a life that was centered on strong principles. I had already begun thinking differently about the people I came into contact with on a day to day basis, but what about the people I already had relationships with?

At the time of writing this essay, I have been dating my girlfriend for four years. There have been times when it was one of those on and off affairs with breakups and heartbreak followed by passionate reconciliations. We kept breaking up because of fear and then getting back together because of a combination of fear and love. For a large portion of the relationship, I had my foot half in the door and half out, keeping my eyes and ears open to other opportunities.

When I wasn't getting what I wanted out of the relationship, I would start an argument and make an effort to hurt her worse than I felt I was being hurt. This was one of those things that I wanted to change about myself, but I had no idea how.

Covey wrote about the tale of Holocaust survivor and Professor Viktor Frankl. When he was put into the concentration camps during World War II he was stripped of everything. His dignity, his family, and his health. One day, he was sitting down at the camp, completely naked, broken, and in pain. He thought to himself, "What do I have left that they haven't taken away from me?" What he discovered was monumental. He realized that he had the ability to choose how this was all going to affect him.

He determined that there is a space between stimulus and response where we can make a choice of how we are going to react. We have a neocortex, unlike most animals, that allows us to use logic and reason instead of the emotional, limbic, part of our brains.

This was the first part of my puzzle. When I felt attacked by my girlfriend, I didn't need to respond back with a greater, more painful attack out of fear of being hurt. I could respond any way that I wanted to. Sure, I had conditioned myself to respond in this counterproductive way for a long time and I would need to uncondition myself, but now I knew that I had a choice. But what would I choose?

Another great passage in Covey's book clued me in. A man he had spoken with at a conference told Covey that his marriage was failing and that they didn't love each other anymore. He and his wife were considering divorce. Covey asked the man, "Why don't you love her?" He responded, "I told you, there isn't any there." Covey went on to explain that love is a verb. You need to be there for her, care for her, and listen to her. You need to actively love her if you expect to get the noun "love" in return.

And there it was. I replaced my fighting with active loving. My relationship has never been better.

I started replacing most of my unproductive responses with active loving across the board. By that I mean that I started to actively care for the things that were causing my problems. I started tackling things that had been holding me back in my life. One day I was frustrated about my lack of organization. But I replaced my typical response of anger with one of industriousness. I spent an evening throwing out old papers and reorganizing all my possessions. When I didn't feel good about my health, I changed my reaction from one of self-pity to one of action, and I would almost immediately go to the gym.

By taking advantage of the space between stimulus and response and by applying action, I have been able to deal with many of the areas of my life in which I felt I was a failure.

Fail

My last tip is to fail. Fail gloriously. Fail like nobody has ever failed before. The important rule about this step though, is to go for it 100% when you fail.

I've produced a couple of plays and improv shows in Chicago, and while I was able to make them kinda-sorta successful, I never felt as though I put myself into them completely. I came up with big ideas but then I never whittled them down to all the minor details that can make a show really interesting from beginning to end. I said to myself, a few shining moments are all I need. During and after these shows, I never felt a full feeling of satisfaction. I tried to convince myself that these were successes, but I never truly bought it. This was all because I didn't go 100% for them.

About a year and a half ago, I began working on a project that I can't talk about very much due to legal reasons. Let's just say, that if it happens, it will be ten times bigger than the biggest project I've ever worked on with a budget nearly a thousand times grander. And during this project I have had some major stumbles and learned some life lessons.

The funny thing is I have felt more successful during this project, with all its failures and setbacks, then anything I've ever done before in my life. I have fully put myself on the line and it feels quite good. By letting yourself fail, you allow yourself the opportunity to learn and grow.

So even if you start changing your life and your definition of success to make things better for yourself: failure ain't so bad. Failures now that allow you to become stronger will make it so that your later successes will be greater.

If you can find your own way to deal with other people, to deal with yourself, and to let yourself fail, you may find that the way you start living is pretty darn close to your original definition of success.

Self Motivation Skills

I'll admit, I sometimes try and fail when I attempt to motivate myself. There is no 100% success trick that will cause you to be motivated 24/7. This is the kind of thing that will often make the "newly motivated" (those who have recently become more conscious) discouraged and cause them to slip back into old habits. This is especially true when you look at those who seem to have an endless supply of motivation that dwarfs your own. Like writing, acting, dancing, or cooking, motivating yourself is a muscle that needs to be trained up with certain skills. Here are some self motivation skills that can improve your productivity.

1. Stepping Back

This is one of the most important self motivation skills. Stepping back means developing the ability to stop what you're doing, thinking, and feeling and taking a look at a situation as if you had a bird's eye view. The completely unconscious among us (those who rarely think or act for themselves) have a hard time doing this. Like a mouse or a horse they will act on emotion and instinct and nothing else. Stepping back is like hitting a big pause button on life and watching the scene unfold. This is especially useful if you are doing something unproductive or unhealthy (playing on the computer, having a long pointless conversation, eating an entire package of cookies). If you can step back from the situation mentally (and physically if needed) you can stop the poor choice of activity or emotion and figure out a new course of action.

2. Asking for Help

If this is self motivation, why would involving someone else be so important? There are times when stepping back is not enough and we realize that it will not take us long to fall back into the bad habit that is getting in our way. If you can find a contact (whether it be a significant other, a friend, a co-worker, or a family member) who is positive and a good influence, you can get yourself out of a self motivation rut. On days when I have to work late, I will often lose my motivation around the 6 PM mark. It is at this time that I know I can call my girlfriend to help re-instill my self-motivation skills. Sometimes just having someone to tell you "You're doing well" and "I think you can do it" is enough to get you back on track. Don't take this as an opportunity to have a long conversation that gets you off track and off schedule. Be upfront about why you're calling, texting, or e-mailing, "I'm a little down (unmotivated) can you give me a quick pep talk so I can get back in the swing of things?" This is not often something that will work with a negative, sarcastic, or unhappy associate.

3. Creating A Life Purpose

While I could talk about setting goals here, this is the most important fire to light as far as self motivation skills go. What I mean by a life purpose is your opinion of why you were put on this earth right now. This can change from year to year or stay the same throughout a lifetime. Currently, my life purpose is to help people improve themselves and to give people opportunities to succeed with their passions. Whenever I'm feeling low or that what I'm doing isn't making much of an impact, I reassert my life purpose. Having a big grandiose purpose is fine, even encouraged, because remembering that I genuinely want to achieve something great and exciting reminds me that life is both difficult and rewarding. This can help me push through a self motivational block and may provide some extra will power for a couple of hours. This purpose can be broad or specific ("healing the world" or "ensuring that children have clean water throughout the world"), simple or complex, new or old. What is important is that its positive and that you identify with it strongly.

Take these three self motivation skills and run with them to improve your ability to work throughout the day. It will take some time to make sure these are a part of your life, but once they are, the amount of time and happiness they will save has an unlimited possibility.

The Power of Thinking

Most of you reading this have never been taught how to think. You may have learned some facts, figures and formulas, some tips and tricks, but there is no class in college called "Actual Thought." I am going to talk to you about my thoughts on thinking (tee hee) and the possible applications of this thought. It is my opinion that adding time to think to your life, can help you progress in almost every aspect of it.

In my personal development path, it was recommended that I listen to the works of Earl Nightingale. Earl Nightingale was a radio personality and a speaker who is the only person to ever receive a gold record for a spoken word recording.

I found a copy of Earl Nightingale's audio program "Lead the Field" and started working my way through it. There were many great and timeless concepts on the program: the money you make is equal to the service you put out, your acres of diamonds are typically right in your backyard, etc. The one that struck me almost immediately was the power of thinking.

Mr. Nightingale suggested that you put aside just an hour a day for thinking. He said to sit down with a cup of coffee (which, I wouldn't do myself because I gave up caffeine) and a sheet of paper and just write down my thoughts. He gave me the opportunity to write down things I thought of that could make my life better and more efficient. In my years of schooling, no teacher had ever asked me to do that.

Sure, I've brainstormed for a paper before or gotten into one of those ridiculously unproductive group projects where just one person ends up doing the work of four. But I had never just been sat down with paper and pencil and told, "don't worry about other stuff right now, just think about yourself and your future." The results were incredible.

I began to brainstorm new ideas to improve different aspects of my life. I figured out how I could afford to go on a mostly raw food diet and how I could spend more time with my girlfriend. I came up with ideas for my theatre/film company and how to become more efficient at what I was doing. My days ended up being planned better and I felt like I was starting to accomplish nearly twice the amount of work that I had previously been doing. I was starting to get ahead of where I was and I have never looked back.

Now, some of you will read this and say that an hour a day is way too much time to give for just sitting around and hoping for some brilliant thought to hit me. Fine. Give it ten minutes a day for a week, and if you make it through that, try a month. If you find that you have been able to get more accomplished as a result, bump it up to 20 the next month. Then thirty. I have a feeling that you'll find it so worth the time that you will naturally try to incorporate it into your schedule.

Now, once you get this into your individual repertoire, how can you further apply this principal?

You can bring other people into the mix. And while they might not jibe with it at first, they will understand the benefits of it after they see the positive consequences.

Some examples:

Sit down with your wife/husband/partner/boyfriend or girlfriend and think about how you can make the relationship better, stronger or just plain more fun.

Sit down and talk with your child and ask him to think about how you can be a better parent to them and how they can be a better kid to you.

Do some thinking with members of your family.

Try to hammer out some thoughts with a co-worker or even with your boss!

An enemy or a perceived enemy is worth sitting down with and doing some thinking.

Just as with everything, I am sure that you have even more examples in your own life. I think that you should make every effort to improve your life in this way. What do you have to lose? If there is something that you are trying to avoid talking about, you may as well get it out in the open (it'll come out anyway and when you least expect it otherwise). If you think that a person won't be interested in "thinking" with you and you are afraid of the rejection then you might as well go for it. The possibility of a one-time rejection is not nearly bad enough to offset the potential gains of a new established habit of actual thought.

If you are able to add thinking to your life and your relationships, you can essentially make every part of your life more efficient.

As with all of the ideas you find in this book, I would try them for 30 days and see how they work for you. I mean, let's face it, you wouldn't have stumbled onto this site if you didn't need to change things in your life a little. Integrating something like this into your life is hard at first, but it may help you make the changes you've needed to grow in your day-to-day lives and relationships.

You should go for it...I think :).

Keeping Up and Moving Forward

Three years ago, if I had come across my own website, I would have read it for about a day and then forgotten about it. Reading it wouldn't have been a priority for me even if I thought it was the most interesting, informative, wonderful site in the world :). The reason I would move on to something else is because the site may have been important for my future but it was certainly not urgent. There were no immediate deadlines to improve my motivation; there was no swinging pendulum coming down toward me. Sure, putting effort into improving my time management and my writing abilities would have helped me become a better writer, but who can find the time in this crazy, fast-moving world?

By completing all my daily tasks I was doing an average job as a creative person. Half the people were doing more than me, and half of the people were doing less than me. I was not being successful or unsuccessful. I was just being. All I was doing was getting by.

What I didn't realize at the time though is that taking care of those important but less urgent tasks is what makes a person exceptional.

In _Seven Habits of Highly Effective People_ , Stephen Covey talks about the difference between Production (P) and Production Capability (PC). He uses the tale of the Golden Goose.

A farmer finds a goose among his livestock that produces golden eggs. Every day it lays another pure golden egg. This is the production. The goose lays golden eggs for a good long time and the farmer becomes extremely wealthy. After a while, the farmer gets greedy and impatient. He kills the goose to open it up and get all of the eggs at once. There are no eggs inside. He has killed his source of gold. He has killed his production capability and now he will have zero production to show for it.

The moral of the story is that without taking care of your production capability, production will suffer.

If you don't write for three years, and then decide you want to pen a novel, chances are it will be much more difficult than if you had been doing writing exercises once a week during that time. Your P will be slow because you did not care for your PC. This, of course, frustrates you and makes you think all sorts of crazy thoughts like you weren't meant to write or that you aren't any good. But really, you're only out of practice.

Covey uses this concept of P/PC as he describes four different types (quadrants) of tasks people do throughout the day in an attempt to manage their lives. Today, I will only discuss Quadrants I and II.

Quadrant I tasks are those that are urgent and important. These are the ones with deadlines and the pendulum. The reason I didn't take time to develop my long term skills of motivation and productivity was because I was too busy on my daily Quadrant I activities: my production.

Quadrant II tasks are those that are important but are not urgent. These are the long-term development tasks. These activities are the PC, the production capability. If you are a baker, Quadrant II tasks could include learning new recipes, trying a new mixing technique, or deep cleaning your oven. A teacher's Quadrant II might involve updating lesson plans, learning new ways to reach students, and consulting the old teachers of your students to get suggestions of how to help them.

If you are a writer, some Quadrant II goals might be to experiment with different genres, to learn how to market yourself for publishing, and to improve your daily writing productivity.

Covey believes that to be a "highly effective" person, you need to move Quadrant II activities to the top of your priority list.

Now, how do you do this if you are a destitute writer who is balancing seven hundred things at once? The counter question: Do you want to be an amazing writer or just one who gets by?

Drop a few hundred tasks. More often than not, very few of those many, many (probably not actually seven hundred :) ) tasks will actually help you advance in your career. Work some Quadrant II tasks into your life. If you could learn one skill that would help you as a writer and help your career, what would it be? Learn that skill. Or work your way up to learning that skill.

I still have plenty of Quadrant I tasks in my life, but one of my current goals is to primarily focus on Quadrant II tasks in the future. I don't expect to rid myself of all these urgent, important tasks. Unless you are a multi-millionaire with a large staff, you probably can't get rid of Quadrant I entirely. But I know that if I continue to work on my development as a writer, my production capability, I will become better.

Start adding Quadrant II to your daily to-do lists. Find a way to focus on your capacity for writing and improving your abilities at least some of the time. Fifty two weeks of consistent development will make you a much stronger writer than one who finishes his standstill tasks every day of his life.

* * *

500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade

Except from Chapter 2: Imagination

Let's face it; this is really the best age group in which to cultivate imagination. Later on, a lot of kids become teens who think imagination is stupid and they focus on television and the Internet to come up with all the creativity. This is the best time to build the imagination up as large as possible so that your kids don't grow up to be crusty, boring adults like us.

Cartoons

51. Who is your favorite cartoon character and why? Imagine that you and this character went on

an amazing adventure together. Talk about the entire day in which you are together from beginning to end.

52. What would your day be like if it was animated? Would you bounce and fly to school? Would your teachers and classmates make funny faces all day long? Describe your world as if it was a cartoon in full detail.

53. Some cartoons have wacky sound effects that make everybody laugh. Imagine that everything you did was accompanied by a silly and strange sound. What are some of the sounds and what would you do about everyone around you laughing all the time?

54. You are an animated super hero ready to take on the world and stop bad guys. What would a day in your new super heroic life be like?

55. Describe what a cartoon version of you would look like. Talk about your hair and your face and your clothes. What would your animated room look like? Tell every detail possible.

56. You have been captured by an evil cartoon villain! Luckily, all of your favorite cartoons from different shows are coming together to rescue you. Who are the villains and who are the heroes in this story? How do they eventually rescue you from the clutches of evil?

57. If you worked for an animation company, what type of cartoon would you make? Try to come up with something original that has never been done before!

58. Slowly but surely, everything in the world has started to become animated and you have to stop it. What do you do to discover what is causing everyone to become hand-drawn and how do you keep it from taking over?

59. If you could make one cartoon character come to the real world who would it be and why? Since this is a new experience for the character, how would you describe the differences between the animated world and the real world to him or her?

60. You have been given a magical pencil. Everything you draw with this pencil comes to life! What do you draw? Tell the story of the things you draw and what you do with your newfound power.

A New World

61. You have become the King or Queen of the entire world! How do you plan on changing things with your newfound power? How would everything change in your home town and in the rest of the world?

62. All of a sudden, everybody in the world has the power to fly just like a superhero! Obviously, this changes the way you're going to get to school, but how does it change the other things in your life? Are you a particularly good flyer?

63. One day, you wake up to find that you have gone 10 years in the future and that you're 10 years older. What is life like in high school or college? Who are your friends? How has the world changed in a decade?

64. Upon returning home, your parents give you the fantastic news that they have won the lottery, which means that they have won over a million dollars! How does your life change with all of that money? Do you move into a bigger house and have better toys and games? Go into extreme detail.

65. As you go to feed your pet snake, he begins talking to you in English or some other language you understand. You begin to notice that all animals have started talking to you. What do they say? Do they ask you for anything? How do you use this new ability to change your life for the better?

66. World peace has been declared and as a result all fighting between countries has stopped for good! Now that nobody needs to go to war anymore, what are some of the things that the countries should focus on? Stopping world hunger? Curing all diseases? Without fighting, how will the world change?

67. On a bright and sunny Friday morning, an alien spacecraft lands in your backyard. All of the news vans in the city come to your house as the aliens come out to greet you and your family. What happens next?

68. A package arrives at your house addressed to you. You open it to find that it is an autobiography written by a version of you from the future. Not only does it say everything that's ever happened to you, but it details the next 30 years of your life! What do you do? Do you read it? Do you ignore it? How does your life change after getting this package?

69. After a big flood of the polar ice caps, your town has become... a water town! Everybody takes boats everywhere and has to learn to swim really well. How else does your life change in this new water world?

70. You have become the most popular kid at school. How did it happen? How has your life changed since your popularity went through the roof?

Time and Space

71. If you could live at any time in history, when would it be and what would you do there? Would it be the time of the dinosaurs? The Wild West? The days of American Revolution? If you can't pick just one, feel free to write about a few.

72. You have been given a magical amulet that gives you and only you 48 hours in a day instead of just 24. This gives you time to do twice as many things in one day! What will you do with your new amount of time?

73. What is your favorite time of the day and why? Is it right when you get up in the morning? It is lunchtime? What do you do during that time that makes you enjoy it so much?

74. If you had a choice to be any age, what would it be and why? What are some of the things you could do at that age that you can't do now (unless you pick the age you are, then say what some of the things are you _can_ do now)?

75. They say that time flies when you're having fun. Do you agree that time goes by faster when you're having a good time and that it goes by slower when you're not? Give an example of each situation from your own life.

76. H.G. Wells has arrived at your door with a time machine! It seems that someone has been trying to change the past so that ice cream never gets made and he wants you to come along and help. Detail your adventures of trying to stop this dastardly criminal.

77. What would you do if you could teleport to any place in the world just by thinking it, like a wizard can?

78. There are lots of other planets in the universe other than just Earth and scientists think that there might be other life on one of them. Do you think that there are other life forms than those on Earth and if so, what are they like and where do they live?

79. You have been selected for the kid mission to Mars! Go into extreme detail about the training process, the space shuttle ride to the planet and what it's like being on the surface of the Martian planet.

80. You wake up to realize that it's Tuesday... even though it was Tuesday yesterday! You relive the same day, with the same things happening and when you go to sleep... it's Tuesday again when you wake up! What do you do as you keep reliving the same day over and over?

Television and Movies

81. Who is your favorite movie or television star? Imagine that you get to spend a day with this person and you have to report back to the class how cool he or she is. What do you say during your presentation?

82. If you could be a part of any television show or movie, what would it be and why? What part would you play? Write about a day in the life of filming the show or movie.

83. The television networks have come knocking on your door asking you to write the next great comedy or drama. What do you make your show about and who are some of the actors you would cast in it?

84. A movie crew has asked your family if they can use the house for a major action blockbuster. Your parents said, "Yes!" and now you get to see all the behind-the-scenes action. What do you see, who do you meet and what do you learn during the process?

85. After an amazing series of events, you star in a really cool movie and you get nominated for an Academy Award, the most prestigious honor an actor can get! At the ceremony, the Academy picks _you_ as the winner! Now you have to go up on stage and give a speech. What would you say during your speech? Who would you thank?

86. You have become the network executive for NBC, one of the main television stations. They have given you the choice of what shows you want to put on every night of the week. What shows do you pick and what new ones do you create from scratch?

87. How are movies and television different from real life? What are some imaginary things that happen on television and the movies that never happen in reality?

88. If you could pick one character to be your movie boyfriend or girlfriend, who would it be? What would it be like to share a smooch on screen with him or her?

89. Right now, the big thing in technology is 3D (three dimensional) televisions and movie screens. What do you think will be the next step in entertainment technology? 4D? Smell-o-Vision? Come up with an idea and pitch your class on why it would be amazing.

90. You wake up one morning and see a camera out of the corner of your eye. It turns out that you and your family are going to be part of a reality show on a major television network. How does your life change now that there is always a camera wherever you turn?

### * * *

Writer on the Side

Except from Chapter 2: Wanting It

I want to preface this chapter by saying that there are a lot of wonderful books and audio programs available about setting goals and making them an important part of your life. I should know, I've read them all (or at least some). From the books, I've picked up a lot of fantastic ideas and I've also found a lot of things that didn't work for me. Regardless, I will tell you some of the ideas I've learned and I will tell you the exact formula that worked for me. I will try to give you a great deal of options so that you can pick and choose like a buffet until you find the right combo platter for you. Deal? Deal!

Picking Your Goal

Most people have but a few goals in their lives. One of the major ones tends to be something like this: "I want to get through every horrible, boring day until I can get home and then zone out in front of my phone or television until the next day starts." There are more than a few flaws to this goal. Other than the fact that it's not positive, it doesn't have any direction and it never changes, there is a huge issue with it that is both sad and true.

It is more or less the default setting for most people with a 9 to 5 job.

This is the tough trait of goals that people don't realize. If you don't pick a goal, your brain essentially picks it for you. The brain loves habits whether they are good or bad. If you come home every day and watch television, your brain is going to start expecting that, to the point that if you skip it for a day, you start missing it. Pushing this habit on yourself has made television-watching a subconscious goal for you. This is similar to a bowl of ice cream every night before bed, five hours of checking your e-mail and Facebook each day or going out to the bars for a bender every weekend.

People will then assume that this habit they have _trained_ themselves to do, is a part of who they are. They say things like "I'm just angry in the morning, that's just who I am," or "How could I give up (this food) or (that drink), it's my favorite and I just love it too much," or "I'll never write a book, I can't work it into my schedule."

Here's the flip side of the coin though. Since you can choose your goals, if you do decide to actually pick something, you can choose any goal that you want. Let's say you currently watch television three hours per night. If you made the decision that you no longer wanted to make television your goal and that becoming an author was your new goal, this is a somewhat simple shift.

I'm not saying that you could immediately go from watching television to becoming Stephen King, but even that simple shift will have you headed in the right direction. The reason it isn't easy at first is because you are trained to watch television, you're trained to eat that ice cream and you are trained _against_ being a writer.

But just like your parents trained you out of bad table manners when you were growing up (I hope), you can train yourself out of poor goal manners right now. And all that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" stuff? That was made up by people who were too lazy or scared to give themselves a worthy goal.

I think of the movie _Rocky II_ when training myself for a tough goal. Rocky's trainer Mickey determines that in order to beat Apollo Creed, he actually needs to learn how to box right-handed, even though he's been a lefty his entire life. At first, it's really awkward and Rocky struggles re-learning how to box with a completely different hand. He wants to give up on it, but Mickey pushes him. Eventually, he does learn it and it throws Apollo Creed off completely. Your new goal will feel awkward to you at first because you are creating new brain pathways that are either dormant or never existed in the first place. Once they are locked in, however, it'll be just like knocking out Apollo Creed.

Side Note: What's This Stuff about the Brain?

This brain stuff is worth mentioning. One of the reasons it's hard to learn new things is that your brain actually forms pathways like a worn groove in a carpet to the things you do all the time. Gymnasts have paths toward the parts of their brains that have to remember long and athletic routines. Singers have paths that lead toward controlling their vocal cords and their listening abilities. Writers have created paths between their hands and their words, allowing them to get quicker and more effective over time.

In the last decade or so, neuroscientists have determined that the brain can actually change its paths over time. If you are used to playing video games and you decide you want to use your free time to write instead, your brain can stop using the "video game path" as often and can start creating a "genius writer path" the more often you write. The best way to create this new path is to devote more time to your writing and make it a habit. It's hard at first, because it takes your brain a bit of time to dig out this new path, but once it's in there (about a month or so until the initial path is dug out) the sailing will be much smoother.

Traits of a Strong Goal

People have the tendency to go at goals the wrong way. One of the big reasons for this is that there are many things in their lives they want to _stop_ doing. As a result, their goals become somewhat negative like "I will not smoke" or "I will not watch television three hours a day." Goals don't work as well when they're negative because you still think about the area you're trying to avoid. In that television example you are still thinking about watching television and you are still thinking about the time of three hours a day. You want your brain to think about other things like writing. It's just like if I said, "don't think about a purple cow." You probably just pictured a purple cow in your mind. We need to take a different approach with our goals.

When you create a goal, leave out the words "not" or "don't" or similarly negative words. Keep it simple. For instance, "I will write for 30 minutes as soon as I get home from work every single day."

This goal can help you integrate writing into your life for a few reasons. The first is that it's positive. If you had been performing writing-blocking activities when you usually returned home like surfing the Internet or watching television, you would need to put those off to the side. Since you didn't even include those tasks in a negative way in your goal, you don't have to think about them.

The second strong aspect to this goal is that it's specific. By stating "30 minutes" and "every single day" you don't give yourself a lot of wiggle room. Time limits are important for goals because they are so much more attainable than something like "I will write a chapter every day" or "I will be nicer to people." You can look at a clock, put pen to paper and then stop when the clock hits 30 minutes. It is simple, specific and an easy habit for your brain to follow.

Thirdly, the goal requires that you do it every day. I am currently writing 2,000 words a day as part of my writing goal. Every day means Monday through Sunday, no excuses. When we force ourselves to do something only a few times a week it can be tough to make it a habit. If you want to wake up early every weekday, that's a fantastic goal. If you sleep in until noon on Saturday and Sunday, it's going to make it that much harder to wake up on Monday morning and continue your positive habit. When possible, and I realize that with fluctuating schedules, it's not always possible, try to integrate goals that you can do every day.

To recap, goals should be positive, specific and habitual.

Side Note: Looking Weird

Some of the following methods to help a goal stick in your head have the possibility of making you look weird. Reading your goals out loud or sticking notes around the house for yourself might make your roommates or spouse insult you or give you strange looks. Setting big goals for yourself is the sort of thing that may ruffle the feathers of your friends and loved ones. Using some non-traditional methods to lock those goals into your brain may similarly rub people the wrong way. If you truly want something, don't let other people and their short-sighted thinking stop you. I have been mocked countless times for my goals and many people have told me they weren't worth it. I refused to believe them and now I am a playwright, a theatre producer, an actor and an author. Good thing I didn't let them get in my way.

What Do I Do With It?

Say that you have picked your goal and you want to apply it to your life. There are many different ways to do this, which is fantastic because if one method doesn't work, you can totally ditch it and try another method. The main objective of any of these is to make the goal a habit. You're trying to create that pathway in your brain that will make the goal practically subconscious (i.e. doing it without thinking about it). Before a goal is a habit, you need to expend energy and will power to force yourself to do it. Once it is a habit, the goal becomes easier and you can spend your will power in other more productive ways.

One of the most effective ways to make your goal into a habit is to thoroughly memorize the goal and read it to yourself every day. Write your goal or goals out on a sheet of paper. Keep this paper by the side of your bed. Read the goal out loud to yourself each morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed. This method allows the goal to circulate in your head all day and all night without you needing to expend much will power. Goal setting champion and author Brian Tracy suggests re-writing out the goal each time before you read it to yourself. This is like reinforcing your goal with a thick layer of concrete. Writing the goals out gives your brain another thing to lock on to when creating this new habitual path.

To even further remind yourself of your goal, try writing the goal or goals out on a slip of paper and placing them in your wallet. My favorite place is right in front of my main debit card or even in front of my driver's license. This way, I am more likely to see the goal as often as possible whenever I open it up. Place notes around your house, cubicle or office that will continue to cement the goal in your mind. Since sticky notes can sometimes fall after a while, I suggest using index cards and tape.

While my side note above mentioned that some friends and family might hold you back from your goals, there are some who are more than willing to lend a hand. Find a goal buddy who is also looking to make an improvement in his life. Chat once a week about the goals that you've set and encourage each other to keep taking steps in the right direction. For example, if your goal is to find a publisher for your book proposal, your friend might advise you to make five phone calls a day to find out more information. He might drop you a quick text message saying, "Did you call them yet?" This personal method of encouragement can work much more effectively than a note if you find the right goal buddy.

Another method involving people is to create a Mastermind, which is like a support group of people who are there to help each other achieve their goals. Don't let the term "support group" throw you off, as it never hurts to have multiple people watching out for you and your best interests. Several best-selling authors like Marci Shimoff and Napoleon Hill thoroughly recommend these groups and write a few more words about them than I'll devote to the subject here.

Get creative with the ways you remind yourself of these important goals. Set your home page on the Internet to a Web page you create with your goal on it, change your computer Desktop to your goal, set up a text-message reminder service to send you your goal every day, tie a string around your finger, have your parents/children call you and remind you. There are many different ways to lock this goal into your head. Once it's in there, you are one step closer to being an author.

The best part about learning the _how_ of setting goals is that all goals work the same way. If you lock the "I want to write my first book by January 1st" goal into your head you can likewise add the "I will promote my website 20 minutes each day" or the "I will train for a three mile race the next six months" or really any goals to your life. Like television and the Internet, you can become addicted to goal setting. A much healthier addiction if you ask me.

Side Note: Covering All the Bases

We have a tendency to create blind spots in our lives. For instance, if you are used to heading out to the bars every weekday night with your work buddies, and you start setting these writing goals, you might automatically assume that the two hours you go out drinking are blocked out. You might not even think about it! If you skipped the bar a couple of nights a week, it might give you the time you need to start working on your book.

I have a friend who is the most goal-focused individual I've ever met personally. The guy is a former minor league baseball player, and a current trainer, professional speaker and a PhD in sociology. For years, he has had a notebook he uses to create and keep track of 25 major yearly goals and the minor goals that help him achieve the major ones. I had the fortune of flipping through the notebook a while back. There were some incredible goals about his speaking, coaching and income within the pages of that book. But there was something missing.

I had always heard my friend speak of his relationship with his significant other in hushed terms. While they had been dating a long time, it seemed that the two of them were no longer seeing eye-to-eye. As I looked at the yearly goals, many of them extremely admirable, I noticed that there were absolutely no goals about his love life.

When you are creating these writing and/or other goals for yourself, try to step back from your life or to get an outside opinion about the things you should be working on. This will help you to see the blind spots that you would normally overlook. You'll be a goal-achieving machine in no time.

From a Goal to a Purpose

When I started setting goals in my own life, it was like a weight had been lifted off my small but capable shoulders. I no longer felt like I had to use will power alone to get things accomplished in my life. Setting tiny goals for my theatre producing and article writing made a world of difference for me. However, every couple of months, I would slip into similar patterns. The goals I had created started to slip away and I had no idea why. Usually, after another giant burst of will power I was able to set the goals up again, but I wondered why I had to expend so much energy after I'd created these wonderful habits for myself.

There are two reasons that these goals tended to slip through my fingers after a couple of months.

Imagine that you had been an Internet addict for the last three years. You are able to push this addiction off to the side after all that time and create some fantastic writing habits for yourself. Even after you've had this habit for three months, those paths in your brain that led to your love of the Internet are still there. For various reasons, you have to spend a lot of time on the Web one week and like that, you feel hooked again. Addiction occurs because the addicted person gets some sort of boost, usually hormonal like endorphins from doing the activity. When you accidentally get addicted to your negative habits again, you have to recognize the problem and start rebuilding the blocks for your goals again.

This is one of ways a support group or a goal buddy can help. They are the outsiders looking in on your life who can determine when you are falling back into old, negative habits. Having supportive people like this has helped me personally on many occasions.

The second reason is another pillar of support that can improve your goal setting, your overall attitude and your general direction. That pillar of support is having your goals protected by the umbrella of a life purpose.

What would life be like if you had a purpose as strong as Mother Theresa (helping people in need) or Thomas Edison (inventing products that improve the world)? Having a purpose is like having a super goal (a super objective as we call it in the acting biz) that pulls along all of your other goals. It is a fantastic litmus test for ensuring your smaller goals are correct. If you had the life purpose of "entertaining the world through your stories" than taking a new high-paying job in a legal office might not fit under that umbrella. If you are having trouble with a goal, seeing your purpose plastered on the wall, in your wallet or in your heart, can help you push past any procrastination to make it happen for the sake your higher function. Purpose leads to productivity.

How does one find this purpose? There is a simple exercise that I found on the first personal development site I ever visited, which is StevePavlina.com. Pavlina suggests that finding your purpose may not take years or an entire lifetime. It might actually take as little as 20 minutes.

Pull out a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen. I suggest a pencil because erasing may occur from time to time during this exercise. Write at the top of the sheet a heading along the lines of "My Purpose."

Write down a sentence or two about what you think your purpose might be. Just take a shot in the dark with the first thing that comes to mind. Read it out loud. Do you think that it completely fits? How does it make you feel? If it might not be 100% correct and you don't feel particularly inspired by it, try writing a revision of the previous statement.

Write. Revise. Write. Revise. Write. Revise, until...

You come upon a statement that makes tears well up in your eyes. Keep revising until you come up with a phrase that makes you say to yourself, "If I lived my life by that purpose, I would be happier, healthier and more driven." This can take a lot longer than 20 minutes and it may still not be perfect by the time you're through with it, but once you create something that tugs at your heartstrings a little, you are certainly going in the right direction.

Take this purposeful phrase that you have created and insert it into your memory and life using the same goal-memorization methods mentioned above. Write it on a sheet that goes in your wallet or by your bed. Spend some time reading it out loud to yourself. Heck, even write it into a notebook or a computer desktop that you use all of the time.

Having a purpose locked into your brain can really make the goals like writing your first book, flow a lot more smoothly. Though I used to be more of a go with the flow kind of person, I'd much rather be a "go with the creative flow that comes from having a strong purpose" kind of guy.

* * *

May 2011 Blog Tour

In May 2011, I went on a 34 day blog tour around the blogosphere, posting tidbits of wisdom about writing, motivation and happiness. In addition, I told anecdotes from my own life and how the stories have contributed to my current state of mind. Here is a collection of the best of the best from that tour. Enjoy!

How I Got Into Writing about Writing

Three years ago, I was stuck like Pooh in a honey pot. Aside from a successful trial of National Novel Writing month, I was in the middle of a several year writing dry spell starting at the end of college. I was still participating in plenty of creative endeavors as a theatre producer and actor (including a stint as a comedic professional wrestler in a Speedo), but I was feeling my grip on writing words beginning to slip away. I needed some guidance and the salary of a coffee barista wasn't going to get me the therapy, life coaching and exorcism I direly needed to get back on track.

So, I read. I scoured websites and libraries looking for information on "motivation for writing" and "writing inspiration." My specific searches often came up short. When I broadened my search to general motivation, I stumbled upon some information that turned my life and its direction completely around.

My main discovery was a website called Personal Development for Smart People. I feigned above average intelligence and dove in. With such enticing article titles as "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job" and "30 Days to Success," I was skeptical but hooked. The site opened me up to people I'd never heard of who were huge in the personal development field like Earl Nightingale and Stephen Covey. I'd always thought that I could be a successful person but I'd never heard of an entire industry devoted to its pursuit. I took in whatever information I could in the field, reading and listening to over 50 books in the success field.

Note: Since I first read Pavlina's website, he's gone a little bit crazy into subjects like polyamory and domination and submission. I suggest reading the old stuff, circa 2007-2009 :).

One of the points that stuck with me from Stephen Covey was that you learn 90% of what you teach. Since my early searches for "writing inspiration" turned up negative, I thought I'd try to fill a niche by inspiring people who were stuck like I'd been, using some of these general concepts of motivation, success and ice fishing that I'd picked up. Thusly, Build Creative Writing Ideas was born.

While my articles on general writing motivation gained a bit of traffic in my first year, the real gems of the Web turned out to be articles that listed 10 to 20 writing prompts: story starters to help get writers who had crippled by writer's block to push past the problem. After creating over 60 pages of prompts, I published them into a collection, _1,000 Creative Writing Prompts_. Out of nowhere, people starting buying the book in numbers that far exceeded my expectations. Interestingly enough, selling a book to inspire writers, inspired me to write even more (funny how that works out) and I started writing and publishing other books on the same topic.

What is the lesson here? If you learn something that is just begging to be shared, you should make every effort possible to share it with the world. What if you're a fiction writer? You should share all your life lessons that you picked up on the street through the trials and tribulations of your characters. Teaching is inherent in writing. Who knows, maybe it'll be just the inspiration you've been looking for to get that half-finished novel off your hard drive and onto Amazon.

The Idea Factory

I didn't move to Chicago after college to become a writer. Nor did I move here to become an actor, a producer, a stand-up, a musician or plenty of other wonderful artists the city has to offer. I came to Chicago to become an improvisational comedian (or improv comedian for short). If there was a spectrum of how much respect an artist gets for his or her craft, it would probably go from top to bottom: painter, musician, actor, stand-up comic, dancing cat, improv comedian, loaf of bread.

There aren't too many creative professions in which the artist not only doesn't get paid for his work, but often has to pay even to perform. And most of those performances are in bars or empty theatres. Yes, this was the life I was aspiring to despite good grades and passable working skills. But if it wasn't for my countless hours (and dollars) put toward these comedic skills, I might never have created my book, _1,000 Creative Writing Prompts_.

The basis of most improvisational comedy is the scene. Two or more players approach the stage from off to the side or the back line and begin speaking. Sometimes they affect a character through an accent or a method of movement and sometimes they more or less play themselves. Since it is rare two improvisers bring back the same characters from show to show, each time a team performs you are getting a unique combination of characters and situations every single time. In a given show or improvisational class you end up with 30 to 50 new scenes, new ideas, new stories to tell.

I estimate that on any given night in Chicago, there are at least 500 improvised scenes through the various shows, classes and rehearsals going on. Imagine if you could harness this sheer amount of creative force in your writing.

By being a part of the improv community, creating ideas for scenes became second nature to me. When I started putting up writing prompts on my website, I was surprised when they became such a popular attraction. Eventually, I realized that not everybody has an idea factory going on in their heads every day (I would love that as a nickname by the way, let's try to get it started, Bryan "The Idea Factory" Cohen) and this inspired me to compile the prompts in a book.

I believe that a little dose of improv comedy could be helpful for any writer. It's a fantastic way to break out of your comfort zone and it may help you to smash your writer's block with a heavy, improvised hammer. It also never hurts to have additional laughter and humor in your life, which improv comedy provides in droves.

If I had one thing to convey that I learned through my time as an improv comedian, I would say it's this. Because there are an unlimited number of combinations of characters, situations and environments, defeating writer's block is inevitable. Find a book of ideas or turn yourself into an idea machine. Before you know it, you'll be speeding through the end of book #1 and ready to go on the second one.

Emotional Control

I can truly say that the major factor which allowed me to become a writer (about writing) was emotional control. Sure, hard working determination and a bit of elbow grease were quite important. Setting some lofty goals for myself and breaking them down into their component parts were also integral steps. But it was not until I curbed my fear and anger that I was able to become a full-fledged author.

As long as I have been creative, I have also been a scared-y cat. I was afraid to express my feelings growing up and I was afraid to try anything out of the ordinary. Blending in was a whole lot easier than getting made fun of. While in college I tested out a fake sense of confidence and swagger, but when the four years were up, I was right back to where I started. I began getting angry that I hadn't yet become some confident, creative superstar. I was angry at my loved ones and angry at myself. Why? I'm still not exactly sure, but I think it had to do with a grand feeling of disappointment and action-crippling fear.

In an online exchange with author Alexandra Robbins, I learned to take a new perspective on fear. I'd always thought of fear as something negative. I assumed it was a cue from my brain that I should run away, and fast! Ms. Robbins taught me that instead of being afraid of fear, I should embrace it. I needed to rewire my system and do the things I feared because those were the challenges I had to face to feel satisfied. Little by little, through lots of patience and hope and lots of reading on the subject, I changed my fear into a beacon for potential future achievement.

The anger was a bit tougher to conquer. It required cutting through years of self-hatred, blaming others, and the locked-in belief that God or fate or chance had given me a raw deal early in life. Meditation and choosing my responses instead of immediately reacting negatively to circumstances helped. What brought it all into focus was the practice of happiness. In Marci Shimoff's "Happy for No Reason," a conversation between the author and a fellow writer revealed that the "pursuit of happiness" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is not "chasing happiness" as we think it to be. "To pursue" in 1776 meant "to practice." Happiness is a skill you improve from within, not some magical jewel you hope to stumble upon.

By cultivating this positive connotation of fear and my practice of happiness like a garden, I was able to finally control my emotions. This helped me to answer one of my true callings as a writer. Are fear and anger holding you back from something? A little fear rewiring and some happiness practice might be just the ticket to achieve your loft, exciting and enjoyable writing goals.

Good Use of My Time

I've spoken with many people who feel that they are too busy to write. It makes me a little sad, because most of these people are better writers than me. This speaks a lot to the power of finishing a book. Lots of people consider themselves authors but until they finish a book, get it published and sell a copy, it's difficult to make the claim. Hell, the first person who bought a copy of my books was my girlfriend's mom and yet that simple sale changed my entire mindset. I was really an author.

I used to think that between working temp jobs, auditioning for acting gigs and playing the part of a barista at a coffee shop, I had no time to create. Or at least, I had the fear that everybody else out there who was creating was better than I was. Regardless of the reason, I was completely full of crap.

I'm busier than ever, spending over 40 hours a week on my freelance writing assignments and the promotion of my website and books. And yet, I'm still setting aside time to write. I'm going to tell you three reasons why I've been able to do this, which I spell out more in depth in my book _Writer on the Side_.

1. Goals

If you don't set goals for yourself, you will fall into crappy ones. The goals for many people include such classics as "I must zone out as much as possible when I get back from work," "I must watch the show Two and a Half Men every week even if it's a rerun," or "I must gain two pounds a month using only food and alcohol that makes me groggy." Nobody actually creates goals like this, but plenty of people are living them. Set a better goal for yourself by writing down something you actually want to do and studying it every day.

2. Increasing Energy

Last year, I read an amazing book called _The Power of Full Engagement,_ which reinforced many of my beliefs about how important energy is in productivity. The book states that time management is bunk and that energy management is where focus, creativity and efficiency truly come from. Eating healthily, exercising regularly, setting aside time for relaxation with practices like yoga and meditation, spending time with loved ones, and working less often are key ingredients to a better life for an author; or for anyone really.

3. Schedule Writing Time

This seems like a silly third step, but it is the one that people tend to have the most trouble with. Personally, I love writing on weekend mornings before anybody in the house is up. Going to bed early on Friday and Saturday is the best way to open this time up for yourself. Stealing away to a coffee shop on weekday mornings or evenings has also been extremely beneficial to my writing, since it keeps me away from distractions and it locks me in at least until I finish my decaffeinated tea.

The silly thing about these three steps, is that you'll probably have just as much time to do the important things like seeing your family and washing your dishes. You'll just dispense with the television and the fatty-food induced cat naps. Those weren't helping you to feel accomplished anyway. Try these steps out for a month and see how they go. If all works out, you'll be well on your way to finishing that book of yours and becoming a published and sold author.

Setting Impossible Goals

I have a picture on my desk that is a snapshot of me during my senior year of high school at our local Relay for Life event sponsored by the American Cancer Society. I am drenched in sweat in the picture because of a foolhardy and ambitious attempt to jog/walk 49 miles in one day.

This strange and seemingly impossible goal came on a whim. Those plastic beads around my neck in the picture are tiny-colored feet. We received one after each mile we travelled which was equal to four times around our quarter-mile track. After I was a few hours into the 24 hour event, I had travelled nine miles, since all I had done there was walk or jog the track since I'd arrived. I had seven orange feet and two green feet. I asked the plastic foot dispensing booth how many colors they had. The attendant said they had seven. For no discernible reason, I decided I wanted seven feet for all seven colors or 49 miles in total.

I was athletic at the time, but I certainly wasn't a marathoner. I'd never even heard of anyone I knew running more than 10 miles at a time. This seemed like a truly impossible and crazy goal. So, I went for it.

When I told my high school peers what I wanted to do, they immediately wanted to help. When you set a huge goal and tell the right people about it, it's amazing how much help you can obtain. People I barely knew volunteered to ice my feet or jog a lap with me. I even jogged a mile with my brother Jamie while holding a boom box that was blaring Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" (don't let either the presence of a boom box or Pink Floyd fool you, this was definitely in the year 2001).

Roadblocks occur in the midst of every worthwhile goal and mine was major to my high school mind. My girlfriend of seven months told me about 20 miles into my quest that she didn't want to keep dating after I went to college. For a nerd like me, who had only had one girlfriend previous to this, the news was devastating. Tired, heartbroken and aching, I pressed on in my goal. Just because something knocks you off track during your attempt for intense achievement, does not mean you should give up. When asked what he would do if the Confederate Army looked to be winning the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln said, "Oh, there's no choice but to keep pegging away."

I did not reach 49 miles by the end of the event. By 35 miles, my legs had cramped up too much and each step sent overwhelming through my feet and calves. I called it a day. 35 miles was a huge achievement nevertheless and it reminds me of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, "Shoot for the heavens and you'll end up among the stars."

When writing you should set audacious goals. You will feel a drive like never before. People will come out of the woodwork to help you reach the finish line. There will be related and non-related setbacks. Press on as hard as you can and see where you end up.

Oh, and by the way, I did the same event the following year. Once again, I didn't end up with 49 miles. I did 50.

Advanced Self-Publishing

Beginner Self-Publishing could be summed up in a sentence or two. Write a book. Visit sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords and follow the given steps.

Congratulations! You have matriculated to Advanced Self-Publishing. This is where it gets interesting. There are a ton of self-published books out there but only a few of them do extremely well. There are steps you can follow to improve your chances drastically, but keep in mind that there is no proven formula for this stuff. It's new and exciting and the sky may be the limit. It also may not be; time will tell.

1. Come up with a good idea

Sexy-vampire-clone-with-a-sultry-cover #75 has a chance of working, but as with any book, a unique idea with a niche offers you a better chance for long-term sales. Even if your idea is not unique, it needs to be extremely well done. If you throw together some underdeveloped characters in an implausible plot with a professional cover, you may find yourself with bad reviews and dropping sales.

2. Create an online community

Many of the successful indie authors like J.A. Konrath and Amanda Hocking have ridiculously popular blogs with many devoted followers. Now, which came first, the blog or the book sales? Konrath's blog started in 2005, about four years before he self-published his works. Hocking began hers in tandem with work on her first book in 2009. I personally began mine around two years before self-publishing. This is a step that could take years to fully accomplish. Nurturing a community of devoted future readers is not an overnight task. If you don't have such a website, start it now, because advanced self-publishing is not the hare's game, it's the tortoise's. Start now and you'll be pleased with the results three years from now and beyond.

3. Promote yourself in a non-annoying manner

Think before you promote yourself. Will a spammy mass e-mail annoy and antagonize your followers? Will that comment on a popular website with the words, "Please read my book," actually have the opposite effect? Before you promote yourself and your books ask yourself, "If someone else took this step would it annoy me?" In promotion, you need to play it cool like the Fonz. Provide advice and information that is worthwhile to others as you promote. Ask bloggers (nicely) if you can guest post on their websites. Interview other authors on your own site to both spread the love and get their followers to see your site and books. Create a plan and adjust it on the fly but don't undermine it by acting unprofessionally.

Truth be told, I've broken all three of these steps from time to time in the past. Only when I followed them did I find optimum success. I hope to save you the trouble of learning the hard way. Successful self-publishing typically takes a long time, but eventually your growing army of followers will start to buy your book. And slowly but surely, you will pass the spastic hare in book sales.

Getting to Know Me

For today's post on my first ever blog tour, I thought I'd share some little known facts about myself. I hope this gives you an opportunity to get to "know the author" better than you might if you just read a potted biography on the back cover.

\- I am a self-proclaimed master of movie trivia and often challenge my friends to games of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" or the board game "Scene It." Personally, I am only two steps from Mr. Bacon.

\- I constantly wear a button that says "optimism."

\- I got into writing about writing in an effort to support people who were struggling like I had straight out of college.

\- I moved to Chicago after college to become an improv comedian and I've had the good fortune of performing with Dan Bakkedahl from "The Daily Show" and John Lutz (Lutz) from "30 Rock."

\- I became interested in comedy while performing in campfire sketches for sixth graders for my high school's Environmental Education Club.

\- I speak to my parents on the phone almost every day and my dad and I are planning on writing a book together at some point in the next year.

\- Various job titles I've held in my life: author, commercial producer, brand ambassador, Santa Claus (at a Verizon Wireless store), administrative assistant for "Oprah's Favorite Things," barista, youth soccer coach, and a stand-in for a car accident victim (twice).

\- I have on five occasions written love poems for my girlfriends or crushes, including a poem written in chalk on one girlfriend's driveway.

\- My favorite movie is "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie" and my favorite television show is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." My favorite book is The Princess Bride.

\- I played the clarinet for eight years in school. I wanted to play the saxophone, but my teacher worried I was too small for the instrument.

\- Some of my nicknames over the years: Coney, the Viking, Cryin' Boen, Bee-Rye, the Happy Guy, Koala Face, CoCo, and Cohen O' Bryan.

\- I have acted in a McDonald's commercial, a Wilson's Pepperoni print ad, and a comedic World Wrestling Entertainment parody stage show as the scantily-clad "Mr. Fortunate." My favorite role ever was in an improvised show called "On Air" as a billionaire soap mogul named "Surfactant Jones."

\- My first kiss occurred while watching the movie "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" ... in the year 2000.

\- I often get called into Chicago auditions seeking actors who look like leprechauns. There are more than you'd think.

\- When I was born, the doctor tickled my feet instead of spanking me. As a result, the first thing I ever did was laugh.

That's me in a nutshell! It's nice to meet you.

A Greater Purpose

When I first started out in writing, I was solely interested in entertainment. I did and still do get a kick out of people laughing at my stage plays and comedic essays. It's a warm feeling of validation that I cherish. An equally satisfying sensation is to see someone moved by my motivational and instructional books.

I both want to entertain and help people, but writing things that cause people to change for the better keeps me more motivated on a day-to-day basis. I believe that this is because writing for others is part of a deep, fulfilling purpose for me.

Writing has always been an above-average skill of mine and I enjoyed it all through college. One of the reasons I liked it was because it was almost always part of an assignment. I loved school assignments (nerd alert) because they had strict deadlines and a clear purpose (getting an A). When I graduated and my assignments were all completed, I lost a sense of purpose.

Many people pick this purpose back up when they go to work at a job or attempt to gain a master's degree or PhD. I knew that I wanted to write books or plays or poems, but there weren't too many jobs with a boss and assignments that would make this happen. It wasn't until I learned the importance of creating my own purpose beyond doing well at school that I thrived at writing.

In a rudderless, drifting state, I started listening to a lot of motivational audio books. Authors like Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale noted the importance of service. According to them, the most successful people in the world have learned to adapt what they love to do in a way that could serve people. I had to look inside and find what I liked doing that might qualify as service. I'd always enjoyed giving advice and helping people through tough times. I thought to myself, "If I'm struggling as a writer, I can't be the only one." There it was: A direction; some coordinates to punch in that gave me a reason to write.

How can you solidify the purpose in your writing and general life? List a few things that you love doing. Then list a few ways for each in which you could apply those skills to service. Maybe it's creating children's books that help kids learn to read. Perhaps you want to craft a thriller novel that adds excitement to the lives of millions. Turn your favorite things to do into a purpose and your writer's block (and life block) may be inspired to take an extended vacation.

Time vs. Energy

Many people who make excuses as to why they aren't doing a particular thing (like working on their novels) blame the belief that they don't have enough time. In some cases, time is an issue but people don't often think about how their energy affects their productivity.

Last year, I read a book called The Power of Full Engagement that argued time management was actually more or less bunk compared to the necessity of energy management. The authors, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, originally tested their theories out on professional athletes, before realizing that athletes only performed a few hours a week at high intensity, as opposed to people in the working world who endure 50 or more hours of work every single week. The authors say that improving your stores of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy can make more of a difference than some new-fangled method of managing the hours in the day.

The name of the game here is balance and if you've had trouble fitting your writing or any other creative task in, this is naturally a good direction in which to go. If you are burning the midnight oil with caffeine and long work days, your physical energy stores are going to be low. You can up that energy with proper nutrition in your diet, exercise, and a legitimate amount of sleep. If you find yourself snapping at your loved ones and co-workers, you may need an emotional energy boost. Trying emotional control techniques like the Sedona method or Esther and Jerry Hick's "Rampage of Appreciation" (or just plain taking some time to chill out each day) can improve emotional energy. Low mental energy means you have trouble focusing and a bad attitude. Taking up relaxing activities like yoga, meditation, or painting can heighten this focus and mental energy. If you find yourself not working as hard or not working towards something, you are lacking spiritual energy. Set up some purposeful goals for yourself to up the spiritual ante.

Personally, I had issues with all four of these areas before I settled down into a writing lifestyle. This isn't a big surprise, since the four areas tend to overlap. The first step for me was giving up caffeine in all its forms, coffee, soda, etc. Through meditation, the Sedona method and goal-setting, I was able to up my levels in the other energy areas as well.

We get so caught up in life sometimes that we forget about living. By adding more balance to my existence I've been able to express myself creatively, spend more time with my loved ones, and remember the most important aspects of living. I talk a lot about this balance in my books _Writer on the Side_ and _Sharpening the Pencil_ and how it pertains directly to writing (though I still recommend _Full Engagement_ as well). While I'm sure that there are several successful writers who are raging alcoholics or who are completely unhappy, I would bet that most of them have found a personal and professional equilibrium that allows them to constantly tap into their originality.

500 Decisions In

During my sophomore year of college, I took a class on 18th century literature taught by one of my favorite instructors, Professor Thomas Stumpf. It was only a week or so into the course when he gave us an assignment to write about a day in our life around 20 years from that point for extra credit. I titled my story "A Thousand Decisions Later" and it detailed a day in my life in the year 2023.

I recently found all of my old college files stored on a few DVDs and this was one of the first files I wanted to read. The reason I wanted to read it is to see exactly how close I have come to my predictions about halfway into my 1,000 decisions.

At the time I predicted I'd still be living in Chapel Hill, N.C., which is still a possibility for 2023, since my girlfriend's family is from there. Sadly, since Saturn has gone out of business, my prediction of a 2015 Saturn in my garage will not come to pass :). I thought I'd be a drama professor/author/comedian. The professor part doesn't seem to be part of my future currently, but the other two have been greatly enhanced by my success of the past year.

"Bryan slipped upon a thin paperback book on step number one but held his grasp on the finished wooden strip. He picked up the book: A play by Bryan Cohen. He used the sigh to replace sitting on the step and reading over what he'd wrought as he placed the book out of harm's way."

While I didn't envision the digital publishing extravaganza of the last couple of years, I do actually have a play with my name on it that people have bought and read. I remembered this quote, because Professor Stumpf had read the passage out loud in front of the entire class. Another passage, however, I didn't recall until looking through it again.

"Bryan was glad that years in cutthroat real world life had never sapped his almost ever-present grin. To be alive still made him happy."

I had forgotten that above all achievements, honors, and memories I laid out for myself in the story that being happy was important to me. I had forgotten this quest for happiness for many years until recently. I'm currently working on my magnum opus of sorts, which focuses on happiness, to be completed later this year. It's awesome to see that the seeds were planted early on.

If there's a lesson to learn from reading this collection of future ideals, it's that there are clues in your past for your future. Look back over your old journal entries and assignments. Remember the ways in which the person you were has contributed to the person you are today. This can act as a wonderful wakeup call to pick who you want to be in another twenty years.

In the year 2031, I'd like to be living prosperously from my writing and through other means I haven't even come across. I want to have a loving family that I treat with great respect and care. I hope to have helped many people to have improved their lives through my books, speeches, etc. Perhaps if I push it, I can achieve all of these things by 2023, exceeding my 2003 self's enjoyable expectations. What does the future hold for you?

Being a Romantic

When I was growing up, I was a die-hard romantic. All I wanted throughout high school was a girlfriend whose hand I could hold as we kissed underneath a picturesque sunset. I dreamed of being a poet, a writer of eloquent fiction, and an actor of the screen and stage. I hoped that every project I was a part of would be some grand, amazing statement. It was this mindset, this desire to have a wonderful, but broad interpretation of everything, which held me back when I first started out as a creative person in the real world.

My belief about romanticism was that if you attempted to make beautiful things in this world that everything else would take care of itself. I thought that things like dirty dishes, bills, and other practical matters would dissolve under the weight of a gargantuan rainbow of sentimentality. My romantic nature carried me to Oxford and Wales, the south of France, and the top of a mountain in Israel. All of these experiences were amazing, but there was something missing.

I thought that these dreamy, passionate ideas were to blame and I put them off to the side. I became more withdrawn and impersonal. I started to assimilate into the "real world." I tried to take my belief of magical phenomena and put them back into the fairy tales from which they came. After trying this for a couple of years, I realized that it was like attempting to take the white off the rice. I was a romantic person deep down but I needed to find a way to make it more practical.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that by appreciating only the big picture of things, I had been discriminating against the smaller things in life. I needed to find gratitude in some simple pleasures. Instead of simply dreaming of becoming a best-selling author, I needed to create a tiny celebration for each individual copy sold. As opposed to taking some expensive master comedy class from a living guru so that I could brag about it, I needed to be patient and to recognize the humor in an everyday situation. As an alternative to staying up all night to create something incredible but rushed, I needed to take months to add tiny brush strokes to make a calculated and refined tour de force.

I found that by appreciating everything from a small smiling glance to a credit card bill paid $1 over the minimum, I could maintain that romantic joy without missing out on a good portion of life. Every moment could be beautiful, not just the ostentatious ones. When I adopted this viewpoint, I was still not the person I envisioned myself being in my youth, but I began to feel more youthful and alive.

And then, as if it was a cue from up above saying, "Finally, you get it," the bigger things started to go my way on an epic scale. People started coming to my website in droves and my book sales began to pick up. The amount of money I was making only rose slightly but it started to go much further each month. With my new attitude toward even small encounters with people, my relationships started to improve as well.

I had found a way to become a romantic not just about the big moments but about every moment. Sometimes we forget that we can make every part of the week an interesting and enjoyable one. Instead of blaming other people for problems in our day we can sympathize with them. Being caught in the rain can be like reliving a childhood memory of trying to dance between the raindrops. An issue at work or in your personal life can be a challenge to use your brain creatively to make the area even stronger than it was before. Finding joy in as many moments as I can has helped me to become a more effective writer and creative individual. I have a feeling that it could do the same for you as well.

The Avoidance of Normal

During the winter of my senior year of high school, I lost 31 pounds to get into an open spot on the wrestling team. Even though I had fallen into a captain role by seniority, it was going to be nearly impossible for me to beat the wrestlers at 152, 145, 135 and 130, so I pushed myself to "suck down" to 125. This had me dieting 3 weeks before the season even began. A normal person might have relegated himself to being a second string, but I was hardly normal.

After a crazy back-to-back schedule of four classes in a row one Friday during my freshman year of college, I stepped into a crowd of over a hundred people watching a cable-access show film what looked to be a Jell-O wrestling match between an adult entertainer and an innocent onlooker. Of the many spectators there, nobody wanted to risk the embarrassment in the middle of their college campus messing around with a scantily-clad woman in a kiddie pool. I was the only one who bought a raffle ticket to be chosen to be the guy. A strange experience for sure, but I was never what you'd call normal.

When I stepped into the real world, my first mistake was trying to go about being an actor and a writer the normal way. First I tried temp jobs and then eventually I worked as a barista at a coffee shop. The pay and the hours were bad and I didn't feel particularly inspired to go hunt for acting and writing gigs. I produced a few shows here and there, but once they were I was back to the regular actor/writer grind.

While traveling in Israel with a group of wonderful people, I told the entire tour bus of my weird exploits and I remembered myself. I wasn't the kind of person to go about the motions. I needed to find my calling and it wasn't going to be through these normal part-time job channels. As soon as I returned home, I quit my job as a barista and figured that I would do whatever came my way until it felt right. I struggled as a freelance writer for a few months before taking up what I thought would be an amazing job at a theater two friends of mine ran. It didn't work out quite as planned and I was back to freelance writing for the next six months.

After half a year of mind-numbing assignments, I could feel these gigs wearing on my brain. I yearned to go back to the normal, easy, but unchallenging life of a barista, but I knew I couldn't give up on finding something weird for myself to pursue. My Hail Mary pass was to write a book called _1,000 Creative Writing Prompts_. If the book didn't work, my next step was to find a regular office job that might suck me up for the next five to ten years.

I prayed and dreamed of the book becoming successful. I wanted to be something interesting and weird and a freelance writer and author was certainly that in spades. As a couple of months went by and the book brought in a little bit of money but not a lot, I started to apply to jobs at nearby companies. In December, my lack of normalcy finally began to pay off.

I was staying at my girlfriend's parents' house in Chapel Hill and I happened to check on my book sales for Christmas week. Out of nowhere, due to some Christmas/Hannukah miracle, my sales more than doubled. I checked every few hours to find that another sale had gone through when it usually took days for two or three to register. My sales doubled again in January and then once again in February. My first self-published work had become the little book that could!

With the extra money, I spent more time writing and published another couple of books. While they have yet to catch on as much as my first book, the proceeds have given me the freedom to let my freak flag fly and keep myself from needing the normal job I dreaded. Now instead of saying I'm a barista or a temp with aspirations to write on the side, I can truly say that I am a writer; plain, simple and weird.

My good fortune may not last forever, but I know that ever since I let myself be weird again like I had in high school and college, life has gone much smoother. If you are strange and you have talent, let it loose! Don't bottle it up in a regular job. Find a way to do something you love as often as you can. The world has a way of rewarding people who do.

Ma & Pa

While I'm writing this blog post on Mother's Day, it won't appear until a week from now. I knew starting out on this blog tour that I wanted to dedicate one post to my parents. They have been very encouraging of my creativity and career path and I owe them more than I can repay (those college loan payments are coming soon, Dad!).

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a teacher just like my parents. My dad was an Earth Science teacher for 7th graders for 32 years before retiring to give computer lessons and make repairs for his <a href=" http://www.pcadvisor.us/">PC Advisor</a> business. My mom met my dad when she was his student teacher (too cute) and she started as a high school biology teacher before becoming a part-time preschool teacher so she could take care of my brother and me.

My parents have always been extremely supportive, attending every home soccer and wrestling match, encouraging me to take art and music classes, and heading down from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to see as many of my college plays as possible. They never forced me to refocus my dreams to be more practical, which certainly could have backfired on them (thankfully it seems to be working out now). My family isn't wealthy by any means and they had to work hard to live in a nice suburban area as we grew up and to put my brother and me through college. They could have called in all my loans and forced me to get a regular job years ago.

Instead, they let me grow into myself and always left me feeling like I could accomplish anything. It certainly helps that I received the hard-working durability of my father and the creativity and personable nature of my mother. Sure, my parents aren't perfect and sometimes they coddle too much, but by focusing on the wonderful traits they've given me (genetically and otherwise) I have grown more grateful over time.

When figuring out what you've "gotten" from your parents, try to think about all the skills you've inherited as opposed to any bad habits. Habits can easily be broken, but if you cultivate the skills you've inherited, you can truly become the best of both genetic contributors. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for taking such good care of me. You helped me to become the strong, resourceful person I am today.

Seasons of Love

I used to think of my relationship with my girlfriend as a burden to my writing. I would be all ready to write and then a fight or an argument would break out and before I knew it I was too frustrated to be creative or it was well after bed time. Eventually, for the benefit of my love and my writing, I found some methods to enrich the relationship.

In _7 Habits of Highly Effective People_ , Stephen Covey talks about the concept of "active love." The author relates an anecdote in which a married man tells Covey that he and his wife no longer love each other and that he needs Covey's advice for how to proceed. Covey asks him if he's tried loving her. The man reiterates that the love is gone and that they've given up. Covey says that love isn't an object you find or lose but that it is a verb, an action. He asks if the man has tried to be loving to his wife by cherishing her, listening to her, and being there for her without expecting anything in return.

After reading this I was blown away. I'd always looked at love like a transaction: I give you this and you give me that. In fact, one of the major reasons my girlfriend and I got into fights was because of my expectations. I wanted to be a loving guy, but only if I knew I was going to get equal loving in return. I employed Covey's philosophy right away. Whenever a situation that would normally rile us up arose, before we could get back into the same pattern, I made the effort instead to actively lover her by listening and cherishing her.

This was extremely difficult at first because I was so used to getting angry. I combined this method of active love with some additional techniques like sending thoughts of love her way. While there is no way of knowing if that had any effect on her, it certainly tended to curb my own anger.

Over time our relationship began to improve in every possible facet. The fights practically topped for good and I had one fewer excuse for my "writer's block." I am not surprised in the slightest that I became much more successful as a writer as our relationship mended. In fact, my girlfriend is one of my biggest supporters, helping me to design my book covers and offering me indispensible guidance.

If you feel that your emotions tied to your spouse or loved ones tend to get in the way of your writing or living, I fully recommend the process of active love. It is always difficult to break the negative patterns you have with a loved one, but once you do you may find a drastic improvement in your life and your creativity. It is true that "all you need is love," just make sure it's the right kind.

Rudolph Reborn

In the winter of my senior year of college, I auditioned for a part in a play called _North Pole Darkening_. It was a black comedy take on the story of Santa and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and at the time I was a shoe-in for the part of Rudolph. After a reading of the script, I loved the brash take on the story, with Rudolph portrayed as a sort of diva who is breaking up Santa and Mrs. Claus' marriage and the entire reindeer team. One of the reasons I was perfect for the part at the time was because I was a bit of a diva myself.

The director, Erin, told me a week or two after I'd gotten the part that, "While the other two actors can play an ass, you know that you're an ass." Now, during college I didn't do anything particularly bad like break hearts or backstab, but I'd acted in a sort of pompous, class clown type of way that rubbed people a bit wrong from time to time. My friends knew me as a stand-up guy, but the way I stood out among other folks was as kind of a jerk.

A few years after school, I listened to a program called "Lead the Field" by Earl Nightingale. One of his first major points was that to become successful you need to change your attitude. He advised that you should treat everyone you come in contact with as if he or she is the most important person in the world. In my "acting like a jerk" phase, my attitude had more often than not been the opposite, treating myself like the Grand Poobah of every moment.

I tried this new attitude adjustment on for size and noticed almost immediate results. I became connected with people who were a lot more genuine as my friends and professional acquaintances. Thinking of others started to make me feel better about myself, and I no longer needed to put on airs to make me believe I was more confident. For those of you who believe in the metaphysical stuff like the Law of Attraction, I felt like I was attracting more positive things into my life.

This change in attitude made me want to create websites and books that could help people through tough times in their writing lives. I wanted to ensure that people knew the importance of a positive attitude and strong life habits in a creative lifestyle. If I ever do become famous from my writing, I'm not too worried about assuming the same guise I had in my college years. I've gotten that out of my system by now. I know that keeping a positive attitude and treating others fairly and unselfishly is going to take me much further than acting like a bestseller ever would.

Take a look at how people look at you and how you look at yourself. Who do you treat well and who do you treat like a lower human being? Are you kind to checkout people and telemarketers? Do you treat all of the members of your family equally? As Nightingale recommends, try treating everyone in your life with a high amount of importance for 30 days and see how your life transforms. Opportunities will open up and you may find room for much more creativity in your life.

Getting Unstuck

Even though I'm a writer about writing and motivation, there are some occasions in which I feel totally stuck. Some would look at these instances as major problems and negative emotions like fear could potentially ruin an intended writing session. I try to see my spurts of writer's block as opportunities to try out my tips and tricks for getting unstuck.

1. Listen To An Audio Program

My MP3 player is loaded up with wise words and success stories that can quickly bring me out of a writer's funk. Short and sweet tracks like the audiobook version of Tom Butler-Bowdon's 50 Success Classics give me a burst of motivation in 15 minutes or less. I also recommend the works of Jack Canfield, Tony Robbins, Marci Shimoff and Earl Nightingale. Make sure to keep your player charged at all times in order to keep your brain charged.

2. Change Your Location

I have written in coffee shops, grocery stores, libraries, parks, beaches, backyards, bathrooms and restaurants. This variety isn't just to spice up my life; it also helps me to break up a pattern that may be causing my creativity to dry up. I'll even try working at different tables within my favorite destinations to shift things slightly. One of my best tricks is taking a bus ride to a coffee shop I've never been to in an effort to "strand myself" and force myself to work. For double the motivation, listen to an audio program along the way.

3. Drag a Friend Along

While many of your friends may blab their way through a coffee date with you, there are probably at least a few who need to get some work done. These are the friends you should enlist to keep you company as you write. As writers, sometimes we lead a solitary existence while typing or scribbling along. If we can look up from our page or document and see another person working, it validates what we are putting our weight behind. Set aside at least an hour for you two (or more) to work and make sure it's clear you will be writing and not chit-chatting.

4. A Walkabout

I once told a friend that from time to time I go for a several mile walk with a notebook in hand to no place in particular. He called it my little walkabout. When you go for a walk outside, the increased presence of oxygen, plus improved circulation literally increases your brain's thinking power. Sometimes this is just the push you need to get past your blockage. I fully recommend a long walk of at least a mile or two for fitness reasons and because more time tends to equal more ideas. Don't worry about "wasting time" as I've thought of several $100 and $1,000 ideas while wandering on my lengthy walkabouts, proving that "time to think" is money.

5. A List of Gratitude

Often when I get stuck, I get down on myself as a sort of scolding for my temporary lack of productivity. To build myself back up, I write down a list of things I am grateful for. I realize this sounds a bit hippy-dippy, but it always helps me get out of the dumps. When you're stuck it can feel like you have nothing going for you. That is, of course, ridiculous and by listing your "good," the "bad" doesn't seem nearly as terrible. Make sure to actually write this list down as it's much more powerful than simply thinking it to yourself.

Try one or more of these five items every time you get stuck. The more often you try them out, the more effective they will be. Soon enough, your wallowing will be over and you can get back to writing your masterpiece.

The Happy Writer

Writers get a bad rap. We are often portrayed as brooding, secluded types with sullen faces and alcohol problems. There have obviously been some famous writers who were riddled with depression like Poe and Hemmingway. Is it inevitable that writers must go to some of the dark places they write about? In addition, even if you aren't a successful writer, can you still be a happy one?

During my sophomore year of college, I met my real-life acting guru, Joan Darling. Joan talked a lot about how some actors get stuck within some of their acting choices. An actor playing a sad role or a junkie role might get depressed from continually accessing those dark parts of himself. While a writer might not go through the exact same process as the actor, writers still access some pretty heavy stuff personal or otherwise to get words onto the page. If the writer or actor cannot pull himself out of the muck, depression, anger and hate can consume him. The cure, as Joan put it, was getting back to zero.

Before and after a scene or performance, Joan recommended that we try a relaxation exercise. When heading into a scene, this helped us to be more in the moment while acting. After a scene, the exercise was meant to shed the feelings and memories we had been accessing for two main reasons. One reason was so that the emotions didn't affect our later scenes and we could start fresh when our characters returned. Another reason was to give our brains a rest from these emotions so they didn't take over. I believe that this can be directly applied to writing, and to ensure mental health a writer should engage in relaxation practices after every writing session.

But what if you're struggling with writing and before you even put pen to page you're a generally unhappy person? Joan always said that as you work on relaxation you can build it up like a muscle. The same is true in practicing happiness. Many people assume that they will be happy if they become successful. All too frequent drug issues and divorces among the rich and famous prove that success does not breed happiness. Happiness is something that you have to train independently of your success. It comes from gratitude, taking responsibility, helping others, living healthily, and the support of friends and family. It does not come from circumstances like winning the lottery or getting a book published.

By employing relaxation techniques after dealing with the heavy stuff in writing and life and by utilizing happiness exercises to raise your emotional set point, a funny thing happens. Those who are trained in relaxation and happiness are not bogged down by everyday problems. This gives them free reign to take on opportunities that might have been lost if they were mired in their own pity and negativity. In short, a happy writer tends to become a successful writer, as opposed to the other way around.

Research techniques in relaxation and happiness (which I discuss a bit in _Writer on the Side_ and _Sharpening the Pencil_ ) and incorporate them into your life. With these tools at your disposal, you can write the saddest stories in history and still be the happiest person at seeing them succeed.

Neuroplasticity

Last year, I came very close to putting all my resources and time into a book about the brain. While I've put that project on the shelf for now, my preliminary research turned up a lot of interesting data that is worth sharing. As more and more stories about Alzheimer's disease and mental deterioration spread around, it's important to realize that there are things we can do now to keep our brains more fit as we get older.

Neuroscientists used to believe that once you had your adult brain, you were pretty much stuck with it. New research, however, has shown that not only can the brain change, but it can change drastically. This ability of the brain to change over time is called neuroplasticity. The way to change the brain for the better is to stimulate neurotrophins, chemicals that help your brain to create pathways to new information and skills. To be an old dog that can learn new tricks, you have to stimulate the neurotrophins.

To do this, the brain requires new types of stimulation to keep running in top shape and to create these valuable neurotrophins. This means that if you do the same job day in and day out for thirty years, your brain gets bored and starts shutting down the parts you don't use. Couple this with the fact that focus on a new idea or task is the best way to remember it and we live in the age of multitasking and you've got a problem. How do you keep your brain fit and active with a repetitive job and a focus-challenged society?

The old adage of doing crosswords and Sudoku puzzles is partly true. If you do decide to supplement your life with puzzles, try switching up the types of puzzle every month. Do crosswords one month, word scrambles the next, Sudoku puzzles the next, and so on. Learning new body positions like those in karate, tai chi, and even tennis lessons can give your brain something new to chew on as well. Exercise in general is also helpful for getting oxygen to your brain, providing additional mental stimulation.

Practicing your handwriting, especially cursive script, may improve connections between your brain and hands and your brain and your mouth. In short, handwriting practice may indirectly improve your writing and speaking. In addition, try writing with your opposite hand to truly give your brain a novel experience.

Combine your senses and instincts in novel ways to create some new mental pathways. Take a shower with your eyes closed, light a different scented candle in your bedroom every day at the same time, and brush your teeth with the opposite hand. Another method to stimulate neurotrophins includes going on a drive with no destination in particular, getting lost, and finding your way back.

These are just a few of the many ideas and exercises that I believe will become commonplace in a decade or so. I have used these methods to stimulate my brain to write more effectively and to learn new materials. If you are feeling low on brain juice, test a few of these ideas and after a week or two, you may feel more alert and intelligent. If regular motivational books and audio tracks haven't helped you, try to target the source: your sluggish but improvable brain.

You Are Your Own Investment

Have you ever dreamed of making millions of dollars a year? If you did, do you think all your financial problems would be over and done with? Recently, hundreds of professional football players, many of whom earn six and seven figure salaries, have come very close to losing their 2011 income due to a still-pending NFL owner lockout. I was astounded to hear that some of the players had considered taking $15 an hour plumbing and labor jobs because they still had bills to pay. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and they didn't have the funds to wait out a year-long strike? Is this a matter of poor saving or something else?

Warren Buffett once said something along the lines of, "I would rather have a $10,000 company making 10% than a $100,000 company making 5%. I have other places I can put the money." Imagine that you are one of these companies Buffett is talking about. Most people in the world are growing 0% or a negative percentage from year to year. How do you become a 5% or 10% growing individual? Will a raise help? Perhaps a second job? If these millionaire football players are any indication, a raise or a second job will not be the solution. The answer according to many of the wealthiest people in the world is earning passive income.

Passive income is the money that comes into your life at any point of the day whether or not you're working. Sources of passive income include investments like IRAs and real estate, owning part of a company that you don't directly work in, and coming up with a creative work like a song or a book. I don't know much about real estate or owning companies, but I am learning new things every day about the passive income of writing books.

Creating a book for self-publishing purposes takes a lot of time at first, potentially hundreds or thousands of hours. Once it's completed, aside from time spent on promotion, you can put it up for sale. If anybody buys this book you receive money whether you're cooking dinner, hanging out with your kids, or driving in your car. While I have not reached the income levels of self-published authors like Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and J.A. Konrath, I am still in the pool of many authors earning a healthy second income (that is quickly on its way to becoming my top source of income). I rest easier knowing that even while relaxing and sleeping, I am still making a few bucks an hour, twenty-four hours a day.

I have not quit my "day job" of freelance writing for several websites, but I could see myself scaling back considerably by the end of 2011. If I spend less time on my freelance and more time on my passive income-earning books, theoretically I could be setting up income for myself in my 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. I don't recommend abandoning everything for creative endeavors or investments, but if million dollar football professionals are looking for a job like yours, isn't that a cue to try something new?

How to Become a Winner

There are no classes in high school or college called "How to Become a Winner," but I think there should be. A class that focused on dumping the habits and traits of an unsuccessful person and building up those of an industry leader would have been helpful for me growing up. Mistakes wouldn't have burdened me as much and perhaps I would have taken an optimistic Edison approach as he did with his "10,000 ways not to make a light bulb." I would have cherished my time and money more. I may have even started writing and self-publishing much earlier. But let's not focus on the past; let's see how we can be successful now and in the future.

Winners use their time wisely throughout the day, even if it's for rest. They set impossible goals and act as fools who rush in to tackle problems. Successful people start now and don't wait until the moment is perfect (hint: there is no such thing). Winners provide people with a service and if that service is good, they tell people about it. The best of the best come with a forward-thinking comprehensive plan and they're willing to change it if opportunities present themselves in a different direction.

The wealthiest people in the world don't have one job with one source of income, in fact, they may have hundreds or thousands of sources of income. According to research in The Millionaire Next Door, many millionaires and decamillionaires shop at bulk discount stores, buy used cars, and live well below their means. Wealthy successful people give back to their community through foundations and some even give anonymously. Successful money makers think only of abundance and have done so even before they were well off.

Winners are kind and encouraging to their loved ones without expecting anything in return. Successful people realize that without the help of others they wouldn't be where they are and as a result they always listen empathically and look for win-win situations. They try to embody integrity and avoid losing contacts through shady dealings.

Maybe it's better than I didn't learn these things until later in life. In losing years to being unfocused and timid, I learned the value of time and the appropriate application of energy. By falling far into debt in my youth, I had to dig deep to come up with the most effective method to create income for myself just to stay afloat. After losing friends to unreliability and a partial absence of integrity, I found the value of those who stuck around for the long haul and how they should be treated.

Some people go their entire lives without learning these principles of success while others simply ignore them. If you feel like you aren't living up to your potential, seek out the stories of successful people. Biographies and autobiographies of Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffett, Michael Dell, Felix Dennis, and Sam Walton are just a few out there that inspire like mad with tales of triumph. Their concepts are woven into my books, which are meant to turn readers into successful writers and complete people. Try out both my books and theirs to see how their inspiration led to my writing success.

A $40,000 Lesson

I once directed the trailer for a Web series I tried to put up with my money and the money of friends and family. I was going to use this trailer to attempt to contact investors with the help of a very expensive legal document that is used by movies, etc. to secure funding. I learned a huge amount from this experience, especially how to deal with a $40,000 hole in my pocket.

I assumed that with a good enough idea, money was the answer to push the project forward into being. Before I had any money promised from outside sources, I paid a team of writers to produce thirteen full-length episodes of the show, rented out an equipment truck and twenty or so staffers, and booked a coffee shop over night for an entire weekend. The biggest expense, however, was paying a lawyer to draft up a private placement memorandum. All of this together cost a little bit over $40,000.

If I had a well-paying job or a nest egg somewhere, this might not have been such a big deal. The issue was that I was working as a barista at a coffee shop (which is how I got the idea for the Covenant Coffee Web series in the first place). The second issue was that I already had tens of thousands in debt from college that my father was graciously taking the load of while I got my life together. Most of the funds I cobbled together from credit cards, online loans, and generous contributions from friends.

The funny thing is, when you have some money to spend, it tends to go pretty quickly. On the first night of shooting, I found out that my line producer had gone off of his medication and he began to promise everybody on the cast and crew (including those who had been working for free) thousands of dollars that were not originally planned for. On the second night, he got into a fight with the owner of the building we were using and I had to pay the owner off so that we could even film that night.

After all of that craziness, we did eventually finish the trailer. I tried to pitch it around to a few people, but I never made it very far. I'm not sure exactly what happened. I think the amount of debt liability I had finally caught up with me and it clenched me up in a bear trap of fear. I'm not sure if I ever could have gotten the investment money, but I'll really never know because I didn't give it 100%.

I gained a lot of great experience during this project and it was almost like going to film school for a year, which might have cost around $40,000 regardless. I matured thoroughly and learned a ton about the true value of money. There is a lot to be said for bootstrapping by working with the little money that you already have. I could have probably shot the show on the cheap and tested the waters spending a fraction as much. Hindsight is 20/20 though and I'm happy to have been seasoned by the endeavor.

A fantastic thing that did come out of the project was the 13 scripts that I am now planning to release in eBook form. The first script is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc. I plan to create a site to chart its progress and once it has sold 1,000 copies, I will release the second script and so on and so forth. Enjoy the wacky antics of a team of baristas trying to make it in the real world. Hmm, sounds familiar...

Fun and Fulfillment

We live in a world of immediate gratification. There is an app for almost anything you can think of. With the power of Netflix and other instant streaming programs, we can watch TV or movies on practically every device we own. In fact, with a steady income, an average person could probably make it from womb to grave almost completely entertained. But is it enough?

I used to be the King of Wasting Time. I used instant messaging software like it was going out of style; I played time-intensive video games; and I made my breaks much, much longer than my time spent working. The time that I wasted though was always a ton of fun. I was able to enjoy my time alone and my time in a group. I was content to waste this time because I figured if I was going to do anything it might as well be something I enjoyed as much as possible.

When I started my writing website in an effort to make some money on the side, I had trouble working on it unless I was stuck somewhere like a temp job or the DMV. During my actual "free time" I only wanted to do things that were quick, easy, and fun. This started to change for me when I began to get kind and grateful responses from readers. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't like a thousand people, it was more like five. The messages told me how much my site had helped them to write or improve their lives. These responses made me happy in a way that random enjoyment couldn't. I felt warm inside and proud of myself. This wasn't fun; it had moved beyond that and info fulfillment.

I feel like we're all given a choice on this planet of how we want to spend our time. You may not always believe that you have a choice but let's face it, you do. You can choose to spend your free time in the pursuit of pure enjoyment. You can also choose to balance this time by leaving room for fun and fulfillment.

Don't block out four hours straight of television. Leave two for writing your dream book and two for your regularly scheduled programming. Don't sneak a double feature at your local cinema. Instead, see one movie and then call your little sister for some family time or volunteer for a local charity organization. Try this balance on for size and a funny thing will happen. You will actually start to enjoy both fun and fulfillment more than you usually do. Your enjoyment will be deeper and it will reach a high point you never even dreamed of.

In conclusion, put away your app, turn off the phone, and unplug your TV; at least for a little while. Find something that fulfills you and start to add it into your life. Even a little bit of deeper meaning per day can make you feel like you're leading a richer existence.

A Compelling Goal

I am a total nerd. Throughout most of middle and high school I played an extensive catalog of video games. Sure, some of them were the fun shoot 'em ups that even the popular kids would play from time to time. Most of the games I played, however, involved wizards, warriors, and dragons. I loved becoming immersed in games like those in the Final Fantasy series that took 50+ hours of my time to complete.

Every once in a while, I start feeling the pull of these games and I am compelled to begin playing them again. The only way I am able to get myself away from their time-sucking grasp is to give myself a more exciting and interesting real-life challenge to face. To get away from a game centered on quests, I have to give myself a real-life quest.

I realized later in life that these games were so interesting to me because they were goal-oriented. I didn't have many goals myself at the time, so I let Nintendo and Sony come up with them for me. "Find the special jewel in the mystical cave" or "create an antidote using a flower from the hidden forest" and so on. Sure, these goals were pretty silly, but they were clear and positive and I was confident I could achieve them. If you don't have a compelling goal in your life, someone or something (perhaps even a video game producer) will come up with your goals for you.

It is up to you to design the direction of your life. You simply need to make sure the destination is exciting enough for you to put things like video games and other time wasters off to the side. In college, this compelling goal was to write, act, and direct in my school's theatre program. I put everything I had: time, ideas, love, and anything else I could muster into every show I was a part of. Let me tell you, when a show went well, I felt a heck of a lot better than I did defeating an army of evil orcs.

Nowadays, my compelling goal is to write and publish my work to help and/or entertain people. If I ever feel sucked into a time waster, I just remind myself that my real-life goal is a lot more exciting and tangible. The first step in this process is to create an interesting goal to achieve. Until then, any shiny light of entertainment or ho-hum task given to you by someone else will be who you are and what you do.

A Writer; A Business

I recently listened to a 12 minute summary of the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber for the second time. While I have yet to read the full book, the distillation of its subject matter has been extremely eye-opening for me as a self-published author.

The "E" in the book's title refers to the term for an entrepreneur. In the book, Gerber states that a person who starts a business is not necessarily an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur in his eyes is a business owner who creates a system that can be easily replicated and that can give jobs to many people. The McDonald brothers who started the famous hamburger business would be considered business owners. Ray Kroc who bought the business and turned their system into a worldwide chain and veritable gold mine would be considered an entrepreneur.

The second time I listened to the summary, I realized how important it was for a self-published author to be an entrepreneur. Writing books and publishing them yourself is like being the author, the publisher and the publicist all rolled into one. In other words, each book you create is like a business, your storefronts are websites like Amazon, and your publicity takes the form of mailing lists, giveaways, blog tours, etc. If your first business is successful (i.e. your book makes a good amount of sales) you know that your system works well and you can open a second chain (i.e. write a second book, publish it, and publicize it).

In the book, Gerber uses the example of a woman who runs a pie business. When business is slow, she assumes that making more and tastier pies is the answer. Writers often think that crafting every word meticulously will have the same business-booming effect. In both cases, while working harder may help, the most effective way to build the business is to step back and look at it as a whole. How can you improve your book-selling business, as opposed to just your writing?

There isn't an easy, fool-proof answer to this question. My friend Joe Pug, who has become a big success in the folk music scene was working as a carpenter on building sites in Chicago about four years ago. He had started to play his own songs on the guitar at some small concerts and knew that he needed to build his business (i.e. his customer base; his listeners). He started making copies of a CD with two of his singles and giving them out for free to anyone who wanted them. Within a few years, he had given out thousands of CDs and the gamble paid off. He now makes a healthy income from his iTunes sales and he's toured around the country playing shows with artists like Steve Earle and Glen Hansard.

While this isn't a book example, I hope it shows you that even a creative person, an artist, can benefit from an intelligent entrepreneurial strategy. When you complete a book, don't just think about writing the next one; think about how you're going to strategically sell your first one. Your ideas might include a fancy cover, a blog tour, an advertising campaign or any number of things. While it would be amazing if all books were purchased on artistic merit alone, it is not the world we live in. Be an entrepreneur with your book and create a system that will ensure all your writing gets out to the widest audience possible.

Food and Writing

I've always had an interesting relationship with food. When I was a kid, it was one of my best friends, inducing comfort and always being around when I needed it. While I never indulged too much, a slow metabolism turned that love of food into chubbiness. Later in high school, when I dieted for wrestling to get into a lower weight class, it became an enemy. It was the temptation of food that tried to keep me from my varsity spot at 119 lbs. In college, it became a buddy again with all-you-can-eat dining halls and its use in my poetry (I once won over a girl with a poem comparing myself and another guy to an unknown chocolate cake and a delectable but familiar crème _brûlée_ ).

Through a few more dieting periods and feasting periods, I've come to a sort of peace with food. Starting this year I've taken up cooking, which is most fun for me when I'm entertaining a large group of people. At a recent dinner, I cooked up a batch of gruyere, prosciutto and arugula stuffed chicken breasts with a caramelized shallot sauce (thank you Cooking Light) and it went over spectacularly. Chicago is one of those cities with a ridiculous amount of dining choices wherever you turn. To save money and your creative energy, however, it's best to do your own cooking and use as many fresh ingredients as possible.

When I was younger, it was much easier to find stores of creativity no matter what I ate. Nowadays, the best way to get myself going is with high energy meals, not too high in calories that keep my brain working. When you eat a large meal or you down a huge amount of booze, your body goes into major digestion mode. It starts diverting blood, oxygen, and energy from all over your body to the stomach area. If you have a hard time being creative when you're in a normal state, imagine how tough it would be when your body is concentrating all its efforts away from your brain.

In addition, if you are eating foods that are high in sugar or caffeine, after a little burst of alertness, your body and brain will drop like a ton of bricks. Training yourself off of sugar or caffeine sucks (it's strangely like getting over a drug addiction, hmm) it's the best way to keep your mind clear and focused. Foods that naturally improve your alertness like apples and whole grains are much healthier in the long term.

Now I know it seems a little silly for a writer to be talking about food in connection with creativity, but since I've reformed my diet to include more fruits and veggies and fewer heavy meals or sources of caffeine, I've felt like a creative machine. I believe that creativity is tough enough that there's no reason to put anything in your own way. Setting up the best diet possible for yourself is obviously great for your health and weight but it also gets your mind ready to churn out that novel you've been putting off.

Saving money, thinking more effectively, having a healthier body and weight, and showing off to all of your friends sound like good enough benefits to me to invest in a cook book and an apron that says: kiss the published writer. Maybe I should copyright that...

Being Grateful

We live in a world in which the bad things that happen to us are reinforced by our social interactions, the Internet, and our minds. Friends tend to talk about the crappy things that happened to them since the last time you talked. People post their shortcomings, failures and insults on the Internet to gain sympathy and for humor's sake. In addition, the mind naturally gravitates toward adding emphasis to the most negative things in our lives. I used to be involved in the thick of all this negativity just like everybody else. Ever since I've pushed myself in the opposite direction, however, the quality of my life and my career as a writer has shot through the roof.

A lot of people associate negativity with realism. They think that they have to talk about the awful things in the world and their lives and do it in a mean, sarcastic way. You know, because that's the way the world works. Here's the thing though, the world tends to look exactly how you paint it. If you paint it to be a painful place that is a constant struggle, it's most likely to be that way. Fortunately, if you think of the world as a loving place in which good things tend to happen, your life will typically follow suit.

I've read many books about prosperity and happiness and in them gratitude is a very common theme. The books that talk about money say that if you appreciate the money you have, and appreciate the money that you will have in the future, you will eventually get more of it. While I wavered on this point as "too spiritual for me" for a while, it has passed the test for me with flying colors. I didn't really try the experiment at 100% though until reading Marci Shimoff's Happy for No Reason.

Marci takes gratitude to a whole new level in the book. Not only does she recommend increasing the gratitude you have in your life, but she suggests diverting focus away from all the negative things you think, say and do. Of course, there are bad things in life that happen from time to time, but we tend to think about them and talk about them and act upon them long past the point we need to. Marci discusses the need to slowly but surely stop blaming people for things that go wrong in your life; to stop talking and thinking about negative things that have happened in your past (or even your immediate rear-view mirror); and not to talk or think about bad things that have happened to other people.

If you start choosing to talk about positive things and to think about the good stuff as often as possible, you'll get used to it. It took me years to get into this mindset and I'm still certainly not perfect with it. Always trying to be grateful for what I've got and what I hope to have hasn't always been a cakewalk either, but I'm getting better. If I have a quiet moment alone I send up a little prayer thanking the universe for getting me to this point.

I know, I know, it sounds like hippy-dippy mumbo-jumbo. But, if you want to give a happier, healthier and more successful life a try, gratitude and positivity is certainly a good direction to take.

Finishing Strong

This is my final visiting guest post on my 33 day blog tour around the Web. In an attempt to finish strong, I'm going to talk about the ultimate "strong finish" as conceived by Dr. Stephen Covey, author of _7 Habits of Highly Effective People_.

In Covey's book, he discusses an exercise in which you are to look all the way ahead to your death. You aren't to picture the circumstances surrounding it or the preparations of the event. As part of the exercise you are simply supposed to picture the eulogies delivered by your friends and loved ones. Ideally, you would probably want these eulogies to tell tales of a great person who accomplished amazing things and had an unshakable character. Covey essentially asks the question, "Well, how are you doing so far?"

If you were to project ahead to this day, what would these people actually say about you? Would they say that you went for your dreams and inspired people? Would they say that you were a good employee who worked hard for the money? Would they say that you were there for the people who cared about you the most? The trick with this exercise is that you get to choose what they are going to say. The way you choose, is by living the life the way you want to be talked about when you are no longer here.

When I first read about this exercise I was not particularly happy with the way I might be portrayed in the eulogies during my funeral. I was a passionate guy with big dreams who had accomplished little of what I'd set out to do in my creative life. Due to low funds and always needing a favor here and there, I had alienated many friends by not attending their events or to their needs. I spent a lot of time online and my weight was beginning to balloon from a lack of exercise.

I'm not saying that reading about this eulogy concept changed everything, but it was certainly a kick in the pants to head in the appropriate direction. I wanted to be known as a person who had accomplished things. I wanted people to say that I was a loyal friend and someone that they were happy to have known. I wanted to be an inspiration to people in my daily actions, my physique, my everything. That is how I want people to remember me when I'm gone.

I'm not all of the way there yet. There are still big things in this world I want to accomplish, but I know that I've spent a lot of my time wisely these last few years getting closer to where I want to end up by the end. None of us can control when we're going to die and how it's going to happen. But if we control the way in which we live, we can change how people look at our impact on the world after we go.

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About the Author

Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor, director and producer who enjoys dabbling in both theatre and film. Bryan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art with a minor in Creative Writing. He has written or co-written the plays or screenplays _Chekhov Kegstand_ , _Something from Nothing_ , _Covenant Coffee_ , _Kerpow!_ and _The Morning After._ He founded the website Build Creative Writing Ideas in late 2008 and he currently serves thousands of users a month. He is the author of the books _1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts Stories and More, 500 Writing Prompts for Kids: First Grade through Fifth Grade_ , _Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job_ and _Sharpening the Pencil: Essays on Writing, Motivation and Enjoying Your Life_. Bryan is a full-time freelance writer and he currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Visit his website http://www.build-creative-writing-ideas.com.

