Monthly Archives: October 2020

Smart Writers Avoid These Story Missteps

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Writers can learn a lot from real life and the arts. In fact, inspiration for these writing tips came to me while watching a television drama. As interesting as the plot for the television drama was, the characters made too many mindless choices to keep me hooked.

After a while, I felt too frustrated watching the characters make choices that would put anyone’s life in jeopardy. Kindergarteners would know better than to do what these characters did. It was more evidence that great storytelling takes work, more than an intriguing plot.

To Tell Great Stories Writers Avoid These Mistakes

Because the acting was good, I actually tried to figure out why the characters in the TV drama were unbelievable. A possible reason could be that the producers and directors were so focused on the story that they often tossed practicality and common sense to the wind. And it’s easy to do, which brings us back to story development.

To sharpen your writing craft, consider practical real-life patterns and traditions as you write. In other words, don’t have a novel character raise six kids as a single parent, operate her own multi-million-dollar business and run two marathons a year, all without ever feeling tired. Even if you’re writing fiction, write believable characters. The more real characters you write feel and seem, the better.

Also, avoid these story missteps:

  • Misalign character motives to what you reveal about the character’s childhood, development and experiences. In other words, don’t make a pastor have a marital affair just because the pastor moved to a new town or just because a woman tried to seduce him. Give the character strong, believable motives.
  • Craft story scenes were women close the front door, not once lock the door, and go upstairs or into the basement without so much as a second thought. This happens in way too many movies, including thrillers.
  • Set women characters in suspense settings but avoid having these same women characters look through a peep hole or glance out of the edge of their blinds to see who’s on the porch or front stoop before they open the door.

More Storytelling Tips for Writers

  • Build deep, abiding trust between two strangers that have known each other less than a day, the type of trust that, in real life, takes months, sometimes years, to develop.
  • Embed a motive to save someone in a character to the point that the character turns blind, even ignoring her own instincts, common sense and basic human impulses to save the person.
  • Develop a character so that he exhibits only one personality trait, ambition or motive.
  • Limit a character to a single emotion, only allowing a character to express rage, fear, kindness, weakness, intelligence or courage.
  • Introduce fashion, housing, food, slang and cultural trends into a television drama, fanfiction, a short story or other storytelling that did not exist at the time the story takes place.

Power of Realistic Fiction

Great storytelling takes work. Even if you’re a writer who can knock out an engaging story absent an outline or character sketches, it takes time, focus and skill to write a story that resonates with hundreds or thousands of book buyers. For starters, you’ve got to appeal to each book buyer’s interests, ambitions, passions and fears.

Even if you write science fiction books, you have to create such believable characters that readers perceive the characters to be real. Readers have to believe that the story could happen, even if the story takes place on another planet.

And yet, the story has to have practical elements. Readers need to believe that your characters’ motives, weaknesses, strengths and personality traits are relatable. Whether you’re writing a novel, a stage play, major motion picture script or television drama, make sure that your characters use common sense. After all, if you’re a skilled writer, people could think that the choices your characters make really are the best options.

Protect Yourself from Burnout

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calm african american woman resting on pillow to deal with burnout
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By Books Writer Denise Turney

Burnout is on the rise. Even if you’ve heard about it on the news, you might not know you’re nearing exhaustion. Surprisingly, as bad as it feels, burnout can sneak up on you. To begin, there’s the seasonal change adjustments that you may be experiencing, depending on the part of the world you live in. These seasonal changes can zap your energy. With the autumn seasonal change comes less sunlight, cooler temperatures and more time spent indoors.

Reaching Burnout Point

Exposure to less sunlight can cause drops in serotonin, a natural mood booster. Low serotonin could bring on depression, Healthline shares. Also, getting outdoors is a good way to soak up natural vitamin D from the sun. In addition to being good for bones, vitamin D may also help with mental focus and mood. Days with less sunlight might make it easier to reach a burnout point.

Furthermore, if you’re challenged with seasonal affective disorder, you already know how tough it can be to shift gears. You might not know what’s happening to you yet, although you’ve felt sluggish and less energetic at the start of autumn for years. Despite your efforts to push through the sluggishness and lower energy levels, this nagging fatigue remains.

This could happen whether you’re a resilient practitioner, a frontline worker whose empathy and compassion are sought by those battling illness, including COVID-19. It could also happen if you’re a new mom or an experienced mother dealing with motherhood burnout. Fortunately, there is help. It is possible to become someone who has survived burnout.

Surviving Burnout

A first step toward surviving burnout and overcoming the challenge is to recognize signs of burnout. This includes work stress symptoms. To start surviving burnout, check out these symptoms. Although the list is not all inclusive, it could signal to you that it’s time to take action. After you review the burnout symptoms, keep reading to learn about treatment.

  • Lack of or diminished motivation (especially if there’s seemingly no cause for the lower motivation)
  • Regular fatigue (the fatigue may not be constant – but regular enough to get your attention)
  • Exhaustion
  • Experiencing irritability, impatience and cynicism
  • Frequently strained relationships
  • Seeking food or drinks to fill perceived inner voids
  • Turning to food or beverages to lift mood
  • Poor sleeping patterns
  • Difficulty staying mentally focused
  • Forgetfulness
  • Increased body aches (which may be caused by higher levels of cortisol)
  • Sudden, unexplained weight gain or weight loss

Additionally, work stress burnout could find you constantly checking emails. As much as you may want to unplug, you could shift into workaholic mode. This could keep the cycle going.

More Signs You Need to Take Action to Protect Yourself from Burnout

According to the Mayo Clinic, other signs you may be reaching burnout point, especially at work, include:

  • Being overly critical of yourself or others at work
  • Feeling disillusioned about the work you do
  • Headaches
  • Stomachaches
  • Feeling that you have a lack of input or control over your work life

Of course, in addition to these systems, you might experience general burnout systems. Regardless of why you are experiencing burnout, it’s important to acknowledge that something has changed.

As a tip, try to do this without blaming yourself or someone else. Tempting as it may seem, blame doesn’t solve problems. In fact, it could leave you feeling disempowered. Therefore, if you’ve reached your burnout point, acknowledge that you have.

Help For Burnout

And seek help. You could work with a burnout recovery coach. Other actions that may help with surviving and overcoming burnout include:

  • Meditating
  • Walking in nature (in safe environments)
  • Talking face-to-face with a friend
  • Setting a time to unplug from work, social media, etc.
  • Turning off the news
  • Getting adequate sleep
  • Listening to relaxing music that you love
  • Reading books that help you to unplug and relax
  • Writing in a journal
  • Flexing your creative muscles while adding color to the pages of an adult coloring book

Take the supportive action that feels right for you.

Furthermore, you may sleep better if you go to bed at a set time. You may also find it beneficial to wear a fitness watch to bed. This way, you could track how much deep sleep you’re getting at night.

Ways to Protect Yourself from Burnout

And, if you’re having trouble getting or staying asleep, you could stop drinking water an hour or more before you head to bed. You could also try sitting down and relaxing for an hour before you go to bed. Should there be something on your mind, try jotting down a note on what you’re going to do to deal with the issue in the morning. Then, release the issue and relax.

Here are more ways that you could start surviving burnout. To get good results, you may have to incorporate two or more activities into your day. For example, if you deal with seasonal affective disorder, you might use a full spectrum lamp, walk outside for an hour a day and meditate for 5 to 10 minutes before you go to bed.

Practicing awareness could help you to spot your personal burnout, the secret to unlocking the stress cycle. For instance, you may find that you start nearing your burnout point at the beginning of certain seasonal changes. Or you might notice that, for you, the stress cycle that can lead to burnout starts after you take on a major project or commit to leading a big family event.

Moving Beyond Burnout

Caring for a loved one for 30 or more days without a full day’s break, could be another way the stress cycle kicks off for you. Try to catch yourself early. Spot stressors and signs that you’re headed in the wrong direction early. In other words, get to know yourself.

Consider taking vitamin D if you live in an area with low sunlight. Check with your physician to see if that may be a viable solution. Also, pay attention to when you feel more stressed. For instance, do you feel more stressed in the morning or in the evening? Are you feeling more burned out during certain work cycles on your job?

In the remote work from home environment, you may find it helpful to step away from some Zoom meetings. That way, you won’t feel forced to sit in front of a computer screen for hours. For example, you could ask your supervisor if it’s okay if you dial into a meeting instead of using video to connect to the conference call.

And seek help if needed. If you work for an employer, check with human resources to see if there’s free counseling offered by the firm. Other options include joining a support group. Also, be patient with yourself. It may have taken months to become burned out. Give yourself love, care and the time to bounce back and move beyond burnout.

Trust the Process to Live Your Best Life

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By African American Author Denise Turney

lighthouse offering light by water as part of trust the process
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Examine your beliefs to live your best life. Beliefs benefit or hinder. In this world, what beliefs don’t do is go away. In fact, wise thoughts may be the greatest investments you can make. Plainly stated, beliefs are thoughts that have been repeated so often you perceive the thoughts to be true, as if they are fact, as if they cannot be examined or changed.

Notice Beliefs that Hinder Your Ability to Live Your Best Life

Of course, it’s your own beliefs that impact you most. As simple as this sounds, it’s not always easy to accept. It’s so much easier to blame feeling stuck, confused or frustrated on another person’s choices, another person’s beliefs.

Based on personal experience, one way out of this trap is to start paying attention to what’s happening around you. This isn’t a tactic to recall every unwanted experience that you have. Instead, it’s an exercise to see how your thoughts, especially your beliefs, link up to your experiences.

And it may take months before you start to see the links. You may not want to hear this. But it could be even longer before you accept the experiences that your thoughts, your beliefs, are making. Please be patient with yourself. It can take a while to get off track, and sometimes just as long to get back on track.

Patience, Acceptance and Awareness Pay Off

So, be patient with yourself. The process is worth it.

Before you start paying attention to what’s happening and how it links to your beliefs, it’s important to know that you don’t have to believe your thoughts create your reality for your thoughts to work, creating desired and undesired experiences for you. In fact, you may have invested in beliefs that you are incomplete, incompetent or, in some other way lacking, without realizing it.

Those beliefs are working beneath the surface. They are creating experiences for you. That’s why it’s important to pay attention so, you can spot thoughts that need changing.

Searching for someone else to blame won’t change your thoughts. Your parents, grandparents, teachers and neighbors may have called you names and told you what you were and were not capable of. But if someone called you a dog that doesn’t mean that you’d bark.

Live Your Best Life Root Experiences

Why? You know you’re not a dog. And you’ve never believed or thought you were a dog. So, you don’t behave like a dog.

Which again shows that your thoughts and beliefs are churning out experiences for you. Those erroneous beliefs can make blocks of doubt, fear and resistance in your thought system. Before you know it, you’ve convinced yourself that you cannot do or have certain experiences. You’ve created inner resistance.

But, once you commit to change, you’ll start spotting the thought/experience links. And you’ll start accepting thoughts you need to stop and replace. After a while, you may see that the world is like an enormous classroom. Trust the process.

Trust The Process

As it regards trusting the process, Mulukan may know this as well as anyone and perhaps better than most. After all, Mulukan was born into a level of poverty that most will never deal with. By the world’s standards, Mulukan really should give up. But she keeps going.

And so should you. Stay open. Pay attention. Try different approaches. Follow inner promptings. Trust the process. And, trust that you really can and will examine erroneous beliefs until you see that they are illusions, until you decide to let them go into the nothingness that they came from. Illusions gone, all that remains is reality, all that remains is truth. And yours is an amazing truth – you’ll see.

You can read about Mulukan’s story in the book Long Walk Up.

Classic Fictional Breast Cancer Memoir Offers Hope

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By African American Author Denise Turney

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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time of reflection for so many women. For other women and men, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a time of sadness, regret and faith. As tough as dealing with breast cancer can be, there is hope. To start, the hope of being a breast cancer survivor is greater today than it was years ago.

Breast Cancer Awareness

Point of fact, five-year breast cancer survivor rates are at 99% if the cancer is localized. Relative survival rates are 90%, according to the American Cancer Society. From 1975 thru 1980, the survival rate hovered below 80%. Clearly, there have been improvements. Even more, as of 2020, regional breast cancer survival rates are at 85%, while the survival rate for women with distant breast cancer is at 27%. In the case of localized breast cancer, the disease is confined to the breasts.

If the cancer is regional, that means that it has spread from the breasts to nearby areas or the lymph nodes. Distant breast cancer occurs when the cancer spreads to other distant parts of the body like the liver or bones. Survival statistics for women with inflammatory or triple negative breast cancer may differ.

Statistics aside, it can be scary to think that you might have breast cancer. Add in cultural factors and it’s understandable why some women might prefer to skip going to the doctor just to avoid being told they have breast cancer. It may feel safer, more comfortable during the early years, to roll the dice (even if that’s really not what a woman wants to do).

Breast Cancer Awareness and Culture

As it regards cultural factors, Sisters Network shares that, as of 2019, African American women with breast cancer have a 42% higher chance of transitioning from the disease than their European sisters. Hispanic women have a lower chance of getting breast cancer than African American women or women of European descent. In fact, Hispanic women have about a 9.8% chance of developing breast cancer.

Yet, mortality rates for Hispanic women with breast cancer is high. Also, as of 2015, cancer (all forms included) was the leading cause of death of Hispanics living in America. Asian women’s breast cancer incidence rates are on par with Hispanic women living in the United States.

However, Native American or indigenous American women have lower rates. Risks of getting the disease and having to work to become a breast cancer survivor for Native American women is about 7%. More information on cultural and racial breast cancer awareness statistics can be found at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Support Breast Cancer Awareness Discussion Groups

Whether you’re facing a breast cancer scare or have overcome gut wrenching challenges and become a breast cancer survivor, this is the month to celebrate. Even if you’ve received the unfortunate diagnosis, you now know where you have to focus your efforts to heal. And, if you are grieving the transition of a relative or friend due to breast cancer, you may be seeking understanding and support.

Hospitals and treatment centers host and sponsor breast cancer support groups. One of the greatest benefits that support group attendees receive is emotional support while dealing with a diagnosis, treatment and recovery. As a breast cancer survivor attending a support group, you might even develop a lifelong friendship with another group attendee. Check with local hospitals, treatment centers and libraries if you’re seeking a support group. Breast cancer awareness organizations may offer virtual support discussions as well. Get yourself the support that you need.

In addition to the above places, worship centers and community centers host breast cancer awareness events. These centers also host breast cancer awareness support groups. You may also find it helpful to wear breast cancer awareness bracelets or a breast cancer pink ribbon during October or throughout treatment. Reading a breast cancer memoir, including an uplifting fictional breast cancer memoir that’s rooted in real life events could also provide support.

Uplifting Fictional Breast Cancer Memoir

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There are several breast cancer memoir books, nonfictional and fictional, that could offer support, inspiration and comfort during this trying time. Portia is one of those classic fictional breast cancer memoir books that has empowered and encouraged women and their families. Portia has inspired many readers.

A daughter gifted her mother with a copy of Portia. After reading the fictional breast cancer memoir, the woman’s mother decided to fight. She decided to live. That’s the impact that a book can have on a reader, especially if the story creates a deep emotional connection between a reader and a character.

And it’s this that happens with Portia. Named after the story’s main character, Portia tells the story of a successful Chicago defense attorney who, after months of domestic abuse, has accepted that she has enough value to walk free of an abusive relationship. The choice unbinds her, setting her free so she can meet the romantic love of her life while attending an annual newspaper Christmas party.

Getting Help You Need

As if a mean twist of fate, after she meets her true love, she discovers that she has breast cancer. To get through the diagnosis, treatments and possibility that her physical experience may get cut short, Portia leans on the love of her family, her soul mate and her faith. She also has a strong breast cancer awareness support system. For Portia, this all happens at a time when breast cancer survival odds aren’t good.

But Portia survives. And it is my hope and prayer that you or your loved one become a breast cancer survivor, someone who thrives, living her fullest life! Path there may involve more than medicine, rest and cancer treatments.

Love Yourself No Matter What

Here are actions you could take to reduce breast cancer risks or overcome the disease. If the actions appear like too much at first glance, consider adding two to three actions to your lifestyle each month. Do what feels right for you.

  • Get outdoors and exercise daily in a safe environment
  • Maintain a healthy weight
  • Introduce relaxation techniques (e.g. meditation, swimming, soaking in a scented bath) into your day
  • Addresses stressors, working to reduce and remove them
  • Eliminate alcohol from your diet
  • Perform self breasts exams
  • Get annual mammograms
  • Eat a healthy balanced diet of fresh fruit and vegetables

Even more, it’s important that you be patient with yourself. Be patient with yourself if you’re undergoing treatments. Also, accept that you may experience fear around the diagnosis, treatments and lifestyle changes for months, perhaps years. Yet, just like Portia’s story, yours can and deserves a marvelous finish.