For ten years, GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was a benched book. I didn’t do much to publish it, though writing it had saved my life.
In 2017, when I considered which of my completed books to self-publish, I prayed and asked. I felt GoldenHeart was the answer, and I ventured into the publishing world to make it happen.
After I made the decision to publish this book, I found heart-shaped seashells for days, and heart-shaped potato chips. My husband found them too, and you should have seen his face when he opened this fortune in a fortune cookie: you have a heart of gold. I met people who told me things that let me know–this book had a destiny.
GoldenHeart’s goal? To teach you how to love yourself and humanity–a journey you will enjoy!
I am Christina Goebel and it’s nice to meet you! I have served humanity in many capacities, as a: wife, mom, waitress, restaurant manager, English teacher, conference coordinator, disability advocate, editor, author, poet, and artist. Everything I have done has contributed to this moment, when I get to share with you how to make your life rock so much more!
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
Inviting all writers! Tune in to X Spaces each Tuesday at noon Eastern Time (New York time) for the Cozy Book Nook X Spaces show. If you follow Christina Goebel at https://x.com/lovegoldenheart , you will easily see when the show is live.
While sharing with thousands of writers at Twitter, now X, I discovered several things that will help authors expand their platforms to ensure real growth. The writing community at X is loving and supportive. They are generous too, opting to share your pinned tweet, which most authors use to advertise their books. Unfortunately, I noted many of their tweets gain few likes or retweets, which translates into less promotion for their work. They deserve more credit and traction for their books.
In light of many recent webinar training I attended, I realized that few authors have a well-rounded platform of the type that will get them attention. They tweet about their books. A lot of writers have great videos and reviews that they share. Fewer showcase quotes from their work–as if social proof is more important than the language in their work. I’m not too sure about that.
I don’t think a lot of us have understood how X functions. People go there to socialize or gather some news. They don’t visit X to purchase things. It’s not a store. It’s difficult to encourage a person to leave an app to make a purchase when that wasn’t their intention. While authors market their books with tweets or posts on other social media, that doesn’t automatically lead to sales conversions (purchases of their books).
If you’re an author, verify what I’m saying by examining a tweet where you included a link to purchase your book. At the bottom of the tweet, select “View post activity.” Now, note the number of impressions. This is how many people at least had the tweet within their possible view. Engagements include how many times users clicked anywhere on the post, including links. If you don’t have engagements, you lack link follows and purchases.
If you’re self-published, or with the gracious support of your publisher, you can track sales or free downloads after you post tweets about your book. This is easiest when you haven’t had sales or if you are publishing a new work.
We should all pay attention to any data we can gather to gauge the effectiveness of our marketing and sales. Certainly, data helps. We need more too. We need to develop well-rounded campaigns that use an array of tools to inform the world of who we are and the works we have produced.
I’ll share more on this topic soon and how I decided to change the odds for the X writing community.
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
How To Be Verbs Can Have Little Meaning
Imagine that we read about Alice from Alice‘s Adventures Under Ground and the author said, “Alice is.” Maybe he said, “Alice is in a state of being.”
What is being? Existing, right? How does a reader visualize Alice being? I picture her standing there, doing nothing. We throw a whole lot of nothing into our writing when we fail to describe which action takes place. Yet, readers need details they can experience with their sensory memory. Remove all the to be verbs you can and replace them with solid action, such as “Alice sat on a round chair,” or “After Alice fell through a hole in the ground, she floated in mid air.” Now we see something meaningful and our readers deserve that from us.
Sentences Needing Work
We were going to the store.
They were given flags to display on the field.
Iwas writing all afternoon.
It was decided that the men would play baseball.
The play is going to be a hit.
The examples above contain words that serve little purpose in the sentence, and they do not represent easily identifiable action for the readers to imagine.
Let me show you edits for the sentences above.
Revised Sentences
We went to the store. (Didn’t need “going to” and the action is that they went.)
The club gave the players flags to display on the field. (Removing “were” helps us see that the original sentence did not tell us which characters gave or received the flags.)
I wrote all afternoon. (The action occurred in the past, so we can say that “I wrote” and eliminate the “was.”)
The organization decided that the men would play baseball. (When you examine “It was” to look for the action, the first question should be, Who is deciding what the men would do?)
The play will be a hit. (Sometimes you keep the to be verbs. Here, by removing “going to,” we have a stronger sentence.)
Further Edits
A further edit for the first sentence might be:
We rode our bikes to the store. (By using more specific action about how we “went” to the store, the sentence creates a more vivid picture. Hopefully, you have ideas how about to enhance this sentence in another step by describing how we rode our bikes. Did we ride at top speed?)
In the fourth sentence, the organization was deciding that men would play baseball. If this is in a novel, we should hear the decision making as dialogue, because people decide things by discussing them.
The organization’s president said, “After much discussion, we think it best that the men play baseball on Saturdays and basketball on Sundays.” (Dialogue brings “deciding” to life.)
For the final sentence, “The play will be a hit,” we never learn what kind of hit or why.
The play will win a Tony Award for its wondrous soundtrack.
Advanced Editing: To Be Verbs Weaken Poetry
In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” William Shakespeare wrote beautiful verse. Could it have shined more? Yes. Replace the to be verbs with specific action and imagery.
“Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon take thy flight:”
My imaginary edit for Shakespeare to add specific imagery keep his rhyme pattern
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now I die. Now I flee. My soul flies away from me: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon take thy flight.
In the original quote, Shakespeare made the second and third lines rhyme and the fifth and sixth lines rhyme too. “Sky” doesn’t rhyme with “light” and “flight,” but it possesses the sound of a rhyme with the last two lines. In my revision, the second and third lines still rhyme and the line with the slant rhyme before rhymes with lines two and three. I didn’t remove any terrific rhyme patterns or change the meter much.
Advanced Editing: A Closer Look at Poetry Editing
Examine the meme quote from Shakespeare: “My soul is in the sky.” What does that mean? What does it look like to have a soul that is in the sky? I don’t know.
During my imaginary edit for Shakespeare, I would have said, “Show us the action you imagine.” Shakespeare said: “My soul is in the sky.” Doing what? Flying? Then say that.
My edited version shows the soul in the sky and how it travels there: “My soul flies away from me.” I can envision air sweeping past the character into the sky. I imagine the character reaching after his soul as it passes. Oh, he lost it! Or, the soul “is” in the sky doing nothing in particular.
Advanced Editing: A Poetic Defense
During my imaginary edit with Shakespeare, he could say, “Well Christina, you messed up. I used a reverse verb and subject order for the first three lines. You switched the order. I wanted them to read:
“Thus die I… Now am I… Now am I”
Shakespeare might add that having that reverse subject and verb order served as a mid-sentence rhyme and it made the lines easier for actors to remember.
My edit had:
“Thus die I… Now I die… Now I flee…”
I could preserve his internal rhyme by switching my edit to “I die thus…”
Poets have many reasons for structuring lines, stanzas, and phrases the way they do. I advise poets to work at their imagery and I point out when I see where they can add some.
Each poet and author should have the final say about the sound and meaning of her or his work.
What about Hamlet’s Soliloquy?
Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” used to be in its truest sense. He asked, Should I exist? Live or die? (He had learned awful things about his family and didn’t face easy future decisions.) When you write about existence (being), then to be verbs work well.
Whether you write nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, to be verbs play the bad guys in your writing. You know what to do.
Edit Your Work to Replace To Be Verbs
When I took the edits to a deeper level, hopefully you saw how much personality action verbs and specific details add to writing. For my own writing, I complete several levels of edits and one type I use while drafting is to eliminate as many to be verbs as I can. I ask myself when I see the be, was, is, etc. if the sentence could have action verbs or if I failed to add details. After drafting, I search for these errors again.
If I imagine to be verbs as a character in a movie, they portray the boring one. They remove dialogue and details and replace them with “being.” Yawn.
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
Book Authority selects top books based on votes from influential thinkers.
Why Perseverance?
I wrote GoldenHeart after devastating personal and spiritual losses and I couldn’t see how my life would improve or how I would recover. The only thing that felt better then was writing a book to spare others the pain and isolation I felt.
Despite our circumstances, we can use love as a tool to persevere. Sometimes, it hurts too much to continue and I know that feeling physically, spiritually, and psychologically. While conflict resolution and a solid psychology course load in college helped me cope with situations, deep and miraculous healing came from sharing love with others.
You can love yourself or others first. Just love.
How to Persevere
When all you can think about is your problems, stop thinking about yourself. Take the focus off your problems and the way your circumstances aren’t making you happy. Now, look for others you can assist. I’ve helped people around me as well as doing organized and personal service for groups I felt inspired to help, such as orphans, foster children, people with disabilities, and people in poverty or who are homeless. I’ve always felt like getting involved when I saw homeless people, for example. They are not people I pass in my car. I want to hear their stories and ease their journey. I talk with them about what is most important for them, including immediate needs and long-term dreams.
While volunteerism usually starts with me feeling that I am useful for a community, it ends with my thanking that community for the love they taught me. Love heals. Reach out and show compassion for someone when you are suffering, and discover a new world.
Your Love Mission
You’re here to love the world — your way. Whether you help someone get or make a meal, or assist with math homework or taxes — or whether you encourage them at the gym or at work — wherever you are, you have skills that ease the lives of others. A smile for the person who thinks no one cares about her or him can save a life. Teaching someone a survival skill can too and we each have skills that help us persevere. We are stronger than our challenges. How do I know? We are still here.
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
I developed this editing series for fiction and nonfiction authors to save them time and money. After having edited for many authors and poets, I will tackle worst offenders here. Today’s topic is eliminating useless words. Let’s examine some.
The best editing takes your readers into your world without a thought for any mistakes. Image: Image by Ria Sopala from Pixabay
Sentences Needing Work
I am going to go to the store.
Are you preparing to leave?
He began to write furiously.
I am starting to believe that you have an excuse for everything.
The examples above contain words that serve no purpose in the sentence, and they are untrue. I am not going to to go the store. I am going.
Let me show you edits for the sentences above.
Revised Sentences
I am going to the store. (Didn’t need “to go.” )
Are you leaving? (Didn’t need “preparing to.” Notice the verb change.)
He wrote furiously. (Didn’t need “began to.” Notice the verb change.)
I believe you have an excuse for everything. (Didn’t need “starting to.”)
Further Edits
A further edit for the final sentence might be:
You have an excuse for everything. (After all, if I say it, then I believe it, yes?)
I suggest when drafting and editing your books or writing that you develop a suspicion of the word to. Am I using to as a preposition that indicates movement, such as “to the store”? Those are okay. Can I remove the phrase using to and the sentence will still make sense? If you can remove the phrase using to, do so.
In the final example, I removed I believe. Sometimes, saying I believe is useful. Other times, you won’t need to say that. Examine words you use frequently and if you or your characters say I believe often, have a good reason for the repetition.
Why Edit My Work?
Some people hate editing rules, but they are practical and meaningful. When you remove the extra words, your writing reads cleaner and truer. When I edit for the most advanced writers, I spend more time removing words that make their writing sound less unique and ensure they use more action, dialogue, and literary devices.
How to Save Money on Editing Services
If you hire editors for line editing (correcting the small mistakes like those above), Heaven help you. They charge more than other editors because it takes them hours longer. If you learn editing techniques, you then only need a lighter editing job, saving you money.
Future editing examples I provide will address some of the issues above, but next, I will share other problematic words and structures.
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions.
When I wrote GoldenHeart, it was after a frank conversation with God. I had a devastating life situation. Everything I had trusted and believed dissolved before my eyes. Faith and family have always resided at my core. It was like someone pressed a destruct button and everything I prized deserted me.
That’s a good moment to speak with the One upstairs. I asked, “What do you want me to do?” Because I could barely pray and didn’t want to live. People worry about saying things like this. I was not going to harm myself, but I didn’t have the will to participate in the drama anymore. The exits away from the scenario would all hurt deeply and involve a lot of work.
Within thirty seconds of asking God what He wanted me to do, the entire concept of GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity popped into my head like a download. I felt then that God had given me this book to write. As I wrote it, and worked feverishly to catch up to the ideas forming in my mind, I realized with humility that God had given me this book concept to save my life, then to save others, and ultimately, to serve in the lives of more people than I can count. It felt huge from the beginning.
If you are going through challenging times and every day is a struggle, I would like you to know that God excels in this area. When you have nothing left, pray. Things do not happen instantly. I think this occurs because so many lives intersect here. A change for you can impact others.
When I felt like nothing worse could happen and had to put Bible verses on Post It notes on doors to keep me moving, suddenly, God took over and used my pitiful weakness to usher in a new age of understanding.
I thought that family was everything and all of my love was intended for them. Looking back, my view of spirituality was limited to a small circle of people. Sure, I loved people everywhere because I was raised that way, but my happiness revolved around my focus on family and faith.
Then, there was no one. Sudden emptiness.
You know what God told me with GoldenHeart? That if I cannot love one person because they have removed themselves from me, then I can love all of humanity. We are not here to love one person.
If you are thinking that your close loved ones are what life is about, then what happens when some pass away? Who do you love then? Because either you or they will exit the equation one day. Death is an inevitability. In psychology, death is a top stressor of the human experience. All of our skills are needed to deal with some deaths of those close to us.
Regardless of your pain, if you expand your love to humanity, then your love is bigger than one person. When one is removed, it surely hurts, but you have the understanding that for your whole life, you will love many people in a variety of ways. Some need you desperately, and for some, I believe YOU are the only one that can save them with your compassion, kindness, caring, and service.
I can only think of myself in this moment as a tiny part of a gigantic history of humankind, and that God would look down upon me in distress and send me an instant book to write to save me and to reach you, I cannot believe that I am worth that time. However, at the same time, I know that God loves us deeply, so much more than we can understand. Babies don’t love us like we love them, not to the same depth. And we cannot love God as He loves us. As he loves YOU.
If you are struggling now, GoldenHeart is designed to speak to your heart and ultimately determine what your love mission is for the world, as well to investigate in the appendix fourteen Bible studies that have one main goal — to show you how God loves and how He loves you. I sobbed while writing the Bible studies when I wrote them and again when I edited them. I feel blessed to have been inspired in such a way and with such a blessing task. In the writing, love was revealed to me in a deeper capacity. I did not write about it in my book, but I felt guilty that I assigned little time to love One who loves me with such enduring force, and resolved that I will will continually pray, study the Bible, and speak with my loving God.
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
How many of us say we are going to do something and don’t? How often does that happen?
All the time, right?
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity is a love manual that will teach you how to love yourself and others in a greater and more expansive way than ever before.
When I wroteGoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity, it was what a reader would call a “thesis on love.” It shares why you often don’t love yourself, how to get out of that programmed thinking and learn more about yourself to love. The next sections teach how to love others better with life examples. The inspirational love manual shares the large-scale love missions of Nobel Peace Prize winners and everyday people. Then, the reader is urged forward into his or her love mission.
Which left me in a bind with my love mission, lol. I felt called to work with orphans, the poor, hurting, and homeless. Those are my people — the forgotten ones and the people who many ignore. For my second GoldenHeart book, I decided to write loving, inspirational messages on life topics for people who are orphans, foster kids, are bereaved, or who just feel alone, even if they have family.
While writing the book, I realized that my method of speaking, and being a woman would limit my love mission’s capacity to reach hurting hearts. This isn’t in a negative sense. There are people craving a father’s voice, you see. Or a practical one, or a voice sweeter than mine. So, I expanded my mission by soliciting the help of people with some of the biggest hearts I know. Some never responded. Some said they would submit something and never did. A few didn’t work out for various reasons.
But thirty-five of my peers did me a solid.
GoldenHeart II: We Are Your Family is a book meant for a lifetime, to pick up and read again whenever you have lost your way.
It took a lot of effort and is a time grabber, but GoldenHeart II: We Are Your Family is not a book. It’s a mission. I wrote a science fiction fantasy book and that is entertainment. But the GoldenHeart Series is a lifetime work to get it into the hands of people who need and want it. The e-book is free and the paperback’s profits roll back into the community it was written for by purchasing books for orphans and foster kids who don’t have access to computers, cell phones, or WiFi.
Sometimes, you undertake something and you know it will a huge commitment and you will need to pray for its completion and reach. That’s what the GoldenHeart Series books are. They are here to love the world. I hope the mission and love touches and blesses all who wrote for or read it.
I’m most at home on Twitter as @lovegoldenheart or on Instagram as @christinagoebel. I hope to see you and learn about your love missions — what you were born to do.
In this editing series, I explore common errors that I encounter when I edit for authors. In the previous post in this series, I warned writers to slow down when they see the word “to.” Now, I urge you to have caution around the to be verbs, particularly be and being, but also am, is, are, was, were, has been, etc.
GoldenHeart: How to Love Humanity was named one of the Top 100 Spirituality books of all time by BookAuthority! I was shocked and then I cried. GoldenHeart was part of a long journey — and a very spiritual one — that took me from utter despair to one of my greatest joys and passions. When …
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We need to develop well-rounded campaigns that use an array of tools to inform the world of who we are and the works we have produced.![Woman types on her laptop that has a heart on it. [To inspire positive emotion toward writing.]](https://i0.wp.com/lovegoldenheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ChristinaGoebel_NovelCourse-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1)
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