Here is the ninth blog post in a series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read a paragraph from one of my motivational books and use it as a prompt to speak freely.
This idea was inspired by the free-writing exercise well-known among writers. I used dice and timer to turn this free-speaking exercise into fun games. I hope you enjoy watching them and maybe trying out this gameful approach for yourself and tasks you want or need to tackle today.
Some questions for contemplation: What are your experiences with writing your truth and taking care of people so that no-one sees your writing as libel? What balancing acts have you done in your writing? And how did this creative discomfort feel for you?
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The next step
I hope you enjoyed watching this little creativity game.
Since we all need a little cheering up from time to time, I invite you to read Cheerleading for Writers and discover what it can do for you. To look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to eight of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and seven in the posts solely for subscribers. Cheerleading for Writers will appear later this year or sooner upon explicit request from the subscribers.
I wish you a beautiful, creative, cheerful, and also gameful day!
Here is the third blog post in a new series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read a paragraph from one of my motivational books and use it as a prompt to speak freely.
This idea was inspired by the free-writing exercise well-known among writers. I used dice and timer to turn this free-speaking exercise into fun games. I hope you enjoy watching them and maybe trying out this gameful approach for yourself and tasks you want or need to tackle today.
These could be, for example, watching TV or random videos on YouTube, reading a book for leisure, playing an online game, staying in bed, spending time on social media, surfing the internet, etc.
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to six of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and five in the posts solely for subscribers. The Who, What, When, Where, Why & How of Turning Life into Fun Games is one of the five.
Enjoy answering any question you receive or ask yourself in a gameful and joyful way!
Today, I have a special addition to a series of blog posts featuring videos on YouTube, where I read from one of my motivational books for one minute.
My little book, 5 Minute Perseverance Game: Play Daily for a Month and Become the Ultimate Procrastination Breaker, will be soon five years old. Many things have happened since then. Without expecting that, turning life into fun games became a part of my career as a writer, coach, and consultant. To celebrate this occasion, I published a second edition of the book.
In this short video, I am reading the preface of the 5-Year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. As with anything else in my life, I turned the reading into a fun little game, a 1 Minute Perseverance Game. I hope it is as much fun for you to watch as it was for me to make and play it.
Here is the excerpt I am reading in the video if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.
Welcome to the 5-year Edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game!
I can’t believe it’s been five years since I wrote and published this little book. It has been quite the adventure. Shortly after publishing, I began telling my friends about it, one of whom told me she had learned about the approach at its core at university. She called this technology “gamification.”
I thought — or maybe even asked out loud — “Gami-what?”
As soon as I got home, I researched the term online and was blown away by how much there was on gamification and the number of people applying game elements to “real-life contexts.”
Parallel with that, I discovered kaizen and started reading all I could on the subject. Step by step, I began to understand the three approaches or skill sets that formed the basis of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game: being present and studying ourselves as anthropologists do (Credits: Ariel and Shya Kane); breaking everything down into the smallest, most effortless bits possible (kaizen); and approaching everything with a gameful and playful attitude (gamification).
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Where to buy the book
To take a look at the new 5 Minute Perseverance Gameand buy it on Amazon, click on its title or image above.
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to five of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and four in the posts solely for subscribers. The first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is already available, and I will add the new edition within the next couple of days.
Here is the first blog post in a new series featuring videos on YouTube, where I read a short paragraph from one of my motivational books and use it as a prompt to speak freely. This idea was inspired by the free-writing exercise well-known among writers. I used dice and timer to turn this free-speaking exercise into fun games. I hope you enjoy watching them and maybe trying out this gameful approach for yourself and tasks you want or need to tackle today.
You might have guessed — from many hints above — that according to the design of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, each round takes one month. When you join in the game, you play every day of the month, including the weekends and holidays. But it is a game, and having FUN is one of the main goals here. So, what better way to spend 5 minutes on a weekend-day than having fun playing the 5 Minute Perseverance Game!?
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Special news
I hope you enjoyed watching me play this little spontaneous creativity game.
I am about to publish the 2nd (5-Year) edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game this year. I have to read it one more time, and then it will be good to go. So, I expect it to hit the online bookshelves this or latest next week. The new book will have fifty percent more content, updates, a template for a scoresheet, and links to multiple articles on turning life into games I published on Medium.
Here is its description revealed for the first time:
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Premier of the description for the new edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game
5 Minute Perseverance Game A Self-Motivational Game to Help You Melt Your Procrastination 2nd Edition
Is there something you would like to do but feel you don’t have enough time or strength of will to achieve?
Is there a book you want to write, an instrument you want to play, a language you want to learn, or something completely different that you’ve wanted to accomplish for as long as you can remember?
If you really and seriously want to succeed in this dream project of yours, then play a game. Not a serious game. But a fun 5 Minute Perseverance Game. This short, personal and humorous game will help you melt your procrastination and win any challenge you face.
So, don’t wait any longer. Read this book and invite your procrastination to a round of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game. This little book has helped many turn a procrastinated project into a fun and engaging game.
This 5-year Edition offers even more. The text has been edited and enriched, several tactical variants added, and you will find a scoring sheet for the game you play with your procrastinating self.
In addition, most numbered chapters and sections offer links and short introductions to articles on the art of turning life into fun games. Together these articles have become the 5 Minute Perseverance Game “Wiki.” With this additional knowledge, you can transform this little game into a series of fun self-motivational games you can play and develop further every day.
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A special offer
So, here is my offer to you.
If you buy the first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game before the second is published and send me a copy of your receipt, then within the week of the second edition’s launch, I will send you a link where you will be able to download the second edition of the book as an e-book in a format of your choice. The new book will be more expensive than its first edition through the considerably larger amount of content. So, I highly recommend that you use this offer if you would like to learn more about the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and other possibilities of turning your life into fun games.
To take a look at the 5 Minute Perseverance Game and buy it on Amazon, click on its title or this image:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to five of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and four in the posts solely for subscribers. The first edition of the 5 Minute Perseverance Game is already available, and the new one will appear shortly after its publication.
I am reading from the chapter with the title “S – Show Me What You’ve Got (or How a Writer Can Serve Others Without Putting Too Much Pressure on Herself).”
Here it is if you want to read along, prior, or afterward.
As with almost any book on writing and its various facets, this one will also address the aspects of showing and telling. But it will approach show and tell from another angle.
During the first three years of my writing career and especially recently, I have come to realize that I joined an exotic species of the working population.
We, writers, want to write books that we would want to read. On the other hand, we also want others to love them.
Or we write motivational guide books to pull ourselves out of initially hopeless situations. At the same time, hoping these books will pull other people out of their miseries too.
What is interesting, though, is that whether others read our works or not, people survive without them. No one seems to need what we do for their daily and most urgent needs.
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A big surprise
Two days ago, I got a big surprise in my inbox. An author I follow has featured Cheerleading for Writers on his blog. This author is the New York Times bestselling author, John David Mann. He is co-author of many fantastic books, including the Go-Giver series with Bob Burg. Here is what he has written about this little book in his blog post titled “NINE RESOURCES TO ROCK YOUR WRITING” about resources he strongly recommends for writers, which include such legendary books as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird:
“Cheerleading for Writers: Discover How Truly Talented You Are, by Victoria Ichizli-Bartels. This little book doesn’t lecture you; it holds your hand, brews you a cup of fresh hot tea, whispers in your ear, and reminds you of all the good things you should know about yourself. It also offers dozens of nuggets of writerly wisdom along the way, in twenty-six bite-sized pieces, A through Z.”
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The next step
We all need a little cheering up and holding our hands from time to time. I am super happy that this little book can provide such comfort to writers. So I invite you to read Cheerleading for Writers and discover what it can do for you. To look at the book and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or this image below:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Cheerleading for Writers will appear later this year or sooner upon explicit request from the subscribers.
I wish you a beautiful, cheerful, and also gameful day!
I hope it is as much fun for you to watch as it was for me to make and play it.