Vision or Vanity?

Every business needs a vision, but not every entrepreneur has to be a visionary.

If you close your eyes and imagine where you would like your life to be in, say, 5 years, what might it look like?

Life in 5 Years

Each time I've done exactly that, what I see, where I imagine myself, is not in the front of my computer in my attic office!

In those daydreams, I've been on the prow of a speedboat, or laying on a bed of fur in a yurt, or cruising along the Amalfi Coast in a vintage convertible,  big bug-eyed sunglasses and a flowery scarf billowing behind me, Audrey Hepburn Style.

Where The Future Takes Us

This is where I imagine my future will take me. But these aren't one-off holidays - a few days hiatus between long spells of air-conditioned offices - No. 

The overwhelming feeling I've had in all these flights of fancy has been that these are high points of everyday life. 

Freedom of self-employment has allowed me to live a nomadic lifestyle.

This is the vision for my business. The vision for our life.

What's stopping this from being my life right now?

Is It Vanity?

This is where I find myself thinking of it as just 'vanity'. 

I can't only think of myself, I have a husband and a mortgage. A husband in a full-time office based job which pays that mortgage!

The thing that stops this being my reality is my responsibility to my life partner, in all things.

The challenge therefore, is to find a way to be true to both.

Is it Vision?

Writing about the 'vision' for my business is the first step to making these changes.

The first steps towards creating a reality that suits both of us.

Being Blogger

Blogging has served me well as a means to an end, doing the thing I'll do anyway... writing.

I started my first blog in 2013, the year I published my first book, when my worlds as an author and business advisor collided in 2015, I started my consultancy business. 

That has since evolved into Learn To Love Your Words and my specialty is as a blogging mentor for business.

Building my marketing around content was the obvious solution. 

The first blog was about becoming an author - I still keep this blog on my author website.

The second blog was to grow my influence as a writing mentor and build a business.

This (third blog!) is about challenging my reality and sharing my love of travelling.

I have an innate curiosity. I love exploring and discovery. I love meeting new people and having new experiences.

I want to discover more of this amazing, diverse and fascinating planet we inhabit.

Life's Little Luxuries

However, I also enjoy a little luxury! 

I don't mean traveling 5-star, I mean not living out of a backpack and sleeping in bug infested hovels.

I mean travelling, but maintaining a comfortable life. Earning enough money to enjoy eating and drinking out, Cafe Culture and sleeping in a comfortable - private - bedroom.

Being able to enjoy the trappings of travel, as well as living with the locals.

I would hate to travel to a once in a lifetime place and not be able to afford the entrance fee!

Perhaps this blog will turn out to be an experiment in vanity? 

Or perhaps I'll achieve the vision of location independence - of being a Wandering Entrepreneur,  a Roaming Entrepreneur? 

In the end, it doesn't matter, as long as the journey is enjoyable!

40 Things I'll Do Before I'm 40 - An Update

At the start of the year, as I reflected on what I had achieved in 2015, I set myself some goals for 2016.

I'm excited to announce that a major one for me is now complete:

I've just published the final book in the Sheridan and Blake Adventure Series - 'Gabriel's Game, Part 2: The Black Knight'


  

 I'll be 40 in December, so I have a year to do 40 things from a mini-Bucket List

Follow Amy Morse - Authorpreneur's board My Bucket List on Pinterest.

 Here's the original post where I share my 40 things

I should have achieved a third of these by now... I've not quite reached that milestone

I'm getting there slowly - here's what I've done so far:

16. Try a new vegetable and cook with it
I tried celeriac. I took to Pinterest and found some recipes. Roasted in oil with other root veg with a roast dinner was the best!

17. Try a new fruit and cook with it
I tried lychee. Technically I didn't cook with it, I added it to smoothies. The thing that freaked me out about fresh lychee's was how much they look and feel like eyeballs. They'd make a great Halloween treat!

21. See the northern lights
This was an amazing experience. We saw them during a long weekend to Iceland. We went out on a boat into the harbour at 11pm. At first there were just  few greenish wisps of clouds, then mother nature gave us a spectacular show!

22. Go vegetarian for a week
This was a tough one, as it's not so much that I have to have meat, but that I cook for myself and my husband and he likes to eat meat every day. He was forced to be veggie for the week too (there was no way I was going to watch him eat meat without me!)

In the end, this was not as challenging as I imagined it would be. It forced me to think more carefully about what I was eating. I was almost vegan, in fact, except that I like a squirt of honey and splash of milk in my tea and I eat eggs a couple of days a week for breakfast. If I substituted my tea for black coffee and herbal tea and didn't eat eggs, I could try being vegan for a spell. This would certainly help with no. 2: 'Get back to a size 14'!

28. Go on a spontaneous adventure
This was a tame one, but we still enjoyed our day. The adventure involved going to Temple Meads Train Station and getting on a train. We didn't have a particular destination in mind, but it needed to be relatively close by and not too pricey. 

 We ended up spending a day being tourists in Gloucester.

 
29. Go to a city I've never been to before
... I could count Gloucester as this one. 

Despite only being down the road in Bristol, we've never been there. However, I'm going to choose Reykjavik (bit more exotic and interesting than Gloucester!)  

39. Leave inspiring notes for people to find
I made up a selection of little notes with inspiring quotes on and for a couple of weeks, carried them around in my pocket and left them in cafe's, bars, restaurants etc. around Bristol.



I'm changing my list a little. 

There were some things on the original list that, on further reflection, I don't want to do. For example: leaving a message in a bottle - there's enough litter in the ocean without me adding to it!

So here's my updated 40 / 40 list - there are a couple of gaps now, I plan to fill these as the year progresses as I'm sure some opportunities that are not apparent to me now will present themselves later in 2016:

Since making the changes. I've achieved another one:

26. Travel First Class
We took a train to Taunton and first class tickets were less than standard. 

Big comfortable seats, lots of leg room and free tea and biscuits - lovely!

Have you got any suggestions for things I could fill the gaps with?

Count Your Blessings - Giving up what you don't need

It was Pancake Day yesterday (officially known as Shrove Tuesday) and so today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

I'm not a Christian, like the majority of people in the UK I don't have a religion.

However, I grew up in a country where the Head of State is also the head of the Church of England and our society is built around Christianity. It means I end up falling into step on the rota of public holidays, along with the rest of us, marking Christian points on the Calendar, like Christmas and Easter.

I went to Sunday School as a small child, mostly because my 'boyfriend' at the time (I was about 7) would be there and my parents embraced any excuse for me and my brother and sister to get out from under their feet at the weekend. I went to a Christingle service once (I was about 6), because it meant I got to stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve and enjoy every single minute of Christmas Day! As a kid, Christmas Day is the best day ever because you get loads of presents and can eat junk all day. As an adult, it's a chore because you have to do 'the family thing' but at least you're allowed to drink alcohol for breakfast.

That's about as far as my engagement with orgainsed religion goes. Although I do know the words to some hymns, having been tortured with them at school, and at various weddings, where people pretend to be Christian for the day so they can get married in a fancy building with pretty windows!

Forgive my facetiousness...

On a more serious note, Lent is an important point on the calendar for Christians of various denominations. It is a solemn religious observance, in commemoration of the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. In the Church of England it is traditionally described as the 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter (40 days until the next bank holiday...? Denied!).

The way I was taught about it as a child was; Pancake Day (sorry, Shrove Tuesday) is the last feast where people use up all the fancy ingredients in their pantry like eggs (and Jif Lemon Juice).

I may be making this up in my excessively imaginative writers brain, but I'm sure I have a memory of giving up chocolate for 40 days until Easter. I also remember being impressed by the chef on Blue Peter's ability to flip pancakes - and it still pleases me today when I manage to do it myself!

It's all in the wrist-flick...

It was meeting Angela, from the charity 'Action for Children', who do amazing work with vulnerable children, that started me thinking about the concept of giving something up and being thankful for what we have.

They've started a lovely campaign, reminding us to 'Count Your Blessings' with 40 things to be thankful for and the work the charity does to make those things most of us take for granted accessible to vulnerable children.

You can find it here:

https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/media/5417/count-your-blessing-lent-leaflet.pdf

My favourites from the 40 things are:

Number 37; Unplug and play

This reminded me of a TV show I watched as a kid 'Why Don't You'...


The message was:

'Why don't you just switch off you're television set and go out and do something less boring instead' 

Somewhat ironic that my brother and sister and I used to religiously tune in and watch it every Saturday afternoon (instead of being outside doing something less boring instead...) 



 ...it's still true today but you could substitute 'Television Set' for 'Smart Phone' or 'iPad' or 'Laptop'...

Be thankful for our awesome connected world that allows us instant access to anything.

But make sure you regularly give up that technology too...

• Put your phone down when you're spending time with friends and be social with the actual humans present (it really annoys me seeing people sat around in a bar together ignoring each other, playing with their phones!).
• Instead of reading mindless nonsense on Social Media, read a book instead (perhaps even an actual paper one)
• Instead of playing computer games, play some sport instead

Number 31; Write a note of warm wishes as a bookmark when you lend out a book

I really like this one. This year, I created a list of 40 things to do before I'm 40 .

On my list, No. 11 is: Leave a note in a library book

This has inspired me to make that note a bookmark with warm wishes written on it.

My No. 14 is: Spend a day in the library reading

I think I'll combine the two...


I'll start with this small token...

Someone else is wishing for what you take for granted

 

 

Creating People (no, not like that...)

 

How to Create Characters

One of the great joys of being a writer is making up new people. We get to play God in the low risk environment of our imaginations and in the process, learn more about ourselves.

My favouite computer game is The Sims (I'm still on Sims 2 and already there's a Sims 4) where I get to be an all powerful deity controlling the life and death of my virtual people. As a writer, I'm doing the same thing in my books.

Create some characters, put them together in a situation, poke them and see what happens.



There's a simple formula that defines a story:

Characters + Conflict = Story

We throw in all sorts of other juicy ingredients to create the layers of flavour needed to keep a reader salivating, but essentially this is what it boils down to.

 Every story needs characters, but how do you conjure up new people?

• Observation: Observing and understanding other people is crucial to develop believable characters. I'm a fan of people watching, watching strangers going about their lives and creating a story for them based on how they look, behave, dress and speak.

• People we know: There's a myth that writers base their characters on real people. Sometimes this works, but more often than not we draw inspiration from different aspects of the personalities of the people we know, consciously or otherwise, and create new combinations of features and traits.

• Research: It's not necessary to be a qualified psychologist to create characters but researching psychology, behaviours, academic studies, personality tests etc. can provide inspiration and help writers to coax realistic emotional responses from our characters when we put them in different situations.

• Learn from other fiction: Film, TV, Books, Theatre - other fictional characters can have a real impact on our lives. Have you ever cried when a character has died?

I love adventure fiction; a bit of action, a bit of history. That's what I enjoy writing and I'm sure that this developed in me at a young age from the experiences I had as a child.



My favorite movies when I was growing up that influenced this were:

Indiana Jones films (I was in love with Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford was my first crush)



The Goonies


Labyrinth


When developing characters, there's a simple process used by anyone teaching the subject and I've added my own take on it.

 
One of the best known personality profiling tools is the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator test. This profiling tool categorises people broadly into 16 personality types.

If you're not familiar with it, this is a great Wikipedia explanation: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator

Use the personality typing questions in this image to determine the personality type of your main characters.


In my Sheridan and Blake Adventure Series I have done this for Tom Sheridan and Sasha Blake
 





Tom Sheridan: ISTJ (Introvert, Sensing, Thinking, Judging)
He's reserved, a strategist, he struggles to show his emotions, prefers to observe than be the centre of attention - his specialty is hiding in plain sight. He's a logical thinker, loyal, likes to have a plan and scrutinize the details, Sasha calls him 'calculating'.


 

Sasha Blake: ENTP (Extrovert, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving)
She's impulsive, argumentative and likes to think out loud. She likes to imagine and consider different possibilities but then pin them down logically, make decisions and solve puzzles. She's spontaneous and fickle but in many ways, despite projecting outward confidence, verging on self righteousness, she is quite insecure and fears commitment.




Once I've made some decisions about the type of person my characters are and what they look like, I find images of actors who could play them in a movie. I collect the images on a Pinterset board, pinning images of the actors in different poses and situations. It helps me to hear tone of voice, imagine and picture scenes.

Here's my Pinterest board for my latest book, Gabriel's Game

Follow Amy Morse's board Gabriel's Game: Characters on Pinterest.  


Actions for writers:

Use this blank proforma to make notes on your main characters and bring them to life on the page:

How do you come up with character ideas?