Welcome to the site! The more time I've spent here, the better writer I've become. It takes awhile to get used to everything, but I really like it.
I've been on here since December of last year--I have kind of the same situation as you. I was looking for writing tools and just happened across the site.
If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me. Here's some gift points for you, too. You can use these to get reviews, reward people for their work, and even buy things at auctions on the site.
Tithing is an important part of being a Christian that I didn't understand growing up. (Basically I grew up hearing my parents complain that the church we barely attended kept "asking" for money.)
About six months after we got married, my husband and I made the decision that we would set aside 10% of our paychecks the moment we deposited/cashed them. It is amazing how God takes that 90% and makes it do a whole lot more than the 100% we had when we weren't giving! We haven't had a major money struggle ever since, and the blessings have continued to roll in the forms of higher incomes and good financial surprises.
There's also the aspect of the act of giving changing a person's heart--you become less selfish, and giving people are generally very successful as well. More money comes when God knows He can trust us with it. I think tithing is something God is using to teach us as well as funding for churches to help others.
This is a great concept. I took a look at your website (note: You have a typo in your link at the bottom of the page--story is sotry in it, but I found your page.) Your story with Jasper is cute.
I'm a camera operator/video editor, so I'm already trained in several professional programs. What you have though looks great for students and people wanting to start out. I wish I'd had something like that in high school and the first part of college.
Education is definitely changing with technology. I think it's a great thing for the most part. I like that students can have more creativity and actually enjoy learning.
I really like your article because it shows a great example of how one person or one family can make a difference in their community.
I think a lot of times people get overwelmed by the degree of need that is out there, but there are many other people who take action to the best of their ability. For Christians, we're following the example that Jesus set--He gave everywhere He went.
I've only rated this average because you're not finished yet--what you have so far is a good start.
I do have a suggetion with this portion:
"Teen depression affects 1 in 8 teens, which means that if you and seven friends were together, at least one of you is, or has been depressed."--I would drop the second portion of the sentence because technically a person could have a lot of happy friends or a lot of depressed ones. (The statisics are likely nationwide.)
There's several directions you can go from here--What is causing teen depression? What is being done to combat it? Is teenage depression decreasing or increasing from several years ago? Why?
I hope that's helpful. Good luck with your article!
You did a great job with this--I reviewed it with the purpose of finding something in it that I might be able to help you with (I don't normally go into items with the intent to pick them apart unless requested). I happy to say you made it hard.
I only have two suggestions, one minor and another that could help you with future situations, too.
LOS ANGELES, read the destination placard over the windshield.--It would probably be okay to take out the comma.
My Claudette Colbert blouse, with its thin dark stripes, white collar and cuffs, is a knockout too, she thought.--
I would maybe look over this and reword it in a way there the thought is more natural. I understand you're wanting to get the description of her blouse to the reader, but you can break it down a little more and add actions (such as having her straighten out her cuffs and collar in a mirror, etc.)
When you can, it's always better to "show" than to "tell" about your characters. I have to watch for that in my own stories and have tried to focus on it lately.
Excellent job on this overall. I hope you're turning this into a larger story!
One of the hardest things I've had to watch as someone in my early 20s is my dad going through as similar situation as you--now he works in the same field but in a job that pays less and is actually more dangerous to his health. It's sad.
I know a lot of companies can't really get a handle on how my generation thinks, but after witnessing what your genearation is going through it's a lot harder to motivate us. I don't think anyone wants to look forward to working a long time for a company just to get traded off for two people half your age who will work for half the money. Now not all companies are like that, but there's a lot of things now that are out of an individual employee's control.
My husband and I now run 4 small businesses that we grew from hobbies in addition to our jobs. I think for our generation the only way to fight what happened to you is to have a lot of back-up incomes until we can transition it to where we can retire.
I bet with your experience, you may be able to do something like that as well. Have you ever considered it?
This is an excellent observation about being an entrepreneur--too many people think that business mistakes are all negative. It causes them to give up too quickly instead of learning what they can change.
I think the main reason people react this way is it's how we're taught to think as children. I don't know any kid who enjoys getting a test back filled with red and a big "F" at the top. We learn to dread the disappointment of our parents, teachers, friends, etc.--over time we avoid making mistakes as much as possible to prevent having those negative feelings. It's a conditioned way of thinking if you study psychology.
Entrepreneurs have to break out of that mindset though--if not, the slightest disappointment will wreck their businesses. You don't have to be perfect to succeed in business--in fact, most wealthy people I know "failed" their way to success. As you said, it depends greatly on your attitude and how you react to setbacks. The people who learn and overcome win.
Two of the major things that impress me with this story series are its realism and how you approach it from different angles. It has a complexity to it that I've rarely (if not ever) seen before and it's very gripping to me from a reader's standpoint.
I'm a psychology major, so the CSI/profiler elements in this were really interesting as well.
I was looking over this, and I want to recommend a book that helped me a lot with tightening up my short stories. It's called On Writing by Sol Stein. He's a writer and long-time editor for a lot of famous writers.
Some of the things he talks about are eliminating unnecessary adverbs (they slow down your pacing) and fine-tuning dialogue. You have a good base and just need to tweak it a little.
I'll be happy to review this for you again when you've made changes. Just e-mail me and let me know, and that way I can raise the rating up.
You have a very real glimpse into the reality of the corporate world for a lot of people in this. I'm only 24, but I've quickly learned that as an individual there's not a lot of job security in the current enviornment. Companies have to stay competitive, and employees can unfortunately be as much of a liability as an asset.
I've learned how to adapt to this by having a lot of side businesses and using jobs as predictable income whenever possible. I actually like things that way--just the right balance of adventure and in some ways more stable because of there being more than one source of income involved.
I think my generation is going to have to do things differently if we're going to have financial freedom. Otherwise people are going to get caught off-guard by situations like these.
You have a lot of good information here for people to look out for as customers. I currently have a day job in the chargeback department for a credit card processing company, and we run into a lot of this stuff.
Another thing I would add is if a person owns an Internet business to really be careful also. Sometimes people get so excited over a big sale that they don't do proper checks on their customers or the credit cards. The end result is the store owner is out the merchandise and their money. It's a sad thing, especially when people have put everything they've had into their businesses.
I tell everyone now to check their credit bureau reports at least once a year and be as careful as possible with their information. A person shouldn't make it into a daily fear or anything like that, but a little caution can go a long way.
I do also want to note that there a good things about Internet business as well. A significant amount of our household income comes from 3 part-time Internet businesses--all of which we checked out really well before doing. There is opportunity out there, but it's never something-for-nothing. They take work just like any traditional business would.
You've done a very effective job with this--if I was in the market for a home theatre at this moment, I would be checking out the company in this article.
Everything is very clear, informative, and has the right amount of even playfulness to it with the suggestions of the Star Trek bridge and other designs.
Great job! I'm sure this did well in the magazine.
This has some wonderful business lessons in it. I really like your examples in your sales business and have had similar experiences of my own.
I think value and business intergrity are becoming more and more important to people, especially when it comes to the Internet. The lowest price doesn't always mean the best deal for customers.
You have a lot of great advice here. My only big suggestion is to go back over it and fix some minor formatting, such as needing a dash before the sentence, "Don’t leave mail lying around for strangers to pry into."
I've worked in the banking industry for about 2 years, and it is insane the amount of information people can get access to in databases used for locating people, credit checks, etc. I looked myself up, and one database had everywhere I'd lived since the age of 5!
Even people who don't think they do anything that could make them a victim should still check their credit reports (it's free once a year now). I'm careful with my information, but a company I applied for a job with had a security breach. Two laptop computers got stolen and the information wasn't security coded. So I've had to place a fraud alert on my bureau and hope for the best.
If a person hates getting pre-approved offers, there's also a way of stopping them by writing the three major bureaus you have listed. It also cuts down on the junk mail, which is nice.
Thanks for writing this. People need to know this is out there and can be a major problem if it's not caught.
Lol--this is great. (I'm putting this on public review, so I won't reveal the ending.) I thought it was really funny, though.
I do think perfectionism can really work against a person if it's overdone. It's not the same thing as putting excellence into something, where you factor in what's the most practical solution to a situation.
I heard something related to this that really made me think about what I'm doing in life:
Lifestyle can be defined as having both time and money. Most people either trade their time for money (job) or potential money for their time (taking a vacation day or at worst complete unemployment).
It is only when you find something that pays you over and over again for your effort (includes writing and selling books among other things), that you find a way to have your time and make money at the same time. That is an answer to building wealth over time.
Looks like you're off to a good start--just need to add more! I'd like to see some of your flower photographs that you mention in the introduction.
"Sunday in the Park" is very nice. The only thing I would have done differently was frame the little boy on the bicycle to where the wheels of the bike are not cut off at the bottom. My eyes went right to him when I opened the picture, and he makes a nice subject. As it is though, it's not a bad picture.
The overall story in this is great--John has a great story of overcoming the odds over and over again. I enjoyed reading it.
The only reason I didn't rate this a 5 is you have some very minor formating problems--I'm guessing you may have copied and pasted this from another program, but the sentences are cut short in some places. It's not a major thing but can be distracting to the story.
I also found a couple of places that need a small correction:
"John had a brokenneck and wasn't expected..."--just need a space between broken and neck.
"I would aslo have to add him as a hero.."--typo; also
You make a wonderful point about wealth in this--that the majority of truly rich people out there aren't trying to impress everyone as much as the people leveraged in debt up to their eyeballs.
It took me awhile to figure that out until I started meeting a few people making those high incomes like what you're talking about in this. I heard a statistic a few weeks ago that's pretty incredible--1 out of every 112 Americans is millionaire in terms of net worth.
I think two biggest lesson in that are 1)It's possible for people to change their circumstances and 2) that to be a millionaire you have to do what less than 1% of the population is willing to do--live on less than you make and do some different things to make income than everyone else does. It sounds fairly simple, but not a lot of people do it.
I really liked this. In business and in life, my husband and I have had to stepped out in faith several times. There are still struggles to overcome in the process, but God has definitely blessed us. (There's no way from a logical perspective that we should have gotten as far as we have on our own in three years--no matter how driven we are.)
I do want to suggest that you look at the format of your paragraphs toward the end. You have spacing between the earlier paragraphs that you just need to continue toward the end.
This was helpful, but I was expecting something a little more detailed and longer. I think you can expand on it--go into things like e-mail (ways of organzing it so you're not wasting time), phone calls, grouping similar tasks, etc. There's a lot of ways you can go with this.
This is a great idea, and the title and subtitle immediately caught my attention.
Thank you for this item--especially for explaning the review tool. I knew there was some way to create a template, but I thought people were copy and pasting them some other way.
There's also a lot of other great review tips in this. I encourage everyone to check it out.
It's funny sometimes how God can turn around what initially seems like a bad situation into something good. Hopefully this will help you knock out some debt and help your business so you don't have to be overworked forever.
I got laid off a month after I started my first job right out of college--it felt horrible at the time, but I learned a lot from the experience. I still have a job right now, but my husband and I make more outside of it in case something ever happens. After we get out of debt (mainly student loans now), I'm going to be able to retire--pretty cool life at 24, and I'm looking forward to it.
I share a lot of the same thoughts as you on this, Kenzie. I remember the day very clearly, and it's hard to believe over six years have already passed since it happened...
Something that kind of disturbs me is how about six months later it seemed like a portion of the population just became apathetic for some reason--was it their way of trying to escape the reality of the event? I don't know, but that still bothers me how people can just shut themselves out like that.
I think we live in a world now where we need to start caring now more than ever about what's going on as individuals and as a country. I can definitely tell that you care.
Have a good night,
Tricia
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