Wouldn’t it be nice to find joy in writing?

I remember I was sitting in school at the back in the corner close to the windows and I was trying so hard to write a nice essay for my German teacher. I didn’t succeed.

Does this resonate with you?

My teacher was never happy with what I wrote. She was criticizing me that I didn’t put a personal touch into my essay. I used to stick too much to general statements.

No wonder, I was so afraid of opening up and showing what I was thinking.

Writing has a lot to do with mindset. Self-doubts and fear are the biggest blocks in writing.

Why?

When I got the chance to write my first article for one of the biggest Swiss Newspaper, “Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, I was so afraid of failure. As I had studied French literature, I received a French detective story to write a review about it and the author. It took my days, weeks, probably a whole month to finish this article. I always re-wrote it.

When I sent it to the editor, I was so surprised that she didn’t answer me, but just published the article, without changing much. What a surprise! But I felt so miserable, because I didn’t want to spend again weeks on writing one article. I wanted to be more effective.

The thing was that with every article, I got more self-confident. And that was exactly what I needed to be able to write apace. And I also discovered joy in writing for the first time in my life.

My dream and also my goal were to get a job as an editor at a daily newspaper. But these jobs were rather rare and the journalists, who got a job at the largest newspapers, stayed for their lifetime. I figured out that I had to work very hard. I applied for an internship at all Swiss German newspapers. Luckily, I got a chance at two different newspapers for three months. And this was my breakthrough in writing.

Writing one or even two big articles a day helped me to get into the flow.

And the most important thing I learnt was to write the whole story without reading back and editing. Once, I had all written to the end, I started editing.

This is also the method I always teach my book writing clients.

If you start writing and you read back, your inner critical voice pops up. You start criticizing your sentences. You re-edit, you fix three sentences, you add one or two and you never come to an end.

Does this sound familiar to you?

Whenever you have to write something, you remember your last writing experience and how big your suffering has been. That’s why it never changes. You already start with your negative state of mind, and it’s so logical that your mindset is always blocking you from having fun and feeling joy when writing.

Can you imagine that I feel when someone wrote something while staying in a flow or the way I described it before? You may not believe it, but I can. and I beg that my German teacher definitely did as well, when she was correcting my essays. I remember I was maybe writing five sentences and deleting three and I never succeeded in filling more than one and a half pages in two hours.

Although, I loved reading since I was a child. I was about ten years old and I had almost read all the books from my library except the special detective stories for boys. When I was asking my school librarian, what else she would recommend to me, she realized as well that there were not many books left, and she told me to ask my parents to take me to the big library in town.

Do you have similar memories?

My first writing client was my younger boy, now 14 years old. He didn’t like reading and writing at all, when he was younger. Whenever he had to write a summary for school, he was suffering so much, and myself as well sitting at his side. I tried different techniques with him.

I asked him to tell me the story before he started it putting into words. This helped already a bit.

Then, we worked on getting into the flow. What he used to do, was to write one sentence and then read again from the top. He spent hours on writing half a page. I was desperate. I told him not to read what he had written already. He wouldn’t believe me at the beginning. Slowly, but steadily, he got the point. I was so happy.

Last year, I realized what I have been able to teach him. Every Thursday, he had to write a short summary of his week for his teacher, and he allowed me to read it as well. There, I found long and funny reflections about his school week put together in a nice and definitely entertaining manner. I was so proud of him. He himself loved to write it and his teacher loved to read it as she told him.

So, if you were convinced that the joy of writing is something you were born with or it needs a special talent, I could help you in discovering the opposite.

Watch my video series on YouTube about how my writing journey started with a diary and how I overcame my self-doubts and how I published my first children’s book.

If you always dreamt of writing amazing texts or even your book, stick to it. You will get there, too. Believe me!

PS. If you like to get started with writing but you’re still afraid, sign in for my special Writing Course “Believe You Can Write”:

Follow me on Bloglovin!

The post Finding Joy in Writing first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Finding Joy in Writing appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

The last publication was the continuation of my beautifully illustrated first children’s book «Leonard and Loulou», which is called «Leonard and Lea». Thanks so much, Teodora Puncheva, for your outstanding illustrations.

The newest publication is up on Amazon since today: «Loulou & Loupi» – a photo book with over 30 touching pictures about the real Loulou and her four kittens, among them the whitest one with his black tale called Loupi.

As a passionate photographer, I followed our cat family with my camera. I took pictures of them as blind newborns, cuddling one with the other, when Mama Loulou went for a short walk. I shot pictures, when they opened their eyes for the first time. I got them with my camera joking around, playing with each other’s tails or drinking with fervor and pushing each other as much as possible to get the most of milk.

I already printed this book one year ago, just one copy, and I took it with me, when I was doing a reading for girls and boys and I showed it to them after they have listened to my story of Leonard and Loulou.

As these schoolgirls and boys were also so fond of this photo book, I decided yesterday to publish it as an eBook on Amazon.

Now, you can discover Loulou’s kittens and certainly the most precious one, Loupi. You have to get to know his story. I say “his”, because all four kittens are male.

Loupi seemed very special since the very beginning. He didn’t push to get his part of milk like the others did. He always got overrun by his siblings. They climbed on his body or pushed him away. We often found three kittens drinking, while Loupi was laying aside and having nothing. He didn’t grow as quickly and strongly as the others, of course. When he tried to walk, we observed him falling down very often. We wondered whether it exists also some kind of disabled cats, because he seemed to be one of them.

Together with my boys, I decided that we would keep him, although mother cats don’t like too much to live with their children, once they are grown-ups.

Today, we are so grateful that we got Loupi, because he is the most sensitive cat in our whole cat family. One can take him onto his arms, and he doesn’t move at all. He just enjoys being cuddled for a very long time. He often jumps on our lap, when we are sitting on the sofa, and he starts licking our hands or arms, as if he wished getting milk out of it.

He is the one, who is looking for close human company the most among our three other cats. Besides, one of his brothers, Blacky, the one with the biggest black spots, is the total opposite of Loupi: his body mass index is the double of Loupi’s and regarding his character, we would describe him as rather aggressive. Blacky is the one, who decided to live with our neighbors. He still passes from time to time and says hello to sweet Loupi, laying under my office table and feeling a bit disturbed by his strong and impulsive brother.

In fact, all these cat stories and books wouldn’t exist, if we didn’t decide a few years ago to try to have kittens. That’s why Loulou joined us as a three months old kitten, and Leonard, the younger son, took care of his baby. With how much tenderness and love, he did it! You can read it here. He even didn’t have time to do his homework because of Loulou – read it in another blog post story.

Without Leonard and Loulou, there wouldn’t be my first two children book’s and this new one, “Loulou & Loupi”.

Enjoy the touching pictures! I always do, even after the 115^th times, I look at them. These cats are just heart-melting.

“Loulou & Loupi”, 60 pages, 30 full-page colored pictures, ca. EURO 3.20, eBook on Amazon

PS. If you like to get my 3 Secrets To A Writing Mindset, download it for free from here:

The post Books, books and more books first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Books, books and more books appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

I can hardly believe it, but it’s real: my second children’s book is printed and waits to be shipped to Switzerland.

“Leonard and Lea” is the continuation of “Leonard and Loulou”, but you might read it first and you won’t miss anything of the whole story. In this book, Leonard doesn’t only have a cat as his friend, but also his new classmate Lea, who is laughed at by the others in school, exactly the same way as they do it with Leonard.

He experiences for the first time how it is to have a friend, who feels the same way as he does.

How did I write this story? Leonard, in real life my younger son, soon 14 years old and me, developed the storyline. It has been a year ago. We drove a few hours to a place in Germany, where I did a reading of the first book.

We started with the question, what would Leonard like to have as a new friend. We designed Lea: with red hair and a pink school bag. We invented her story, why she joined Leonard’s class in the middle of the school year. We asked ourselves how the two of them got to know each other better and how it came that they even met after school.

The plot got developed, step by step. Leonard helped me to create a natural story, and sometimes, he would tell me, that his classmates would not behave this way, and we shaped the continuation differently.

It has been so inspiring to work with my son on the story. When we got home from Germany, I started writing chapter after chapter. In between, I read the text to him. Most of the time, Leonard was excited about it. Sometimes, I needed to discuss again a situation with him, when I wasn’t sure whether it would make sense what I had in mind.

The story got quite a bit longer than the first one. But it was done rather quickly. The first reader was excited, too, as well as Teodora Puncheva, the art professor and illustrator of “Leonard and Loulou”. Her contribution with these wonderfully detailed and colorful illustrations seems even more dense to me, as if she got more familiar with the characters of human beings and the animals.

I’d love to create a trilogy and continue in a third book with Leonard’s story. There would be so many other episodes to talk about. Bullying at school is such a big theme nowadays, and the topic of feeling oneself not good enough is such a huge topic, even adults are suffering from it – including me.

If you like to discover the whole story of “Leonard and Lea” in German and English, order it here. There is even a special, numbered edition, which will be personally signed and dedicated to the one you choose.

Enjoy the story and the very beautiful illustrations!

The post A beautiful and touching second book first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post A beautiful and touching second book appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

What are the most touching moments during the readings of children’s books?

My very special moments are when small girls and boys start telling things like about a cat, who came to their house, who did this and that and how that felt or like today, how a small boy told a long, long story with plenty of unimportant details about moving and so on in order to reveal at the end how it was that the cat purred.

It is amazing to realize that my story about the boy Leonard and the cat named Loulou resonates with children.

But not only with children… Another touching moment was when an adult told me at my very first reading that my story reminded her so much of her beloved dog from childhood that she was moved to tears. Or one colleague bought my story because when he was a kid, his cat always walked him to school as Loulou does with Leonard in my story.

Today, at my first reading close to my Swiss hometown Winterthur, I didn’t expect a big audience. Fifteen minutes before the start, half of the restaurant was full of joyful, small and big children and even elderly people, and at the start, all 30 chairs were taken.

What a moment to stand in front of this big audience and to see all these open eyes and minds to listen to me!

I’ve been reading stories to children since many years. My two boys, now 13 and 15 and in puberty, listened to me every night. We read together so many books, we read all books written by Astrid Lindgren. We travelled with Jim Knopf and Lukas, the train conductor. We suffered with the figures of Brother Grimm, and when we didn’t have a book at our hands, I started inventing stories about an elephant who was too big because he loved eating, and how many times, my boys told me to continue the story about Frederic, the elephant.

Reading to a big audience like today is completely different. It is strange because I am not that close to the children and I cannot feel exactly how they perceive the story. That’s why I love to ask questions in between in order be able to hear what they have understood and what they have been thinking of it.

One thing I was reassured of today: Animals like cats and dogs have such a big impact on people’s lives.

It gives so much color to my life with my two sons. Besides, our cat story only started five years ago with two cats. Then, Loulou joined us, gave birth to four babies. We kept two of them. Meanwhile, we only have three cats because one of the babies decided to stay at the neighbor’s house. I could tell so many stories about our cats, how they disappeared, how we found them again, how many dead mice, but even more living mice had visited us, and how many of them, I had to catch. Funny moments, I can tell!

The sequel to the first book won’t talk about mice but will be the story about «Leonard and Lea», and there will be a dog playing a big role together with the cat Loulou. The story is already complete in my mind, and more than three-quarter of it written down. As soon as I have some quiet moments without running after mice, I will get it finished.

The post Touching children’s hearts first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Touching children’s hearts appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 24 first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 24 appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Baby cat Loulou got pregnant before it turned one year old. But even at this young age, it is a wonderful mother.

When I got to bed that special night, Loulou slipped under my cover. It was rather hot there and Loulou realized after some minutes that this wasn’t a good place to give birth to its babies. I made it a nest on the matrass beside my bed and felt asleep very quickly.

Three quarters of an hour later, I woke up and saw Loulou with two wet kitties very busy with cleaning them. I had promised my two boys to wake them up in case…

Excited by this little wonder happening in my bedroom, we three observed Loulou and its two charming creatures. We thought two babies would be enough. So we could keep them both. But suddenly, Loulou laid down again. It sounded like a fart when a black ball rapidly got out of its body. Loulou took of the bag of waters and dried the third baby by licking it softly.

Okay, three babies would be enough, we thought. But after a few minutes, number four slipped out of its mother, very quietly compared to number three. Oh, dear! We’re so proud of our cat mother.

Loulou did all as I had read before. It ate all four placentas. “It looks like a dark brown slug”, Little Boy said which was a very precise description.

It was 1.30 a.m. 10-year-old Boy and me, we two were not tired at all. “I go to bed now,” Big Boy said, “and I’ll look at the details in the morning!” That was a clear statement by my 12-year-old.

The exciting adventure with our cat family is 10 days old today. Nature is gracious to us. All four kittens and its mother are healthy, drinking, sleeping, drinking, sleeping, getting washed by its mother, smelling wonderfully like newborn, peeping from time to time when they cannot find a free teat.

We could spend hours and hours by watching this small miracle.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

The post Birth of our four kitties first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Birth of our four kitties appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

The other day, we’re talking about travelling to India again. Big Boy was rather excited about the idea, Little Boy wasn’t. So, we started discussing, we three, about the good and bad things about spending our vacation in a totally different country than Switzerland.

Little Boy told us: “I’d be coming under the condition that we won’t sleep again in this cottage hotel with a lot of spiders, cockroaches and worms which were eating the wooden walls at night and disturbing me in my sleep. I want to have the nice hotel room we had when we went to India the first time.” This was a clear statement. Big Boy reacted in a way I wouldn’t have expected: “Oh, no”, he said, “I loved our cottage in this beautiful garden with a lot of nice plants and flowers, and I loved it because it was so simple.”

Well, two boys, two different views… I tried the financial aspect: “The first time, we had more money and the third time, we tried to keep the budget low. And for the price of one night in the nice hotel room, we could sleep ten nights in the bamboo cottage. What do you thing about this?”

Little Boy answered, surprisingly different than we expected: “I have enough money on my bank account to pay one night or two in the nice hotel or if you want one week.” This was typically Little Boy and very generous.

We kept on discussing a while, but couldn’t find a solution fitting to every one’s needs of us three.

I tried a different approach: “How about the flight”, I asked the two boys. “Cheap flight, long travelling time and at least two stopovers? Or an expensive flight with Emirates, but quick and only one stopover.”

“Emirates….! Definitely”, cried Big and Little Boy. “We want to watch again all the movies like the first time. Not like last time. The service wasn’t nice and the movie program was rather poor.”

Okay, okay… I said: “Our budget is limited. Emirates would cost us more than 1500 Swiss Francs on the top of the cheap flight. Do you want to spend this money for just the movie program”, I asked.

Big and Little Boy started to evaluate what makes more sense: cheap flight, expensive hotel or expensive flight and cheap hotel. And they tried to calculate which solution would be more suitable for my finances.

Little Boy tried to reduce costs by a cheap flight, in order to get rid of the bothering insects. Big Boy tried to convince me of a comfortable and short flight, in order to prevent me from jetlag and exhaustion. That was very sweet by him. But I understood that he didn’t want to renounce to the entertainment program.

At the end of the meal, I was proud of our reasonable conversation with my 10 and 12 years old boys, but I proposed to postpone any decision and get back to it another time.

I’ll let you know how and when we’ll be finding the solution for our next trip to India.

The post Different views first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Different views appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Conversation between brothers: Scene 23

16.15 am after school

Little boy:    “Did you listen to what mom said?”
Big boy:        “No… why?”
Little boy:    “Don’t disturb me…”
Big boy:        “Oh… poor you… you’re feeling disturbed…”
Little boy:    “Yes… I said stop…”
Big boy:        “Oh… yes, I heard that. What’s your problem?”
Little boy:    “I have to do my homework now.”
Big boy:        “Go on…”
Little boy:    “But you’re disturbing me.”
Big boy:        “Oh… my little brother…”
Little boy:    “Leave me now…”
Big boy:        “Well… I see you want to do your homework.”
Little boy:    “Yes.”
Big boy:        “You’re such a eager beaver.”
Little boy:    “Stop insulting me…”
Big boy:        “Oh. You’re feeling insulted. Poor you.”
Little boy:    “Yes. Go away…!”
Big boy:        “Oh. You’re such an excellent scholar.”
Little boy:    “Stopppppp. ”
Big boy:        “Okay… you’re such an intelligent boy…!”
Little boy:    “Stopppppp.”
Big boy:        “You know. I’m cheesed off with school.”
Little boy:    “No wonder… with your intelligence!”
Big boy:        “Hey. Now, you’re insulting me. Stop.”
Little boy:    “Ha, ha, ha… you see how it feels!”
Big boy:        “I didn’t insult you as much as you did.”
Little boy:    “That’s what you think…”
Big boy:        “Yes…! But it’s true…!”
Little boy:    “No…!”
Big boy:        “Yes…! It’s true…!”
Little boy:    “No…!”
Big boy:        “Yes…!
Little boy:    “Stop!”
Big boy:        “You started!”
Little boy:    “No. You did.”
Big boy:        “Oh. What a liar.”
Little boy:    “Come on.”
Big boy:        “Mom. He’s so mean.”

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 23 first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 23 appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

4.10 p.m. on a holiday afternoon

Big boy:        “Who is your girl-friend?”

Little boy:    “I don’t have any girl-friend.”

Big boy:        “What? Are you sure?”

Little boy:    “Sure enough.”

Big boy:        “But who’s writing you messages?”

Little boy:    “You’re so curious.”

Big boy:        “Tell me!”

Little boy:    “How about your girl-friend?”

Big boy:        “Girl-friend?”

Little boy:    “Yes. Come on!”

Big boy:        “I don’t have. Girls are all b…!”

Little boy:    “I don’t believe you.”

Big boy:        “You know my school mates.”

Little boy:    “What’s wrong with them?”

Big boy:        “They behave in such a daffy way.”

Little boy:    “I know…”

Big boy:        “I cannot stand it.”

Little boy:    “I’m glad. The girls of my class are different.”

Big boy:        “Wait… they’ll soon be the same way.”

Little boy:    “O my god!”

Big boy:        “And they always stick together…”

Little boy:    “Yes… I saw them during the break.”

Big boy:        “I cannot talk to them any more.”

Little boy:    “Fortunately, we’re boys…”

Big boy:        “Oh… yes!”

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 22 first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Conversation between brothers: Scene 22 appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Why not?

She’s 87 years old, our remarkable grandmother, living in Geneva in her tiny apartment.

“Do you play Beaver Gang with me”, asked Big Boy.

“Well, I’ve no idea what this is”, said Grandmother. “But, why not!”

Big Boy explained the game to her. Very quickly like a fast train. One could hardly follow. They started. She didn’t know what to do, but she kept on, always smiling.

“Now, you have to look at this card and exchange it with this one”, Big Boy tried to help, with a big smile on his face, too. Little Boy followed, amused as well.

She didn’t give up, played until the very end of the game. Big and Little Boy contributed their part to the successful ending.

“What a funny game”, Grandmother concluded, although she didn’t understand all.

The Boys wouldn’t have noticed what Grandmother has told me: It’s worth to say more often “why not” instead of “no”.

The post Why not? first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Why not? appeared first on Swiss Made Story.