#bookwriting | Olya Aman

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know. No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. – Mitch Albom (“The five people you meet in heaven.”)

1) The Very Success-Defining Skill

There are many things that we learn early on but think insignificant and omit in the process of our upbringing. One of them is the very success-defining skill – empathetic listening. That skill involves all our senses: ears, eyes, posture, mimics. It is vital to learn to listen using all of them, and not just to “listen” without even capturing the meaning as we think at this very moment about what we are going to say next. Most of us do that. Pay attention next time and you’ll see the living proof.

2) We Need to Listen Twice as Much as We Talk

We have two ears and one mouth. Isn’t it a sign to be more attentive when someone is sharing information with us? But here again we need to rein in our egos. We think that no one can give us anything valuable, which is such a big mistake. Every person in our lives comes with a definite purpose and you just miss it when you do not pin your ears back and give yourself in full to this moment of shared wisdom.

3) The Art of Asking Questions

Imagine a foreign language course in your curriculum. And you decided to skip a lesson or two. How hard is it to stay at the same level of knowledge as your more responsible classmates? You feel you need to put so much extra work in now to acquire the same speed they learn with. Of course, in a classroom environment it is easier to grasp the meaning of some rule that is difficult to understand, as there is always someone who will ask the right question that will cause you to understand the teacher’s explanation. The same thing in life: you may miss that particular opportunity to listen, think, and ask the right question and the life you want to live becomes a few steps farther from your reach. We need to master the art of asking questions. And to do that we need to listen and think. And, of course, to have the end result in mind (I mean “why I need to listen” and “what I need to learn”).

Conclusion

The vital ability to think requires some training and a lot of practice time. You go to the gym to make your body fit and strong, and in the same way you need to train your brain to think consciously on subjects of everyday life. I know it is insane to force your mind to think: “take a toothbrush in your right hand and brush the upper left side…” and so on. Our subconscious mind keeps us sane by relieving us of the necessity of tracking every routine movement. But simply by trying to use your left hand more if you are right-handed and vice-versa makes a world of a difference. Small steps like that create a habit of using our thinking muscles more frequently and making them all-weather resistant. Every achievement starts with the unremarkable little steps that we take every day in the direction of our ultimate goal.

Stay tuned…

Never be disheartened!

Introduction

A. is a 26-year-old office worker who is bored to death. When her boss is looking the other way, she switches the screen of her computer to the pages of her book. It gives an anxious, haggard look to her gentle face. A. writes away with an odd mixture of the detached and the involved. We are going to witness a drift of her thoughts during this process.

When you look at a beautiful hand embroidery, you see cross-stitching and think that if you had patience enough, you could do that. The multitude of colors may scare you at first, but you know that to master the skill itself you just need a little training. The reverse side of it, though, looks eerily tangled. And that may add the fear of new and unknown to your feelings.

Life is a custom masterpiece, and the beauty of it is inspiring. The confusing opposite side is a mere bunch of knots that are made along the way. Many or a few – they keep the picture in place – when a thread is over, you make a knot, get a different shade, and keep going.

Never be disheartened!

You Have Power to Grant Eternal Life by a Simple Touch of a Pen to a Paper

“Mat is cheating. The girl he met at his best friend’s birthday party was paid by his wife to seduce him so she can tarnish his image in her father’s eyes. This way her lover, not her husband, can get that important promotion. But they truly fall in love with each other…”. I keep talking in this way for a little longer before I realize that my cat Rob is no longer listening to this nonsense. He keeps nodding as if understanding while struggling to keep his eyes open. I laugh and affectionately kiss him. He is now so used to my ‘crazy moments’ that he can play the game of ‘attentive listener’ any time when I intensely get to my work.

You have the power to grant eternal life by a simple touch of a pen to a paper. The idea will shine with profound meaning, a character will look at you from a page and walk away to the depth of the narrative to suffer and love, struggle and succeed.

You should unite the intrinsic and the extrinsic while building the net of your story. It will be in the highest degree engaging and attaching if you play it in your mind (intrinsic) and aloud to an attentive listener (extrinsic). Keep your narrative in admirable order, constantly improving it till it becomes full of light and incapable of blunders.

Important to Get Away From the Techno-World

Today I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop and racking my brains on how to put another plot twist in my book. A handsome guy entered the shop, got his coffee, and took a seat. No laptop! No smartphone! He was just simply drinking coffee! It looked a bit insane.

Our world is overflowing with information. It’s all the more important to get away from the techno-world and escape to the peaceful embrace of the natural world to recharge your inner batteries.

People in an advanced stage of inspiration had better not be interrupted at all. If you can help it, try to isolate yourself from unnecessary intrusion. Allow yourself to be politely absent from social life for a few productive hours and you will impute ample worth to anything you do.

Find Enough Power to Push Your True Essence

I was so excited to print out almost all my earlier stories for the first and dearest reader. “Interesting,” my mom never was eager to squander praise, but just one word, which is not even any definite evaluation of my work –is discouraging, to say the least.

It is not easy to enter the backside of your reality and find enough power to push your true essence out and change the shape of your life. You may find little encouragement from your family and some friends. That just means that they care about you but see a lot of pitfalls on your writing way and want to protect you. Cleverly mend your wounded pride and try to be the most comfortable and amenable person to spend time with. No need to prove anything, save your emotional energy for grander deeds. No one, save infinite good time and yourself, can perceive the events of your life.

Something Old and Stale and Faded

Today two-year-olds can unblock their phones and get to their games, plug in their tablets when the battery is low, and switch on videos on the kids’ YouTube channel. What was I doing at that age? I was eating chalk and cuddling my bear. This no longer fluffy, one-eyed, stitched belly little friend is still sitting on my laptop. I haven’t been writing for three days now. Feeling disappointed in myself.

Some object in the cupboard – the quiet, dusky cupboard where there’s an odor of stale spices – can listen to your chatter with infinite good nature. If you cherish and love that inanimate object, it also becomes affectionate towards you. And when it does, you feel kind protectiveness it irradiates. You can use it as an amulet.

Something old and stale and faded can be of more beauty than the latest fashionable adornment. The connection to such an object is very gentle and gracious. You cultivate it by sharing memories and impressions with it, by expressing your gratitude every day. This relationship is binding you both like a good book. A simple touch to such a thing can give you inner peace.

Your Book Is Something You Want to Be Seen

Rita texted me today: “Are you okay? How are you doing? I haven’t seen you for a while.” Marketing never was my cup of tea. I haven’t been active on my Facebook, barely posting once a month or even less than that. So when I started to emerge every day across all my social platforms, my friends got worried thinking I had family issues and was now spitting my grief in verbal diarrhea.

Someone’s knowledge about us is a power that is hard to confront. Your book is something you want to be seen. You shouldn’t be too insistent, yet, not too quiet. You need people to remember who you are and what are you up to. So when the time comes for announcing the publication of your book – the audience is ripe with curiosity.

Alterations That Only Experience Can Cause

I often talk to myself while driving. Sometimes I talk to other people, real and imagined. Today I was answering some talk show host’s questions about my book. She was reading some excerpts, and we were discussing her insightful ideas about them. We were laughing a lot and agreeing on almost every idea she had. What a smart person she was and how nice of her to spend that time with me!

Time is irrelevant unless you not only feel the outside changes but the inside, not obvious and even almost imperceptible, alterations that only experience can cause. When you have enough inherent strength to get in with a person whose virtues of the heart serve as an example for you, your personality will muster depth and complexity. This inner change is a precious and welcome sign of the passage of time.

To boost this magical transformation you need to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are in areas you want to learn about, wiser than you are in areas you had no idea being existent. If no such people are present in your life at the moment, even self-conversation with an imagined opponent can be a great beginning. It is not insane; it is very normal.

Conclusion

Can silence be unpleasant? It can. My skin feels the cold touch of it in the room full of people. When two are silent, it can be shared friendly and all understanding stillness of like-minded souls. I have nothing to say to people. A crowd started to be distractive for me. I feel a need for time off work and off people.

Often you see how silly bird coming from someone’s mouth to the freedom of open space is flying long distances and singing her song loud enough to spoil life for as long as memory is living. And this thing is highly resilient. People love talking, labeling, and stigmatizing. Is it good? Of course, it’s not! But this is the way it is… Like destroying water, one verbal mistake can crush the sturdiest human rock.

Words that were said mean something, even if YOU didn’t mean anything. Your intellectual standing in the eyes of people around you can be proved by the thoughts you share with them. Your book is a product of your mind. Do your best to make every word in it worth to be said.

Stay tuned…