Reminder Service for Creators

This free sign-up service is for classes, but our group can use it too. Sign-up here to get text message reminders for meetings on Monday mornings @ Coaltrain Coffeehouse in Hotchkiss, or for the Live Broadcast meeting on YouTube.

Video Interviews with David Nagy

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Untitled from Julia Widdop on Vimeo.

Double Your Creative Power by S. L. Stebel

Double Your Creative Power contains a number of useful exercises to discover what your subconscious feels passionate about, because as the author, Stebel points out your writing will be much stronger if you are passionate about your subject matter.

Stebel recommends that you write the book jacket material before you start the book. He also recommends writing a review of your book before starting to give your subconscious a target to aim for in the real writing of the book.

Double Your Creative Power is full of tips and exercises to access your subconscious and enlist its help in the creative process. I specialize in accessing the subconscious and I thought Stebel's methods were very useful.

For example he says watch for conflicting agendas between you and your characters. In bold type the author insists that the character's agenda always takes precedence over your agenda. The character's conflicting agenda is coming from the writer's own subconscious.

I had a hard time deciding on the most useful tip in the book, but finally decided it was the solo brainstorming technique he recommends. He recommends repeating the solo brainstorming process several times until you recognize that it is time to stop. Connections will have been made he says and a story will begin to emerge. I tried this exercise and I was impressed with the amount of targeted material I generated.

Available at Amazon, this hardcover book is priced at only $14. The solo-brainstorming exercise was worth that price alone.

Review by Julia Widdop

DreamJournal.org

Life gets more engaging if you are paying attention to your dreams. Record your dreams in a dream journal. There are some easy ways to do that. If you forget your dreams or don't think you have dreams pay attention to someone else's dreams. You can join dreamjournal.org and get a batch of dreams each morning to read in your email. DreamJournal.org lets you make your dream journal public or private. If you make it public as many people do, then it is sent to people for comments and interpretations. As you try to interprete or comment on the dreams of others your own dream-maker will realize that you have chosen to honor dreams and will begin to send you more vivid and colorful dreams.

The Dream Journal website includes an extensive
Latest News: Dream Journal is giving members a beginners guide to lucid dreaming. It's right on the front page available for download to any member. Great!

Power Corrupts

We absolutely must start paying attention to corruption on every level and not turn a blind eye. It looks like Mexico is almost totally paralyzed due to corruption. When you witness corruption on any level, you should check up on what agency polices that person and take the trouble to file a complaint.



American can be wonderful, but we have to start taking a more active role on every level. For a list of Agencies in Colorado where you can report corruption and ethics violations see LifeSurvival.org

Follow Up Then - Remember and Remind

I use the google calendar service and it works very well to remind me of appointments etc, but I realized after a couple of my radio shows went awry that I needed to remind my radio show guests to call in to the show on the correct day. Soon after that I discovered Follow Up Then. I love it. Here's how it works:

How to Use FollowUpThen
FollowUpThen requires no account to get started!
Just compose an email and include [schedule format]@followupthen.com in the "Cc", "Bcc" or "To" fields of your email. Each is a bit different:
BCC: You will receive a followup but we won't bug the original recipient. TO: You will get a followup after the time interval you specify. CC: If your recipient has not responded by the scheduled time, both of you receive a followup. Note: Your recipient has to “reply all” to include followupthen on their response for us to know about it. You can always cancel followups by emailing pending@followupthen.com. Supported FormatsHere are some examples of the scheduling formats you can use:
Time Interval
1minute@followupthen.com
2hours@followupthen.com
3days@followupthen.com
4weeks@followupthen.com
5months@followupthen.com
6years@followupthen.com  
Day of Week
tuesday@followupthen.com  
Common Scheduling Terms
tomorrow@followupthen.com
nextweek@followupthen.com
nextmonth@followupthen.com
Specific Date
mar30@followupthen.com
2010-05-30@followupthen.com  
Specific Time
11am@followupthen.com
1132am@followupthen.com
1500@followupthen.com  
Specific Date and Time
tomorrow9am@followupthen.com 12pmAug25@followupthen.com  
Recurring Reminders

everywed@followupthen.com
everymar30@followupthen.com

Viewing and canceling pending remindersJust email pending@followupthen.com and you’ll receive an email back with list of pending followups, along with a link to cancel any reminder.

I can even send myself emails and I'm getting better organized all the time. I'd love to hear how you get organized.