Improving Habit of Listening

Get into the habit of active listening. Listen to as many different people as possible - your friends, your family, your boss, co-workers, customers-anybody who can give you a new thought or perspective to think about. Ideas are almost always born of dynamic blending of thoughts, and the more you listen to what other people have to say, the greater your chances of striking a new idea you might not have thought of on your own.

View of old Arsenal Game

Its shocking to see how bad a good player like arshavin has become. Walcott never actually reached his peak of promise. He is a sinusoidal curve. He doesn't look up many times when he cross or cuts back. It's very bad from a player on whom there's a lot of expectations. Sometimes it's okay to just cut back or cross being hopeful. But most of the times?

And he can't take ball one on one and when two players approach him, he almost always loses possession. Arshavin on other hand is mystifying story. Its hard to tell whether his attitude on pitch or wenger killed him by playing him out of position. Nevertheless, which ever position he plays, he looks more shocking by the day. He is a classy player when he gets going with confidence, but everything seems to have deserted him.

I am actually more disappointed by walcott thanarshavin. Arshavin only screws us for 15-20 odd minutes. Walcott tortures us 60-70 mins. When with the crosses and chances we get on his side should be enough to at least cause panic in defence, but he rarely matches up the hype.

Politics between Senior Cricketers

Ganguly is known for pissing in when he is out of the tent! Kallis has the kind of bowling to back the team even when there are poor scores by batsmen. Let's see now. Australia was dismissed for 47 in SA. That gave a platform for SA to win the test. Indian bowlers have been ineffective for quite some time, with rare glimpses of brilliance. That's why we lose when our batsmen fail.

The big 3 headed mainly by Dravid have been carrying the show on their capable shoulders. India had been able to bat the opposition out of the game. So when we have a rare failure of all three, like in Australia, the Indian team starts to look very ordinary. And in England, Dravid stood tall. A little support from Tendulkar or Lax would have seen India put up a better show. Okay, here's another tidbit. when was Kallis ever asked to keep wickets, change his place in the order and generally get kicked around like Dravid has been. Or for that matter, has Tendya ever succeeded when he came down the order in ODIs? Did he ever come down the order once he wrested the no. 4 position? Even when Dravid carried his bat at the Oval and must have been dog tired, did Tendya volunteer to open? This is what we are doing to the best no. 3 batsman we have ever had! Given our circumstances,Dravid is any day superior to Kallis or Ponting!

We Indians have this knack of pulling down our best. to me Dravid is the best batsman, in Tests at least, that we have had! And Ganguly has been a waste of God given talent, who never worked to enhance his strengths or reduce his weaknesses. Who is he to comment on Dravid anyway?

Information to write Novel

I often touch on the different aspects of fiction writing in my blog, Writer's Edge[http://www.writers-edge.info], but I don't think I would presume to tell anyone else how to write their book. We all develop our own methods, sometimes different ones for different novels.

For example, right now I am working on my third book. The story idea arrived whole in my mind (a rare occurence for me!), so I wrote up a quick outline: beginning, middle, end. Some writers call this a "framework" for a book. Then I expanded the outline and found I needed a cheatsheet on each character, a list of settings, a chronology of events, and a chart of relationships (it's a complex middle). I tried having all this on the computer in one file of MSWord documents, but I really needed a faster reference method that wouldn't take me out of the page itself. I printed out the charts and tables and posted them on a bulletin board near my desk. I couldn't possibly keep all this information straight in my mind before I write the book.

Having this novel pretty much completely outlined allows me to focus on the writing craft now. After several decades of writing, I know that this procedure works much better for me than just writing and seeing where it goes (nowhere, usually).

For you, I would suggest that you first get a better grasp of the language, if you're going to write in English professionally. Never pass by an opportunity to practice good writing and to demonstrate your skills.