Now if you do not have any children in your life-borrow one from a family member or neighbor. Not literally, but talk to the parents and see what appeals to their child and see what you could create. There are many software programs that let a person read a story to a child. See if you might be able to do the same thing. Write then record the story you want to test on the child and let them listen to it. Get the feedback about their response to the story line.

While you might not be interested in childrens writing as a long time project, it can give you some connections to the stories that appealed to you when you were younger and help you unravel what about those stories that you liked that still makes you remember them.  Adding that insight to your writing can change how your reader will connect with you and your stories. Besides it can be fun once in a while to get nostalgic and remember the romance of those old stories and some of the other things that were happening to you and your family during that time that were positive influences on you that still impact you today.

I recently saw a movie and the teacher was contrasting the way fairy tales started and ended and how that often was different than in real life. However, I have had some of those happily ever after results and I’d guess if you really put on your thinking cap you might be able to connect with some of those results too.

Hey, it’s just a bit of time and a few sheets of paper if you are writing manually or a few pages of copy in your word processor. Give it a shot.  It could be great fun and the benefit to your reader will be huge because it makes your writing more believable.

Write a short story about if this has happened to you and what you decided to do. Your story could be humorous or a drama depending on what happened to you

It will also give you the steps that you go through to decide on things that need to be done to maintain your car and sharing your written list could help others in evaluating so they just get what is needed instead of many additional items that were not needed.

I always value information that someone who is knowledgeable gives when what I need the information about is not something that I know much about. Having expert resource information has saved me a considerable amount of money and kept me from having totally unnecessary repairs.

Make your list-Share it with others if you are in the know and ask lots of questions if you are the one who is asking for help.

It can also be a good idea to get a second opinion when this happens unless you are really confident in your repair facility.

Every part of your life can give you topics to write about and your experience not only could help others but help you handle how you feel about what happened.

Labels can be so useful. When you go and buy your food and groceries, you can pick out what you need easily by what’s on the label.

Imagine going into the canned vegetables aisle of your local supermarket, and none of the tins having any labels. There are just shelves and shelves and naked silver tins, with a hundred different types of vegetable inside, but absolutely no way of knowing what they are without opening the can.

Labels in this instance are a very helpful idea!

Not quite so when it comes to people though. Because when you give someone a label, they will more often than not live up to it.

Tell someone they’re a loser, a waste of space, stupid and incompetent, and they will probably do a very good job of being a loser, a waste of space, stupid and incompetent. In fact they might even been so good at it they virtually make it into an art form.

On the other hand, tell someone they’re creative, talented, capable and courageous and they will most likely rise up to this label and prove it to be right.

But we’re not just talking about “someone” here, we’re talking about you. And when it comes to labeling, the person who labels you most is you.

To reveal some of your favourite labels for yourself, try this quick exercise.

Take a sheet of paper and write in the centre – “I am…”, and circle it. Then, start drawing lines coming out from that central circle, filling them in with all the things you believe you are, all the labels you have given yourself.

Write whatever comes to you, maybe “a father, a writer, a photographer” and “capable, inconsistent, talented, naive”, get down everything that comes.

This will soon give you a good idea of how you see yourself.

What kind of phrases came up? Did you write things like “I am creative”, “I am intelligent”, “I am compassionate”?

Or were they more like: “I am an underachiever”, “I am useless”, “I am lazy”?

If you wrote the positive stuff, then that’s brilliant, you obviously have a strong belief in yourself.

If you wrote the more negative, restrictive phrases, then your beliefs about yourself  won’t allow you to be all you can be, and to be yourself.

Let’s go back to our aisle of canned vegetables for a moment. (Please try to contain your excitement.)

What if there was a mix up at the factory? What if, you thought you were buying the basic, own brand mushy peas, because that’s what it said on the label. But when you got home and opened the tin, inside was not cheap mushy peas, but caviar, worth fifty times what you paid for it.

Labels aren’t fixed, they’re not permanent.

And it’s likely that though you’re more precious than caviar, early in your life (in the labeling area of the factory) someone slapped on a label that said “mushy peas”. Or “kidney beans”. Or something equally uninspired and unfitting.

It’s time to rip off those labels and run free.

How do you do this? It won’t happen overnight, but there are steps you can take today, and every day, to help you live up to all the incredible talents you really do have.

The first step, you’ve already taken. Identify all those negative labels you’ve attached to yourself.

The next step is to remove and replace them, one by one. Turn them around.

“I am an underachiever” becomes “I can achieve anything I set my mind and focus to”.

“I am useless” becomes “I have all the talents and abilities I need to be whoever I want to be”.

“I am lazy” becomes “I am focused and committed to becoming the best version of myself I can be”.

And so on. Start now, take the label that you feel holds you back the most. Write it on a piece of paper on its own. Then rip it up into tiny pieces.

Take a new sheet of paper and write down your new label, the positive turnaround. Doing this once will help, but you must keep reprogramming those old labels every day, many times a day, to make the new positive ones stick.

So, are you ready to rip off YOUR ragged old labels and run free?

Share with us below the labels you carry around with you that hold you back most.

As we grow up we are programmed not to talk about our problems and hence the same situations/challenges (that all human beings face) become personal.

Remember I keep telling you to write out what you did to solve the problem you faced and be willing to share the steps and results with others so they could get to the solution more quickly.

It’s just that you think you are the only one going through problem xyz, that no one else would want to know what you did and you might be embarrassed if they found out you had that problem. 

Even through we all feel that our problems are unique to us, they are in fact a problem that everyone faces at some time in their life. If you can solve your problem and move yourself closer to your goal, then you have created a solution to a problem that millions of others also have and will gladly pay money to read, learn about  or give their attention to.

Ex: Have you ever had the experience of telling someone something and when they explained your problem back to you, you were excited because this person truly understood what you were experiencing and feeling?

They are really willing to listen to you then when they feel like you understand them.  They will become one of your readers because you are helping them with an answer.

News Flash:  Stop thinking you are the only one going through situations in your life and focus on looking for and sharing with others your steps on solving those issues we all face.

Write and share and enjoy the profits you will make by being willing to do that.

You have to keep it real for your readers or they will find other authors that they can resonate with who do tell the truth or present the story line in such a way that the reader can connect with the content.  No body likes a showoff and often that is how they perceive someone who is bragging but can not back up what they are saying with any proof that what they said is what they did.

Lean too far to the right and creative side and the story starts to wander all over the place.  Lean too far to the left and logical side and your story takes on too many boring facts and becomes more difficult for you to write.

So how do you find a balance?  Usually you can tell when the story seems to wander and there is no sequence of events.  You might be coming in the door and in the next paragraph eating dinner.  Well, what happened between these two events? 

On the other hand you could give so many details about the events between the door and eating that the reader says alright already let’s get on with the story. 

Just read over your story line and see how your events flow together and you will immediately improve the quality as well as the content in your story line.

For the side that you prefer to be the one they choose, it is up to you to give the most in depth explanation so your reader can join with you.  Being believable with your writing is the key to that. 

If you were ever in debate club in school or knew of others in your class who were, you might remember that you were not always in favor of the topic you were assigned to defend and had to spend some time researching to be sure you had enough facts to actually defend the topic.  Well, life is very much like debate club.  We are always faced with topics that we need to research to be able to make a decision if they are accurate and apply to our lives or not.

If you make looking at both sides of a story fun, it is easier and quicker to get to the decision point regarding the information you are presented.  If you can do that in your writing, your reader will stay engaged with your content and continue on to the next chapter.  Creating curiosity is another way to keep a reader engaged, but, for now just apply the gathering information on both sides of the story and begin to apply that to your writing.  Your story  lines will blossom and for the characters in your non-fiction work you will be able to create very interesting plot twists.

First you tell your story from your experience and knowledge.  Be believable. If it is fiction have your characters doing things that really could have happened to someone.  Being credible with your facts and presentation will set you apart as an author/writer that people will want to read more work from in the future.

Your reader has the same response when you present your story in such a way that the story line is not believable.  Once you begin to present information in that way you will notice you have less and less interest in what you are writing about. 

Write, have someone else read it and give you feedback to see if they can find any areas where you could improve your story line and your overall presentation.  A good way to determine that is if your reader begins to question you about what they are reading or start asking for more information.  It can be as simple as leaving out steps in the story to as complex as skipping important sequences in the information of your story line.