Archive for the 'Culture & Society' Category

The postal strikes continue here in the UK and with Xmas looming, it’s decision time for those of us who send Xmas cards. While I conduct most of my business and personal communications digitally these days - by email, instant message, Facebook messaging and Twitter - every Xmas so far, I’ve made the effort to sit down and write Xmas cards, enclosing a printed newsletter with some cheery reports and photos of what we’ve been up to in the past year.

This dead-tree method of keeping in touch with about 100 or more friends is a bit of a chore and often, we’re usually so busy that we only manage to do it all in a mad rush in the last weekend before the cut-off date for posting our cards in time for the festive season. Every year, during that pressurised weekend, I wonder, why don’t I just scribble a link to my blog where all my up to date news is already waiting anyway….? But many of my friends seem to live their lives un-digitised (though how on earth they manage that is beyond me….!) and anyway, if we’re shelling out lots of money on stamps, it makes sense to include something more than a couple of signatures to a pre-printed card.

But with the postal strike about to force us to make the choice of either sending out our Xmas cards ludicrously early this year or risk them arriving in January next year, we’re wondering about switching over completely to sending e-cards with perhaps a pdf newsletter or a link to my blog. And even as we were discussing this option at the weekend, The Times reported today that “people may snub postal service because of dispute“. Royal Mail’s chief executive Adam Crozier is quoted in the piece as saying, “The danger of the strike is that the trend that is there already gets exacerbated by this and that people speed up [the move away from] not just sending Christmas cards but paying bills by direct debit or standing order. People all over the country have changed the way they communicate.”

The thing is, in this time of digital communications, Xmas cards are still the one last remnant of that excitement we used to get when the postie arrived.

Back in the old days, it was an exciting moment, especially if you were in love or waiting for news (like whether your novel had been accepted by an agent) - you’d grab the post and sift through it, hoping to find the handwriting of your beloved or an envelope that might be from a literary agent. Now, the post just brings junk mail and bills and all the excitement has been transferred to the beep of a text message from your honey bun or a silent email slipping into your inbox from the one person who can make or break your writing career.

But at least once a year, at Xmas time, the traces of that old thrill is awakened. Amongst the junk are white or coloured envelopes, handwritten in script that you vaguely recognise. You put all those in a pile and bin the rest, then play a little game of guessing who each one is from. That looks like so-and-so’s writing; this one has a stamp from Oz, so it must from my cousin; wait, I recognise that writing - is it X or is it Y, they have such similar styles… And of course, the colourful cards are great to hang around the house or stand up on any flat surface, adding to the festive air of the season.

So I’m undecided. Shall I send Xmas cards but do so in November? Or shall I go entirely digital and send some sparkly pixels instead?

What’s your advice? What will you be doing about your Xmas cards this year?

Photo: thanks to a.drian from flickr.com (CCL)

As I was saying the other day, I love autumn. But this week, I only love it kinda.

It’s all very well waxing lyrical about the cool air and new beginnings. The reality of autumn is a little bit more mundane, I’m finding. Piaf might warble, “The falling leaves/ Drift by the window….” but did she ever have to go out there and sweep them off the patio?

Well, I comfort myself that it’s good for the soul. Meditative. Calming. I pretend that I’m a wise Japanese sage in a stylised Oriental water colour picture painted on a scroll, sweeping leaves, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping.

I sweep using what they call a witch’s broom here in the UK. In the East, we call it a plain old broom but over here, if you go into a shop and ask for a broom, they will give you something like an upside down T. You push the T along and gather your leaves in front of you, working in straight, regimented lines. I can’t get along with the T shaped broom - it feels weird and uncomfortable for being so strict and uptight.

Although I’ve been in the UK for 30 years or more, I can only sweep with the Oriental / witch’s broom, which is the one that looks like a giant paint brush. You sweep from side to side or gather the leaves like you would gather children together, sweeping them towards you in a protective motion. It feels to me fluid and natural - and sort of artistic, I suppose. As well as wise and Japanese sage-like.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how a thing as boring as a broom can be so, well, interesting - it’s almost as if by taking on a meditative air while I’m sweeping, I find myself actually meditating and noticing these nuances about sweeping and how the actions are making me feel… Huh, maybe I am really becoming a wise Japanese sage….!

Photos: T-shaped brooms - my photo; oriental broom thanks to kleinmatt66 from fllickr.com (CCL)

Earlier this year, while we were in Amsterdam, we visited the Anne Frank House one grey, drizzly morning. It was a short walk from our B&B and after a lovely breakfast of fruit, scrambled eggs and croisssant,s we meandered there along the picturesque canals. Amsterdam is one of the loveliest cities in Europe because of the water and quaint arched bridges, the canal boats and tall narrow houses, the good food and delightful cafes. We were one of the early arrivals at the Anne Frank House so we could go straight in and the thin, tall house was not overly crowded with visitors. I suppose we were not expecting how strongly we would be effected by our visit.

We began in the basement where the goods from the Frank business were stored and level by level made our way up the steep staircase to each storey of the house, up the main office on the first floor and then up again to another level of public rooms. At Otto Frank’s request, the house is empty of furniture - that was the way the Nazi’s left it and that was the way Otto Frank wanted it to remain, as a stark, physical reminder of what happened at the house. There were photographs and video interviews at each stage along the way and across one set of the upper level windows was overlayed a photograph of a view taken of the street outside during the Nazi occupation - it was strangely creepy to stand there and see the view from the past, especially as the occupants at that time had also witnessed other families being taken away by the Nazis from that window.

The hidden rooms are accessed by a secret door behind a bookcase. We climbed up a set of steep stairs and were in the upstairs attic rooms where the Frank family hid. Everyone fell silent as we moved softly and uneasily around the rooms - it felt as if we treaded on graves. The room that Anne shared with her sister was the most upsetting - the photographs that she had cut out from film magazines were still stuck on the walls by where her bed would have been, preserved behind glass frames. I used to put posters of my favourite movie stars and singers cut out from magazines on the wall by my bed when I was a kid - how many of you have also done that? And, of course, like Anne Frank, I had always wanted to be a writer, even as a child.

After the visit, we went down to the cafe in the new annexe next to the original house. It’s a beautiful space, with plate glass windows on two sides so you can seem to float above the canal and next to to the Westerkerk. We had coffee, looking down at the cyclists and swans on the canal but it felt strangely disturbing. We loved sitting there sipping coffee and we were loving our holiday in Amsterdam. And yet, we felt uneasily guilty at that pleasure when we thought of the terrible events in that house and what happened to its occupants.

The thing is, if you think about these things too much, you realise you are surrounded by the history of terrible inhumanity wherever you are. It wasn’t just the Frank family that experienced the tragedy of the Holocaust - thousands of other families did so too in Amsterdam and millions across Europe. And of course, it’s not just in that period or in Europe that such horrors occurred - they are still going on in places all around the world now.

I suppose I take comfort in the stories of humanity and courage that come out of such times of which Anne Frank’s story is just one. The Anne Frank House, for me, reminds us that we can find joy, pleasure and hope even in the most horrible times. And that we should appreciate such moments whenever and wherever we can have them.

Enjoy this little video that the Anne Frank House put up on Youtube the other day - but do try to go to the house itself if you manage to get to Amsterdam.

You can find out more backgrond information about this film via the New York Times article, A Brief Glimpse of Anne Frank on Film

Photo: from Anne Frank House website

I love autumn.

After the heat of the summer, the cooling air is so refreshing. But it’s not yet bitterly cold because the energy of the sun absorbed by the earth over the last few months still maintains an underlying warmth so we can wander around in T-shirts but without that feeling of oppressive heat that characterises July and August. We’ve had a couple of fantastic weeks here in London when we’ve been able to bask in the gentle sunlight in the garden without burning to a crisp or gasping for air. But it’s distinctly colder now and you can feel the radiating warmth from the earth slowing dying down.

It’s not just this sense of being air-conditioned while the sun shines that I love. September here in the northern hemisphere is the time for new beginnings - even as the year is waning. It’s the time that the new school year starts and my first experience of September in the UK was coming to London in 1975 to start my first term at a British boarding school. It was all so new and different from Malaysia. I was excited, scared, nervous, curious and full of wonder all at the same time - at this new country, the pale people, the different way of doing things and at the new adventure lying ahead of me. This September mingling of warmth and coolness always reminds me of that time.

And I guess each year, it’s not just the school kids and students who start new adventures in September. This is the time when everyone else also comes back from their summer holidays, refreshed and reinvigorated. The streets of London noticeably fill up again after the summer lull and the traffic is worse - that part of September I really dislike! Projects that have been postponed over the August holiday period get picked up again. There’s a sudden spurt of activity as people catch up with each other.

I often feel energised in the autumn. I’ve started running again - I had been finding it awfully painful trying to keep that up over the summer because of the heat and now, the cool air makes plodding round the park so much more bearable. I’m starting a new book project - which, fingers crossed, if all goes well, will come to something: more on that next week after a meeting that I’m having with my editor at Kogan Page… There’s a round of talks I’m scheduled to give as well as a bunch of social activities with friends. Yes, autumn is the time of new beginnings.

I’m struck by how the changing seasons really influences the way we mark time here in the temperate zone. The financial year is marked out in quarters and the legal marker dates for leases and quarterly payments fall on traditional feast days that celebrated each distinct season. When planning medium to long term projects in the business world, there seems to me a natural tendency to think in three month chunks. In our daily lives, we look forward to or plan for Christmas, Easter, the school holidays in July and the time when people are back from their holidays in September. We notice the winds and rain or storms during the “in between” seasons of autumn and spring. We grumble about the rain in winter - and also the rain in summer. We look back at our lives in seasons - “I remember around Easter last year…” or “Aaah, the summer of 1976…” (famous for its long heatwave).

I’ve never lived in Malaysia as an adult although I grew up there - it’s on the equator and has a warm tropical climate year round. I’ve also never lived in a place like California where there seems to be perpetual sunshine and an even temperature. I wonder how I would mark time if I were to migrate there? How would I remember my past if it all looks and feels like one season? Would I miss the variety of having a different ambient world every three months - and the opportunity to have a change of wardrobe every few months? Or would I just embrace the year round sameness and be glad that I were no longer in rainy London?

Photo: thanks to hichako from flickr.com (CCL)

That was the question that the Pan Asian Women’s Association asked at their inaugural launch event last night.

PAWA (sounds like “power”) was created by a group of UK based Asian women with backgrounds from the Indian sub-continent, Korea, Malaysia and more and its tag line is “Empowering Asian Women Worldwide”. The event took place at the lovely premises of Asia House and was packed with high-powered, high-achieving professional women and entrepreneurs - they were mainly of Asian origin but the organisation is also open to men and non-Asian women with an interest in the region. I was delighted to have been invited and it was so energising to chat to so many dynamic women representing 30 countries ranging from Iran across to Japan.

The high aims and global vision of this association was signalled from the start with an opening addres by Baroness Lydia Dunn who had been a member of the the Cabinet in Hong Kong and is a leading light on the international business stage.

The evening began with a short vox pop film asking ordinary people in one London street “What comes to mind when you think of an Asian woman?” There were young white men, Asian men, older men, white women and young Asian girls, a young Chinese boy so the answers were many and varied. But there were some themes that kept recurring: charming, strong, outwardly subservient, sexy, strong mothers, good wives. When asked about role models, the answers ranged from Indira Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benathir Bhutto and Michelle Yeo to “don’t know” to one lovely man who said, “My wife.”

But there was not among the stereotypes in the vox pop an image that described many of the women in the room. Business woman. Lawyer. Accountant. Entrepreneur. TV executive. Journalist. Sure, many of us there were charming, strong, sexy, mothers and spouses and perhaps outwardly subservient when we needed to be but we were - are - also engaged in the business and professional world. There was a lively panel discussion following the film where a consultant psychiatrist Dr Ghazala Afzal Hameed, an acclaimed choreographer Gauri Sharma Tripathi, a formidable financier Sonia Lo and a policy advisor on women’s issues Anni Marjoram discussed the stereotypes and their own experiences of being an Asian woman in their respective fields.

The formal part of the event came to a close with some remarks by the Founder and President of PAWA, the striking SungJoo Kim, a leading entrepreneur who built her billion dollar business from nothing.

I had been invited along with my co-author Silvia Cambie by Mei Sim Lai and also Betty Yao, two lovely women whom I’ve recently got to know. When we first met, I liked them immediately - they are down to earth, charming and friendly. It was only later, when I Googled them (as you do these days!), that I discovered that Mei Sim is an OBE and Betty is an MBE and they are both amazingly high achieving in the field of finance (Mei Sim) and Asian culture and arts (Betty).

For me, the power (ha ha) of yesterday evening was seeing all these extraordinary - and also in many ways, ordinary - women all gathered in one place. In my daily life, I mix quite happily with a primarily English crowd and a range of international friends. I have Malaysian and Asian friends but they are often dispersed around London and the UK. In the daily news and public media, it’s not often that an Asian woman makes the news - other than sad stories about poor Indian/ Pakistani women murdered by their families or Chinese migrant women (and men) found dead in the back of a lorry and other disempowered images. So in my daily consciousness, dynamic Asian women don’t really feature. Which made the impact of last night all the stronger for me - I had a sense of relaxing, that these women understand some of the challenges that I’ve faced being a Malaysian-Chinese woman in the UK and I also felt inspired by the vibrant energy buzzing around the room!

So, yeah, I’m going to be signing up as a member of PAWA - I’m off to fill in my form now!

If you check them out because of this post, do mention FusionView.co.uk and also come back and let me know and we can keep an eye out for each other at their next event.

Twitter is THE big thing these days on social media. Barack Obama and other presidential candidates made it hip for politics in the last couple of years. Celebs like Stephen Fry and Oprah have also helped with bringing Twitter to the masses. Royalty have got in on the act - check out Queen Rania of Jordan (thumbs up for a smart and appealing use of the app) and also the British Monarchy (thumbs down for press releases galore).

Now, it’s the turn of the RAF in the UK and NASA in the US to use Twitter to bring what they do to a wider, global audience. The RAF hopes to use Twitter and also Flickr to help with recruitment, according to New Media Age (NMA). Six RAF personnel have been given multimedia phones to upload pictures and commentary on what they are doing. One paragraph at the end of the NMA article made me smile: “The RAF’s latest recruitment project comes as the Central Office of Information revealed its annual report earlier this week. It spent £40m on digital marketing in the 12 months to March 2009, an increase of 84% year on year” - I hope that they didn’t spend £40m just to come up with this Twitter / Flickr campaign!

Over in the USA, space agency NASA has its own Twitter feed as do a number of astronauts such as Mike Massimo and Mark Polansky. There is also a general NASA Astronauts feed. I’m following the two astronauts mentioned and it’s wonderful and surreal to read their updates from space - all about space walks and orbitting earth - while I’m here at my desk going about my daily business. We’ve come a long way from the Apollo missions and the moon landing back in the ’60s when we all crowded round the TV or radio to hear the latest bulletins - now we can get real time updates straight to our PCs or mobile phones directly from space!

Photo: thanks to ImpactLab.com

The Japan Matsuri (festival) is coming to Spitalfields in London in on Saturday 19th September this year. The aim is to celebrate “Japan and its rich culture, arts & crafts” in festival welcoming autumn, according to the Japan Matsuri website.

The festival is organised by The Japan Society and the Japanese Residents Association and they are taking a very “Web 2.0″ collaborative approach, asking people to tell them “what you would like to see at the Matsuri through our blogspot. It’s your festival, we want your ideas to be included!” They are also calling on “all young artists with an interest in Japanese themes to perform on our stages” and “if you are a Japanese catering company or restaurant, or if you run Japan-related craft business, interested in holding a stall at the festival contact us”. The contact details are on the Matsuri website. There are already 7 comments with suggestions on the site at the time of writing so do go over and add your ideas to help make it a user-generated festival!

I’m definitely going to try to go along if I’m not out of town that weekend. The new re-vamped Spitalfields is a great location and the festival looks like it will be really interesting and fun - in particular, I’m keen (as usual) to check out the food stalls!

I first heard about this event via bespoke tailor Carol Alayne who blogged about this festival on her blog Tailoring For Women - it will be happening on the doorstep of her studio in Spitalfields. Thanks for the tip, Carol.

Picture: from the Japan Matsuri website

Neville Hobson, over at his blog the other day, asked why he should use Posterous.

For those of you who’ve never heard of this application, it’s a blog-like platform that enables you to blog by email. You sign up for a free Posterous account which gives you a blog at www.yourchosenname.posterous.com and you can then blog by sending an email with photos, mp3s, videos or text, and even by calling in on your phone - these items will be posted on the blog automatically. For more details of how it works, check out my review of Posterous from around this time last year.

Neville’s question - and the responses he got from various people - got me thinking about how and why I use it, when I already have this blog.

There seems to be a trend towards not just multimedia but also real time, or almost real time, communication online, facilitated by smartphones with always on internet connectivity as well as SMS (short text messaging) and MMS (multi media messaging). This is emerging as a fresh form of blogging that is being called “lifestreaming” - where you stream a record of your real life on to the online space in nearly real time. Twitter is the most well-known application that enables you to do that via text. Posterous facilitates the process in a multi-media way.

I use my blog here at Fusion View for posts which are more like articles or essays where I explore issues and topics in a considered way. These longer posts are interspersed with some video, audio and photo-slideshows. But it doesn’t feel like this is the right place for very informal snippets of what’s going on in my daily life. So that’s where lifestreaming comes in.

I’ve called my Posterous site the Fusion View Lifestream. Since I got my new Blackberry Bold the other week, I’ve really been having fun snapping shots of my garden and friends I’ve met up with as well as my recent jaunt down to Bristol - and then emailing them straight to Posterous. You can also email multiple photos in one email and it will create a little slideshow automatically. There is an automatic cross-posting function that sends the snaps to Twitter, Facebook and my Flickr account - as well as a range of other social media sites, if you were so inclined. This means that my friends and family who follow me in those spaces can see what’s going on for me within minutes of my snapping the pictures or tapping out the text on my Blackberry. But people who read my blog who may not be that interested in seeing my tomato plants or my tourist snaps of Bristol don’t have to be bothered by those more personal moments.

Occasionally, I get Posterous to automatically cross-post to Fusion View as well if it’s the right kind of vignette or mood piece that would fit with the blog and break up the longer, in depth posts.

So, if you’d like to follow my lifestream vignettes, you can subscribe to my Posterous feed or follow me on Twitter.

If you’re lifestreaming or using Posterous, why don’t you add a comment with the link to your site - I’m curious to see who else is having a go at this!

Photo: thanks to Zest-pk from flickr.com (CCL)

What contact information is on your business card apart from your name and the name of your company/ business? Traditionally, it would most likely have been your job title, your real world address and your telephone number. In the ’80s, that new fangled technology, the fax machine, meant that fax numbers were then added to the card. In the 90s, that tiny bit of card had to cope additionally with website URLs and emails and mobile phone numbers.

Is it time to de-clutter, I wonder?

Recently, I’ve come across a number of business people exchanging their Twitter @usernames, in the way that one might exchange mobile phone numbers - or including those monickers at the end of their Powerpoint presentations.

I wonder if we could reduce the verbage on our business cards simply to our names and Twitter @usernames?

OK, for those who have not yet heard of Twitter, it’s an online micro-blogging site where you can post short messages of 140 characters for the world to see on the Twitter site - either via your mobile phone or your computer. Your Twitter username is a username of your own choosing. Mine is fusionview. To “hail” someone on Twitter you send a message - or “tweet” - with @ in front of their username: so “@fusionview” would reach my Twitter inbox.

If we minimised our contact details to our @username, might that also improve our communications with people we meet other than the obvious one of de-cluttering our business cards?

People can “follow” your Twitter stream by clicking “follow” on your Twitter page and you can “follow” them back - or you could choose not to. So new people you meet as well as your friends and associates could easily find and follow you online with just your Twitter username. You can have public discussions with them - and other Twitterers - or private exchanges, if you prefer.

You would normally include in your Twitter profile a link to your website so people can find your more detailed contact information via you website Contact Me page, if they need to. On you Twitter page, all people need is a quick snapshot of who you are / what you do. People can also see on your page the kinds of things you “tweet” about or what you discuss with other Twitter users. That can actually say a lot about the kind of person you are, what you’re interested in and how you engage with others. Might this then be an alternative and more informal way to let yourself and your business be more open and accessible to new acquaintances and lonstanding friends alike than your website?

I rather like the concept of a business card that just says:

Yang-May Ooi
Writer
@fusionview

… and a way for people to encounter me online at Twitter as they might encounter me - as a friend, a writer, an avid learner about all things social media, a reluctant gardener, an unfit runner, a lover of good food… and so on, as my Twitter stream evolves.

The only thing is that we’d all be dependent on Twitter to stay afloat into the foreseeable future if it became the norm to trust our contact details to it…

Or maybe the end result will be yet another new contact format to crowd into that little bit of card as we squeeze our Twitter @usernames into the last available blank space there…

Do you use Twitter for chatting, networking, making contact with people whether in a personal or business context? Do you think there’s potential for mass take-up of Twitter as a contact tool?

Image: thanks to xotoko from flickr.com (CCL)

I met writer Miranda Gray at a Society of Authors do awhile back. She is also a coach, healer and a Company Director of a multimedia production company. She told me about her new book, The Optimized Woman, which encourages women to embrace the power of their menstrual cycle rather than viewing it at “The Curse”. I was instantly intrigued and invited her to tell me more by way of a blog post for Fusion View, especially in the context of women and writing!

Here is Miranda’s blog post:

We’ve all been there. Sitting at the blank computer screen, fingers poised above the keyboard ready to start… and nothing happens! Then, after a few attempts, the panic steps in: ‘Why can’t I write, what’s wrong with me?’, ‘What if I can’t meet the deadline?’, and ‘Am I really any good at this, should I get a proper job?’!

Women’s creativity has a unique element to it; it is cyclic. When we begin to understand this and work practically within this cyclic nature we find that writer’s block is simply trying to do the wrong thing at the wrong time! The cyclic aspect to women’s creativity lies in their menstrual cycle. Many women don’t realise that the menstrual cycle affects the way we think, our abilities and skillsets, how we communicate, and how we perceive the world and ourselves. And for women in the creative industry, the menstrual cycle can be either a huge challenge or a resource of powerful tools they can actively use to excel.

The menstrual cycle can be divided into four phases; pre-ovulation, ovulation, pre-menstruation and menstruation. In each phase we can experience days of heightened abilities and skillsets called Optimum Times. For example, the pre-ovulation phase is the Optimum Time for logical thinking and reasoning skills, the ovulation phase has heightened feeling-orientated perception, the pre-menstrual phase offers us inspiration and problem identification, and the menstrual phase is the Optimum Time for touching base with core values and issues.

So how does this relate to women writers and solving writer’s block?

A ‘block’ appears when we expect consistency of thinking and ability, and we expect to be able to do something not in line with our cyclic abilities. This is not to say we can’t do any task outside of out Optimum Time, simply that it can take longer, be more difficult and may be of poorer quality.

To get ahead, we need to apply to our writing the tools that our cycles give us.

We can use the pre-ovulation phase to build the structure of our work or book, to plan our plots and our work schedule, to break down the chapters into sublevels, to organise our files on characters or to categorise piles of research, and to give ourselves the basis on which to write creatively later in the month. It’s also the Optimum Time for analytical and structured writing, for editing and research, and for checking the small print on the publisher’s contract!

With the change to the ovulation phase comes heightened communication, listening and empathy skills, making it an Optimum Time to write dialogue, to interview people for their stories, to write from the heart and from our passion, to ask for people’s views and critiques, to empathise with our characters or our audience. It is the Optimum Time to network, contact publishers, market our books and proposals, and do talks and signings.

The pre-menstrual phase is often the most challenging for many women, but it offers us some powerful tools for writing. It can be an intensely inspirational and creative phase if we allocate time to day-dream and ponder, often providing ‘Eureka’ moments as ideas lock into place. The Optimum Time for creative writing and to explore ideas, it often takes only one small seed idea to start an avalanche of writing. The pre-menstrual phase is also the time to identify problems and create solutions. It is the time to analyse whether the plot really works, to explore why we are not happy with the structure, to cut away superfluous words and sections, and to brain-storm what would work, how we could approach things differently and how to re-write that awkward paragraph.

As we move into the menstrual phase our physical energies are often low, and mental abilities such as concentration and memory can also decline. If we have planned well in the pre-ovulation phase we are on track with our deadline and can afford to drive ourselves a little less for a few days. When we take the opportunity to rest in this phase two things happen; firstly, we come out of this phase into the next refreshed and full of renewed energy, and secondly we have the opportunity to connect to our deepest insight. This phase is the Optimum Time for touching base with who we are and what we are doing, not only in our life but also in what we are writing. Does the book feel ‘right’? Are we writing in a style, genre, method that feels ‘comfortable’ to us? Can we commit to the direction the book is taking, or do we need to go back to the core values of the book or of the publisher? Have we gone off track? Are we writing what we were asked to write? Is the deadline feasible? In this phase we can ask ourselves these potentially challenging questions without the emotional rollercoaster and needs experienced in other phases.

When the next pre-ovulation phase comes round again we are renewed in our energies, mental abilities and commitment to get started. We can plan our work schedule for the month ahead using our Optimum Time skills to their best possible advantage and knowing that just because we can’t write in a particular way right now, give it a couple of weeks and there’ll be no stopping us!

‘Writer’s block’ no longer exists - we simply do the right task at the right time.

~~~

Miranda’s website is http://www.optimizedwoman.com/
She blogs at http://optimizedwoman.blog.co.uk/

This post first appeared on Miranda’s blog.

Photo: from Miranda’s website, with permission