I was stuck on an Excel problem ... It seemed simple enough but after I got the answer I knew I would have been at it for weeks until I thought to dig in the direction the answer was.
I just wanted to have a date/time in one field, and in another the date in the first field, with 10 minutes added to the first. So when I change the first field the second will update with a bonus of 10 minutes.
Right?! Simple.
Ha!.
I found a few places that seemed to have the answer, but the answers were confusing and difficult to understand. Then I came to Easy-Excel.com Frustrated I noticed their Contant offer and wrote them an email asking for help. Not only did the answer the question, they sent me a spreadsheet with the equation formula I was looking for. On top of that, it worked~ My life got simpler by several hours a day.
So, Thanks Easy-Excel.com and I do hope you are getting what you are worth.
By Country Tell a Different Story?
I'm currently checking into how this narrows down per country. Is this equal i the US for example? It doesn't seem usable at a world level. A Metric which really says nothing. What do you think?
"Less than an estimated 20 percent of land in the world is owned by women — yet those few women who do own land are reported to see benefits."
Their children are 33 percent less likely to be severely underweight, 10 percent less likely to be sick and these women are eight times less likely to experience domestic violence. Other studies suggest women with strong property rights earn up to 3.8 percent more income and dedicate more of their budget to education.
https://www.devex.com/news/how-ngos-can-better-support-land-rights-for-women-84902
"Less than an estimated 20 percent of land in the world is owned by women — yet those few women who do own land are reported to see benefits."
Their children are 33 percent less likely to be severely underweight, 10 percent less likely to be sick and these women are eight times less likely to experience domestic violence. Other studies suggest women with strong property rights earn up to 3.8 percent more income and dedicate more of their budget to education.
https://www.devex.com/news/how-ngos-can-better-support-land-rights-for-women-84902
Today's Word | MoolaHoop
Despite the fact that women own 10.6 million businesses in the U.S. and represent 35 percent of startup business owners, they receive a piddling 4.2% of venture capital funding. This means women-owned companies tend to be smaller and grow more slowly than companies owned by men. MoolaHoop launched a crowdfunding platform for women entrepreneurs today to bridge this gap.
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Perspective and Experience | Hardlines
Perspective is a funny thing. Look forward and the path seems uncertain, the future unpredictable. Look back and all the dots seem to connect… except the dots that mark the choices you didn’t make and the risks you didn’t take.
Experience is that thing you get, roughly five seconds after you needed it. There’s no other way to acquire this powerful and effective trait. You have to do… live through…
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A Unifying Word?
Emma, during her speech, Sept of 2014, HeForShe’s announcement to the world at the U.N, said that they did not yet have a unifying word, but that we had a name.
We do have a predecessor
When he learned that women were marching, Mark Twain said “Votes For Women.” and set all of his talents to writing a speech. The, then elderly, Mark Twain traveled, and spoke, using all of his skills to convince…
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FaceBook Discussion Group
The FaceBook Discussion Group is up and running
Discussion Group for #HeForShe up and running
http://bit.ly/HeForSheDiscussTime To Take Over The World! Meet you there. We got stuff to talk about!
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HeForShe Key Messages
These are the Key Messages of HeForShe as posed by the UN Action Pack
1. Gender inequality is one of the most persistent human rights violations of our time. Despite many years of promoting gender equality, inequalities among women/girls and men/boys continue to manifest in egregious ways around the world
2. HeForShe is a solidarity movement for gender equality that engages men and boys as advocates and
stakeholders, to break the silence, raise their voices and take action for the achievement of gender equality
3. Gender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that affects all of us – women and girls, men and boys. We all benefit socially, politically and economically from gender equality in our everyday lives. When women are empowered, the whole of humanity benefits. Gender equality liberates not only women but also men, from prescribed social roles and gender stereotypes.
1. Gender inequality is one of the most persistent human rights violations of our time. Despite many years of promoting gender equality, inequalities among women/girls and men/boys continue to manifest in egregious ways around the world
2. HeForShe is a solidarity movement for gender equality that engages men and boys as advocates and
stakeholders, to break the silence, raise their voices and take action for the achievement of gender equality
3. Gender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that affects all of us – women and girls, men and boys. We all benefit socially, politically and economically from gender equality in our everyday lives. When women are empowered, the whole of humanity benefits. Gender equality liberates not only women but also men, from prescribed social roles and gender stereotypes.
Word of the Day -- Sensitize
sen·si·tize
ˈsensəˌtīz/
verb
gerund or present participle: sensitizing
- cause (someone or something) to respond to certain stimuli; make sensitive."the introductory section aims to sensitize students to the methodology of the course"
- make (photographic film) sensitive to light."the kit sensitizes any 35 mm film in hours"
- make (an organism) abnormally sensitive to a foreign substance."the workers had been immunologically sensitized to the enzyme"
Rawanda's ambasodor to the UN, Senator Tito Rutaremara, said
"We spent six months sensitizing the population on what a constitution is, what voting means, what democracy means. We created booklets in Kinyarwanda (the local language), and went from village to village across the country. We even simulated Senates so that the population could see how a system would work in practice."
It is likely that sensitizing will be a necessary step with the current fringe elements of the Equality and Feminist movements today, in order for there two be a future tomorrow.
A Failure of Reporting Propagated by Omar Avolos
I brought this in to post mainly as an example of Feminist reporting reporting which has gone more toward the hot-topic sensationalism, than ‘news reporting.’. We are still putting out there that nudity and sex are “harmful”, which no study has shown or given any empirical data to promote this claim. The framework theory which birthed this claim, remains a frameworth theory which since 1997 has shown any hope of doing so with each study. Yet still this reporter pulls it in and chastises the world with its false authority.
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Earlier this week, Kim Kardashian posed for Paper Magazine in what they called an attempt to “Break the Internet”. I was able to go about my day without any internet problems, so its safe to say that Kim didn’t quite accomplish her goal.
However, for many days my social media feeds were filled with people either bashing or defending the reality TV star.
But this blog isn’t about whether or not…
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What HeForShe is about | Elma's words
If you want to reach a place it is best to know where that place is. I know that sound pitifully obvious but I have been on so many projects which had very little in the way of direction because we didn't know where we were going. We didn't have a clear idea of what the project would do, what it would be like when finished or even a full list of functionality. If you have experienced this, you…
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FaceBook Group Open | Offer Your Voice
I’ve started the HeForShe Facebook Group. I’m likely going to need help with that, if it goes bang. Would love to see you over there where we can discuss things more freely.
Bring your voice, offer your ideas.
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Guest Speaker #3 | TamedInsanity
TamedInsanity is not a fan of many things. Like our other Guests however, she does offer some good insights into the Anti-feminist movement which I’ve personally never looked into. Again there is the question of equality and what it means, which I’m happy to report that I’m finally making some sense of and coming to a point were something practical should be published soon.
I would like to point…
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Fact: Without Women There is No Sustainable Development
A baby girl born today will still have to confront inequality and discrimination, no matter where she lives. Women are 14 times more likely to die in a disaster than men, over 50 percent of working women have vulnerable, informal jobs with no benefits, and two thirds of the world’s illiterate are women. At the same time, 46 percent of global news content reinforces gender stereotypes so thousands…
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Top Five Feminist Myths of All Time | Christina I love this...
Top Five Feminist Myths of All Time | Christina
I love this woman. We’re going to have many Guest Slots for her.
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Emma Watson is not interested in dictating, but in being as loud as she wants
Emma Watson has become a sudden feminist icon in Hollywood, but she explained that it wasn’t something she had to think too much about. Just last month, Watson gave a speech to the United Nations about gender inequality around the world, which launched a campaign called #HeForShe.
Kristen Stewart and 5 other surprising celeb comments on feminismWatson will grace the cover of Elle U.K. magazine…
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Is Common Core a Path To Greater Equality?
The Common Core State Standards can have an invaluable impact on girls— particularly girls of color.
In kindergarten through 12th grade
There are achievement gaps in math and science between girls and boys; in particular, girls of color significantly lag behind their peers. On the eighth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress exam, a nationally representative assessment of the…
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Gender Equality - The Gap Report
I’ve been working all day, researching, pushing posts and twitters out, bugging people for their opinion – following up on our last Guest Speaker’s question, “What is Equality?” We should know the answer to this, don’t you think? I mean, how are you going to know if there is progress if you don’t know what it is?
Well, many of the people I talked to suggested that they would know, because of the…
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50 Faces of Gender
Gender Equality just got a little more complicated, or perhaps just got a wakeup call. Emma, in her speech suggested that gender needs to be looked at with a little more fluidity. Seems FaceBook took her to heart and just added 50 gender choices to their profiles pages. That’s a fairly broad spectrum. PBS has an article on this change.
Facebook users will find Thursday that they’re no longer…
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Teens and Privacy with Mobile Devices
This isn’t our regular subject area but I felt that some of you would find the matter interesting.
It appears that teens are far more aware of privacy issues with their mobile devices then what common knowledge suggests. Many parents, on discovering some of the open purges of information on their teen tend to freak out a little bit — and it seems that a recent study suggests perhaps freaking is a…
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Brussels Griffon x 2 -- Guest Speaker #2
Brussels Griffon x 2 I met on the g+ network. She is participating in the Write A Novel challenge which happens every November (Write a Novel Month). I read a couple of her posts and noticed that she was also taken by Emma’ s HeForShe speech. So, I asked her if she would post her thoughts on where we are and where we’re going. This is her gracious reply which I’ve now read five times.
Brussels…
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Ms Young and Some Reason
Ms Young, a contributing editor for Reason Magazine wrote an article which Time put on their website, entitled “Sorry, Emma Watson, but HeForShe Is Rotten for Men” If you are not prone to falling down after be assaulted by demagoguery or fall victim to vomiting when experiencing violent twists of logic, then give it a read.
Time, as a company, must be in dire straights. I look at the reactionary…
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Men, Without Women
“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir…mighty scarce.”
― Mark Twain
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Anaïs Nin
“I hate men who are afraid of women’s strength.”
― Anaïs Nin“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
― Anaïs Nin“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to…
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Dying
“The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation.”
— Anaïs Nin
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Celebrate or Lose It "People of our time are losing the power...
"People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.
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Slaughtering our Finest Impulses "Every day we slaughter our...
Slaughtering our Finest Impulses
"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.
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It Doesn't Work
Emma is right, the term Feminism no longer popularly means what it meant before the twisting effects of the last few decades. In her speech she said, just before announcing HeForShe at the end of her speech, that "We are struggling for a uniting word..." I didn't really get that until today. That is the only trouble with Emma's speech. It is dense. She doesn't waist words.
How did a Nice Guy Like Me...?
I just ran into a Woman Against Feminism and a guy who hates feminists, but believes strongly in equality of rights -- on tweeter.
Tweeter is horrible for conversations like that, but I learned quite a bit. I'm weekss from being 50 years-old, so I've been around watching the Feminists getting more and more brutal for awhile. I get that the movement has gone awry. They pick fights when to do nothing would be to their benefit and make a stronger statement. They go after fights they can't win, ignore objectives where they could succeed, and frequently disown allies -- I'm incredibly happy I don't have to deal with them.
To be honest I forgot who Emma Watson was until she mentioned Harry Potter in the speech which I didn't catch when I read the transcript the first time. I checked around and it appears she wrote that speech herself. What is she? 18? 19? Wish I had a world view like that at 18.
In Less Than A Minute...Farhan Akhtar
Farhan Akhtar is a HeForShe. One of those guys like Patrick Stewart who radiat reasonable reason. Eloquence, is a word that comes to mind. The message is simple, understandable with clear goals and purpose. His focus is impressive and it presses you to see more clearly.
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At Equality Ms. Young is as Obtuse as a Senator
Time, as a company, must be in dire straights. I look at the reactionary and purposeful angst of their headlines lately -- Time is becoming more like the National Enquirer every day. Did you see the one with the Teachers? Soon Time will be publishing articles titled "Emma Watson has Big Foot in her Cellar".
Yes, I understand that Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine, came up with the title for this ... what is this? An Essay? or just an Editorial? It is basically bias, and often irrelevant opinion. Is that what an Editorial is these days? It use to be that the editors chose higher roads than the writers and reporters, but that doesn't seem to be the case any longer. Perhaps it is just the way things are at the Libertarian magazine known as Reason.
Finding out that Reason is a Libertarian production, didn't come as much of a shock. If there is one thing that Libertarians both declare affinity to, and show amazing lack of, it is Reason. I offer as citation the Koch brothers declaring that raising the minimum wage will result in Nazism. Yes, Nazism, because that is how seriously out of touch with reality most Libertarians are.
But let's set my personal lack of tolerance aside and look at Ms. Young's Reason-ing.
"Too bad they are belied by the campaign itself, which is called “HeForShe” and asks men to pledge to “take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls” but says nothing about problems affecting men and boys." -- Young
Now, see, this is why Libertarians get such a bad rap. They state something like this, as if no one has access to the speech -- the speech where Emma spends nearly a third of her time addressing exactly this area and bases her ideas on research in that area. She cites -- because of the problems affecting men and boys, there is a disproportional amount of suicides which her research tells her is directly related to issues of the inequality the male population faces everyday of their lives, which no one has really addressed in a meaningful way (which is true) and she proclaims that HeForShe is dedicated to seeing that this changes. So, we haven't even gotten into the article yet and the first proclamation is "Liar Liar Pants on Fire".
The next paragraph, again, the same thing. Now Ms. Young contradicts herself, saying that yes, Emma is addressing it, but Feminism doesn't. Which again, Emma talks about that very thing, and that this flaw that has woven itself into Feminism is based on Hate, rather than equality, and again, she declares that this must be addressed, and that HeForShe intends to be the platform for that issue.
Now, this next bit is so far out of whack that I have to quote it here, so we can take a look at it solidly.
Emma Watson's U.N. Speech
When I heard this speech, back in September of this year, my first thoughts were to marvel at how optimistically powerful she was. You don't get that much -- powerful and optimistic. Most of the time powerful speeches are dramatic and hard hitting. Or they are on the other side, being funny and pointedly humorous. A commonality found in most powerful speeches is the direction of force -- toward you, the listener -- which doesn't hold the energy of optimism without discord and degradation.
"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."
...is a line from a powerful speech, which demonstrates what I'm talking about with the idea of Direction of Force. It's all on you. You can change the world. You can make this country great. You have the power. You rise up and face the challenges because you are what this country needs.
These claims might sound optimistic, but in fact they are closer to cheerleading. This is the rhetoric of building false structures. What is imbued feels powerful, but the power does not endure under stress. In our world examples of this abound. Face it, if all you need to be motivated to change our world is a "What you can do for your country" speech, then your problems are fairly shallow. Don't twist this, I'm not putting Kennedy's speech down. I like that speech. Unlike many of its kind, it has a brilliance which few have matched. But it has no optimism, only power and motivation.
So what is optimism, since I am wilfully calling out distinctions...
You may disagree, but I understand confidence to be a quality, which can not be directed at you. Confidence can not be injected. Confidence is a quality, which is derived from experience. And experience is what you acquire roughly five seconds after you needed it. In other words, experience is acquired through the survival of failure, and the tenacity to solve afterward. The attribute of experience is formidable because of this -- not because of that sentiment given by Nietzsche, "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger," but more from the confidence of "whatever doesn't kill me, had better start running..." Confidence is a quality, therefore, of realism. When someone cheerleads you into a sense of motivation and confidence, it never feels whole. That's because it never is.
This is actually the point of brilliance with Kennedy's speech. He's not bolstering his nation up, he's making them take stock, and to alter their perspective. He's putting the power in their hands, but not offering a false sense of ability. He's asking you to ask, "what can you do for your country?" He's directing his nation to take inventory. Times were rough, the problems were dire, and some didn't make it through to the otherside. But those who did, Kennedy points out, have the chance to return to the field, wiser, more cunning, and with a clarity unearned in any other fashion.
"Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out..."
Kennedy illuminates the uniqueness of their condition, and gracefully redirects their energy "With what you know now, what can you do?" It is an enlightened and effective alteration, which makes all the difference between his speech and the bolstering shams so many others bark out at crowds to rile and incite.
Emma's speech is Powerfully Optimistic. There is no doubt in her words that this problem of inequality is real, nor any faltering regarding the existence of a solution. These two points are inalienable truths.in her speech, in spite of the fact that no nation can claim the existence of social equality -- which she flatly admits. Despite the fact that all those who have gone before have been driven back and turned from their path of unity to a path of hate -- which she flatly admits. It is this admittance which calls attention to her experience. These are the failures, these are the flames from which she has come. And she has the solution. She was born in the solution. She was raised in the solution. The steel of her energy has met those flames, lived, and stepped forward to put them out.
Her solution returns us to recognize and admit that this separation no longer works. Neither man or woman are moving forward any longer. We are stalemated and burdened so gravely, our inability to take action is becoming dire. We can not take the next step forward without the other. It is, as she says in more graceful terms, ours to do together or ours to wail at apart. This is not, and never has been a woman's problem, or a feminists problem. This is a human problem. Separation from each other is destroying the foundations of what we have always denied as being related to inequality. It is time to become human.
Her delivery is excellent as well, and the video is linked here.
TRANSCRIPT: Today we are launching a campaign called for HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved.
Word of the Day -- Optimism
op·ti·mism
ˈäptəˌmizəm/noun
synonyms: hopefulness, hope, confidence, buoyancy,cheer, cheerfulness, good cheer, sanguineness,positiveness, positive attitude "I wish I had your optimism"
Tools for World Domination -- and a couple of Writer places too
If you are interested in being part of the Internet, or using it ... to advance your professional life, these are some places you should know about. There are also a few that will add a bit of quality to your personal life as well.
1. Trello
Trello helps you manage all your ideas and due dates and keeps track of
what you’re in the process of completing. Plus, it looks nice—it’s like the Pinterest of to-do lists.
2. Hackpad
Think Google Docs—only better for collaboration. Invite as many people as you want to contribute to your docs, or set them to private so they’re just yours.
3. Coffitivity
What is it about a coffee shop that gives you such laser focus? Coffitivity streams the background noises of a coffee shop so you can get your creativity A-game on.
4. FaxZero
FaxZero lets you send and receive faxes through your email—because nobody likes the fax machine.
5. RescueTime
RescueTime lets you monitor how you spend your time on your computer and mobile devices. (The truth is sometimes ugly, but necessary.)
6. Unroll.me
You know all those email newsletters that you accidentally opted into, but don’t really read? Use this site to clear out your inbox.
7. Remember the Milk
A to-do list manager with several key bonuses: You can sync it with your all your devices, share tasks with others, and get email or text reminders of things you need to get done.
8. Springpad
Springpad lets you organize all of your notes, favorite websites, and online inspiration into different folders. It gets bonus points for looking nice, too.
9. HabitForge
Forming a new habit isn’t easy, so HabitForge keeps track of how well you’re doing with simple reminders and check-ins.
10. Evernote
Evernote helps you remember everything using text, photo or audio notes, and clippings of websites.
11. Hemingway
How does that email (or any of your writing!) come off to readers? Plug it into this ingenious app to get the breakdown.
Streamline Your Life
12. Feedly
The greatest RSS reader on the market right now, Feedly is the place to keep up with all the latest from your favorite blogs and publications.
13. Pocket
Don’t have time to read that great post your friend just put on Twitter? Send it to Pocket where you’ll be able to read it later—even offline on your phone while you’re commuting home!
14. TaskRabbit
TaskRabbit helps you open up time in your schedule by making it easy to outsource any task you really don’t want to do, from running errands to planning the details of your next vacay.
15. IFTTT
Standing for “if this then that,” IFTTT helps different apps, online programs, and services work together to make your life way easier. Think getting the weather texted to you every morning or having your photos automatically save to Dropbox.
16. Lifehacker
Lifehacker is always coming up with solutions to problems you didn’t even know you had. From how to handle tech woes to the most pro productivity tips, you’re sure to find it here.
17. ZocDoc
Scheduling doctor’s appointments is one of those things that seems to never quite get done. ZocDoc makes it simple to stay healthy by allowing you to schedule and manage your appointments online.
18. Handybook
Need some help around the house? Handybook makes it easy for you to book cleaners, plumbers, movers, and the like—all online.
19. Seamless
Whether you’re stuck late at the office or just don’t feel like cooking when you get home, Seamless is there for you with super-streamlined online takeout ordering.
Let's Fight -- Koch vs Gates
Let's see here...
Koch is pushing libertarianism (which is one step away from anarchy, and yes, their idea that raising minimum wage will lead to Nazism is so far out there it could be considered a horror) Advancing Liberty is good? You must be stuck with the Patriotic sense of the word Liberty, rather than what it really means.
The Koch have a definite idea what Liberty means with clear goals on achieving it, such as, getting rid of public education, the Dept of Health, Welfare, Social Security, ripping apart business oversight, doing away with worker safety (OSHA), EPA, highway systems... it gets sillier from this point.
The point is, that their only involvement in the Schools is to bring them down, and diminish their ability to succeed. Cherry pick information all you want. That is their publicly stated goal -- the removal of the public education system.
Bill Gates has pledged to give half of his worth to education, and other charities. So far, he hasn't pushed his ideals into curriculum (no CCSS is not curriculum, go read it). He has the experts, and means to do so, but refrains.
Gates has written quite a bit about education and his opinions on the subject, and has attended many forums, studies and gatherings, but leaves schools -- such as the NYC system where he dumped over $50million -- to their own experts.
Gates does not choose teachers, books, methods, or pressure one subject above another like Koch always does when they get involved with any college, university, or public school (t in fact they demand their direct involvement as the price of their financial backing).
Gates has engaged the OpenSource community -- and that Koch lover, is the best move he could have made -- because public schools and full education is fairly safe now. Another two years, and OpenSource will be so ingrained in the public school systems, nine-year-old kids will be able to take apart articles like the one the Federalist published, and leave them as the piles of crap they are.
There is no comparison between the goals of those two. They are not even in the same universe.
Tools for Writers -- and a few for World Domination
FreeMind A mind mapping program which I find very useful.
Scrivener This is the all-in-one planning, research, drafting, writing, and publishing tool you've probably heard a lot about.
CoSchedule CoSchedule is an editorial calendar, task manager, and social media planner for WordPress.
Evernote I store my brain in Evernote. This is an amazing notebook tool for research. Another is ...
Google Keep Fast, easy, light and backed up on your Google Cloud. Never loose any note again.
iA Writer Minimalist writing app for iPad. Using Dropbox, you can sync writing in iAWriter between your devices and Scrivener.
TweetDeck MarketingTweetDeck is the easiest way to keep track of your social accounts without needing to log in every time.
Buffer Buffer is a lifesaver. It posts automatically, using a queue-like list of your scheduled updates.
AWeber It's the #1 mailing list provider, and I use it for all of my newsletters.
MindMup is a mind mapping tool, like FreeMind, but different. It's super easy to use, but limited.
Feedly RSS reader to keep up with all of your blog reading.
Skype Skype is my phone -- no, seriously, it is what I use for most of my communications That and ...
The Right Word, not The Most Interesting
People only hear, what they understand.
That's a maxim that should be taped to the desk right beside the keyboard, and never covered. People do not ask what a word means. Even though they could right-click the mouse and ask Google to define the word for them, they don't. What they do, is ignore the whole sentence and make something up. This is true. Read "Predictably Irrational". The whole sentence -- just gone..Your pitch is useless from there on.
Why are sex scenes in most books unrealistic?
Who wants real sex? I mean, seriously. First time sex is always a little awkward. Someone's foot always winds up in someone's face. Hands flutter into each other. Takes a while to get a good rhythm going with each other. It is fun. God yes, but seriously. Write a first experience down and then read it out loud. If you aren't one of the participants, it is dull stuff. Like watching golf. It is not sexy. It is not a turn on. It is certainly not visual and more often than not it breaks the Willful Suspension of Disbelief -- that last being why I never go for realism.
Yes, yes, it is unrealistic and be as critical as you would like, but it is a turn on. If you are going to have a sex scene that doesn't turn the reader on, I would ask, WHY? Why bother. First off, they are difficult to write, even for seasoned erotica writers. You mess up on them, they turn into a lurid low-budget snafu -- just add one wrong moment, or bad line. It takes some practice to get them down and a great deal of editing.
Second, if the reader doesn't like sex scenes, she'll skim. If she does like them, she will feel cheated if he jumps out of bed to take a piss, doesn't flush and leaves the seat up, before running back to bed to try to get her warmed up again, but she's not really in the mood because she's thinking about the fouled toilet water... so, why bother?
Yes, yes, it is unrealistic and be as critical as you would like, but it is a turn on. If you are going to have a sex scene that doesn't turn the reader on, I would ask, WHY? Why bother. First off, they are difficult to write, even for seasoned erotica writers. You mess up on them, they turn into a lurid low-budget snafu -- just add one wrong moment, or bad line. It takes some practice to get them down and a great deal of editing.
Second, if the reader doesn't like sex scenes, she'll skim. If she does like them, she will feel cheated if he jumps out of bed to take a piss, doesn't flush and leaves the seat up, before running back to bed to try to get her warmed up again, but she's not really in the mood because she's thinking about the fouled toilet water... so, why bother?
Build Readership? or
Finish the novel First?
This is just my opinion, but after a couple decades doing this, I would worry about finishing the novel first.Marketing is a full time job, and you want to be a writer. So, Write.
Seriously. Get the novel done, beta read, edited, and then the cover completed.
Now, this is a fast easy way to get your novel going so you can get back to writing. Because that is what we do, we write novels, right?
1. Write three short stories that go with the novel. Each between 10k-15k words. Craft them with all the skills you have, and tie them directly to the novel you just finished.
2. As a cycle, putting out one short story every week, on Wednesday morning -- Go on to Amazon, e-publish one of those short stories. List them for $0.99 but use the Special pricing of FREE for the four days they will allow you. One per week, and in-between start mapping out and researching your next novel.
3. At the end of the run, publish your novel at $3.99 on amazon, no free option.
4. Once your novel is up, go to SmashWords, and run the same schedule.
5. Then, write another novel.
Never read or reply to your reviews.
...just saying.
The only thing I would add is a blog, but only if you are going to commit to posting something every day. That is where you can answer questions or comment if someone gives you an opinion on your novel. But if you aren't going to commit to a post every day, then don't do it. A dead blog is death to your marketing.
Look at the list of my activity over on the side of this blog. See those first two years? Three? Yeah... I had a huge problem getting a readership "Back". Most of my readers (the ones from the writing I've done under my own name) had come and gone, a long time ago. Since I was ghostwriting these series novels, I didn't really give this blog much thought. And I'm grateful that when I came back to it I didn't need to get a readership up in a hurry, because my readers are only just now beginning to trust me enough to trickle back in.
And thank you for the chance.
#amwriting #writerslife #write
Your reviews don't matter
Don't Read Them
Never read your own reviews. And, Never, Ever, EVER respond to them.
You can skim the review. Go down to the Comments area, where the author answers -- and then replies to his answer -- and then replies to his reply -- and then throws caution to the wind and replies to that reply... Finally a third party offers an opinion and the author spirals completely out of control -- now arguing with himself, and the newcomer at the same time. More voices enter into this rising storm -- and it is like a car wreck with a body on the road -- you're horrified but you can't look away.
Then some people try to offer comments to the Author of the Review Post, and it is like Greek Fire across the deck!
... and then … it just gets amazingly weird after that.
Bad Author! No Biscuit!
Now, a success story, of a woman who doesn't have good mechanics, but doesn't let that stop her, and she doesn't read or reply to her reviews.
This novel is 613 pages when she publishes it. Between the covers there are Run-On sentences, which travel half-a-page -- horrible punctuation, terrible grammar, absolutely stuffed with unrequired verbiage, l o n g d e s c r i p t i o n s of getting dressed in the morning, repeated use of tedious responses, frequent use of adverb-adjusted dialog tags.
However!
Perfect storytelling, brilliant awareness of reader, characterization so strong readers frequently forget the MCs are not real -- deep emotional connection, excellent use of dialog, impassioned sexual encounters, lively engaging secondary characters, believable interactions, thoroughly entertaining.
Good Reads 22,105 reviews on one title
... nice following eh?
4.50+ rating
Amazon (Indie Published on Kindle) 396 reviews 4.5 rating
Then she is picked up for Traditional Publishing by Forever Publishing
It's like Cinderella! Or Dorthy arriving in the Emerald City!
Achieves Adoration from Editorial Reviews on reprinting -- just look at the Amazon page.
Author Name: Kristen Ashley
Title : Sweet Dreams (Colorado Mountain Book 2) I believe this is her 20th book.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11227040-sweet-dreams
She Never responds, or even reads her reviews... which is good because she would probably stop writing -- there are some brutal people out there.
Never read or respond to reviews. They do not matter.
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