Available now at Amazon.com; soon on Barnes and Noble.com and here by clicking below.

It is not a book about relationships; it is not a book about caregiving. This book is about the way we live our daily lives, caught up in care giving and care receiving, without even realizing it and without realizing how critical it is to put more love into our caregiving relationships and more caring into our love relationships.

…its a new way of thinking, a new way of living, and a message for a happier  and more in-balance life.

Your voice as a writer is that unique quality that connects you to your reader’s soul … or falls short. And while I could write pages on the subject of “writer’s voice” and never fully cover the nuances of it, this post is about a different type of voice.

In this case, it is the synthesized voice of “Mary,” “Mike,” “Sam,” or sometimes “AT&T Mike 16.” If you write for business, whether you are a professional writer, or you simply need to write letters, reports, and emails that make sense, Mary, Mike and their friends can be a great deal of help to you.

For less than $30 you can download a software program that reads aloud to you. For several years I have used, Text Aloud from NextUp.com

This simple software lets you pick a voice, speed, pitch and volume to read your work (or anyone else’s) aloud to you. While some of these synthesized voices sound very natural, I actually prefer the ones that sound a bit like Rosie the Robot from the Jetson’s. Without inflection, I hear how my words really resonate. I also catch a lot of errors. It it is a tool that as a writer,  I can’t live without.

Eleanor grew up during the Great Depression and her intelligence and hard work made it possible for her to earn a scholarship into Brooklyn Law School at St. Lawrence University. With so many young men in the military as the US headed into World War II, opportunities were opening up for women, where before doors had been closed.

After the War, married to a man who was his family’s only survivor of the Holocaust, Eleanor and her husband settled into what should have been, and could have been, an abundant and happy “picture book” life.

…Until the birth of her second child, Alexander, turned her world upside down. Eleanor’s story is one from the heart–a heart broken and yet a heart overflowing with love.

Eleanor and I are anticipating the release of this book this summer through Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson.

… I’ll keep you posted!

One of the prospects responded by asking, in an email, several additional questions. This is where it got interesting… one of the team members involved in the hiring saw the questions as a sign of that person’s organizational skills and interest. Others saw the questions as an effort to look like the “best student in the class” without really doing much to become that person.

Mixed feelings.

And then came the prospect’s second round of questions.

Others on the team began to see the person as attempting to position himself as the most interested applicant. Some voiced the opinion that the questioner was beginning to seem high maintenance.

That’s when it struck me. Yes! There is such a thing as a dumb question!

When the person who asks a question is disingenuous in the asking, firing questions for effect, then the question not only becomes a dumb question, it becomes a defining moment in the relationship development.

When questions reveal that the asker is shortcutting the process of assimilating information through reading and reflecting on the topic itself, instead wanting others to digest the material for him, then yes… it is a dumb question.

And when the question indicates that the person asking is not willing to let some answers be revealed to him through the process, but instead wants others to, “stop what you are doing and take care of me now,” then the question is beyond dumb… it becomes a deal breaker.

Apparently, you can tell a lot about a person by the questions he or she asks.

]]> http://lindaparkerbooks.com/2011/04/what-about-the-dumb-question/feed/ 0 http://lindaparkerbooks.com/2011/04/the-zen-of-advertising/ http://lindaparkerbooks.com/2011/04/the-zen-of-advertising/#comments Sun, 03 Apr 2011 15:43:01 +0000 Linda http://lindaparkerbooks.com/?p=189 Continue reading →]]> Art and science come together in this very Zen moment in advertising. Forget it is an ad. Just enjoy and be amazed….

“If you are working more than fifty-five hours a week, you are working too much. You may be able to work more than this for a season, but it is not sustainable. If you persist in working this much—or more—something will eventually break…” says Michael Hyatt.

I encourage you to click the link above and read what he has to say, and to follow this man regularly. He is a scholar of social media, publishing, and life. Especially life.

The Self Shot

When movie directors in the 2030s are trying to convey in a single glance that their scene is set in the 2000s, they will use the self shot—the self-portrait shot from a digital camera or cell phone held by one hand extended away from the subject. We look out at our own hand, perhaps squeezing another friend into the frame, composing our face in a smile or a laugh. We are shooting ourselves.

The visual presentation of the self accelerated in the 2000s. Previous generations saw themselves most often in mirrors. But mirrors do not show us what others see—they show us a mirror image with right and left reversed. The difference is subtle but real, and symbolic of a deeper reality. Now most 20-year-olds have seen thousands of images of themselves as others see them. In the 2000s we learned to shape and groom our image for public consumption. Body modification—augmentation, reduction, smoothing, straightening, whitening, tanning, not to mention tattooing—became normative. The closing years of the decade gave us the word “manscaping.” Enough said.

—Mark Twain

Reading about this conference reminded me of the stigma sometimes attached to boredom. In my family, I remember as a child ‘getting the message’ that boredom was a character flaw, one that reflected an inability to find or create self-entertainment. I grew up believing that people who felt bored were in fact, boring people. Perhaps just not as clever as they should be…

As an adult, I have come to appreciate boredom. It represents a time when one has nothing pressing, no demands, deadlines, or urgencies. In order to truly be bored, a person would have to be trauma-free, with no worries bearing down on them. No major appliance breakdown, sick family member, unpaid bill, or irate neighbor to otherwise occupy your thoughts …  simply a test pattern/screen saver (pick your generation) that plays out in our heads while nothing of any significance occupies our thoughts.

Sigh, I am going to strive for more periods of boredom in 2011.