Write4Publish and For Fun

A blog about writing and creativity

[anneofthesky]

Dear Fellow Bloggers

It’s the first week of spring “down under” in Australia, and already the temperatures have cooled in Sydney. I hope the weather is warming up for you in the northern hemisphere.

I have enjoyed connecting with you and your wonderful posts on WordPress during the past months and years.

I want to let you know, dear bloggers—from all over the place, even from Romania !—that you have helped me greatly with confidence and strategies in starting out on my blogging adventure.

Thank you all for the kind likes and comments along the way.

It is now time for me to take new steps towards improving my technical skills in relation to a refurbished website, as I move towards publication and marketing of my books that are still in manuscript form.

For this reason, I am concentrating on developing my personally branded WordPress, site “Anne Skyvington:The Craft of Writing” at http://anneskyvington.com.

I would be very sorry to lose contact with you, and I invite you to keep in contact with me at the above site.

Let’s stay in touch

Warm regards

Your friend Anne

Climbing New Heights Dear Fellow Bloggers It's the first week of spring "down under" in Australia, and already the temperatures have cooled in Sydney.

[anneofthesky]

Dear Wordpress Bloggers

Dear WordPress Bloggers

We’re coming into summer here Down Under, while you in the northern hemisphere head towards winter.

I have decided, paradoxically, to go into blogging hibernation now, while the outdoors call me to join them. At the same time,  I wish to concentrate on finishing two novels that I started on some time ago. And I find that it is difficult concentrating on any other form of writing while I do so.

Ma…

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[anneofthesky]

New Horizons

New Horizons

Those past two weeks had seenme have 2 new artificial lenses put in my eyes, that is, cataract surgery on both eyes, start a new blog, and study about plugins that help bloggers to make their sites look and work better. It’d been a steep learning curve. At the same time, I’d agreed to assist Labor in Australia’s recent elections, even though I felt they would lose. And what a…

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[anneofthesky]

Taking Risks

Crazy young woman is biting her laptop in office

I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker in some ways. [See “My Travel Journal: (A Metaphor) From Paris to Russia and Back in 1968” (Memoir)].  In other ways, I’ve been incredibly stable during long periods of my life. We’re all made up of contradictions, I guess. Anyway, recently, I made the decision to change over to a self-hosted website on…

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[anneofthesky]

A Childhood Memory

School children performed maypole dances

The Grafton Jacaranda Festival  is in full swing at the moment in my hometown. It is a spring celebration that is held every year during the first week in November. At this time, the jacaranda trees are in full bloom.

Some childhood memories are golden. Or, in this case, mauve, lilac, purple, and, as Dad once said, heliotrope. It’s hard to pin down the…

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[anneofthesky]

Getting Feedback on Your Writing

Getting Feedback on Your Writing

How do you react to negative feedback?

I sent off my manuscript of “Karrana” (a novel) to a professional editor last year. I requested a structural edit. She gave me both positive and negative feedback. It was useful, and I’ve now started rewriting the first draft, and molding it into  a better shape.

My first reaction after receiving criticism was to withdraw from the project. I read only…

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[anneofthesky]

The Voice of T.S. Eliot

Revisiting voices from the past and present T.S. Eliot and others...

Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock“, and especially the second and third lines, are said to herald in modernism in poetry.  His is an excellent example of a unique voice. The voice resonates within the words, reaching out to decode the metaphorical content. It is as if the meaning is the voice of the poem, as much as…

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[anneofthesky]

The Bridge at Mostar

The Bridge at Mostar

The bridge is pleasing to the eye. It’s perfect in its simplicity. You can only appreciate the grace of its arcs from a distance, or from the pebbly beach down below. Looking up you see a figure standing on the topmost point of the arc. A man is waiting until the amount of money offered by spectators on the bridge reaches a certain point. Jumping is dangerous. If satisfied with the offering, he…

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[anneofthesky]

Copenhagan is Amazing

The Little Mermaid of Copenhagan

It’s on the opposite side of the earth from Sydney, the language spoken is very different, and it’s much colder in autumn. There were 18, 000 doctors visiting the city for a conference, so we were lucky to find reasonably priced accommodation, Hotel Nora, recommended by Trip Adviser. Admittedly, my visit was short, but here are some first impressions of the city…

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[anneofthesky]

Finding Peace...Going Deeper...Meditating

Finding Peace…Going Deeper…Meditating

What is Meditation?

“It’s what happy and successful people do,” I was told, when I first started learning about meditation and how to do it. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhists  believe that happiness is the actual goal of most people on earth. I started meditating in the nineteen nineties, when I was searching for strategies for overcoming work-based anxiety and depression, which were…

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[anneofthesky]

Emotional Intelligence

Wikipedia gives a good overview of the term  Emotional Intelligence. But what are the implications for writers and others today?

I love this ad from Mercedes-Benz from Ads of the World  that seems to sum up the functions and importance of both sides of the brain. Which side do you think emotional intelligence is linked to? See credits for the ad below

Swedish “love coach”, Carolin Dahlman,  gave…

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[anneofthesky]

Sculptures by the Sea 2012

Sculptures by the Sea 2012

Every year at the end of spring, there’s a council sponsored exhibition of sculptures by local artists displayed along our beach front walk between Bondi and Tamarama Beaches.  In 2012 I went on a week day to avoid the huge crowds that follow the routes on the weekend. Some of the best works this year were humorous ones, like the female skeleton doing a tightrope walk on a high post that ran out…

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[anneofthesky]

Hurrah Helen Garner!

Helen Garner, one of my favourite Australian writers, deserves this hurrah. She writes across genres, and  has just won the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction. When she received an email asking for her telephone number from someone at Yale University, she thought it was a case of spam.

This brings her great validation, as well as $US150, 000 in prize money.  Her novel  Monkey…

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[anneofthesky]

Hurrah Helen Garner!

Helen Garner

  Cover of Monkey Grip

Congratulations to Helen 

Helen Garner, one of my favourite Australian writers, deserves this hurrah. She writes across genres, and  has just won the prestigious Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction. When she received an email asking for her telephone number from someone at Yale University, she thought it was a case of spam.

  The First Stone

This brings her…

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[anneofthesky]

The Great Beauty

A perfect day for a walk

In the movie “The Great Beauty”, the 2013 Italian film by Paolo Sorrentino, a tourist,  after taking photos in Rome,  collapses and dies. The message is clear: See Rome and die!Like the protagonist in the film, my abode while in Rome (in my case, the Palatino Hotel) was almost overlooking the Colosseum. A flight of stairs opposite the hotel led up through an archway…

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[anneofthesky]

Are You Left Brained or Right Brained?

Are You Left Brained or Right Brained?

Tread Carefully Here…

I have to be careful when discussing this concept, as I’m married to a scientist, who also happens to be a very creative person. He was an actor when we first met, but has for a long time worked in a left-brained (academic) field: researching best-practice treatments for treating stuttering.

Left-brained people…

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[anneofthesky]

Statins

I was recently advised by doctors that I should take statins to lower my blood cholesterol reading. The statins lowered my reading quite quickly to half what it was before. Originally it was 8, then 7 after trialling diet and exercise for a short time, then it went down to 4 when on the drugs. The problem was that I developed jaw and neck problems that sent me off to my dentist and to an…

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