Category Archives: Writing Musings

Musings from author Denise Turney on writing, including freelance, marketing, self-help, nonfiction and journal writing. Here you will find book marketing tips as well as advice on places where you can go to sharpen your craft and network with other writers, including novelists. You’ll also find places where you can network with readers, editors, publishers and literary agents.

How New Authors Gain Book Sales

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By Book Author Denise Turney

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Yes. New York Times bestselling books are often written by household name authors. Readers know what to expect from these authors. To readers, there may be less monetary and time risks involved with these titles. But that doesn’t mean that new authors can’t gain book sales. In fact, following are techniques that help new authors gain book sales.

Launching New Books

That’s good news. Unfortunately, simply writing a book, even a beautifully crafted story, isn’t always enough to gain book sales. Furthermore, publishing a book on a major platform like Amazon, Kobo or Barnes and Noble also is no guarantee that new authors will gain book sales, let alone enter the ranks of bestselling books.

Despite the genre, new authors could gain book sales if they publish books in January. To get more sales, the book genre is another factor to consider. For example, romance and self-help books may perform better when they launch in January. Children’s books and cookbooks may do well when published in December, and science fiction does well when published May thru August.

Getting to Top Selling Books

Yet, here’s the thing. During the end-of-year holiday season, authors of bestselling books are marketing and promoting their titles. That puts new authors in competition with household name authors which is why January launches yield results. In addition to launching new books at the start of the year, to move books for sale, new authors can:

  • Design catchy book covers using tools like Canva, Book Brush, Pic Monkey, 99Designs. Consider posting two to three book cover options on social media and asking people to vote on their favorite book cover. Another option is to share three book covers with family and friends and ask them to tell you which image they like best.
  • Also, write an attention-grabbing book description. It’s this overview that may determine whether readers simply flip a book over and put it back down or pick a book up and buy it.
  • In today’s digital book world, it’s important to add the right keywords to book overviews. Why? Keywords are what will help attract readers to new, classic and older books. In fact, keywords will impact search engines, Apple Books, Google Books, audio books and Amazon bestselling books.
  • And here’s another tip. If new authors aren’t gaining book sales, they can update their book description, trying different keywords within the description.

More Ways for New Authors to Achieve Top Selling Books Status

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Here are more ways for new authors to gain book sales. The first choice sounds easy. Yet, there are still authors who don’t have an official website.

  • Therefore, it’s important that new authors have an official website. When developing a website, consider using the author name as part of the website URL. It may not be a good idea to use a book title as part of a website URL if a new author plans to write more books.
  • To polish the story, let an experienced book editor look at the book. New authors and established authors are so close to their stories, it can be hard to spot mistakes in the writing. Even more, authors may overlook parts of a story that should be carved out. Another thing authors can miss that can hurt sales is an area of a story that could be stronger with dialogue or scene change.
  • Back to the official author website. Don’t just create a book author website. To get traction, add a blog to the author website. Add a new blog article that has relevant key phrases at least once a week. Here’s another tip. Website content management systems like WordPress allow authors to add a link to their book’s Amazon sales page.
  • Depending on the budget, new authors should consider trying paid ads. But watch the budget to avoid getting dreamy and overspending with minimal results.

Even More Ways for New Authors to Gain Book Sales

Places to test books for sale ads include Book Bub, Bargain Booksy, Cush City, AALBC, Facebook and Amazon sponsored ads. Here’s another tip as it regards ads. Run two ads to test which images and ad copy pull in more book sales.

  • Also, review book marketing analytics. This could keep new authors from entering states of magical thinking. After all, magical thinking can cause new authors to think that their new title will soon be among the Amazon bestselling books and New York Times bestselling books just because they wrote the book.
  • Create, publish and market book trailers.
  • New authors can also create their own Vimeo or YouTube Channel, offering writing and marketing tips.
  • Notwithstanding, the fact is selling enough books to see a title among the top selling books takes work. Which is why book marketing analytics aren’t always fun to review. But they offer insight into the types of book marketing techniques that are working and the techniques and strategies that need to be changed or stopped.

Pathway to Book Sales Online and Offline

Even more, podcast interviews, offline radio interviews and television interviews are effective ways for new authors to gain book sales. Other ways for new authors to gain book sales are to design and mail post cards using tools like Canva or VistaPrint. Thanks to the Internet, these postcards can be in print or digital.

Other options to announce books for sale include posting flyers on college and university bulletin boards. As a safeguard, authors should ensure they get approval from school administrators to post the flyers. And creating book newsletters is another way for new authors to gain book sales.

Definitely encourage family and friends to spread the word about the new books. This is not the time for authors to be shy. This raises another point. If new authors are assertive, there are a myriad of actions they can take to promote and market their books.

Keep the Momentum Going

For example, new authors can attend book festivals and cultural events that attract their book’s audience. Teaching college writing courses is another way to pull in more book sales. Additionally, there are book tours, book reviews and book swag to share with attendees at major events.

In closing, as the Internet and the world continue to change, new authors can develop innovative book marketing strategies. They can also take advantage of marketing apps and social media book marketing tools. To continue growing book sales, authors have to keep releasing new books. And, they have to keep introducing their new books and their backlist to book buyers and book readers.

What You Do Matters – Achieve Success with Integrity

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By African American Books Writer Denise Turney

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Achieve success with integrity and enjoy a good night’s sleep. Living with integrity also keeps you in high regard. Yet, operating with integrity won’t always gain you a fast track to success. Why? It’s easier to take shortcuts, especially when you feel like you’re in a tight spot.

Facing Integrity Temptations

In fact, if you’ve ever cheated on a test, you’ve experienced how easy it can be to operate on the other side of integrity. Also, some ways you may have sidestepped integrity include speeding through a red light or lying about not making a mistake on a work project. Your heart and intentions may have been good. But risks associated with operating with integrity in these instances may have seemed too high.

And, that’s the rub. There are times when you may find yourself facing hard choices. During these instances, it may seem easier and more advantageous to forego integrity. Doing so could yield short term benefits. However, over the long term, not operating with integrity could cost you.

For example, if you don’t operate with integrity in business, you could face lawsuits and employee turnover. Of course, your brand reputation could also be permanently damaged. Yet, the same voice inside your head that tempted you to take the shortcuts, may also convince you that you won’t pay for your poor choices.

Achieve Success with Integrity in the Arts

In fact, that voice may exclaim that you won’t get caught. You’ll never be found out. Television shows like American Greed and Luther have pulled in good ratings as viewers watch one person after another who thought he’d never be found out – get caught.

And, as it regards television, the arts is a prime area where the temptation to sidestep operating with integrity can be a problem. Years ago, an aspiring actress might unwillingly shortcut her way onto a major film through a powerful studio executive. Fortunately, that may be changing.

Examples Missing Integrity

But there are hidden ways to sidestep integrity and ethics in the arts and business. And these hidden actions could derail your career. Among examples of not operating with integrity and ethics in the arts and business, there’s:

  • Asserting that you graduated from a college or university you only attended for one semester
  • Paying for book reviews to be posted at books sites when you know the people posting the reviews haven’t read your books
  • Posting negative comments and negative reviews on competitor products, websites and social media accounts in the hopes of boosting your product rankings
  • Stating that you love a product that you haven’t used once

Writing headlines that confuse readers about the topic of an article in order to drive website traffic is another way to sidestep integrity. It’s almost as if you’re competing in a sport and are willing to do anything to win. Yet, if you’ve ever been on the short end of the lack of integrity, you know how painful the experience can be.

Get Clear About What You Want

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Also, if you’ve signed a bad contract, you know what it feels like to get burned by someone who sidestepped integrity. So, how can you achieve success with integrity in a world where taking unethical shortcuts is, at times, praised?

To begin, get clear about what you truly want. For example, as your primary goal, do you want to write a compelling novel with engaging characters that share universal truths? Or, do you want to sell 100,000 copies of a book in a record number of days?

Operating with Integrity

Your primary goal may impact whether or not you achieve success with integrity. So, get clear about what you most want. Other ways to achieve success with integrity are to:

  • Set clear boundaries for how you will operate in business and in the arts. Companies do this by developing policies.
  • Stick with telling the truth. In fact, setting a boundary of truth can prevent you from engaging in behavior that you’ll later be tempted to lie about to avoid penalty.
  • Talk through grey areas with trustworthy partners, family or friends.
  • Accept reality. Avoid stepping into the world of illusion and convincing yourself that doing wrong will, somehow, pay off.
  • Put yourself on the other end of the deal. For example, how would you feel or think if someone undercut you on a film, book or business contract?

Also, think long term. Consider what would happen should something you say or do not only be discovered, but gain local, regional or national exposure. After all, you’re building a reputation. Whether you want to or not, you are building your personal brand which is strengthened when you achieve success with integrity.

Achieve Success with Integrity – How Do You Want to be Perceived

Do you want to be known as someone’s who transparent and honest? Or do you want to spend long hours and years building a remarkable career only to watch that same career disintegrate because choices you made years ago caught up to you?

This raises another point. To achieve success with integrity, put your best effort into your work. In other words, respect your audience. Respect your customers. Approach them as the intelligent people that they are. For example, if you’re a novelist, avoid writing “down” to book readers.

As you get in the habit of operating with integrity, honest business decisions may become habit. You also might reduce the number of times you rationalize poor choices. Instead, you may simply accept that you made a mistake and focus on avoiding making the same mistake again.

Living with Integrity Takes Courage

This is why to achieve success with integrity you must have courage. It takes courage to stick with integrity and stay on a path that, although rewarding, may increase the time it takes you to hit success goals, like sales and revenue targets. And it takes courage to pass up an entertainment or business deal that would require you to lie, break a law or be unethical.

Over the long term, operating with integrity gifts you with a clear conscience. You can sleep good at night. And, you won’t have to live in fear that unethical deals you made will be exposed. In fact, you might enjoy a rewarding career absent regret.

Ways to Tap into More Creativity as an Artist and Employee

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By Books Writer Denise Turney

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Tap into more creativity and enjoy success. Creativity isn’t just for painters, novelists, architects, dancers, songwriters and musicians. In fact, to excel at work, relationships and in the arts, you need to be creative. After all, it’s creativity that’s the spark of innovation. If you’re starting a business, creativity will advantage you while you’re developing creative logo designs. It will also aid you while you’re looking for new ways to connect with new hires, dissatisfied customers and loyal supporters.

Make Time For Creativity

Advantages aside, it doesn’t always seem easy to tap into more creativity. Tight deadlines, family demands and social responsibilities can do more than chew up time. These tasks prove exhausting, threats to stillness and mindfulness. And, it’s stillness and mindfulness that can let creativity flow. Hence, a first step to tapping into more creativity is to watch how you map out your day.

If you’re serious about allowing creativity to flow, leave time open to simply sit and relax. That, or you can try walking in nature, floating in a swimming pool or meditating. Relaxing and practicing mindfulness help whether you want to tap into more creativity to create beautiful paintings, a business plan, music, a riveting novel or another tool to place in your art box.

Easy Ways To Become More Creative

Another effective way to tap into creativity is to engage in a hobby. For example, crafting a stage play may assist you with mastering workplace writing. Adding delicious color to an adult coloring book could open space in your mind for innovative ideas related to a work project to surface. Here are more ways to tap into greater creativity:

  • Write in a journal in the morning or before going to bed at night
  • Take an advanced English writing course if you’re seeking ways to sharpen your business or artistic writing
  • Enroll in an online music or arts class. For example, you could learn to play the guitar. Or you could take an online cooking class.
  • Sing a song while you shower or enjoy a bubble bath.
  • Meditate using a lava lamp or while using an online slow moving visual. For instance, you could meditate while looking at a circular online abstract painting that moves.
  • Pursue creative ideas when they surface, especially if the ideas don’t require a significant time or financial investment. Should creative ideas require a significant investment, consider researching the ideas before you act on them.
  • Enter a creative arts contest. Doing so could get you exposure. It could also increase your confidence in your creative abilities.

Additional Easy Ways to Become More Creative

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Check out these additional ways to tap into more creativity. Each of these actions is fairly easy to implement:

  • Join a creative discussion group. Participating in a creative group is an effective way to stay on track. It’s also a good way to generate more creative ideas. Successful businesses use this method to surface ideas for new business designs, products and services.
  • Exercise, especially outdoors in nature. Moving in nature has a remarkable way of generating creative ideas. Make sure you explore the outdoors in safe areas.
  • Drink plenty of fresh water and treat your body to a healthy diet of green, leafy vegetables and fruit. The healthier you are, the better you may feel. This alone can find you tapping into more creativity.
  • Do something creative every day. This could include doing something as simple as writing a relative or a friend a letter.
  • Revisit creative artwork or creative business designs you have already produced. It could prove to be the fuel needed to spur more creativity.
  • Enjoy other creative works, artwork produced by other people. See if it doesn’t inspire you.

Tap Into The Right Creative Ideas

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As with any goal, setting the right priorities is important. Because stress can block creativity, leaving time for mindfulness is key when it comes to creative artwork like developing an abstract painting and even creative logo design ideas for business. So, you’re going to have to map out your day so you have time to relax.

Then, when creative ideas surface, write the ideas down. That, or you can start developing the creative ideas straightaway. After a while, you may learn to quickly distinguish quality creative ideas from ideas that you may never develop. It’s this mental sharpness that can prevent you from spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on ideas that never work.

Respect Your Bank Account

This raises another key point. Just as lack of time can block the flow of creativity, so too can financial debt. And here’s an interesting pattern. You gain an artwork or creative business idea. Then, you start seeking out partners, creative artists and creative agencies to help bring your idea to life. Sounds simple. But, depending on the deals you cut with these people, you could dig a hole for yourself.

Creative agencies may promise excellent results at cost. Should these professionals deliver, your next move may be to share the creative work. This is when you might start working with marketing agencies. As good as it feels to imagine future success, marketing agencies aren’t cheap.

Should it take months, perhaps years, for your creative artwork, beautiful paintings or workplace creative designs to yield strong results, you could be thousands of dollars in the hole before your idea generates a growing income. So, while developing creative ideas, be smart. Respect your bank account.

Be Smart With Creative Ideas

As tempting as it may feel, don’t over spend to develop or market creative ideas. Also, read through creative contracts. Thoroughly review these contracts. After all, you don’t want to sell away your work or sign a contract that marries you to an agency for years. If you’re an employee, also be smart about turning creative ideas over to your employer.

Being smart adds so much to your creative ideas. Getting your novels copyrighted, filing for new product patents and trade marking creative logo designs are ways to be smart with your creativity. Another way is to maintain full control of your artwork and creative business designs. This way, you can reuse the designs in various formats without needing to ask permission.

Faith for Overcoming Tough Times

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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If navigating this world was only easy. What a wonder it would be if life in this world was always smooth, never bumpy, not once requiring unshakable faith. Actually, when you’re a kid, life can feel like a cool ride if your parents are loving, responsible and have strong child development skills. Then, years pass, and you get what you’ve been begging for. You get to grow up and become an adult. That’s when you need faith for overcoming tough times.

Set Yourself Up for a Good Life

Brace yourself, my friend. You may have just entered the space where you’ll have the types of experiences that grow into the case for faith. As you prepare to navigate these experiences, make smart decisions. A doctor once told me that an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. For example, give yourself a solid chance to live in peace by choosing zero to low student loan debt. Also, get a wealth of experiences beneath your feet before you decide to marry or become a parent.

Travel. Explore. Live carefree and unhinged.

And pursue what calls your heart. For instance, if you’re passionate about painting, busy yourself working with a myriad of colors, inks and canvases. Love writing? Start penning your best novel. Don’t worry. You may have lots of time to get better as a writer, sharing remarkable stories with the world.

Overcoming Tough Times

My prayer is that you never have a hiccup along the way. But the world being what it is, that may be unlikely. In fact, if yours was a challenging or abusive childhood, you’ve already hit bumps, maybe even faced your share of mountains. One more setback, and you could consider tossing in the towel. Or you might ponder simply surviving, just getting from one day to the next.

Yet, if there’s a bit of kick in you, this choice could turn into regret. That’s why you’re encouraged to exercise faith. After all, overcoming tough times calls for fearless faith. To stir up your faith while overcoming tough times, remember why you started on your life’s path. Remember why you started painting. Or remember why you went into ministry, sales, medicine, science or education.

As hard as it may seem, see yourself doing what you love. Also, see yourself enjoying, actually enjoying, being successful while you’re doing what you love. Keep at it. You’ll see that ongoing life success really is the case for faith. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1 shares that, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (New International Version)

About Loving Life

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You may have also seen this shared as, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (New King James Version). Beyond Bible study on faith, there are the words and experiences of motivational speakers and instructors.

Motivational speakers and instructors teach that inner vision produces what we see out in the world. When experiences that you want keep showing up in your outer world, this is easy to digest. In fact, you might celebrate these seemingly “easy” successes.

During these times, blessed faith doesn’t seem necessary. But, this is when seeming ease could make a future challenge that much harder. If you don’t practice daily awareness, you could start to believe that your successes are magical events. You could miss the link between your thoughts, beliefs and faith and what you see in your outer world.

Faith Building Tips

Then, when hard times show up, you may feel incapable of facing them. Therefore, to strengthen your thoughts into fearless faith while overcoming tough times:

  • See yourself living a rewarding life, enjoying your passions. Do this every day.
  • Practice awareness. Pay attention to your thought world and notice the link between your inner thoughts and the images your thoughts show you in the seemingly “outer” world.
  • Surround yourself with people who are living the life that you’re passionate about. Watching others achieve their goals, especially goals similar to yours, can pump up your unshakable faith.
  • Watch programs that support your passions, programs that strengthen fearless faith in you.
  • Listen to deep meditation tapes that inspire, motivate and encourage faith love hope.
  • Recognize inner guidance when it surfaces. And follow guidance from your Higher Self.

Also, take action that leads you closer to your goals. If you get into the habit of taking wise daily action, you can gain a momentum that could propel you through unimaginably tough times. This has happened to me at least twice. And, when I say unimaginably tough times, I’m talking gut wrenching struggles.

Strengthened Faith for Overcoming Tough Times

Here are more ways to strengthen fearless faith while overcoming tough times. Remember, it’s this type of faith that may become blessed faith, a belief in good that doesn’t call for years of struggle and suffering:

  • Each day, engage in at least three activities that you enjoy. For example, you could take a scented bubble bath every night, sip on your favorite herbal tea in the morning and take a relaxing midday walk.
  • Love reading books? Curl up with your favorite books two to three nights a week. Not only will you be entertained, but books that you read may offer insight into your current struggles. Additionally, books that you read, including fiction, might hold an answer to a question you’ve been pondering.
  • Dance in the morning, if only for 30 to 60 seconds. Do this even if you’re struggling to find a reason to get out of bed.
  • Spend time with loving family and friends. For instance, you could commit to visiting and calling family and friends once a week. Keep this commitment to avoid isolating yourself and feeling like it’s you against the entire world.
  • Continue to build good, loving relationships. Little beats good, trustworthy, loving friends when it comes to overcoming tough times.
  • Be patient with yourself. Even if you’ve lived with fearless faith before, it can take weeks, months or years to reach a blessed faith state. Once in a blessed faith state, trusting the Creator to help you see while in the light may become natural.

Getting to a Good Life

In other words, take care of yourself. Be kind to yourself. It may not be what you want to hear. But, you may have lots of chances to practice fearless faith. That’s another reason why it’s wise to start paying attention to the link between your inner thoughts (inner images) and the external thoughts (outer images that you see in the world). Also, take full responsibility for your life. This can help you to feel empowered, even if you’re facing hard experiences.

One last tip. Read stories of people who faced and overcame seemingly impossible challenges. Stay motivated, encouraged and inspired. See yourself enjoying what you want to experience. In fact, see and feel it as if it’s happening right now. Despite how hard things may appear, see yourself enjoying a good life. Practice fearless faith until you achieve a blessed faith state.

Psychology of Success: Staying Motivated Thru Failures

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Psychology of success aligns personality, experience, core beliefs, critical thinking and self-awareness. If you want to experience quantum success, you’ll also need to commit to self-honesty. No more playing games, no more lying to yourself. You also have to take full responsibility for your decisions. Yes. It means you take full responsibility for your conscious and unconscious decisions.

Psychology of Success Honesty

To achieve and sustain success, you have to really get to know yourself. Another thing you have to do is face your fears. For example, you may feel fear when you think about aging, living alone, public speaking, being criticized on making a mistake in public.

In fact, Napoleon Hill, author of The Law of Success, Think and Grow Rich, How to Own Your Own Mind, The Magic Ladder of Success and The Science of Success, shared that our leading enemies (or fears) are fear of poverty, sickness, death, aging, criticism and loss of love.

To avoid getting blocked, work through fears early, before fears go deep into the subconscious. Tips to work through fear include journaling, writing a letter to someone whose opinion you’ve inflated and walking in nature and allowing submerged thoughts to surface. Other ways to face and move beyond fears are to talk with a trusted friend about the fear and joining a safe support group to hear how others deal with fear.

Train Your Brain for Success

Additionally, you could limit the time you let yourself think about something you fear to 2 minutes a day, and no more than once a month. This single step reduces time you spend worrying. As you do this work, you might discover that you invented a goal to avoid facing a fear. For example, you might have a goal to be the top sales rep at your company because, deep down, you fear your father doesn’t think you measure up.

Accept what you discover, what surfaces as you get to know yourself. This acceptance is better than spending decades chasing a dream that never really was yours. Signs that a success goal is truly yours include feeling peace while taking actions related to your goal, living with increased energy and clear focus. Also, you might feel more curious about life in general, living with a sense of wonder.

After you get clear about what you want, start to train your brain for success. To train your brain for success, listen to deep meditation tapes and repeat positive affirmations, statements that stir deep emotion in you. Making a visual success map, hanging inspirational quotes in your home and writing letters to your future self (the self who has achieved the goal) are other ways to train your brain for success.

Stay Open

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Each night, see yourself, actually see and feel yourself, enjoying the experiences that you want. See yourself speaking with clients and prospects. And see yourself signing hundreds of books at cultural festivals and large book conferences. Visualize that you’re living in the house you want. To continue to advance, stay open. In fact, Psychology Today shares that being open to new experiences is another key in the psychology of success.

Self-discipline, sound money management and the right actions are other psychology of success keys. Track the results of your actions in a weekly or monthly spreadsheet. Seeing the results of your efforts could fuel you as you work to achieve success.

Navigating the Road of Success

Also, stay motivated, because despite how hard you work, there may be times when you fail. Reading inspirational quotes helps keep you going. If reading inspirational quotes doesn’t work, consider:

  • Revisit why you started pursuing your goals
  • Take a break – simply take a break for one to two weeks
  • Ask your Higher Self for guidance
  • Read an empowering book
  • Accept and acknowledge successes you have already achieved
  • Continue to train your brain for success
  • Appreciate your blessings – focus on the good in and around you
  • Visit family and friends – connect with people who make you feel loved, people who make you feel good

Love for Your Success Journey

Somewhere on your success journey, you’re going to have to empower yourself. After all, no one stays on top forever. In fact, if you pursue success long enough, you’ll see that success is never owned. That’s why it’s important to appreciate your blessings and connect with people who make you feel loved.

In fact, it’s these people who make success sweet. Little may be more rewarding than sharing success, especially hard-earned success, with those you love.

If you let these opportunities slip, by the time you realize success is never owned, what could have been your sweetest relationships may have been ruined because you were too busy or didn’t take the time to see that success without a circle of love isn’t really success, which brings up another point.

Stay Motivated

Your family and friends and the people your work helps may be your life’s real quantum success. Fill your life with loving relationships, achieve goals that align with your highest values, and, for you, quantum success may naturally unfold.

So, stay motivated. Train your brain for success. And make the psychology of success part of your life. Also, remember that success is never owned. Keep advancing. Count your blessings and appreciate the good that’s in your life right now. Even more, continue to nurture loving relationships. After all, love and appreciation are a huge part of any success.

Physical Fitness – How Busy Freelance Writers & Novelists Can Stay Healthy

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By African American Books Writer Denise Turney

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Busy freelance writers and novelists can stay healthy, even while juggling hectic schedules. Admittedly, it’s going to take focus and commitment, but it can be done. By focusing on good health, these creatives will have more energy to produce better writing.

Good Physical Health Challenges for Freelance Writers and Novelists

After all, good physical health leads to improved emotional and mental health. It’s also linked to better mental clarity, energy, motivation, inspiration and creativity. Additionally, writers might enjoy more patience and find themselves becoming better, more flexible, communicators.

Benefits aside, the path to maintaining good physical fitness can present challenges. Furthermore, challenges associated with maintaining good health may be numerous for writers. To begin, there is stress associated with meeting tight deadlines, nailing feature interviews and polishing work on short notice.

Doesn’t matter if writers are knocking out web content writing jobs from home, remote freelance technical writing on the road or content marketing writing at an office. The temptation to keep plugging away in effort to get “caught up” or to “get ahead” with writing projects is stressful.

Stay Healthy Completing Online Writing Jobs From Home

I learned this lesson the hard way while I freelanced full-time during the Great Recession. As fast as I wrote, before I knew it, I had slipped into the habit of spending 12 to 16 hours a day zoning in on remote writing jobs. I mean, I didn’t take a day off. Instead, I worked long hours seven days a week. If you’re like me, you may not fully realize that you are actually working because you’re writing from home. Fact is, you’re working even if the television is on, or you’ve got the radio turned to your favorite station.

Also, not having to commute to work could deceive you into thinking that your work schedule is somehow easier than it would be if you drove into an office. Slip into these habits and before you know it, you might start to feel stressed. Even more, you might start to burn out. And, burn out can sneak up on you.

Fortunately, there are methods to steering clear of these challenges. For starters, set clear start and end times when you will focus on writing jobs. As an example, you might complete freelance writing projects from 8am until 5pm, Monday through Friday. Instead of working seven days a week, you might only write two to three hours on Saturday and none on Sunday or vice versa.

How About Superfoods, Probiotics and Health Products

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As a hidden gem, eating superfoods like green leafy vegetables, papaya and guava are other ways freelance writers and novelists can stay healthy. Probiotics (I love Kombucha beverages!) could support digestion, soothing writers’ stomachs as they make healthy food choices. This single choice could help writers avoid stomach pain or heartburn.

Here are more ways freelance writers and novelists can stay healthy, even with demanding schedules. To get the most out of these tips, consider adding three or more of the tips to your daily routine.

  • Eat a breakfast of green leafy vegetables, superfoods like fruit and/or eggs
  • Try healthy shakes for lunch
  • Drink plenty of water whether you’re looking to maintain your weight or seeking healthy living weight loss results
  • Practice safety when using physical fitness equipment
  • Get up from your computer or laptop once an hour. Doing so could relieve stress and promote healthy living weight loss

Check Out These Easy Ways Freelancers and Novelists Can Stay Healthy

  • At least once a day, get outdoors for a walk, run or swim (this is such a benefit!)
  • Connect with family and friends. Don’t fall into the trap of writing to the point that you isolate yourself.
  • Take a lunch break. During lunch break, enjoy healthy shakes, salads and other health products rich in vitamins and minerals.
  • Admit when you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Again, step away. Take breaks.
  • Build vacation time into your schedule, and don’t work while you’re on vacation.
  • Stop thinking about work when your workday ends. Otherwise, you may never fully leave the job.
  • Ask for help when you feel you’d benefit from assistance.

Just as writing stellar novels, technical guides, e-books and marketing content takes effort, maintaining overall good mental and physical health as a freelance writer and novelist takes work too. Therefore, commit to making rest, healthy eating and clear boundaries part of your daily routine. In a few months, you may be very glad that you did.

Commitment to Good Health

Writing from home might look like light work, but it’s not. There are client intake meetings, email marketing campaigns, web page copy, blog articles, press releases and business e-books to tackle. And that’s just the start. Depending on your writing range, you might also write technical guides, annual reports, product descriptions and video, radio or television scripts.

Don’t fool yourself. Despite what you may think, you’re working hard. That’s why finding healthy snacks, taking effective joint supplements and adding a garlic supplement to your diet can be beneficial. Other choices you could make to support your mental, emotional and physical health include choosing healthy shakes over high calorie, low energy foods and beverages.

It’s not always easy. In fact, it may take focus, effort and commitment. But it’s worth it. Regular exercise, superfoods, a garlic supplement and other organic, non-GMO health products could help keep your cortisol levels down, preventing stiffness and joint pain.

The right food and exercise choices could also keep you from experiencing sugar highs and lows. The only downside may be around drinking lots of fresh water. Drink a lot of water and you might have to take more bathroom breaks. But, then again, those breaks could be just what you need to step away from writing projects long enough to avoid burn out.

Living a Blessed Life You Love

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By Books Writer Denise Turney

woman focused on living a blessed life soaring mid-air while blowing huge balloon in sky
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Living a blessed life is natural. But, in this world, living a blessed life takes courage. Perhaps, this is why it’s tempting to cash life in for playing it safe and doing what it takes to gain the approval of someone you admire, even if these choices force you away from joy.

At first glance, giving in to safe choices is easier, better. It’s easier to say “yes” to an invitation when you really want to say “no”. And it’s easier to agree to do a friend, manager or colleague a favor than it is to tell them “no” and risk incurring their disappointment or anger. But there’s a price to pay for so much yielding.

Start Living a Blessed Life Now

If you’re serious about living your best life now, prepare to face resistance. After all, not everyone thinks the way you do. Furthermore, not everyone should think the same. The one commonality that allows for freedom with grace is a commitment to love. This commitment is at the core of living your best life.

This means that you commit to only love.

As you work at this, should you feel tempted to hold a grievance and get blocked, forgive. There’s power in forgiveness. Why? Forgiveness keeps the flow of love open. And it’s these that offer access to light for inner vision, guidance and the courage to forge ahead as you deepen and expand your life.

Pursue Living Learning Loving

Living your best life also requires that you get clear about what you really want. To do this, sit still for 15 minutes. Simply sit still in a quiet, peaceful place. Make it a habit. Notice if you don’t receive more inner guidance, love-based promptings.

woman sitting and smiling
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After you get clear about what you really want, map out a path to fulfill those goals. And these goals may not involve gaining material things. These goals may center around experiences like traveling to a new country, learning to speak a different language or dancing for the first time in years.

For example, in addition to sitting still and/or meditating, the path to living a blessed life might find you researching facts about your goals. Prior to traveling to a new country, you might research what you need to do to get a passport. You also might research key places to visit in the country, tour guide options, hotels and flight deals. As you live your best life now, you also might study the language in the country, learning enough lingo to be able to enjoy time that you spend in the country.

Go Confidently in the Direction of Your Dreams

Here are other actions that could help you as you go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Create or cut out pictures of experiences you want, experiences that will open the door to joy. Other choices that could help you to go confidently in the direction of your dreams include:

  • Writing down actions you will take to achieve your goals
  • List out specific steps required to fulfill these goals
  • Identify financial, time and legal resources needed to fulfill your goals
  • Clearly outline where you will get these resources
  • Schedule events that put you in contact with the right buyers, supporters and influencers

While you go confidently in the direction of your dreams, stay on high moral ground. Remain ethical. Avoid thinking that doing the wrong thing will pay off. After all, even if cutting corners lends you short term benefits, doing the wrong thing will cost you big in the long term. Why? You have a conscience. At your core, you always want to do what’s right.

Art of Living a Blessed Life

Fortunately, you can do what’s right and do what it takes to start living a blessed life. Just be prepared to face resistance, including inner resistance. For example, there may be times when you have to learn the art of living alone and loving it. This could happen after your children reach adulthood and leave home.

Or it could happen should your spouse transition, you divorce or relocate to an area miles away from family. Business shifts, market changes, physical challenges and/or mental or emotional changes are types of resistance and setbacks that you could face. Despite the challenges, when you go after what you’re Higher Self wants, it’s always worth it.

Steer Clear of These Regrets to Keep Living a Blessed Life

Consider this should you feel tempted to quit, throw in the towel and take the easy route, striving to make others happy instead of yourself. These are five things that people often regret when they reach the end of their physical experience. Choices that you make now could keep you from experiencing these regrets.

  • Living a life that others want you to live instead of living the life that you want
  • Not resting and enjoying experiences more fully
  • Choosing to avoid communicating with friends. Opting to busy yourself with work and family over maintaining healthy friendships.
  • Keeping your authentic thoughts secret, and, instead agreeing with others just to go along
  • Putting everything ahead of your goal of living a blessed life.

To start loving your life, you’re going to have to take one to three actions each day that support the belief that “you love yourself’. Looking for ideas? Try a relaxing bubble bath, walk in nature, listening to relaxing music that you love or dancing. Yes, dancing. After all, enjoying life and living a blessed life are about loving your Real, True Self more and more.

Looking for more support? Here’s to hoping that Love Pour Over Me proves helpful to you as you go confidently in the direction of your dreams, especially if yours was a troubled beginning.

These 3 Keys Lead to Book Marketing Sales Success

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By Novelist and Books Writer Denise Turney

man standing inside library with rows of books holding and reading book
Photo by Mark Cruzat on Pexels.com

Congratulations on your new book! Considering the work that goes into writing a good book, your achievement is worth celebrating! A meal at your favorite restaurant, a visit to your favorite jazz club, an afternoon at the beach or an evening enjoying a live stage play — wonderful ways to celebrate writing a new novel. And celebrate you should, because soon focus on book marketing sales success goes into full swing!

Book Marketing Sales Success Resources

If you’re an experienced novelist, you already know that selling books is not magic. In fact, as part of your book marketing efforts, you may have already started contacting book clubs, bookstore book buyers, librarians and book bloggers, sharing details about your new book.

Good digital marketing companies that focus on books you could use as a marketing resource include sites like Book Bub, AALBC.com, Reedsy, Goodreads and Bargain Booksy. Pinterest, Facebook and TikTok are other resources you could use to introduce your books to more readers and book buyers.

Book marketing software resources range from Storiad, Bublish, Publish Wide, Book Buzzr, Book Baby to Publish Drive. To save yourself time, use social media schedulers.

Book Marketing Schedulers

Among the social media schedulers there’s Loomly, Buffer, Hootsuite, VistaPrint Digital Marketing, SproutSocial and CoSchedule. Strengthen social media marketing by using Net Galley and other resources to get book reviews, going so far as to email family, friends and beta book readers, asking them to write a review for your new book.

Give reviewers an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of your new copyrighted manuscript. If they love your new book, they may be great first-person book marketers, sharing details about your book with their colleagues, neighbors and friends.

Admittedly, even with schedulers and other resources, consistently selling lots of books is work. This is where the three keys that can lead to book sales success are important. Simply put, even if you get book reviews, engage in direct book marketing strategies by mailing postcards, print newsletters and book catalogs to book buyers, it may not be enough.

Road To More Book Marketing Sales Success

You still might not generate enough sales for your book to hit a bestseller list. Put in 10 or more hours a week marketing your book only to yield low sales and, after six months, you could wonder if it’s worth it. You might even wonder if you should keep writing and selling books at all.

This is the time to exercise the 3 keys that lead to book sales success. It’s now that you need to call on creativity, tenacity and perseverance. You need to create new book marketing strategies. And, you need to tweak existing book marketing actions. Examples of this include analyzing Amazon book sale reports, social media posts engagement and connections between book reviews and book sale spikes.

Additionally, it means that you try different direct marketing strategies. For instance, you might start your own literary podcast. Or you might design and use a car magnet on an older vehicle. Sending book buyers holiday greetings, blogging and paying for ads on influential book blogger websites are other choices that you could take.

Examining 3 Keys That Lead to Book Marketing Sales Success

In fact, creativity goes beyond writing books. Creativity is a huge part of the book marketing process. Throughout your writing career, you’re going to have to shift, pivot and make creative changes.

Tenacity is another must in order to experience a rewarding book writing career. This applies whether you write fiction or nonfiction books. If you’re tenacious and confident, you won’t abandon creative marketing ideas too soon. You’ll know when to hang in there and when to step away.

Even more, you’ll be persistent. But you’ll be persistent with your book marketing strategies in smart ways. In other words, you won’t hammer book buyers with one book ad after another. While using social media schedulers and good digital marketing companies, you’ll take time to actually engage with book readers and book buyers, and you will consistently measure the results of your book marketing efforts.

Engaging Book Buyers

For example, to introduce your books to more readers, you might post motivational quotes, questions and polls in literary newsletters or on social media. Other actions you might take include responding to visitors’ comments and thanking followers for Likes. To generate interest in your new book, you might run giveaways. This doesn’t just work with Amazon book sale efforts.

In fact, you can run book giveaways at your author website. And you can run book giveaways as part of online radio interviews. Book conferences and book festivals are other places where you can run book giveaways, particularly as part of contests.

Another key that leads to book sales success is perseverance. If you’re aim is to write books full-time, perseverance is a must. Book writing and book marketing are not for the feeble of mind. As a book writer, you’re entering a field that calls for toughness.

There’s a lot of competition. More than 1 million books are published each year, according to BK Connection. Then, there are the more than 12 million books already in print (or in audio book or e-book form). Even with the numbers of avid book buyers, that’s a lot of books to sale.

Keep Advancing Smartly

If you don’t persevere, you could throw in the towel just before your big break arrives. You could also start to believe the way your book sales are currently going is the way they will always go. And that doesn’t have to be the case, especially if you keep monitoring your results, pivoting and making smart changes. So, believe in your creative abilities, research book marketing tools and book marketing strategies.

Also, attend free marketing webinars offered by companies like Constant Contact, Amazon Marketplace, LinkedIn and Social Butterfly. Attending these free webinars is a great way to get up to speed on online marketing for beginners. Local chamber of commerce’s also hosts free online marketing webinars.

As you persevere, you can grow your book catalog. This alone can attract new book buyers, netting you more book sales. Readers will start to become familiar with your writing style and your personal brand. Don’t be surprised if your reader base grows, especially if you continue to sharpen your craft.

Then, you may start to generate book sales from your backlist. As your catalog grows, keep marketing your backlist. There’s a market of readers who look for used books for sale and old books for sale. Marketing your backlist is also an effective way to maintain interest in you, as a writer, allowing you to create traction for each new book that you release.

7 Podcasts Marketing Tips to Help You Grow Your Podcast Audience

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By African American Books Writer Denise Turney

photo of gold colored podcast microphone
Photo by Jean Balzan on Pexels.com

Want to grow your literary podcast listener base? Check out these 7 podcasts marketing tips. These marketing tips can work whether your aim is to create audio only or video podcast shows. Even more, these marketing tips work if you’re promoting books, book marketing services or publishing products during podcasts interviews. Just know that you have to distinguish yourself from a growing crowd. Why?

Early Podcast Days

Gone are the days when you could attract hundreds, if not thousands, of listeners simply by firing up a microphone, switching on video and starting a podcast. Celebrities, entertainers, news stations, media outlets and radio stations are launching podcasts today, some pulling in millions of daily and weekly listeners.

To stand out, attracting attention calls for more than a good interview, humor and sharing valuable information. It’s not the way it was in 2004, when Adam Curry and Dave Winer started their podcast “iPodder”. Their background, one a VJ and the other a technologist, made for a successful launch.

If you want to build your listener audience, you’re going to have to get the word out about your podcast. With this goal in mind, start by finding a good podcast directory.

Podcast Directories are a Must for Podcasts Marketing Tips

iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and RadioGuesList.com are podcasts directories. Other podcasts directories include iHeartRadio, Overcast, Pocket Casts and Google Play. Of course, you could start a YouTube podcast. Podcast directories are great places to distribute your show episodes. More about that later in this article.

Also, have a focus for each show. For example, if you’re interviewing an author about her nonfiction books, focus on the specific points you want to share with listeners. What do you want listeners to walk away thinking after they catch your podcast interviews?

How do you want listeners to feel and what do you want them to focus on? Not sure? Here are interview focus ideas:

  1. Kick off the interview by asking guests to share their name and the titles of their books, book marketing products or publishing services.
  2. Build rapport by asking guests where they are from and what inspired them to do what they do, including write the books they write.
  3. Tell listeners what your guest’s website URL is. This way, listeners can visit the website and learn more about your guests.
  4. Share a funny or insightful fact about yourself. Even more, you could share insight on how or why you created your podcast, one or more of your books, products or services.
  5. Repeat customer testimonials that focus on specific elements of your podcast you want listeners to pay attention to.
  6. Be natural. Remember, you’re about to share valuable information with podcast listeners.

Recording Audio Matters

Relax, and remember you can edit and polish the show after it ends. But do make sure you and your guests use a good microphone. Fortunately, a computer mic is generally sufficient.

Regarding your responsibilities as a podcast host, have back-up questions on hand should you need to fill empty space or brief instances of silence. Here are seven more podcast marketing tips that are good to remember:

  1. Use a good sound system while recording audio for podcast shows. As a tip, if you’re using a telephone, consider going with a land line phone. Why? A land line phone may come in clearer than a cell phone. And you can get a podcast recording system like a USB microphone for a computer. Take this route, and you won’t need a telephone.
  2. Before you start recording audio, do a walk-thru with guests. Let guests know how the podcast intro will go. For instance, tell guests if there are ads or music at the top of the show. Also, let guests know if there will be breaks during the show and how long breaks are. Whether or not there is live Q&A with listeners is another area to cover with guests before the show starts.
  3. Sounds simple, but this is important among the podcast marketing tips. Slip up here and you could spend hours editing each show. Conduct podcast interviews in a quiet place. Tell everyone in recording space that you’re recording audio. Let them know you can’t be disturbed while interviewing. If you’ve ever seen someone bomb a Zoom recording, you know how distracting it can be to hear an unexpected voice cross the line.
  4. Even if you use exciting background visuals, you have to make the interview interesting. Relax and be conversational. Coach guests to expand on their answers, steering them away from one-word answers. Also, interject humor into the interview. As an example, you could read a funny excerpt from a guest’s book.

More Podcasts Marketing Tips

As an extra tip, listen to popular podcasts to pick up intro, closing, background and Q&A ideas. Here are additional tips to produce better podcasts, potentially attracting more listeners:

  • For added visual appeal, if in addition to being a podcast host, you’re also a book author, sit in front of a background that highlights your books. Regardless of the recording system you use, test the camera. Make sure you come across clearly on the video from your shoulders up. (If you’re short like me, you might have to sit on a pillow.)
  • Allow sufficient light inside the space where you’re recording video podcasts.
  • Repeat the titles of guests’ books, book marketing products or publishing services at the end of the podcast, especially if guests paid to be on your show.
  • Edit shows and send a downloadable link to each guest. But don’t just share the link with guests, encourage guests to promote the show at their social media accounts. Also, share the link with your supporters via email, etc. The more traffic your podcast gets, the better. Traffic is a good way to attract advertisers and great podcast guests.

Professional Podcast Production

If you’re recording audio for podcast as a show host, familiarize yourself with video podcast hosting companies like Vimeo, Wistia, Burbrry, Simplecast and Wave before you create video podcast shows. Check out professional podcast production features like distribution channels, web player analytics, pricing, number of downloads you get each month, demographics and other listener metrics.

Also, see if you can get professional podcast production features free of charge, especially if you are only going to create video podcast once a month. Keep promoting and marketing your literary podcast shows. As with other items in this article, this applies whether you interview on podcasts or host your own podcast.

If you’re looking for another way to market your podcasts, create a website for your literary podcast show. Ways to increase the website traffic includes writing blogs that link to topics your guests cover during their interviews. Additionally, you could write and distribute press releases.

What’s at the Heart of Healthy Romantic Relationships – Is It Love?

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

man and woman in love and happy romantic relationship holding hands and running on a field
Photo by Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels.com

What if much of what you believe about love, especially as it regards healthy romantic relationships, is wrong? Could the core of what you believe about healthy romantic relationships apply to something else, not to romance at all?

Healthy Romantic Relationships Rooted in Personal Experience

Based on personal experiences, you may believe that love is kind. You also might believe that love is patient. Foundation for this belief is 1 Corinthians 13:1. The scripture states that, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

Whether or not you grew up in a religious home, for you, love might have to prove itself. Transfer this to a romantic relationship, and you might push your partner to go to extremes to prove that they love you.

Should you have spent years witnessing your parents argue or inflict psychological or physical harm on each other when their emotions were strong, you might think that people get loud and violent when they love each other a lot. Try as you may, it’s impossible to make a complete break from what your childhood taught you about healthy romantic relationships.

Love Quotes and Healthy Romantic Relationships

On top of that, we all want love, especially to feel loved. But no one is always kind, always patient? No one is only one-way. Sometimes you and your lover are frustrated, angry, discouraged. This is where love appears to come up short. And this is when relationships can seem like too much of an investment.

Statements about love, including the oft spoken “love you to the moon and back” and inspirational love quotes like “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within” by James Baldwin and “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in” by Morrie Schwrtz, require action.

Uttering love quotes doesn’t create magic. Love itself isn’t a form of magic.

Creating and sustaining healthy romantic relationships is not easy. It’s not a snap. Perhaps part of the reluctance to take the actions necessary to give and to receive love consistently has to do with how you define love. It’s these definitions that are explored in the 5 love languages. (https://www.5lovelanguages.com/)

Impact of Your 5 Love Languages on Your Healthy Romantic Relationships

For this reason, it may be worth exploring your particular love language. Just know, the results of your 5 love languages survey may surprise you.

But those surprises can be good, especially if you’re open to exploring new ways to give and receive what you believe to be love. Additionally, results of your 5 love languages survey might reveal why you feel frustrated, unheard or unappreciated by your romantic partner, even as they work to express their love for you.

Knowing how you define or see love could help you to get to the heart of what’s keeping you away from good relationships, including healthy romantic relationships. Also, the way that your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles defined love could be a key factor in how you try to get (or stay away from) to love.

Advice on Love and Relationships

Their relationships could also be impacting whether or not you believe that love is even at the heart of good relationships. Admittedly, a childhood filled with parental unkindness, impatience and cruelty can serve like a roadblock to love.

Yet, childhood trauma doesn’t shut off the desire for love. To recover, you might make an illusion of love. You might end the person you care about (and who you want to love you) flowers, love quotes and love letters, hoping it will spark a sustainable romance.

Or you might convince yourself that this give and take means you’re in a healthy romantic relationship when, in actuality, you’re not. If this happens, years could pass before you recognize that you’re in a troubled relationship.

Knowing What Love Is

This is why it takes at least one person who has truly experienced love to be in the relationship. Experience real love firsthand, and you will know what love is. You’ll also know when love is missing from romance.

If you think about couples who have given and received love from each other for years, you witnessed this happening. This witnessing is beautiful. Yet, it doesn’t mean you’ll convince your partner to release their trauma and let love in.

couple facing each other
Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Love in Action as Part of Healthy Romantic Relationships

Yet, patience and kindness are more than ideas. They are a choice, an action. And, as with all choices and actions, you have to believe that the reward you’ll receive for taking an action is equal to or more than what you think you give up (invest) by taking that very action, by making that very choice. Which brings us back to childhood.

Isn’t that the best place to witness love? If not in childhood, definitely during early adulthood.

Considering this, imagine what life would be like if each person made witnessing love a priority. You’d turn away from abuse, not investing a second in rationalizing as you tried to convince yourself that witnessing love’s opposite was a good way for you to learn about love. Instead, you’d feel attracted to those who are patient, kind, caring, loving and working to awaken. And you’d want to be empowered by witnessing true love in action.

Witnessing Love In Action

Raymond doesn’t make witnessing love a priority. Like you, especially if you had a challenging childhood, he makes surviving a priority. After he gets to college, this changes. It’s at college where he meets Brenda, someone who truly loves him. Theirs is a complicated romantic relationship. Yet, despite its complications, their love truly does take them to the heart of a very good romantic relationship.

It’s not sudden. It happens over time, a long time. But, once you arrive at the heart of love, there’s no turning back. As happens with Raymond and Brenda, you won’t want to go back.

Researching love is not enough. Talking about love is not enough. Knowing your 5 love languages can’t fully prepare you for this experience.

Getting to love from where you are right now is the point. At times, reaching true love may seem impossible, like too difficult a task. Yet, giving up on getting to love is the one thing that you don’t want to do. After all, getting to love is getting to the real you. As it is for Raymond, there are many people and many experiences to help you get there.