Thank God for Social Media

When I was at university, I wrote two books. The first book was an accident because I did not intend to write a book, I was simply going to write a letter. I got a letter from my local pastor asking everyone for their thoughts on where the church should go in the coming years and I started writing a letter in reply - and I just kept writing. Every day, I do a little writing - if I had some spare time or if I wanted a change from my studies. One day, I realised that I had over 200 pages. While I was wondering what to do with this, I saw a notice in the University library offering a book binding services, so I titled it "Culture, Church and Community" and had it bound in book form. Needless to say, my pastor was very surprised to get a book in reply to his letter.
Having written one book by mistake, I wondered if I could actually write a book on purpose. I did not want it to get in the way of my studies, so I decided to write a book about that subject. Once again, I wrote a little every day. I made it easy by not making it hard. The only target I set myself was to finish a page a day - if I did more, fine. Not long later I had over 600 pages which I got bound. It was called "Behaviour: Cause and Function"
By this time, I had been in discussion with people with church about my book and having got a cool reception, I went back to it, re-read it and decided to re-write it - which I have now been doing for almost 30 years. Over time, I also became aware of some weaknesses in my other book which I have also been re-writing. Having got into this habit, I found that writing things in book form was a very good way of learning a subject. When I asked "would someone else understand this writing", it really helped me hone my communication skills

Over recent years, I have written less and less. This is because only a couple of people in Jersey were even remotely interested in the subjects and there was no real way of getting it out. I tried to get them published and received a string of rejection notes. I tried submitting my other works which might have had more commercial appeal so as to get my foot in the door - and received even more rejection notes. I researched how to get published and found that it was a lottery and some of our best selling authors had a hell of a job to get that first book published. I remember the first words in the Author's Handbook. "First write your book. Now that is the easy bit out of the way." How true.
By this time, the Internet had started to develop. So I looked into using that to get my ideas across. But if it wanted a website, it cost hundreds of pounds and that was the easy part because you had to spend hundreds more promoting your site. I joined forums only to find them filled with lonely youngsters looking for sex.

And then Social Media was born.
First it was MySpace (I think), then FaceBook and Bebo and blogging and vlogging with YouTube in there somewhere and so on and so on and so on.. Suddenly, people were not just interested in voicing their opinions, they were interested in other people's opinions as well. There was even some dialogue going in between all the insult hurling. People were actually discussing things!!!!
So here I am able to share my thoughts and experiences with you in the hope that you find them useful to you and your life and help you find a little extra peace and happiness - because you can never have enough peace and happiness

God Bless

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