Toastmasters Success Stories

For more than a month now, we've been trying to get our company's Toastmasters club re-established. We had a demo meeting last month which was attended by around 21 people, not counting the guests from other Toastmasters clubs. In that meeting we formed a steering committee that would work towards getting the club on its feet. After that meeting, the club has yet to take off.

I've been a Toastmaster for nine years. I've seen people improve their communication and leadership skills, taking them to heights that would otherwise have been unreachable or difficult to achieve. What would it take for people to put a priority on their self-development?

In my company's previous club, we had a member who had a terrible tendency to say the words, "whatcha call this." In his first speech, he uttered these words in almost every sentence.

It's something we call a "filler" in Toastmasters. When a speaker doesn't know, is unsure, or forgets what the next word is, he inserts a filler. The most common is "ah" though other people use other fillers.

I tend to refer to fillers as "crutches." Just as a real crutch helps lame people walk, a Toastmasters crutch helps the member get by with his speech delivery. Unfortunately, like a real crutch, the person still hobbles around, not improving. The sad thing about this is that they are usually unaware that they're using a crutch. They had gotten so used to it that it becomes a part of how they talk. They need someone to point it out to them.

That someone was our "Ah Counter." He's the person assigned to watch out for people who use fillers or crutches. This can be  ah's, uhm's, repeated words, anything that a speaker uses to prevent him from stopping and making an embarrassing pause in his delivery. Near the end of a Toastmasters meeting, the Ah Counter stands in front and tells people what fillers people used when they spoke and how many times they did it.

Of course, having someone point out your fillers can be embarrassing but if the Ah Counter is careful about how he or she says it and if the recipient is willing to accept it, it can work wonders. In our member's case, he took it to heart. In his next speech, there was not even one "whatcha call this." In fact, he didn't have any fillers at all. The applause at the end of his speech was enthusiastic.

He eventually finished his ten speeches and achieved his Competent Communicator norm. He retired from the company soon after that. About two years ago, I met him at a mall and he said that he had been getting invites to be a keynote speaker, to conduct seminars, and inspirational talks. He's been overseas several times, all expenses paid. He credits his Toastmasters training for it all. Yup, he did more than just eliminate his fillers but that was where he started. Then again, after seeing how he overcame his crutches, I never doubted it.

The next story is about a lady, a member of another club. When I first met her, she was soft-spoken and seemed unsure of herself. We met at a speech contest and she was a contestant, another member who was determined to improve herself.

After some time, she was asked by her club to be the club president. She tried to get out of it saying she wasn't prepared or she didn't know if she could do it. They persuaded her, assuring her that they would support her. At the end of her term, her club received the highest award a club could get. After that, they persuaded her to be the area governor. Again, she pleaded against it but again, accepted. At the end of her term, she was recognized as one of the best area governors of the district. She also became division governor but, this time, she didn't hesitate about accepting. That's leadership training at work.

If you've got reservations about joining Toastmasters, you're not alone.  Lots of Toastmasters went through the same thing. It's the determination to learn and improve that pulled them through.

Word Mastering in Toastmasters

'Came from a demo meeting by Toastmasters last night where I was the Word Master of the evening. This is the text of my presentation (as near as I can remember):

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.

The English language has a lot of borrowed words, words that originated in other countries or other languages and found their way into common use in English. Tonight, I will share with you three words from Italy along with their original meanings.

The first word is:

espresso

Today people are more familiar with this word as a type of coffee drink. The original meaning, however, is, a person of nearly frantic demeanor; a person in a hurry or working at a face pace. The espresso coffee drink, which is a particularly strong type of coffee, probably got its name due to its effect on drinkers in which it energizes them.

The next word is:

quarantine

The word "quarantine" is derived from the Italian word for "forty." In medieval times, sailing ships that came to port with sick passengers or crew were not allowed to disembark from the ship for forty days. Today people understand the word to mean "isolation" to prevent the spread of disease.

The last word is has been in the news these past days, I think you'll agree. The word  is:

sotto voce (soh-toh voh-che)

No, this is not another word for plagiarism (referring to Senator Tito Sotto who has been accused of copying someone else's speech). It actually means, to speak in a whisper or low, soft voice so as not to be overheard. The word is typically used in music and drama.

So, there we have it, ladies and gentlemen, three Italian words that have made it into common usage in the English language. Good evening.

(Note: I failed to mention it during the meeting—bad of me—but these three words came from an email from DailyWritingTips.com)

Wanting to be Prolific

It's been raining in the afternoon for several days and I haven't been able to get my daily walking exercise in. For once, it didn't rain this afternoon so I got into my walking shoes and stepped out for a brisk 30 minute walk. As my feet pounded the street, I reflected on what my future might be.

Writing was a new love and I'm still determined to have a go at it full time. Can I support my family with my writing? I don't know. I've read about a lot of authors who have to work full time and squeeze a little time into writing. Obviously, they are struggling. I guess it's important to focus what little time you have into doing what you want. For us, it's the only way.

I sometimes wonder how other authors do it. They entered into writing about the same time I did and they're churning out three, four, five, or more novels per year. That's astounding creativity! And what's more is that they're actually selling lots of books. Most of them, I found, are full time authors and they keep writing...non-stop.

How do they do it?

I've discovered two types of these prolific authors:

Type One - is organized; he/she prepares a storyline or outline of the story and uses that as a guide to keep typing.

Type Two - is a make-it-up-as-you-go type of author. A master of converting thoughts into typed words.

I happen to sort of lean toward Type Two though I'm hardly a master. If those other authors are making four or five novels a year, they've got to be typing non-stop for hours on end. Sometimes I envy their ability to think while typing.

Some time ago, I read about an author (who's name I can't remember) who rented out a hotel room, somewhere only his wife knew (with instructions that she was not to call him unless it was a matter of life or death), and brought along his typewriter. For the next week or so, he kept typing away, used up about  two reams of typing paper and produced a novel. That's quite a feat considering that he'd been using a manual typewriter. Evidently, he needed a quiet place where he could work in private, without any distractions and interruptions.

At this time, I'm probably not at that point. Besides, I'm still working and I don't want to use too much of my precious vacation time. Once I get my own computer though, I'm thinking of spending Saturdays somewhere else rather than home, just to get things done.

Blogger Paragraph Spacing 2

The original Blogger Paragraph Spacing post has been getting a lot of views ever since it appeared and it's still going strong. I guess that shows how irritating the bug is for a lot of bloggers. In the hope of helping those who are looking for solutions, here's something that might work for you.

Take a look at the cropped screen shot below. This is an old post I made where two blank lines appeared between paragraphs after publishing even though I typed only one blank line when I made the post. You can get HTML view by clicking on the button "HTML" (upper left of the window, next to the button "Compose").

This is how it looked after publishing:

In the first picture, notice after the words, "about writing," there's a series of HTML code that separates each paragraph. Take note especially of the code "<br />." That's a break tag. It inserts a line break or starts another line. Everytime you press "Enter" the editor will insert a break tag.

Now, scan the rest of the code and you'll notice two more break tags before the start of the next paragraph, "This type of blog... ." So, having three break tags is like pressing "Enter" three times which means you'll have a double space between paragraphs instead of just one. Now, don't ask me why the editor inserted an extra break tag. I don't know why.

Below is another post I made:

Each paragraph has one break tag and another break tag to insert a blank line between the paragraphs. When I published this post, there was only one line between each paragraph which is what I wanted.

Notice also that the other post is practically empty of HTML code except for the break tag. I don't know how I did that but it didn't seem to affect anything. I guess if you don't change things like font, font size, color, or other such things, your post will be that much simpler.

Seeing how the absence of HTML code doesn't really affect things, I'm going to go back over my old posts and do some editing. I get a little irritated looking at all those spaces.


(late addition 21 October 2012)

I think I've figured out why the recent posts are almost empty of HTML code. In the past, I wrote my entries in MS Word and copy-pasted the text into Blogger. It seems that Blogger's editor is inserting the formatting into the text. I've been typing directly into Blogger lately and that's when the double spaced paragraph spacing disappeared. Note: I inserted a double space to separate this additional entry into this post. It's not the bug.

Also, if you look at my old posts, you'll see that the double spacing has disappeared. I went through every post and deleted the HTML code using the HTML editor. Other than the double space, nothing was affected. I only noticed later that there's a "Remove formatting" button at the top. I haven't tried it.

If anyone is having problems with double spacing of paragraphs, I hope this solution will work for you as well. 

My Book is Free!

From now until July 31, my book, Funny Stories from My Travels, can be downloaded for free at the  Smashwords website. Just visit the link and use the coupon code to be able to download the book at no cost.

The book is a collection of stories about my adventures during my travels to Singapore, India, Switzerland as well as my wanderings in and around the Philippines. It started out as a series of Facebook notes which gained a small following of readers. By the time the series ended, the idea to have the stories published had taken hold. I rewrote the stories, added a few more, proofread it about a dozen times, and finally uploaded it to Smashwords as an ebook.

This is my first attempt at writing and I've got three other books in the works. If you do decide to download the book, all I ask is that you leave a review at the bottom of the book's page. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Book Review - The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success

The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is a collection of tips on how indie authors can give their books the best chance of success. Success can have several meanings for authors. For some, making tons of ebook sales is what counts. Others may be satisfied just having people read their books. For others, just the act of actually putting a book out there is reward enough. Except for the last type, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success can help you get your book into the hands of more readers.

The author, Mark Coker, is the founder of Smashwords, a website that helps authors publish their works as ebooks. He's been named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the "Eight Stars of Self-publishing" and he's also a contributing columnist for The Huffington Post. An author himself, Mark put together results of research, experiments, and experiences of other successful authors into a 36,000+ word book and offered it to readers for free. Uh huh, you read that right, the book is free. So, is the book any good? Let's find out.

Content-wise, Mark gave 28 "secrets." Some of them are pretty obvious to anyone but a few seem to run counter to common sense. For instance, he advises authors to give some of their books away for free. It would seem strange for anyone who wants to make money selling books to give away a title or two. Experience, however, shows that it can work. If you write a great book (that's another secret, by the way), marking it free makes it easier for readers to discover you. Once they know you're a good writer, there's a better chance they will pay to get your next books.

The book is written in a conversational style and it's easy to understand and digest. Personally though, I think 28 secrets is too many. I'm not saying that some of the secrets aren't valid. I just think some of them could have been lumped together. When I was  learning public speaking, one of the lessons we were taught was to limit your discussion points to between three and five. The reason was that most people won't remember more than those numbers. Maybe that "rule" doesn't apply to the written word but I still believe the book could have been simpler.

Is there anything wrong about the book? Not anymore, at least none that I can see. When I first downloaded the book, it had a lot of errors. I got the impression the book had been pushed into publication without proper or not enough proofreading. It seemed Mark had slipped with one of his own pieces of advice.

However, one of the nice things about publishing your work as an ebook is that you can make corrections easily. I downloaded Mark's book again recently and found that a lot of the errors have been corrected. You can't afford to do that with a traditionally published book. If you make an error in printing or editing, you may need to reprint them. If the error's really bad, you may have to recall the books from the bookstores and that is going to be very expensive. With ebooks, you just upload a new version.

In conclusion, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success is a good resource for indie authors. It's a great adjunct to another of Mark's free books, the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. No matter what success means to you, you can't go wrong with following these "secrets."

Writing Semi-Fiction

Is there such a thing as semi-fiction?

When I first came up with it, I doubted there was such a word. I had never heard of it. Most articles or blurbs just say "based on a true story." Maybe it's just clearer to say that rather than calling it semi-fiction. Or it's a psychological thing. Who'd want to read semi-fiction? It sounds like it's half of something.

Anyway, there is such a word and I'm working on one now. Sorry, 'can't tell you what the story is but it's based on a real historical event. In fact, I've been doing so much research that it's eating into my writing time. That's okay though. Nothing's too good for an author's readers. So what's the lessons for this so far?

If you want to do semi-fiction, it would probably be better if you get every piece of information you can about the event before you write the story. There is a real problem here though. How much research is necessary? How do you know if you have enough information to begin writing?

Right now, there's no definite answer. Other authors may have begun writing with just the basic information they had at hand. Still others probably began writing and just added or revised portions of the story as new information came in. I guess it depends on what's important to them. Just come out with a story that the reader will like or be as faithful to the real story and just hope the reader will like it.

The reason may even be personal.

Have you ever read about a historical event that touched you in some way? Were you so riveted to it that you read it from start to finish in one go? Or maybe you knew about the event but didn't care so much until you read someone's personal account? Someone who was there and gave his story in such a way that you want to rewrite it so that everyone will look at it in a new light?

In my case, it was a little of everything. I had an idea for a story which was going to be fiction. Technically, it's historical fiction but not based on any real event. Then, while doing research on something technical I needed to know, I stumbled on an actual event. It had little in similarity with the original story in my head but I found the story so interesting that I began looking for more information. After several weeks, I decided I'd base my story on this actual event. After several months, I'm ready to start writing.

The additional lesson I obtained from this exercise is how to find information on the internet. The story about the actual event had links to other sources. Some were just repetitions while others gave some additional tidbits. Then I began using the search engines. I googled names, places, and dates. Right now, I've got so much information I could write another book just to recount the actual event. I just might do that too.

A historical event is a time-frame intensive story. Keep extensive notes and make a story outline based on the sequence of events. Get your names and locations right and show connections (how one event in the story affects another event). Don't forget the human element. The story may be about history but the characters were humans with their own thoughts, emotions, memories, and principles.

The most important element, however, is telling the story in such a way as to have the same effect on the reader as it did on you. In the end, a story is only worth reading if the story is interesting to you.