Operation Beautiful-Have you paid it forward today?

I've always been interested in affirmations and positive self talk.
If you were to visit my house you would find affirmations on my bathroom and bedroom mirrors, posted on my doors, kitchen cupboards and other random places around the house. 

When I had a chance to review Caitlin Boyle's new book "Operation Beautiful" I couldn't resist. You see Caitlin was tired of watching people, especially women pick themselves apart over their weight or other inadequacies. She jotted down a little note on a post it pad that said, "You are beautiful" and placed it on a public bathroom mirror. Then from there Operation Beautiful began. It picked up momentum and spread around the world like wild fire. People were finding post it notes with all kinds of wonderful, encouraging sayings on them in the girls bathrooms at school, in line at the bank, the backs of marathon runners, grocery store isles and even on the window of a blood donation center. "Smile, You are beautiful!", "Beauty is here forever", "This is not a trick mirror. You look awesome" are just a few of the encouraging comments people left. What a great way to pay it forward!

What encouraging words could you leave for someone to find?
Here's the encouraging words I posted on the bulletin board by our neighborhood mailboxes. 
Everyone in the neighborhood will see it!

Can you imagine if every young woman in the world grew up believing in herself and excepting her body the way it is? No more negative self talk? Feeling empowered?
Operation Beautiful is full of remarkable reminders of how special and unique we all are and how we can gently help remind each other of this in subtle ways. Caitlin Boyle shares simple ways to lead a more focused, appreciative life. 
If you are struggling with self confidence, weight loss or just need a great book to read this book is for you! If you have young daughters you can practice the same techniques used in this book to instill in them now while they are young how beautiful they truly are. Have a teenage girl in your life? Give this book to her as a gift and inspire her to pay it forward to all her friends.
This isn't just for girls either. Leaving encouraging messages are beneficial for boys and men also. Reading a positive message can have many beneficial effects on the body and mind. It's sort of like having someone smile at you.


To read about Caitlin and more encouraging "Operation Beautiful" notes that continue to be found around the world check out Operation Beautiful


Giveaway! To win your own copy of Operation Beautiful and a post it note pad it's very simple:

• Sign up as an Intentional Conscious Parenting Newsletter subscriber (Three entries)
• Follow ICP on Facebook http://bit.ly/dzUBeM (Two entries)
• Follow on Twitter http://twitter.com/intuneparenting (One entry)
• Visit Operation Beautiful and leave a comment and return here and leave a comment letting us know about all your entries. (Four entries)
• Tied entries will be selected by random.org

If you win I will contact you for your shipping information and someone from Penquin will ship it off to you. The winner will be announced the end of next week. 


Have you read Operation Beautiful? I would love to hear about it. Did you pay it forward and leave an encouraging note for someone to find? What did your post it note say?
Are you having your children do the same? Email me pictures of the creative comments you and your children came up with and I'll post your pictures, blog links and info on our blog.
intuneparenting@gmail.com


http://www.intentionalconsciousparenting.com
Written by: Carol Lawrence

What We Have By Amy Boesky

I recently read the most amazing book. 

What we Have

One Family's Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, and Survival

By Amy Boesky

Amy Boesky tears at your heartstrings, brings out tears of joy and sorrow as she gives you an intimate look into her world from the viewpoint of being a daughter, sister, friend, wife and mother all over the course of one year. 


She'll captivate you with her stories, her strength, her triumph and tragedies as she experiences the roller coaster called life. She shares her compelling stories of growing up fearing the "C" word (Cancer), balancing being a daughter, a loving wife, mother and building a career. She'll mesmerize you until the end. Amy's book is heart-wrenching and heartwarming all at the same time. If you only have time to read one book this month this should be it. 


"What we have" makes a great gift. Especially for the women in your life. Your mother will love this book! Plan ahead for the Holidays and beat the rush! Purchase a copy now or sign up for our giveaway.



How would you like to win an autographed copy of "What We Have"
Amy has graciously offered an autographed copy for our Intentional Conscious Parenting readers.


Here's how you  can enter to win:

• Sign up for our Intentional Conscious Parenting newsletter.  Newsletter link is on the right side. We never send spam emails or share your information with anyone! (counts as two entries) If you already are a newsletter subscriber let us know and you still earn two entries just for returning and reading our post.
• Sign up as a follower (counts as one entry)
• Follow Intentional Conscious Parenting on Facebook (counts as two entries)
• Follow on Twitter (counts as one entry)
• Follow Amy on Facebook. (counts as two entries)
• Visit Amy Boesky's website. to learn more about Amy and her books, informational links on dealing with cancer and more. (counts as one entry)
• Return here and leave a comment letting us know you visited Amy's site and what you found most intriguing about it and what all you signed up for so all your entries are counted.

Thanks for being a loyal reader of Intentional Conscious Parenting!
We love our readers. We are putting together a special prize drawing for our Intentional Conscious Parenting Newsletter subscribers this Fall. Keep in touch for more details.
Remember sharing is caring. Please retweet and share this post.






Have you read this book? We would love to dialog about your feelings on the role our beliefs and genetics can play on our health. If you would be interested in this please let us know.
We'll have a follow up post in a few months after our readers have had a chance to read this book first.


Written by: Carol Lawrence
http://www.intentionalconsciousparenting.com

"Things to do to become a writer" by Josh Berk

Last week during the writeoncon conference Josh Berk gave a virtual key note. He shared this wonderful poem. I contacted him and asked if I could share it with our readers. He said he would be honored.
So here it is. Enjoy!


"Things to do to become a writer"
Be born into a house filled with books.

Spend some of your time living fully in the world

And part of your time watching it.

Study poetry so that you learn to love language for language's sake. 

Then study journalism so that you learn how to get out of the way of a good story.

Read everything you can get your hands on.

Write a poem or a story or an article that will never be published.

Read some more.

Write another poem or a story or an article that will never be published.

Find someone who will read your work and tell you what they think. 

If they tell you it's wonderful and there is nothing that should be changed, find someone else. If they tell you that it's over-written and boring in parts tell them thank you.

Then write it again, even though it will never be published.

Read no more than two books on how to write, and no less than one.
Write a poem or an article or a story that will be published! And celebrate a bit. 

Raise the bar slightly for yourself and try to publish somewhere bigger.

Don't despair when this doesn't work. Keep writing. Write stories, poems, articles, anything.

Does one of them feel like it could be a very long story? Twenty pages? Fifty pages? Keep working at it even if - oh my Lord - it feels like you're writing a novel.

Don't think about it too much. Just keep writing. 

This novel will never be published.

Show it to your writing partner. And listen to what they have to say. Listen to what everyone has to say. 

You must be doubtful enough of yourself to realize that you are a beginner not an expert. You have work to do. You have tricks to learn. 

But you must be confident enough in yourself not to give up despite the mounting rejections.

That's really what they're called. Rejections. Why did you sign up for a profession so filled with rejection? 

You must enjoy the work. Because even if you do all these things there is no promise of any sort of anything at the end. 

And that story that grew and grew did become a novel! 

And hopefully it was at least a little bit of fun writing it. Otherwise you won't do it again. Which is too bad because this one was not published & never will be.

So you write another one. You take everything you learned from those books, everything you learned from your critique partner, everything you learned from the countless hours writing that first one. 

And you write another one.

And it doesn't get published.

And then idea strikes you -- something wild and weird and strange and unforgettable. And it's all you think about. You become the character. 

And you write for the love, for the fun, for the art, for the magic. You write like a poet, you write like a journalist, you write like a story-teller. You write like a novelist.

And your critique partner reads it and says, "You're ready.

After you fix these 25 things."

And so you do. And you polish and polish and polish and then: it's business time. Don't fret about the business. If you're savvy enough to put together a job application and ace an interview, you're savvy enough for the business. 

It's not you they care about anyway. It's the writing. So you write a query letter, you send it out to a bunch of agents, and, hey ... one of them likes your book. Enough to tell you to do massive re-writes. So you do. Because you can sense it. Your foot in that door.
And a literary agent offers to represent you -- offers to represent your book -- well it's just a manuscript now, no one even hints of calling it a book yet. But some day.

And a lot of revisions later.

It will be.

-Josh Berk

Check out Josh's blog and see what he's been up to. 

Posted By: Carol Lawrence
http://www.intentionalconsciousparenting.com

For all our writing friends: Query Letter Don'ts

Have you been participating in Writeoncon?
WriteOnCon is an online writer's conference for kidlit writers. 
It has been amazing!
We are really enjoying the conference and learning a lot.
If your having a problem getting on writeoncon.
Try this: http://tiny.cc/eoq9s and please spread the word!


The line up of agents and authors has been super inspiring. 
We can't wait to put pen to paper and get to writing! 


Query Letter Do's & Don't's video by Kate Schafer Testerman who founded Kit Literary


Even though she doesn't represent picture books her query tips are a must for every writer.

Here's some quick notes I took while listening to the video.

Querying Don'ts

Don't let anyone else send your query letter, including manager, business partner or even a literary reference.

Don't write from the view of your characters. Your characters are not seeking an agent you are.

Don't say your novel is going to change the world or be the next best seller. Use it to tell your story.

Don't waste time telling about all the kids you read it to that think it's the best book they've ever heard.
The kids aren't critics or editors.

Don't waste time in the query letter the lesson she'll learn from the book. Readers don't want to be taught they want to be entertained.

Follow agents instructions.

Personalize each query, know your agent and be able to say why you are contacting them, reference a current client or mention a recent blog post or note on twitter.

Don't create a new category or genre for your novel. Don't refer to it as a fiction book. This works: Magical realism, urban fantasy, chiclit, science fiction, and comedy. But not all together.

Know where you would want your book shelved in the book store and use that catagory.

As you move past the book describing the query onto the bio.
Don't include gardener etc unless that's what your book is about.
Don't brag about any writing experience you don't have

Include any classes, workshops taken.

Don't stress out about the query letter. If manuscript is strong enough someone somewhere will love it!

Include name and books title in the body of query.


Posted by: Carol Lawrence
http://www.intentionalconsciousparenting.com

Do You Twitter? Have you watched your own Twitter parade yet?

Hello everyone, if you are a regular reader you know we are on Twitter.
We love our Twitter followers.
We want to share something really cool with you.
Check out our very own twitter parade.
Check out our twitter parade here!

If you twitter you'll want to watch your own twitter parade. 
Pretty funny.
Clever invention!

5 Reasons We Like To Use Twitter

1. It's quick and easy to use
2. You can reach a wide audience any time of the day
3. Twitter followers love to follow each other
4. Twitter is a great place to make friends
5. You can use Twitter to guide people to your website, share a new product, promote your book and on and on and on..............You name it, you can share it!

Click Here To Follow Us On Twitter
Be sure to leave a comment with your twitter link so we can follow you back!

P.S. Our Blog Frog community is growing as well.  Intentional Conscious Parenting Blog Frog Community
Click above link or stay awhile and take a look around and when your ready just click on the frog to the right side of this post towards the bottom of the main page to check our our BFC.

Great Gifts For The Writer In Your Life!

Great products at our Intentional Parenting Zazzle Store.

Best Selling Author Coffee Cup Coffee Mug from Zazzle.com

This Best Selling Author Mug Makes An Excellent Gift....Are you an aspiring author? Creating the life of your dreams? Have a friend who writes?

Get them a special gift. Support their writing dreams.

Every time they take a drink they'll think of you and be inspired to write!

Great for Birthdays, Book signing parties, Holidays and more!

You can even personalize your own coffee cup! 

Add your name, photo or title of your book and make it more real.