- going to Easter Sunday church service when you don’t go other times of the year

- getting in a car accident you never intended to happen, or did you?

- starting a love affair, whether married or not

- buying new clothes for yourself to go into summer with

- marrying the wrong person, and so later you have to get a divorce

- wanting to take a week’s vacation instead of work at your job

- reading the latest mystery novels just out this year at this time

- going into nature with your friends and doing at least a walk there

- feeling depressed because you have nobody to love

THE ARCHETYPE OF EASTER-SPRINGTIME

What does the above list have in common?

- Why must you watch out for its effects?

- Why do certain celebrations occur traditionally at this transition from winter into springtime that is the 21st of March and the month of April?

In Jungian terms the archetype of Death-Rebirth becomes most active at springtime.

Death-Rebirth? What is that?

In nature and inside ourselves are energy patterns and dynamics that activate. Humanity evolved over a million years or more responding to the seasons of the year. Thus we have built into our genes, our psyches, a natural energy rhythm that we would do well to acknowledge and not avoid.

For what is not faced consciously in our awareness gets acted out anyway unconsciously.

Why do Norwegians every springtime take a week or more vacation at their summer cottages by the sea or in the mountains?

It’s a wonderful thing to do. After the long Northern winter of more darkness than light, of more cold than warmth, the Norwegians are used to the seasonal shifts.

The spring equinox is the transition point when the hours of night equal the hours of day. We can imagine the long winter nights of the Northern countries, such as Norway. When spring finally arrives a sense of happiness comes with it, or so we think.

What about the dark side, the people who commit suicide when the spring comes, the people who have accidents?

One strange custom that has developed in Norway is that Norwegians when they go in the spring to their cottages also take along this year’s published thrillers and mysteries. This type of genre is all about being killed and finding the killer. Why should a strong people who have just survived the winter then want to read fiction about death?

Well, don’t think everything is just fine in the springtime. Norway has other forms of death for you, like quicksand in the forest because the ground is no longer frozen. Or how about you are hiking up the big mountain in Norway and suddenly the ground under you on the path just collapses into running water and mud and you are swept off the mountain to your death?

Yes, things like this happen every year in Norway. Several deaths occur to hikers in the Norway mountains when the springtime is arriving. Death is not over. Springtime is also the time they find the thawed-out bodies of those Norwegians who have chosen to commit suicide in the past winter by going into the forest and sitting under a favorite tree and freezing to death.

Deaths like this are no stranger to the Norway clime.

What is going on?

Since Death-Rebirth is the archetype of springtime this means that one must experience death first and then rebirth, then new life. The religion knows this with its Black Friday and then its Easter Sunrise service.

You don’t have to go to an actual church service to feel the effects of Death-Rebirth. But the archetype is there.

Part of the monastic service is to have a midnight service and the lighting of the new pascal candle which has nails in it representing the crucifixion.

Thus built into our psychology is the recognition that we have to acknowledge our suffering and hurt and go through a letting go process to release ourselves into new birth.

The beauty of doing a sunrise experience is that you experience in nature Death-Rebirth, and this experience becomes a conscious part of you for as long as you live.

I went with some friends years ago and drove to the top of the local mountain, Mt. Diablo, in Northern California. There in the darkness we waiting all night looking out over the near and distant cities that kept their street lights on, the energy of humanity. We talked. We meditated. We knew the significance for us in our own lives of the Death-Rebirth experiences we were going through. Finally from the stone-walled walkway we saw the dawn breaking in the far distance. We had stayed up all night in our vigil and sharing together.

Here was our reward: the new dawn to a special day of rebirth. It is never to be forgotten.

Of course, the important level is to also take such things inside.

As a dreamwork psychologist, I wanted to figure our why when I lived and taught in Norway that the Norwegians read the new mystery novels at springtime. They did not know consciously themselves. It was a fad that most of them did.

Could it be that the Norwegians had waited out the long winter cold and at last when they did not have to be so strong any longer they could indulge in reading about surviving death?!!!

What is the essence of these death-defying thrillers if not to catch the murderer before he or she catches you.

We all know we are under sentence of death but with indefinite reprieve, as Victor Hugo, the French writer, put it, but we don’t know when our death will come. Will it be this year or the next, or after that? But it will come.

It’s great in reading a thriller to realize that though there are deaths in the story, none of those victims are you. You are alive one more year, or so you hope.

Thus for me in the Norway sun and rains, and the new leaves on the branches of the trees, I felt a certain sadness. I was so glad to be alive still another year, and always planned to make good use of my “luck.” But I also knew that one of these years the spring would come and I would not be there to marvel in its new life. The very wooden Norway house I lived in could have been built by those no longer alive. I lived in a dead man’s house. And if not the house being there after me, at least the other houses of our community in the country of Norway, beloved land of all the seasons, would surely outlive me.

Whether by the sea in spring in California, or high atop the mountain elsewhere, it is a time to go adventuring and meditate on all your life is now.

What must you lose and give up? What must you sacrifice so you don’t have to sacrifice life itself, even gruesomely as recounted here?

Better to realize the death part of your life now, the letting go of what can never more be. This is the base, the preparation to look forward to, and to experience through choice the new life you will dedicate yourself to with passion and awareness, as you live further your existence purposefully on this earth.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Strephon_Kaplan-Williams

Of course you have a fully loving relationship in which all your reasonable desires and requests are met by each other. Right?

This article is for those who either live alone, because they can’t seem to live with anyone else, or who live with someone, sharing intimacies, but can’t seem to work well together solving the problems of daily life in the love nest.

Are you one of these?

• Someone who doesn’t do the dishes?
• Someone who doesn’t do the cooking?
• Someone who doesn’t do the shopping?
• Someone who doesn’t earn at least part of the income you both live on?
• Someone who looks at television or the Internet while the other one works?
• Someone who complains about things at home, including the sexual life, but does not problem-solve the problems to make things a lot better for you both?

If all these above statements are true then you are both lazy persons. Agreed?If only some of the above are true for you or your partner, or both of you, then there is hope for your relationship. Agreed?

HERE’S THE BIG WORD, THE WORD YOU NEED MOST IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP. IT’S CALLED:C O O P O R A T I O N

What is the opposite for you to COOPERATION? Is it

-Aggression-Selfishness

-Laziness

-Irresponsibility

-Domination

You can add your own words, of course.As a relationships counselor and professional psychologist I have dealt a lot with couples in trouble. The reason couples came to me was because they had serious problems in their relationships that they realized were destroying their relationship.

EXAMPLES

-One couple had an alcoholic husband. The wife was pregnant for the first time. She brought them in to see me. The male carried in a bag with a bottle in it, classic defiance symptom of the alcoholic. As their counselor I knew enough to know that if I talked about ‘what’s in the bag’ it would destroy their confidence in me. I treated them both equally as wanting skilled help from me in helping them solve their marriage problem. Through our sessions I got them to focus on the fundamental: did they want to be together or not, and not just for the baby coming? The answer was yes for both of them. The relationship issue ultimately focused on whether she was making his lunch sandwiches right or not? (she was not) He had not voiced his preferences. She didn’t know. He did not trust enough to say his needs and preferences. She was not aware enough to do what he wanted. After three months of marriage counseling they learned that they could settle their differences, that they could cooperate and problem-solve together. It was realized also that she could not solve his alcoholism for him or with him. He announced on his own that he was going to AA meetings. In essence they became a problem-solving, cooperative couple. This is a real plus in life.

-Another couple having fights came in to see me. They were both strong people. They quickly got angry with each other, bringing up their issues with me. Then they both jumped up and started kicking each other. Yes, you heard me, kicking each other. That’s a No-No I said loudly at them. If you are going to be able to use me effectively to learn how to solve your relationship problems, you will have to obey certain ground rules while in counseling with me. They both refused to abide by my rules and so it was the first and last session we had together. They could not cooperate with me. They could not cooperate with each other. They would probably tear each other apart rather than share love together. Settling the issue of who does the dishes tonight or forever would turn out to be an impossible problem to solve.

-Another couple hated each other as ex’s. They had had a boy child together. This meant they still had to cooperate in the child’s sharing visits and living with each parent. The ex wife was good at cooperating with the man she now hated and not letting her anger infect her boy child. Even though these two humans hated each other they could at least cooperate in doing what was best for their mutual child. Love over hate is possible, it seems.

THE PROBLEM

The problem in intimate relating is not the sex, not the money, not even the compatibility.

If you cannot solve your problems together, then why be together? Sex and love and intimacy and children may bring you together, but they will not keep you together unless you both learn to cooperate.

Practice cooperation then. How do you do this? you would ask.

There are many attitudes to change in yourself and the patterns inside formed in your parents’ relating.

We can’t go into it here in this short article. We hope you see that cooperation is the key to a successful love relation because you have to cooperate, don’t you, to solve the daily problems that may come up in your living together and relating.

How do you problem-solve and cooperate in a love relationship?

A big, big question.

Around half of the adults living in America and England don’t live with anyone though they may date on weekends.

THEY LIVE ALONE!!!

As a relationships counselor I find that the biggest reason is that people have given up on intimate relating. They have decided that its less hassle in life to live alone than to live with someone you love.

Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a professional psychologist with many books published. He has given dreamwork training programs for thirty years and worked with many groups and individuals in America and in Europe. He is also a well-known podcaster with over 60,000 listeners in 10 months. He is committed to getting out his knowledge of human experience through Internet publishing primarily.

See us at:

www.creativewritingandwriters.com

You will find these and a lot more ideas and resources in a full report for sale at a reasonable price at this author’s regular website: http://www.creativewritingandwriters.com

See his other free information articles and paid-for reports, plus examples of his own fiction-writing work. Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a well-published writer and expert psychologist now selling his new work solely from the Internet. He offers solely his own experiences as a resource for new writers coming on the Internet.

Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Strephon_Kaplan-Williams

And you wonder: where does that leave you?

Here is the most startling current piece of information there is now in 2007.

The Internet, the World Wide Web, has become the publisher of choice for the world’s information needs.

THE INTERNET IS THE BIGGEST PUBLISHING HOUSE AND THE PREFERRED PUBLISHING HOUSE IN THE WORLD BY FAR!!!

Do you doubt this?

You don’t feel the Internet has the prestige that having a book published with a big publishing house would bring you, and maybe you are right.

However, those places at the top of the traditional publishing world are few and far between. Interesting metaphor.

While at the same time organically the biggest publishing house by far has developed just next door!!!

Is it not time for you as a writer to claim your niche on the World Wide Web?

A writer is a packager and conveyer of information, even if you write successfully sold novels.

People in the millions look to their computers and the Internet for most of their information needs.

This is natural since the Internet publishes information quickly and in a relevant manner, and with more experts per subject area than any paper book publisher can muster.

WRITERS EARNING MONEY SELLING THEIR WORK

An economic analysis of what writers are paid in the traditional publishing world shows that all but the top writers are getting screwed royally. How is this?

Writers traditionally are paid eight percent about of the retail price of a book. The author does the big labor creating a book and the publisher and book sellers take over ninety percent of the cover price the consumer pays for that book.

We don’t complain that this is totally unfair. We say to the writer: move to the Internet, the biggest and best publisher in the world.

On the Internet selling your work you will get at least fifty percent of what your electronic books sells for after expenses are paid.

There are no printing and paper costs, or if there are they are taken up in the Print On Demand, POD, publishing service. You get even here twenty to forty percent of your book cover price.

So that almost suddenly now paper book publishers, their editors, their printers, your agent, your publicist, and any other people such as sales people, have become limited or irrelevant.

The world has gone largely Internet for its information needs, free and paid for.

It will only get worse for writers who rely on paper book publishers. You, the writer, will never make much money there unless you are one of the very few.

You will have to go Internet now. These are some of the key ideas you need to know and follow to survive and grow as a writer making a living from your work.

1. Create a web site or a web blog site where you make your presence as an author known.
2. Don’t rely on your web site or blog to sell your books in paper for you.
3. You don’t make a pretty, author-like, book-cover like, web site. These pretty sites do not sell books or products. They just look nice, but few of these pretty sites have that many paying visitors who will buy your books from them. I as an author with a pretty website, dreamwork2000, since 1999 know because very few of my paper book have sold from this website.
4. You don’t just create a website. You create a marketing website from which you give away good information you are expert in through short articles, and also through which you sell expert information as downloadable books, fiction and non-fiction.
5. You as a writer are not selling your style. You are selling your expert knowledge. Therefore, you must position yourself successfully on the web as not just an author but an expert in a certain subject also. THIS IS THE KEY!!!
6. Check out what we say here. Go to author’s pretty web sites. Do you read them and buy from them? Do you? Go to Internet marketing websites and note the difference in how they are designed and written. March 15, 2007 – you feel a pull to read some of their free articles, and also to buy some of their reports and services.
7. This is the marketing pull. As a writer these days you are responsible for also marketing your work and writing it in a style that alerts people to the fact they may need your information.
8. This article comes from a working writer who has sold over 350,000 books published in paper. He has now moved his writing and publishing career to the Internet.
9. He has changed also how he writes some of his information, including fiction and non-fiction to formats that work well currently on the Internet.

He has bought marketing reports and services that help him get sales through the Internet of his work. He has produced new work Internet style in his effort to become relevant to this new way of publishing information with the biggest publisher in the world, the Internet.

You will find these and a lot more ideas and resources in a full report for sale at a reasonable price at this author’s regular website: www.creativewritingandwriters.com

See his other free information articles and paid-for reports, plus examples of his own fiction-writing work. Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a well-published writer and expert psychologist now selling his new work solely from the Internet. He offers solely his own experiences as a resource for new writers coming on the Internet.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Strephon_Kaplan-Williams

For this article we are not dealing with how bodywork therapists and massage persons can attempt sexuality with their clients, but only about clients displaying sexuality during the session.

I speak as a former Licensed Marriage, Family and Child Relationships counselor in the State of California, USA. I have done bodywork myself as part of the therapy I do. I have had many years of bodywork done with me, as well as a number of training courses in bodywork therapy.

I speak from counseling massage therapists in my own practice. I also am familiar with psychotherapy for sexual uses, including therapeutic sexual massage that is effective.

Sexual massage is more practiced outside the United States than in the States because of severe sexuality issues and attitudes in the United States differing from Canada and Europe.

Here is a sexual issue example:

A man asks the woman massage therapist over the phone: do you include the genitals in your massage work? This is rather direct. The presenting problem may be more, do you work with sexual problems as part of your massage work?

How is a male or female massage therapist to respond? Is this a sexual come-on? Or is this a cry for help?

A massage therapist comfortable with their own sexuality may be willing to take on a client who does have sexual problems. Many females are upset that they cannot orgasm. Males may easily get erections, but while in a woman be unable to orgasm.

It would be unusual indeed if at least half the people who come in for massage treatment do not have sexual problems. What is the massage therapist to do?

Some forms of massage do include massaging the naked body of the client, with a towel over the pelvic region or not. Other forms work with light clothing on and consist more of stretching movements.

Rolfing works with the naked body so as to see the alignment. There is hardly a chance in this form to feel pleasure responses because Rolfing itself is to break up muscles and facia that have been emotionally tense for years, and so the work can be extremely painful.

It is rare that a male client will directly attack a female massage therapist, but it is still considered good practice not to give massage to persons you do not know fairly well in places where you have no protection should you need to call for help.

Of course a male client may not tell you he has sexual problems on the phone, but just come in and then tell you.

One female massage therapist reported to me about a male client who would get an erection every time and have spontaneous orgasm. She never touched his genitals. She had to have a box of tissues nearby so that he could clean himself up. This was Essalen massage combined with Shiatsu pressure-point massage, which deals especially with freeing blocks in the body.

The male client did not try to have sex with her or get her to touch his genitals. Was this a genuine case of being too orgasmic? What would be the best treatment?

I advised her to instruct her male client to practice full-body awareness as he was being massaged.

Indeed, a chief value for anyone being massaged in many different styles of massage is to relax totally into sensual, bodily awareness. Some fall asleep during this relaxation, which is not necessarily healing for the client but acceptable.

For this male client orgasming he was either impressed with his ability to orgasm spontaneously without touching himself, and needed a female to witness this, or he was indeed a seducer.

Men who fixate on being seducers are only interested in getting a female so open to them through their ways of seduction that they do succeed with having intercourse with her.

Thus some men have developed a seduction technique and try to make it work to perfection on female massage therapists. They are not interested in an ongoing life relationship. They want only seduction and conquest and are willing to pay the massage fees to set up these kinds of situations.

To my knowledge with the female massage therapists I have known, they were never trained through role-playing in how to handle seductive clients.

The massage therapist should keep a massage session always on a professional level with a client, not just for reality reasons of keeping one’s license to practice, but to keep the massage situation objective and therapeutic.

With the man who spontaneously orgasmed while his body was being massaged he was emotionally and physically too focused on his erect penis and its ability to display sperm.

So what, we might say. The therapist has to accept many peculiarities with clients, whether it is a massage session or not.

I also counseled the massage therapist to take the first five or ten minutes to talk objectively about the client and his behavior. How does it feel to orgasm here? Are you making it happen? Is it spontaneous? What happens with your own lovers?

These simple questions make the client an object of treatment. They de-potentiate the session of its potential sexuality. The female therapist asserts her professional role as a helper and not a partner. Things are kept within structure. The client is made to feel responsible for his own behavior.

The bodywork therapist is also responsible for the effects of her treatment with any of her clients. A bodywork therapist should not think of themselves as just giving a good massage. The effect on the client is also their responsibility.

Thus I have counseled therapists on the issue: can you as a therapist handle this behavior on the part of a client and work with it to some resolution?

If you are a real therapist of course you want to take on challenges and handle every situation. But can you?

Working on the body is often a temptation to be or feel sexual. Relationships have started up between client and therapist, and always will, such is the human condition.

It is important to keep the therapeutic situation non-sexual, unless you are trained in sexual massage therapy and can practice this form, certainly a developing form in Europe and even America, despite repressive attitudes everywhere.

Thus our advice is to keep defining your boundaries as a massage therapist. It will not be just acting out sexuality that you will sometimes be dealing with. Other clients may be more into anger and you will have to structure your relation to this other great instinct as well.

We have raised some issues here. Instead of giving rigid rules we have explored the issues in terms of their human meaning and trying to be the best massage therapist you can be. You know full well it is more natural than unnatural to face the issues of human sexual feelings and expression inherent to living in a body, your body, and the bodies of your clients.

When faced with unusual or intense situations in your practice, do your best to bring the dynamics into reality.

Oh, what happened with that first male client who was orgasming on the massage table each time?

The female massage therapist did take the first ten minutes to talk objectively and without judgment about her client orgasming, and what his internal experience was. She shared with him her therapeutic approach involving awareness and responsibility of self.

The man never came back.

Was he then just a seducer, using as his field of available women female massage therapists, some of whom might well be seduced by his genital expression? Or did he simply get the point that maybe he could get over his fascination with his own behavior and seek intimacy with a sexual partner he also ate dinner with, showered with, and slept in bed with.

For in the end much of sexual expression is the expression of the need for bonding and intimacy with another human being. The goal of most massage therapy is not simply bodily expression but body-awareness that is relaxing, pleasurable most of the time, and balanced in its expression, sex, sports, sensual expression, caring, anger expression, whatever.

For other articles and talks by Strephon Kaplan-Williams, retired psychologist and writer, please visit at his sites: http://www.strephonsays.com/

http://www.dreamwork2000.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Strephon_Kaplan-Williams

Should you spend all your time possible on ‘writing a damn good novel?’ Or should you also spend time to see if you can develop a following in one of the Internet venues, such as MySpace, youtube, podcasting or writing an almost daily blog?

Should you start getting a following now on the Internet of those who like what you say? Or wait possibly years while you write and rewrite an eventually successful novel, should that ever truly happen?

We see from the following excerpts from comments on a writer’s forum the issues highlighted in the commentator’s own words.

-FROM A WRITER’S FORUM-

A Wanna-Be-Published Writer: I have a page on myspace which we know is huge and can be a very valuable networking resource. I am trying to build a fan base even before I become published, that way if publishers see I already have a following they may be more likely to offer a contract. I post excerpts and works in progress as blogs. Does anyone have any tips or tricks on how to generate more traffic to my page especially to my blogs? And also how I might attract a few celebs to my page. Thanks in advance. — A REPLY: MySpace is not a good place to build a fan following of the kind publishers really care about.

Then again, neither is anyplace else. Publishers aren’t really interested in fan following, they’re interested in books that are well-written, that have good, memorable characters, and great dialogue.

If you can do this, you don’t need to build a fan following first. If you can’t do this, all the fans in the world aren’t going to help.

-THIS ARTICLE WRITER’S OPINION-

I just started with myspace and don’t know what will happen. But I have eight months with Libsyn.com doing around fifty podcasts and getting after eight months 40,000 listeners. The rate of increase is 1000 a week and rising. At this rate I will have anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 listeners by the end of next year.

I continue my comments, trying to stay with my actual experience.

The question still is: should a writer who wants to be professionally published spend time developing a fan presence for his expression and views on the Internet?

The point of view of a long-time commentator, who also works as a editor: he considers developing a strong presence on the Internet a waste of time for a serious novel writer.

Is it? And how can we evaluate the issue and decide for ourselves as writers? I continue my remarks:

-WHY I NEED AN INTERNET AUDIENCE EVEN IF I PUBLISH BOOKS-

While I realize that my novel or memoir has to be well-written, the fact that 100,000 to 200,000 actual people will have listened to me one year from now does count for something.

I have read statistics that one out of ten published fiction books sells and makes money? Is this because publisher-editors can’t tell what good, readable fiction is? I just don’t know. Or are the figures off?

COMMENT: Here in the above I suggest that publishers and their editors are not so hot. This means that they cannot show a high success rate for publishing printed books that sell well. Surely publishers should have an eighty percent success rate? My success rate in university was more at the ninety percent level. To continue my forum response to our opening issue:

I only know that from the Google advanced search that 18,200 know my name and work, and from the podcasts 40,000 right now.

A publisher or editor who does not put some value on an author being known to the public I would hesitate to publish with.

-ONLY WANT AN INTERNET SAVVY EDITOR AND PUBLISHER-

COMMENT: The truth is that I would not go with an editor or publisher who did not highly regard a strong Internet presence. The Internet is looking really good these days for establishing outreach. But I go on:

My total count of books sold is around 350,000 over the years. This is significant since it says that what I write sells. With Simon and Schuster, when the Dream Cards were in print it was over 70,000 in sales in the United States and over 40,000 in sales in seven other languages.

So I can write serious books in non-fiction. Now I switch to fiction and see what I can do.

COMMENT: As a writer this is my current big issue, at which I spend a lot of time. Can I switch from non-fiction to fiction and be successful? I am already age 72 and how many years left do I have to learn novel-craft at a high and successful level? Back again to my original forum entry:

What I have gained so far in an internet presence is market testing, not in sales but in interest. 40,000 listeners in only eight months? That shows some talent to communicate, and relevance to modern people hungry for information and stimulation.

Any writer who narrows down to just one form of communication is more likely to fail than succeed. A writer is a communicator, not a machine. If you get any kind of large audience you can capitalize on that if you find the right forms for you.

I don’t know if I can write good novels or memoirs yet, since it has taken me over six years study and writing my half million pages so far. I have put the results of this study into my The Writer’s Interface, which is just starting to sell to other writers. Who knows how it will all work out?

Maybe don’t get stuck on the old forms of being a writer, like writing a novel that is supposed to go big. Be a communicator instead and build on that.

-BUILD AN AUDIENCE ANY WAY YOU CAN AND START NOW-

COMMENT: This may be a major point. Only time will tell. For you, for me, not whether we will build a presence on the Internet or not, but more, how shall we do it?

-IS THE INTERNET BECOMING THE MAJOR PUBLISHING SOURCE FOR ALL WRITERS?

Many blogs and experts are saying that the Internet is now becoming the major source of information that people turn to. Couple this trend with the recent trend that people are now willing and wanting to do their shopping on the Internet, then you do have the Internet being the Information Storehouse of the world. How will we as writers take advantage of this new trend, and maybe make more money on the Internet than we ever made as a whole with paper book publishers?

Writers in today’s world should realize that publishers today and in earlier years never paid writers a fair share of the money publishers earned with a book. Getting only ten percent of cover price for a book never enabled most writers to earn a living publishing their writing.

Today on the Internet it may be possible for many writers to publish and self-publish their work quickly on the Internet and earn more money than they ever did or would do with a paper book publisher. Why? Because as an Internet publisher you get more of the price of your writing and there are less expenses to publish information on the Internet electronically.

Back to my original forum comments:

A chapter of my Jesus novel is up as a blog and a podcast and has over 3000 listeners so far. I like to think that with the complete book there will be a lot more buyers and listeners.

COMMENT: Remember the rather righteous comment from the editor quoted above that you should sit down and write your novel and that getting fans on the Internet is useless? Well, it isn’t, as the following will show:

-USE THE INTERNET TO TEST THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR WRITING-

So I use the Internet presence to test the waters. This gives the writer instant feedback. I hope some of you can recognize how lonely it is to write a serious book, a novel or otherwise, and now the Internet allows a writer to communicate with an audience a lot more quickly. I have a following again. No one has commented negatively on what little I have shown of the Jesus Novel. That’s good. The numbers of over 3000 listeners says ‘good’ also.

A writer-communicator needs to have an audience.

Any way you can get one is feedback on your ability to communicate. So I say to anyone who wants a presence on the Internet, use whatever possibilities there are for your style of communicating and telling a story.

-IT’S ALL FEEDBACK-

No one can tell you a presence on the Internet won’t help you. That would be arrogance. Why? Because the Internet is fast evolving and so everything is so new in this new style of communicating, and who is to say about its future?

I found that one of my audio podcasts, Loving Laurie, has the second highest listener response rate: 2600 listeners. That’s significant because of the title and content.

Thus I make sure I also write the Loving Laurie memoir. I am now forming the outline for doing a complete audio book to sell online with some free chapters to listen to.

If I can succeed at telling this story effectively enough that readers buy the audio, then I will put it into text form as well, and present some agent or publisher with the statistics. If they see potential in good statistics then that is probably a publisher I want to be with.

In the meanwhile I have tested the market quickly for my writing by going Internet. That gives me feedback as a writer-communicator. Hope this helps.

See Rachel Vater’s blog on agent evaluating writers. She is Miss Snark at raleva31.livejournal.com. She’s a wonderful example of building an internet following through publishing in her expert field. And she gives you what it’s like out there in the current publishing world. She will write paper books someday maybe as well. Right now she edits and agents them.

-BE A COMMUNICATOR AND NOT JUST A BOOK WRITER-

My conclusion is more that the new, modern writer going into the future has to have communication success both on the Internet in one of its forms, and in the old paper world of the past, which is paper book publishing.

You want to be a professional communicator? Build your audiences wherever and whenever you can find them.

ACTION TO TAKE: Stay positive. Listen positively to negative people and views if they seem expert enough. What they say might dampen your enthusiasm, but it might also ground you in reality.

Yet to be positive is to believe something new and of greater value can happen for you if you pursue it. Look at how you can accomplish much more than look at what can make you fail.

Also, test your plans where it is easy and grounded to do so.

Internet publishing is largely free information these days as what is most popular. Yet, people won’t take free information if it is lousy information, poorly presented. Get some kind of numbers feedback to confirm where you are with your communicating and writing.

-READERS ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN AGENTS, EDITORS, EXPERTS AND PUBLISHERS-

A so-called expert or professional advice is only one person’s view of things. Don’t put your trust in editors, agents, experts and publishers. Don’t pay for professional readers and editors.

Create an audience of readers of your work. Only the reader, or listener, is the reality test of your work. Editors don’t buy your books. They expect you to give them to them. Readers who must pay are paying hard-earned money usually to own your work. The best vote is the dollar!

Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a writer-psychologist who devotes his time to doing podcasts on the internet on a variety of life subjects, as well as how to write books. His sites are Strephon Says: http://stefania.libsyn.com, and, The Writer’s Interface: http://thewritersinterface.wordpress.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Strephon_Kaplan-Williams

One time when I was home from boarding school to New York City where my parents lived at age eight I got terribly excited when looking up at our tall Christmas tree that reached the ceiling that my father had to cut the top off, much to my child’s regret.

What a great tree that was, all green and its spruce aroma filled the air of our apartment. Outside was snow spiraling the air with white fluffs smacking us in our crispy cool faces. If my father did not watch me I would be eating the fresh snow off the curb or making snowballs for you know what.

I would get so excited and happy at the advent of Christmas because here love was. My mother told me that people were always nicer to each other at Christmas. Yes, I did not know why yet, but there was magic in the air!

However, when we got the big tree up the stairs, my father and I, and into the apartment, cut off top and all, I looked up at it and fell into a faint and hit my forehead above my left eye against the radiator as I fell.

The plain truth which I realized later is that the promise of Christmas is the promise of love, of caring, of new life itself.

Have you ever felt disappointed at the Christmas presents you got? I certainly have. It seems like those who love us never can really get us the present we really long for. Is that not because we long for love in our life?

Why is it that families tend to go home to the parents at Christmas, or one of the sibilings’ houses?

It’s called the family archetype. We return to the nest where our existence started. In nature at the darkest time of the year, the Winter Solstice, the new light is born. After the longest night and shortest day the days start getting longer and we know that after winter spring and summer will come. Inside us it’s the birth of hope again, of another year of life, yet with new wonderful things possible.

It’s the death-rebirth cycle. Not only nature goes into hibernation, and living things are still but not dead. It’s also hibernation in the inner womb. It’s the season of the inner light, and so the outer light of many candles lit in the afternoon and evening brings joy to our hearts.

Where I lived for awhile in Sweden and Norway both, they have the custom of lighting big candles that cannot be blown out by the wind and placing them outside shops and restaurants on the sidewalks. This represents the winter light when all is darkness.

Darkness represents depression, the withdrawal of light, of life force, of energy and enthusiasm for new projects. In England it seems like the whole month of December nobody works that hard in their companies. What are they doing? The good restaurants are full all afternoon and evening because companies take all their employees to company Christmas feasts. They stay for hours, believe me. And they are mostly in no condition to work after such a feast.

Ancient societies always had winter light festivals, whether snow visited them or not because of the climate.

Christmas, the birth of the Savior, was put by the Church fathers at near the time of the traditional winter solstice. Whether they knew it or not, they were intuiting the need for humans to go through their own inner death-rebirth cycles.

And we go through ours as well, whether we know it or not that consciously.

Here are a few suggestions that will guide you through the winter holidays. Don’t worry about whether you are religious or not. Seek the spiritual significance of Christmas-Winter Solstice in your own inner being.

If you get caught up in a Christmas gift buying frenzy just remember that each of these material gifts symbolizes the One Great Gift really, which is the gift of life itself. Life comes through love.

If you don’t have that much love in your life at the moment, don’t get totally depressed by it, or if you are depressed, don’t hide from it with alcohol or anything else you want to take to relieve your depression.

Don’t let materialism take you over. In other words, don’t give yourself totally away to others in gifts or time spent with so many people. Choose. Pick your close friends and family. Pick what you want to do during the holidays as well as go with some of what you feel obligated to do.

Relax into the festivities. Take time to be with fellow workers and friends. Remember that the spirit of this time is bringing light out of darkness. Take some time to write an old friend with something serious about yourself and how life is going for both of you.

After being with a lot of people celebrating, also suggest to some of those closest to you that you all go somewhere in nature for a walk.

Remember that your life is one year older, as is everyone’s. You let go of the old year to make space for the new by acknowledging the old life, or the highlights of the year, and then you let them go.

In giving feast toasts you might ask each person to toast one highlight of your being or working together throughout the past year. Thus you are acknowledging the light, symbolically the high value times of the year.

If you just go along with things, or act happy when you don’t feel so happy, or get totally stressed out with shopping and planning dinners and parties, then you will lose a lot of energy and feel depressed by the time Christmas arrives or right after.

Don’t forget that New Years is soon to follow!

Seems like most of us want to be with other people during the transition into the new year. What is the tradition of kissing at twelve o’clock midnight but the symbolic hope of true love in the new year?

If you’re not with somebody special, don’t get depressed about it. If year after year you are not with someone, then make sure you go to a New Years special workshop or something.

Give up something old in transition into the new year. Yet also focus on something new for the new year.

Once I asked a group of twenty people who wanted me to lead their New Years celebration at the sea in Big Sur, California, on an estate, ‘what is the worst New Years you ever had?’ People told amazing stories. One theme dominated them all. It seems that when New Years approaches expectations are aroused. You are supposed to be supremely happy and optimistic. But what if you just don’t feel that way?

Understandable, say we psychologists. Expectations are never as good as reality.

The best attitude to approach the Christmas and New Years time is to open to all the feelings without expectation of what should happen.

Strangely, Christmas fights are common in families that get together every Christmas. You don’t have to fight but families do. Like my mother said, people are kinder to each other at Christmas. Was that a wish or a reality? She and her sister sometimes had horrible fights.

The problem is that most of us don’t get or give enough love and appreciation during the year, so then at the time of love and new birth we feel secretly depressed over not having enough love in our lives. We fight each other and become sick and depressed, rather than choose to love as best we can everywhere we can.

Watch out then because Christmas symbolizes the birth of new life out of love, and New Years symbolizes the sacrifice of the old life for the new. Sacrifice your negativity and hurt and choose again to love.

Love is choosing to love fully despite disappointments and past hurts. You must love yourself first before you can love others. You must love others first before they can love you.

The only true gift at Christmas is love.

Love is accepting the unacceptable because you want new life for yourself and others.

Love is the sacrifice of old hurts and traumas so that you can love and share again.

Love is caring about what is important in life. Love is caring about who is important in your life.

Love is feeding the rat behind the door as well as the beautiful kitten in front of the door.

Love is not perfect but the choice to love is fulness itself.

Love does not end hate but it does offer a chance for change.

Love is exchanging old life for new. Lovers may be old but their love can always be new.

Yet don’t expect perfection in love, or love’s ideal. A rose may be almost perfect but you don’t have to be.

You wont find your ideal gift or person probably out there. You have to allow times of quiet this holiday season to feel your inner person and to do things that are meaningful to you. Love yourself first and you will love others. Try to get love from others and you will be hurting yourself and them.

Don’t try to buy love with Christmas presents. Relax. Slow down. The right gift at the right moment will come to you if you let it. Go for simple. If you have to work too hard at it why do it?

Don’t just send Christmas Cards, if you still do. Send a few heartfelt sharing letters to a few people who have really counted for you in your life.

Don’t just have parties or go to parties, or to family gatherings. Make sure you put in special times, like lunches together, for special friends whom you don’t see that often because of the work-a-day world the rest of the year.

What people need is your love, not your gifts. You need to allow the time and inner receptivity to love and to allow love to come your way.

It’s also a time for reminiscence. With that special friend or family member, make time for the two of you to sit down together, or go for an hour’s walk in nature, just to tune in.

How has it gone with you this year? you ask. And you share some yourself about what you feel most good about, and also what has been difficult for you.

Remember, the real gift is love. We were born through an act of love and closeness and thus we become alive. We have the gift of life for as long as we have it. Don’t worry about death. The real problem is to fully live when you are alive.

Don’t rush around at Christmas and New Years any more than you have to. Slow down the pace. Don’t drink or eat heavily to avoid a secret pain, or because you think you have to be happy all the time during the holidays. You don’t.

If you are your real self you will feel the sadness of what didn’t happen for you this past year, and the joy from what positive things have become the shining lights on your Christmas tree of life and love.

The true star is love.

Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a psychologist-philosopher. You may find him at his site: StrephonSays.com, or The Writer’s Interface blog. There he gives podcasts and vodcasts at one or two a week on the important issues of life. We invite you to drop by, and bring your friends also.

- Strephon Says and The Writer’s Interface
For dreams visit
dreamwork2000.com

When love is false, or not compatible, you cannot kiss the other person over and over again and feel what you should be feeling when kissing a true love.

Some of us already know this from our earliest kissing experiences. Yet, then again, in the business of life we may have forgotten this simple truth of nature, of the instincts, and of the soul.

Instincts are our genitals in interaction. Sexual desire and expression are our bodies and instincts at work to generate desire for the other person, and as in the old days, pregnancy and children.

Love compatibility between the sexes is not built by sexual desire, love-making techniques and free sexual expression.

Many of us have had the experience of having an intense sexual relationship with a person we are not compatible with in values, life-style and soul to soul understanding and liking of each other. We have mistakenly tried to feel connected to the other person through enhanced or at the edge sexual practices, or through technique and mind-altering experiences. We have even used the sexual function to create babies in the hope of keeping ourselves together with the wrong partner for us.

This is a waste of love potential. Therefore, if you don’t really like kissing your love partner, even thoughout the day when you have time to be together, then what are you two doing together? You should not be together because the soul-to-soul connection is not there. You cannot build a soul-to-soul connection. It is either there or not there, and you know it through the kiss.

◦ This kiss indicates the freedom with which you can express yourself to the other person.

◦ The kiss represents the truth of how you sense the person being present with you.

◦ The kiss shows you if you are being insincere in kissing the other person, while thinking of something or someone else.

◦ Through the sensitivity of your mutual lips in contact with each other you know if you are being fully present, and if the other person is being fully present with you.

◦ Through your experience of staying in love with the other person you know this is true if you are kissing each other often and regularly through the years.

◦ Parents have to be careful with children around that they do not stop kissing each other regularly, and at times of feeling throughout the day. They can also include affectionate kissing with the children on a regular basis when you are sure the children like this kind of intensity and attention from you.

What do you do if your kisses with a certain person have lost their passion?

What if fairly recently you have let yourself be kissed by another person besides your regular relationship partner? What if you really enjoyed it?

Ask yourself then if it is time to move on?

Even with small children it is better that you both as parents be with the right person for each of you than be with each other when there is not the right chemistry between you, as indicated by the frequency and energy transfer of your regular kissing together.

No, you are not “eating up” each other’s faces, though you can play with that sometimes also. You are uniting to deep and transparent levels when you kiss a true partner for you.

You have to be real to kiss soul to soul. The soul cannot be faked since it is the most true part of us. The soul is that incorruptible core of our being where we reside and know it as our true selves. When we are one with ourselves we experience soul, the core being that is us and in life itself.

When we are faking it, living a superficial or artificial personality, for whatever reasons, then we can sense it, others can sense it. We are not being our real selves.

You would think that in the most intimate of relationships where we get naked and have sex together, sleep in the same bed night after night, that we would not want to fake it.

However, the opposite is often true. We find ourselves with an incompatible person, and instead of accepting the fact and ending the relationship, we keep it going, doing the behaviors of intimacy, like mating and kissing together, but without our heart and souls behind them.

What’s in a kiss?

Everything. Trust the kiss. Know from it your ability to unite and share completely with this other person. If you are not open to this, or they are not fully open to you in this, then don’t try the kiss, don’t keep going with the kiss.

Don’t try rationalism. Don’t say to yourself, because this person seems to love me so much I will then give in and relate to them. It doesn’t work in the long run. Better to be alone and available for the right kiss than to be on familiar terms with the person who is just not right for you.

When they have not met you in the kiss, they have not met you.

When they have left you in the kiss they have left you forever.

When they have not given themselves fully to your kiss they cannot give themselves fully with you, yet with another maybe they can.

It’s all in the kiss.

When you cannot find a person with your kiss and theirs together, you cannot find that person. Don’t try. If it’s not there, it’s not there. Let it go. Let that person go. You don’t have to mate. You don’t have to live together. You certainly don’t have to have children together.

You will know this all with the kiss. But it might take some time of course. In the meanwhile, remember, it is the kiss that counts!

Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a writer-psychologist who has worked with couples professionally for many years as a relationships counselor besides his other interests, such as in dreamworking the dream for life direction and purpose. See his two sites at: Strephon Says, and, The Writer’s Interface.

I once worked at an innovative treatment center as the chief psychotherapist. There in one of the memos to all our seventy staff I put out a direct order to stop complaining. It led to positive results, because of course I could not act like some army general, but I could highlight the issue in a dramatic way.

With all my students and clients in therapy I have suggested ending complaining, but of course not in a direct memo to my clients.

You might ask, since when is complaining a bad thing? Why can’t I complain once in awhile? It doesn’t hurt anybody.

Have you ever been at the dinner table with a constant complainer?

Maybe you have been the one at the dinner or breakfast table and began to complain at how the food was cooked?

No complaining means no complaining! You can say instead, “Hey this food is great! It’s really special. Maybe the eggs are a little, well, overdone, but, hey, who’s complaining? We’re lucky to be alive, aren’t we?”

What then is wrong with complainers, including ourselves? Why would you want to stop complaining in life?

It goes like this: the definition of complaining is talking negatively about some experience that has happened to you, but without doing anything about it.

Yes, complainers are maybe good at making problems, or seeing problems, but do they do anything about their complaints?

No! The one thing you will never see is a complainer who solves the problem instead of just bitching about it.

If you want to stop complaining then you can choose to adopt the attitude that there is a creative solution to every problem?

Wouldn’t that be creative? Imagine how your life would be then? Maybe you would suffer a lot less in life? Maybe you would be more successful at what you do? Maybe you would not let things get you down, like the difficulties of life?

So here are the tasks if you choose to adopt them: one, is to simply stop complaining. Whenever you find yourself not liking something, keep your negative reaction to a minimum and ask yourself, how can we improve the situation right now?

”These eggs maybe lack a little something. Let’s try some tomato sauce with them. I think I will put my fried egg on a piece of toast and add some grated raw onion to it. I bet that tastes good!“

See how relatively easy it is to go into the problem-solving mode? It’s not denying that something may not be that good in the moment, but don’t go negative. Simply figure out how to immediately improve the situation.

Remember our second task: practice the wisdom principle that there is a creative solution to every problem.

This way you won’t get weighed down by your own or other people’s negativity.

A more positive attitude leads to seeing more positive possibilities in life.

How do you like this little article?

Hey, it may not be the best I can do but it’s the best I can do in this moment with the time I have. Hope you get something useful from it!

Strephon Kaplan-Williams is a writer-psychologist who devotes his time to doing podcasts on the internet on a variety of life subjects, as well as to how to write books. His sites are - Strephon Says, and, The Writer’s Interface.

Listener-Viewers Give Strephon A Resounding Round Of Applause in confirming his podcasts and broadcasts, just started last April, 2006.

When asked how he explains this growing popularity, Strephon Kaplan-Williams winked one eye slightly and said, “What we have here with the podcasts is the world’s people voting for something serious, don’t we? People are searching! They don’t want to be just entertained. They want food for thought. Honestly, with the advent of computers and the Internet I think world IQ is significantly rising.”

“But why you?” Strephon was asked. “There are plenty of professors around and other writers who can speak wisely.”

“You define the difference!” Strephon said. “Have you ever met a professor who was not boring? They’re conformists. Instead of academia I chose to be out in the real world working with people, and suffering a few hard knocks myself.”

“What do you mean by ‘a few hard knocks?’”

“A professor in an ivory tower? What does he or she know about the world? A guaranteed salary, a light work load, do some research, write some papers? No one paid me to write my many books or organize my many workshops. I had to get out there and work late nights and organize, organize, organize. I know the real world and have helped many others get their feet into reality. Why shouldn’t I have something to say?”

“Exactly what is your message then? Every writer has a message?”

“Mine is reality. Come into reality. Check out your fantasies. Especially check out all those little ego desires that just don’t happen in your daily life. Get with the program and the program is life. I teach a lot of ways to fulfill yourself in the real world, in the real you. That’s why people listen to me.”

“Do you think that many of your listeners take your messages seriously?”

“Look at the numbers. We are increasing listeners and viewers at three to four thousand a month. People don’t listen to serious stuff if what I say is not both practical and inspiring.”

“What about the American political elections? Who do you think is going to win and why?”

“American elections are all about people. Are Americans waking up? Not all of them, but at least an edge of aware people are there who can swing elections. Americans wake up at these elections. There is so much to put people to sleep in America. At election time people get out of their complacency and go vote. They see the bad done by their own country. They see a President who is stupid and misguided in his ways. They see a political system that gets rotten through and through, and they try and do something about it.”

“But you don’t talk about politics yourself?”

“I do, but you don’t notice it. I say vote with your heart. Vote with awareness. Vote with values. I say get out of the herd that just lives by collective values. I say become real. Don’t act superficially. Don’t be so selfish. Get out there in life and vote every day of your life. Every day of your life choose a value to live by, choose to live by more than your fears, your desires, your unconscious expectations. Get with the program, and the program is consciousness.”

“So what are you then? A teacher? Writer? What?”

“Right now on election day in America? I’m a spiritual politician. I say wake up. Vote with your life. Make a difference in the world! Work hard at what is meaningful in life. Do something that challenges your capacity to the full. Have a great time in life but not by indulging endlessly in all the pleasures. Use even your pleasures for value and consciousness. Make yourself aware. Help others be aware.”

“What is your final word.”

“Final word? Everyday is election day. Every day makes a difference in how I live my life. The drama is not all out there as a country chooses its statesmen and stateswomen, and its politicians. Everyday you can be free of your inhibitions and your fears. Choose, vote with your heart. Choose and live for values. The problem is to take the election fever into your own heart and live life passionately to the full.”

“You have my vote!”

“Thank you! We are all running for election of the heart!”