The first step is disassembly:

1. Drew removes the book cover with a box cutter.
2. He then would slice a sheet or a small group of sheets away from the adhesive binding in the spine of the book until all sheets are free from the binding.
3. He would pull off any glue residue and hanging chads.
4. To make the pages a consistent size for my scanner, he repeatedly would align small groups of pages in a regular paper cutter and trim the binding edge.

This process could take 45 minutes or so, depending on the book page count and the strength of the binding adhesive.

We just bought this 12″ heavy duty paper trimmer which drastically reduces the time needed for steps 3 and 4 above.

After removing the book cover, this time Drew inserted the bound pages into the 12″ cutter. With one smooth motion, this trimmer chopped off the adhesive spine, leaving all the pages loose with an even, straight edge ready for feeding into my scanner!

This disassembly job only took about 1 minute! It took more time to position and clamp the book into the cutter than to liberate the pages from the book cover.

I’ll scan the pages in my trusty Epson ES-500W scanner (replaced by the ES-500W II). It scans 35 double-sided pages per minute, collating the pages into a PDF.

I do have some extremely rare books for which I paid too much money to consider disassembling them. I’ll leave those books intact and use the CamScanner app to photograph their pages and create my PDF. The original books can hold court on my bookshelf for years to come.

Regardless of whether I made the PDF using my scanner or the app, I run Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and file compression on it. You’ll find my PDF Optimization instructions in Step 3 of Planning Your Trip to Public Domain World.

With an optimized PDF as my script, I’m now ready to prep and record the book.

The post Creating a PDF From a Public Domain Book appeared first on Karen Commins.

Signs and coincidences are not just funny little weirdsies… They are not accidents. They are real. They are cosmic messages. They are made of love, and they are for you… There is a web that connects all things, all timelines, all thoughts, all possibilities, and certainly all souls… What you call a coincidence is nothing more than a moment when you actually notice the web… If you were even more tuned in. more calm, and present at all times, pretty soon you will see nothing BUT such glimpses, signs, and coincidences.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, 8/2/26 Letter From Love newsletter on Substack

Shortly after writing the quote in my book, I was bloomscrolling on Substack and saw 2 random notes from people I don’t follow that contained the same message. When 2 people who didn’t collaborate say the same thing, I know the Universe is trying to tell me something! The messages were:

THIS DID NOT APPEAR ON YOUR TIMELINE BY MISTAKE! August is about to blow you away with massive abundance and success!
— @EliseMcDowell

August will be a month of abundance.
— @BadRedheadMedia (Rachel)
(The message looked like it came from a fortune cookie.)

ACX had notified me on the previous day that one of my audiobooks is on sale throughout August. That’s certainly one way the Universe could bring some massive abundance and success to me this month!

When our housekeeper came last week, she asked me about meeting the incomparable Barry Manilow. At the precise moment I showed her the pictures, the SiriusXM Escape channel started playing Daybreak! Even she recognized it as one of Barry’s songs!

That afternoon at the dentist, I liked the electric mix of music, but I was still surprised to hear ABBA’s Dancing Queen. I always feel that’s a hello from my Daddy!

It’s easy to dismiss or completely miss little occurrences like these. However, sometimes too many related “coincidences” are stacked together that I must believe they were ordered by the Universe.

When writing about my experience of meeting Barry Manilow, I was reflecting on all of his concerts I’ve attended. One in particular stands out because a number of so-called coincidences taught me a valuable lesson.

In June 2002, I had to travel to Phoenix for a 2-week class about installing and administering the Microsoft Exchange 2000 email server and client programs. Yes, PHOENIX. In JUNE.

I didn’t want to be away from Drew that long, and I hate to be hot. Everyone assured me, “Phoenix is not like your hot and humid Atlanta summers. It’s a DRY heat.”

True, but it was 10-15 degrees warmer there and felt like sticking your head in an oven!

You can imagine my elation when my boss told me I could stay home, and she’d ensure that I would attend a local training class. Unfortunately, the project manager, who lived and worked in Phoenix, whined to the big boss about my lack of attendance. The big boss called my boss, who called me and gave me the bad news: start planning a trip to Phoenix.

I was completely pissed off about the prospect of attending this class and struggling to stay awake every day in a hot office with a bunch of my colleagues from across the country whom I didn’t know well as the project leader droned on endlessly about the intricacies of EMAIL for 2 loooonnnnggg weeks.

Ugh! Tarring a road would be a much worse job, but this seemed pretty bad. I absolutely did NOT want to to go!

Daddy told me that if I had to go to Phoenix, something good would come out of it.

On 6/6/02, I wrote in my journal to the Universe and my guardian angels:

Do you have some purpose in mind that is causing me to go to Phoenix on 6/17 for 2 weeks? Is something good supposed to come out of it? Please help me to understand the purpose for that trip. I’m still aggravated that I have to go.

While I could certainly entertain myself in my hotel room for the entire time, I hate to think that is what will happen. I won’t have a car, so I wouldn’t be able to meet anyone who could utilize me for v-o.

I’m wondering if I could work out something on the Friday that I leave. I will miss seeing Barry by 1 night as he will be in Tucson on Sat., 6/22. I was just thinking about trying to meet some casting people on Friday and staying to see Barry on Saturday. I don’t know whether I could work any of this out.

I spent the next few days trying to scrounge a ticket to Barry’s Tucson show at the Anselmo Valencia Amphitheater (yes, outdoors…in Tucson!) and could only find a lawn seat.

In a surprising and delightful twist, another fan whom I didn’t know saw my 6/10/02 post about tickets in the Barry news group. She emailed me the next day and told me she’d sell her 3rd row ticket to me at cost! I was beyond excited! She inexplicably waited 3 days before sending me the ticket to me via FedEx. I was so relieved when it arrived the day before I flew to Phoenix!

My 4+-hour flight seemed like an eternity. After I climbed into the window seat of a cramped row that didn’t recline because it might block the exit row, I then had to sit with my knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of me because that passenger leaned back practically in my face. How I wanted to rest my chin on the top of her seat and spit on her face!

While Atlanta enjoyed a sultry 91ºF day, the weather was a scorching 109ºF upon my arrival in Phoenix.

Linda from the NY office, whom I had just met on the first day of class, had rented a van for the duration of the class. She asked me to go sightseeing and to dinner with her after work. I was talking about renting a car for my 2-hour drive to Tucson on Saturday when she generously volunteered to drive me there!

We spent that Saturday doing fun, touristy things on the way to Tucson. After dropping me at the venue, Linda amused herself by photographing the the scenery outside and enjoying the air conditioning and games inside the Casino del Sol next to the amphitheater. The casino and amphitheater, which are owned by the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, sat on land covered with dirt, rocks, and cacti.

As I found my seat, I discovered that the 2 people sitting directly in front of me in row 2 had 3 big guide dogs with them. One dog belonged to Bob, and Debbie owned the other two.

As we chatted — and melted in the stifling 107ºF air — before the show, Bob told me he had Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. He said he lived on Social Security payments and couldn’t even afford to buy a new CD. He and Debbie had taken the casino shuttle to get to the show. However, the last shuttle was leaving at 10:15pm, and the concert wouldn’t be over until 10:30pm or so.

Debbie asked if I could take Bob home. I decided that a man aged 50+ with Parkinson’s and epilepsy who was attending a Barry Manilow concert with his service dog posed little risk of being a serial killer! I called Linda to ask if she was allergic to dogs or would mind an unexpected passenger and side quest for a few miles. It turned out Bob’s house was only about a 10-minute detour for us on our way back to Phoenix. He profusely expressed his gratitude for our help.

Think about all the improbable “coincidences” the Universe arranged so that Bob and his dog could get home safely that night:

1. My work caused me to travel from Atlanta to Phoenix.
2. My boss was overruled about me missing the Phoenix class, making my appearance there truly a command performance.
3. I then realized I could see Barry in Tucson while I was in Arizona.
4. Another fan whom I didn’t know happened to see my message looking for tickets and sold me a fantastic 3rd row seat.
5. That person waited 3 days to send the ticket, but I received it just in time for my trip.
6. I sat directly behind Bob and his dog at the concert.
7. A co-worker who was new to me rented a van, not a car, and asked me to join her for meals after class.
8. She demonstrated incredible kindness in driving me to the show in a city 2 hours away, which is going way above and beyond, especially for someone you just met!
9. She agreed to take Bob and his big dog home in that spacious van that she happened to rent.

I think things happen for a reason. Often, though, we don’t know the reason because it’s not about us.

This time, the reason was very clear…and unforgettable.

That night taught me that when I’m facing some situation I don’t like, I should look for the gift and/or the way to be of service to someone else. I’m not always successful in adopting this mindset and therefore spend too much time and energy being angry about something I can’t change. When I remember to focus my attention on others, magic can happen!

By the way, Linda told me later that she won $35 that night at the casino. I’d say the Universe was smiling on her for all the help she gave to Bob and me!

The post Coincidence — Or Something More? appeared first on Karen Commins.

I can’t remember when I first heard Barry’s music. However, I know that I became obsessed about Weekend In New England shortly after he released it on 27 November 1976.

I was in 10th grade, and I played oboe in my high school’s symphonic band. I LOVED the oboe part in that song! Even though I had never arranged any music, I decided I would write out the parts for every instrument in our band so that we could play the song. I, of course, would have those wonderful oboe solos!

I listened to the record over and over and over and over to hear all the instruments and write the notes I thought I heard. This process was even more complicated because I had to transpose notes for the key of the instrument. Plus, I had to include the key change in the song. I wanted my arrangement to sound full and rich like Barry’s orchestra, though we didn’t have a string section.

I don’t remember how long it took to complete my transcriptions — possibly longer than it took for Weekend In New England to peak at #10 on the Billboard Top 100 on 26 February 1977.

Alas, my band director only let us play my masterpiece one time. I’ll never know if it was shelved because my arrangement had too many wrong notes, my fellow students had trouble reading my handwriting, and/or my teacher didn’t like Barry. I’ll always suspect it was due to that last reason.

When I went to college, I stopped playing or even listening to music. I worked at the IRS while going to school, so I didn’t have much time for anything else.

After graduating with my BA in Journalism, magna cum laude, desktop computers were in their infancy. I landed a highly-coveted position as a computer programmer. The hiring manager knew I didn’t have the technical skills at the moment, but I demonstrated in the interview that I had the aptitude for the work and am a fast learner. More importantly, I had the communications skills that were desperately needed for teaching the staff how to use their new computer hardware and software.

I discovered programming was a great match for my logical and analytical nature. I wanted to learn things and go deeper in my new career, so I went to grad school at night to earn my MS in Computer Information Systems.

Two life-changing events happened in 1992:

1. I finished grad school.
2. I saw Barry Manilow on an Oprah Winfrey show.

In watching that interview, I remembered how much I liked him in the 1970s. I bought a Greatest Hits CD. I thought that would be enough. It wasn’t.

The more I listened to Barry, the more I wanted to hear. I bought some of his albums. I didn’t know if he still performed in concert. I just knew that if he ever came to Atlanta, I was determined to see him.

Oh, yes, he was still doing concerts! He was in the midst of his “Greatest Hits and More” tour when I saw him for the first time on 30 July 1993 at Lakewood Amphitheater here in Atlanta.

I wrote in my journal:

I was very pleased with our seats. We were very close to the right end of the stage.

His curtain was multi-colored, with MANILOW embedded in it so that you could only see it when the light shone upon it. I was so excited at my first glimpse of Barry! I could see him through the curtain.

He began singing Ready to Take a Chance Again; I thought my heart would burst from joy!

I wrote more, much more. Many songs were old favorites. I wrote about Weekend in New England that I didn’t think it was humanly possible to sustain a note as long as he did on the ending When can I hold youuuuuuu?

Some songs were new to me, including Brooklyn Blues, If Tomorrow Never Comes, and I Made It Through The Rain.

I did something the next day that I’d not done in my teenage years for my then-idols David Cassidy and John Denver: I joined a star’s fan club — the Barry Manilow International Fan Club (BMIFC)! I’ve been a card-carrying member ever since!

The word “fan” is shorthand for “fanatic,” and that’s what I became after that first concert!

Since Barry wouldn’t come back to Atlanta any time soon, I decided to go to where he was.

My second show was 4/26/94 in Knoxville, TN, a 3-hour drive away. I was thrilled to have front row seats! Prior to the concert, a fan behind me offered to buy my ticket for $50. I said, “Absolutely not! This is a thrill of a lifetime!” My end-of-show handshake with Barry put me over the moon!

At the end of 1994, Drew and I went to Las Vegas for the first time. I was lured there by Barry’s wonderful New Year’s Eve concert at the old Aladdin hotel. (I’ve now seen a total of 14 Manilow concerts in Las Vegas! I’ve made several trips there and attended his show on subsequent nights. Once, he held my hand in 2005 while singing Copacabana; trust me, a hand hold is sooo much better than a shake!)

By the mid-1990s, I had met and made friends with other fans on-line by using my Compuserve account to access the old Usenet groups. (Anyone remember those?) I started traveling to more Barry concerts in other cities. I’ve now seen him 57 times in 21 different cities! Don’t worry — I won’t tell you about all of them.

Until I started attending so many concerts, I never realized how vitally important music is to my soul. Barry was the conduit to get me back into listening to and enjoying music, and, as a result of that step, actually playing music again after being away from it for over a decade. Rather than simply returning to piano, oboe, or flute, I started playing the harp.

I admire Barry for his tremendous philanthropy in addition to his musical genius. After he saw budgets for school music programs continued to be cut, Barry established the Manilow Music Project. This organization helps schools obtain and repair instruments and awards college scholarships to students and grants to teachers. He honors a local music teacher at his concerts.

Atlanta hosted the 1996 summer Olympics. To raise funds, the Atlanta Olympic Committee sold engravable, commemorative bricks to be laid in Centennial Park. Drew’s parents bought a brick with both our names on it. I bought 2 bricks of my own:

Through the 1990s and 2000s, I collected Barry’s recordings, sheet music and songbooks, programs, pictures, pins, apparel (shirts, hats, and jackets), bobblehead, videos (VHS, laser disc, and DVD), music boxes — if it had Barry’s name on it, I wanted it! I bought from the BMIFC, other fans, eBay (I was an early adopter in 1997), and even record collectors and stores around the world who responded to ads I ran in DISCoveries magazine. I definitely acquired some rare recordings that way, like colored vinyl from other countries!

I also found rarities by checking out record stores wherever I traveled. When Drew and I went to England and Scotland in 1997, we spent more time thumbing through dusty bins of records than visiting museums!

In 1999, I sold a big chunk of my Barry memorabilia in order to buy my first pedal harp. However, I still use my Barry Manilow I Made It Through The Rain umbrella, and posters and a cardboard cut-out of Barry adorn my craft room. The Hamburg poster on the right has its own story.

I also won’t part with the RIAA gold record for Barry Manilow II, Barry’s second album which includes his first big hit Mandy. Can you believe that song hit #1 over 50 years ago? The gold record belonged to Dick Fox, who was Barry’s agent at the time.

While Barry was in town on 12 July 2000 to promote his delightfully fun 2-act musical comedy Copacabana, he did an interview on the 99X FM morning show. I was listening to it that day while I was at work at the IRS. They invited fans to call in, and I was thrilled to actually talk to Barry! His advice to “create your own stuff” applies to all of us in creative fields.

If you listened to my exchange with Barry, you might be wondering what he wrote about following your dreams in his 1987 autobiography Sweet Life: Adventures on The Way to Paradise. Here it is:

I believe that we are who we choose to be.
Nobody is going to come and save you. You’ve got to save yourself.
Nobody is going to give you anything. You’ve got to go out and fight for it.
Nobody knows what you want except you,
and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don’t get it.
So don’t give up your dreams.

One of my dearest dreams has been to meet Barry and have a private, meaningful conversation with him. On Saturday 1 August 2026, after seeing Barry in concert for the 57th time across 33 years, that dream came true in Nashville!

It was especially meaningful to meet him now because Barry had lung cancer surgery at the end of 2025. No one knew whether he’d want or be able to go on stage again. His concert was FANTASTIC!

He was so warm and kind. I called to Drew to join us, but Barry told me that we’d first take a picture of just us, and then we’d take one with Drew.

Meeting Barry was an incomparable thrill and a memory I will always cherish!

I’m looking forward to seeing Barry’s concert again in Atlanta this week!

I didn’t have time to tell him that we fans want him to update his memoir, and I want him to record the book as an audiobook. Barry, when you’re ready for that task, I would love to narrate the introduction for you!

Other resources on this topic:

Articles:

• 6/17/06 Hollywood Star Search
• 5/27/10 3 Cs of Branding Illustrated by Barry Manilow
• 5/28/10 3Cs? Make the *4Cs* of Branding Illustrated by Barry Manilow
• 6/5/24 Living With No Regrets
• 4/29/26 Stop The Comparisons

Harp videos of Barry’s songs:

• 8/21/22 Even Now first 2 pages
• 1/22/23 Copacabana 1st stanza
• 8/13/23 Even Now full song
• 11/19/23 This One’s For You
• 5/5/24 The Old Songs 1st verse and chorus
• 5/26/24 Can’t Smile Without You
• 9/1524 Ready to Take a Chance Again
• 1/26/25 Mandy
• 8/10/25 Somewhere in the Night

The post I Met Barry Manilow! appeared first on Karen Commins.

You may be thinking, “That’s great, but what does your presentation have to do with AI?”

This article will answer that question.

Background

When I worked for the IRS, I read Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points, and it changed how I develop presentation slides,

Atkinson instructs you to create a storyboard of your discussion points. Using his process, you’re able to scale your presentation to last from 15 to 45 minutes. You can download his invaluable templates on his site

Due to this system, I don’t make ugly, boring slides consisting of black text bullet points on a white background. Instead, each slide displays a captivating image that has something to do with the idea I will address.

As you might expect, it can take some time to locate images that correlate to your talking points. I can spend weeks creating slides for a presentation.

I often have to pay to license the graphics on my slides. I use Public Domain (PD) images whenever possible, but modern concepts usually call for modern images.

AI Advances

Whether or not we want AI attributes in our software, manufacturers are shoving AI down our throats in all of our applications — often without the capability for the user to opt-out of the AI tools.

We’re increasingly bombarded with overly enthusiastic messages like:

• “Everybody is using AI. You better get on board, or you’ll be left behind!”
• “The AI can create what you need in seconds!”
• “Think of how much time you’ll save!”

In fact, the TV show HACKS included just such a conversation in this week’s episode. I was glad to hear Ava’s character speak about the lack of ethics in AI tools. Most Large Language Models (LLMs) have been trained using copyrighted texts and art without permission from or compensation to the creators. Also, the tremendous power consumption required by the data centers is doing terrible things to the people in their communities and the planet.

Meanwhile, many people have embraced AI as part of their everyday life, seemingly without regard to any privacy concerns. One of our friends told me she asks ChatGPT numerous questions every day. She said it saves her time doing research. She does investigate the options the Chatbot presents her, but I suspect most people don’t.

Other people I know create every new fad meme made with generative AI just because they saw it on social media. They either don’t know or couldn’t care less about the lack of ethics and power consumption used for their little bit of fun.

Ryan Holiday discusses in his 5/7/26 newsletter how AI is destroying our critical thinking skills. By writing our thoughts, we are “focused, patient, and disciplined.” We become different people as we learn how WE think rather than blindly accepting AI suggestions or asking a chatbot to write something for us..

My Initial Forays Into AI

I will say that I have used the AI tools in Evernote and Adobe Acrobat. In both cases, my usage is akin to a semantic search of my material contained in the application.

In Evernote, I often ask the AI Assistant to find an entry among my 20K+ notes that contains a certain quote or describes a situation. I also heavily rely on its transcription tool on newspaper articles, recordings, and even my journals because it recognizes handwriting. The linked article outlines the many corrections I must make to the transcriptions and includes info about Evernote’s data privacy policy.

With Adobe Acrobat, I have interrogated its AI Assistant about the PDF of a Public Domain audiobook as part of my prep for an audiobook I was about to record. (I’d need to fully read the Privacy Policy and related FAQs before I asked the AI Assistant anything about a copyrighted PDF.) I’ve asked it for:

• analysis of media influences in a court case
• character descriptions, accents, and pages where they have dialogue
• page numbers where the author referred to himself in first person
• pronunciation list of proper names
  • In one case, I asked it how it knew that the name should be pronounced the way it suggested and not the other way that name is commonly said. The bot supplied its reasons. I did some research to find a family member and confirmed the pronunciation with them. Adobe’s AI Assistant got it right.

Here’s where my current AI dilemma comes into play.

Experiment

In my June presentation, I’ll teach narrators about using the wealth of Public Domain works, which is material on which the copyright has elapsed. Things in the PD belong to ALL of us. If the corporate overlords who built the LLMs behind generative AI had trained them with PD works, I would eagerly use every AI tool available.

Some people argue that AI advances are no different than the Industrial Revolution. Technology advances inevitably put people out of jobs.

AI is different, though, because of its origins in stolen copyrighted work. I can’t ignore that aspect.

I have to confess, though, that my strong desire to save weeks of time, possibly generating the whole series of slides with a few keystrokes, tempted me to see what AI actually could do for me.

I have a subscription to Microsoft Office 365, which excitedly assures me that its Copilot could:

Generate and edit images, posters, infographics, banners, and more: Turn ideas into pro-grade visuals in minutes. Just describe what you want to create—AI handles the heavy lifting so you can focus on the message, not the mechanics. Then, make precise, targeted edits with our AI visual editor.

It first guided me to choose a template in one of these categories:

• Recommended
• Pitch Deck
• Business and Productivity
• Research Shareout
• Project Report
• Marketing

Templates have been a mainstay of Office for decades. I’m a firm proponent of templates and other ways to be efficient.

However, none of the templates looked like anything I envisioned or want to use.

I started a chat in Copilot. I first asked, “How can I generate a Powerpoint presentation based on a theme without using a template?”

It responded with an in-depth series of steps to manually make a Powerpoint file, starting with a blank presentation, choosing colors and fonts, etc. In other words, I was shown the same process I’ve followed for the last 30 years.

I then asked, “I know how to manually make a presentation. I want to know how to use Copilot to generate a set of images for my slide backgrounds that all visually related to the key word I give it.”

This time, the bot gave me a much better response, saying:

Got it —you’re not asking how to design slides, you want a repeatable Copilot workflow to generate a cohesive set of background images that all “feel like the same collection,” driven by one keyword.

It offered another lengthy set of instructions and pointed to this official reference.

I wrote a very specific prompt to request an image, and the rendered graphic beautifully matched my description. Inserting it in the slide then caused Powerpoint to give me numerous design ideas about the text.

Conclusion

My experiment made me want to see whether I could develop my whole presentation this way. I haven’t decided which way to proceed: the old manual method of finding — and possibly paying for — suitable images, or the new approach of generating them. I could even choose a hybrid plan as I’ve already found some good images on stock photo site.

Hence the title of this article — An AI Dilemma.

What choice would you make if you were me? Please leave a comment!

The post An AI Dilemma appeared first on Karen Commins.

One meaningful quote leaped off the screen at me! I immediately reached for the nearest piece of paper, which happened to be a notepad from work, and copied it:

I have never done anything for the money or the charts. I do what I want to do because I believe in it, and it’s always been that way for me.

I didn’t even listen to the radio back when I first recorded Mandy, so I never really knew what was going on, and I still don’t.

When you start trying to compete with what everyone else is doing, you’re lost. (my emphasis)

After suffering from comparison-itis for years, I wrote in my journal one day:

Maybe this is my purpose!
Maybe my biggest challenge is the thing
I was sent here to learn and teach.

While I can’t say I am completely cured from comparison-itis, I do have some techniques to keep it at bay.

Background

Sometimes our professional comparisons are healthy and motivate us to create goals and improve our performances, processes, and tools.

Unfortunately, many of the questions we might ask other narrators just set us up for unfavorable comparisons that aren’t useful.

Many of these comparison points, like the number of audiobooks someone has narrated or publishers they have worked for, are just arbitrary statistics. They shouldn’t be a measure of self-worth or success, but it’s easy to internalize them that way.

You can feel like you’re “not normal” if you can’t consistently record 2 finished hours per day, or you could feel “less than” if you aren’t booked months in advance.

Like your fingerprint, your narration career is unique to you. We all have different capacities for the amount of work we can and want to do based on our availability, interests, income requirements, lifestyle, etc.

The worst flare-ups of comparison-itis hit me when I looked at social media, which I still do more frequently than I’d like to admit. I could be having a fine day and feeling good about myself and my place in Audiobook World. Then, I opened Facebook, and would see…

“I just signed a 10-book series with my dream author!”

I have literally felt punched in the stomach or the sensation of my heart dropping when I unexpectedly saw such an announcement, especially when the books in question would be right up my alley, but I was never considered for them.

“Three new-to-me publishers sent me books this week! Persistence pays off!”

I would see statements like that and think, “I’ve been persistent for years. Why not me? When will it be my turn?”

A pitfall of online narrator groups and social media in general is that these sites invite the Comparison-itis Monster to take up residence in your mind and run rampant in your thoughts. As you know, people primarily show their highlight reels on social media. We don’t see the areas of their lives that aren’t so rosy or the behind-the-scenes struggles that came before the big accomplishment.

It took me a long time – too long! — to realize that, whether I see someone sharing a humble brag or simply some good news, my feelings about these kinds of comments from other narrators had nothing to do with them and everything to do with ME.

I resolved I would STOP THE COMPARISONS and, like Barry Manilow, run my own race!

Quotes

These 5 quotes about the negative affects of comparisons reinforce my intention to focus on my work, goals, relationships, and life.

Comparison is a cancer of the soul.
— Unknown

To compare is to despair.
To compete is to deplete.
— As I discussed in this article about competition, I saw the first line and added the second one.

We should never watch to see what another is doing or how he is doing it, for when we do this, we are limiting our own possibilities to the range of another’s vision.
— Ernest Holmes

We won’t be distracted by comparison if we are captivated by purpose.
— Bob Goff

I will write what I want to write, without any worry as to comparisons with “Gone With the Wind.” A writer is only responsible to himself, not to the critics or the world.
— Margaret Mitchell

Tactics

Everything I wrote in Change Starts With Your Thoughts and Words — especially the 6 Actions I’ve Taken to Develop and Maintain a Positive Mindset — apply here. I offer 3 additional steps to help stop the comparisons.

1. Define for yourself what SUCCESS looks like and means to you.

2. Start a regular journaling practice to share your thoughts with yourself.
My journals help me see where I’ve been and where I want to go. I can write my thoughts about situations and people, make plans, and choose better thoughts.

If daily journaling seems daunting, you could simply write a gratitude journal every day. Some people like to do it as the last activity before bed or first thing in the morning to start your day right.

I’ve even seen journals that prompt you to write just 1 line a day. It’s a great way to dip your toe in the water and begin a journaling practice.

3. Have at least one hobby that gives you a creative outlet and sense of satisfaction.

Hobbies keep your mind from dwelling on other people or situations and open your life up for a richer experience. Not only will your mental health improve, but possibly even your physical health.

Instead of thinking about what other people are doing, I think about what I can do to continue moving forward.

The post Stop The Comparisons appeared first on Karen Commins.

Someone asked how to store and catalog all the assets that you create. Our fabulous host Joel Froomkin suggested that Evernote would be a good tool for this purpose.

He’s right!

As I’ve previously written, I love Evernote because it synchs across my devices and is always accessible to me. It offers tremendous flexibility in how you store info and search for it. You can use tags, the title, key words, and dates in your search.

You can add videos, photos, and audio to a note. Evernote also will transcribe your media, including your handwriting!

A Google search revealed plenty of apps for the specific purpose of holding your social media components. Airtable would also work well for this task, but I don’t know whether or how well you can use your phone with it for uploads.

I didn’t want to buy another app or test Airtable. I use Evernote for everything and wanted to try it for this purpose.

As an experiment today, I used my iPhone to:

• capture some images and videos during my day in Grand Cayman
• create a folder in Evernote named Social Media Assets
• add a single note in the folder for each picture or video. You could add multiple media to a single note, but I want each thing to be a separate unit for searchability.
• edit some video clips together in iOS iMovie

The ship’s Wi-Fi is horrendously slow. I also found that it often timed out or logged me out on my phone, especially when I was uploading the videos. I had much steadier reception using my laptop.

Since it was so problematic, I uploaded the images from my phone to an iCloud folder. I then signed onto the Wi-Fi with my laptop and imported the media into my Evernote notes.

I wouldn’t have any issues in uploading videos and pictures straight from my phone into Evernote using regular cellular service or land-based Wi-Fi.

Here’s the 2:26 explainer video I made in iMovie. It doesn’t highlight screen taps as I normally would show in a video I produced at home. However, I think you can get the gist and see how quick and easy it is to use Evernote to catalog your clips and photos.

When you’d want to use the asset you’ve stored in Evernote, you could Open it and Share it to another app, or download it. I’d rather Open and Share it from within Evernote so I don’t have multiple copies of the thing.

A better option might be to store the resource you’ve made somewhere in the cloud like Google Drive and add its Share link to Evernote in addition to or instead of the asset. You then could use Evernote for inventory and search and always have a link to the component.

This Evernote note has the intro clip that we filmed after breakfast that I used in the video demo. I corrected the date and transcribed the video. The video doesn’t load for me on ship, but it should be available and will probably download if you’re on land.

I recorded this tip for cruisers:

If you want to see the notebook containing all the clips I created today, please send me an email. Note that I will process the requests after I get home.

Want to learn more about Evernote? I created a 10-module video course for members of NarratorsRoadmap.com. I show Evernote’s basic features and how I use it for my Customer Relationship Management (CRM) records.

I also want to mention that when I write anything substantive on a social media platform — whether my own post or comments on someone else’s — I copy it from the platform into Evernote so I might repurpose it later. My words belong to ME!

I found in today’s experiment that I took far more pictures and videos than I usually would in a month! Plus, I learned how to do some things; for instance, I’d never used iMovie on my phone. I also learned the importance of uploading videos to YouTube rather than my WordPress site!

The biggest benefit to the experiment was that I felt more creative throughout the day as I was specifically looking for interesting things that I might want to include in my private journals, articles, and social media posts.

Thanks so much to Jess Moran for explaining your system and giving me a new approach to documenting my life!

PS. We had a great time shopping in Grand Cayman! I saw this sign as we walked around and couldn’t resist sharing it here!

The post Storing Social Media Assets in Evernote appeared first on Karen Commins.

It was 5 years ago today — 18 March 2021 — that I first heard about the situation that inspired my forthcoming book.

By the end of that year, I hadn’t done much on the project even though I kept thinking about it. I’d found 2 books and originally planned to mash them up in a new book like I did with Nellie Bly’s and Elizabeth Bisland’s books about their competing and very exciting solo trips around the world in 1889, creating Bly vs. Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg in a Race Around The World.

However, 6 months later, I wrote in my journal on 22 June 2022: It’s been on my to-do list with no movement forward.

Fast-forward another 1.5 years to 5 December 2023. By this time, I had discovered a third book on my subject, which made my idea to combine texts more complicated. While this project was never far from mind, I still hadn’t taken much ACTION on it.

And then, I attended Jennifer Jill Araya’s workshop Dream Big: Year-End Goal-Setting for Creative Entrepreneurs.

I’m a planner by nature. I know and have written about goal-setting. I understand and have also written about the importance of writing your goals. I definitely get stuff done!

Yet I hadn’t taken the first steps of figuring out and writing a goal for this project until that afternoon with Jennifer. Writing a thought or a wish turns it into a goal.

Jennifer walked us through the framework for setting SMART goals.

As shown on Jennifer’s slide, SMART goals are:

• S — Specific
• M — Measurable & Meaningful
• A — Attainable & Assignable
• R — Relevant
• T — Time-Bound

I wrote my goal for the first time that day. I excitedly shared it in the Zoom chat:

In my Evernote notes for the workshop, I wrote “first quarter 2024” as my timeline for completion. I had no idea that I would feel called to do original research and how that would change the scope and deadline MANY times!

I wrote in my journal on 2/24/24:

It took me almost 3 years from the idea to get fully immersed in this story. Maybe the Universe had to align things for me to meet someone who gave me invaluable advice about structuring my story.

The project scope and my self-imposed deadline have changed several times, but my commitment to the work has only grown stronger. I craft my book every day!

Drew told me something that has become my guiding principle:

Write the book that YOU want to write.
Don’t worry about any deadline that you have set.

Longtime readers (and those who clicked some of the previous links!) know that one of my favorite books is Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want and Getting It.  Author Henriette Anne Klauser offers a number of creative ways to write down things, from filling in blanks in theme books to writing letters.

She assures us that any kind of paper or writing instrument will do. Her only rule is to date whatever you write down.

i’m not sure whether typing your thoughts on your computer screen has the same effect as putting your hand to paper. While we write using our keyboards and screens all the time, we have a greater personal connection when we physically write something on paper.

I actually had explored writing this kind of book about 30 years ago, but I ruled it out for a number of reasons. I didn’t realize that my old dream was now being fulfilled for me until recently when I transcribed my journal from 30 August 2000. This example further convinces me some ideas take time.

Acquiring my dream harp was the same way. I wrote at least 20 years ago — maybe longer — that I’d love to have a Lyon and Healy Style 11 because it has irises on the column and soundboard. I didn’t see it as a true possibility for me, though, and I even forgot I wrote it down. I certainly hadn’t had this model at the forefront of my mind when the opportunity suddenly arose in 2023 for me to buy this harp!

I encourage you to listen to those little glimmers of ideas, write them down, and see how great your life becomes as a result. The Universe will conspire on your behalf in its own good time and way to help you make them happen!

Screen shots from Jennifer Jill Araya’s slides used with her kind permission

The post Write It Down. Make It Happen! appeared first on Karen Commins.

Inspired by this article about how John Steinbeck used his diary while writing The Grapes of Wrath, I’ve been documenting my progress in researching and writing my non-fiction book in my daily journals. My journals are much more interesting as a result!

I then photograph my journal entries related to my book and use Evernote to transcribe them. Longtime readers know I’m an Evernote evangelist and use it for everything. I love it even more since Evernote actually transcribes my handwriting!

Authors who write in longhand could use this technique to quickly generate editable text rather than having someone laboriously type it.

I store these transcriptions in the Evernote notebook I created to house my book’s 1900+ (and counting!) research notes.

I tag the journal entries to be able to easily find them later. Once I launch the web site for the book, I’ll re-purpose all my journal entries into a new blog devoted to the book! The blog will certainly improve my SEO ranking for my book’s topic.

Since I was already doing that, I thought, “Why not transcribe the entire journal entry?”

On 12/14/25, I finally embarked on my long-held dream of digitizing my handwritten journals! I started keeping a regular journal on 8/28/99 and now am writing in book #86.

Over the years, Drew and I have looked for the best method to accomplish this task:

• I ruled out using my flatbed scanner because it takes too long to actually scan, plus you have to sit there with it and turn pages.
• I want to keep my journals intact, so that eliminated my super speedy Epson ES-500W from contention. I often use that scanner to create PDFs of Public Domain texts after Drew disassembles the book from the spine. I outlined my steps to perform OCR and otherwise optimize the scanned PDF in step 3 of Planning Your Trip to Public Domain World.
• Reviews of hand scanners made them seem unreliable and persnickety to use.
• The CamScanner app could do the scanning, but it doesn’t recognize handwriting.
• We bought a CZUR book scanner when they first came out. It also seemed to take too long to scan and was cumbersome to use, so we sold it. The newer CZUR ET24 Pro machine is far superior to the one we sold, but their app doesn’t recognize handwriting.

Since Evernote recognizes handwriting, I’m excited to use it to digitize my journals.

Here’s the process I use to transcribe my handwritten text:

1. Write in my journal as usual.
2. Take a picture with my phone’s camera of each page in the entry.
3. Crop the saved photo(s).
4. Share it to my computer. I AirDrop the photo between my iPhone and iMac.
5. Open desktop Evernote. (It’s usually already running.) Evernote will transcribe images on the phone, too, but I found it to be very frustrating because it would eat up time and memory.
6. Create a new note in the journal notebook.
7. Drag the journal picture(s) into my Evernote note.
8. Hover the mouse over the top right corner of the picture until the Transcribe button appears, and click it. Refer to the picture below.
9. Proof Evernote’s transcription for accuracy.
10. Create links to other entries, research, etc. that I mentioned in the journal.

It’s important to check the transcription carefully against the source text. The transcription process makes mistakes, including but not limited to these errors:

• For my handwritten text, Evernote’s transcription frequently uses wrong numbers, whether I’ve written a time, date, or a word count.
• It leaves out commas where I had them — almost always ignoring the Oxford comma and commas between independent clauses — and adds them where I don’t want them.
• It adds ‘s for plural words, which, as a grammarian, annoys me considerably!
• It removes the NOT part of contractions, completely changing the meaning. For example, wouldn’t becomes would.
• Even with typeset text from newspapers, magazines, and books, sometimes Evernote:
  • paraphrases content
  • removes, adds, or changes words
  • makes up whole sentences entirely.

I’ve used this process in transcribing my research finds. The transcription errors become worse as an article’s length grows. I’ve learned to break up long columns of text when I’m transcribing newspaper articles.

So far, I’ve transcribed 148 pages of my current journal and am up to date with it. I started transcribing Journal #1 from 1999 and have completed a number of its entries.

With over 26 years’ worth of words to transcribe, this project will definitely take a while! I keep this quote from Leo Tolstoy in mind:

A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his ultimate goal
and say to himself every morning:
“Today I’m going to cover 25 miles and then rest up and sleep.”

PS. If you’re interested in developing a journaling practice, I’ve previously written how I use my journal and things I’ve learned about adding entries to my journals. I shared some entries with their take-aways in my This Date in My History series of articles.

Important note about your data privacy when using Evernote’s transcription tool

Evernote’s AI Transcribe FAQ states:

For audio, transcription processing occurs within Evernote. For audio summarization and image and video transcription, some data may be shared and processed by a third-party AI vendor.

Such content is only processed to complete your summarization or transcription request. Your data is not used to train AI models. Files are processed securely and deleted by third-party processors within 30 days. If you need more info, you can always review our Supplemental Terms, our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.

Whether you’re using the audio transcription tool, the video transcription tool, or you’re converting your screenshots to text, you can trust that your content stays private and secure.

The post Digitizing My Journals With Evernote appeared first on Karen Commins.

I’ll share more as I continue with this project.

Behind the Scenes

I first wrote a bulleted list of the pieces of info I wanted to include in the video. I wrote the script and then recorded and edited it in my studio.

As is the case whenever I make a video, I always create my audio first and then match the visual components to it.

I either created the video clips by recording the screen with Camtasia or downloaded them from Storyblocks.com, where I have a subscription.

Their image search is very frustrating and frequently doesn’t reveal useful graphics, so I was pleasantly surprised with the video search. I quickly found usable clips that matched very well with my voiceover.

For instance:

• I said ‘But wait! If I’m going to write a new book, why not add my own research and conclusions to it, especially since I LOVE this kind of research?!’
  • During the first part, I showed a lightbulb that is outlined in blue neon, and the filament spells IDEA.
  • In the second part, I play a video of vivid hearts.
• Near the end, I say, “I still have much research and writing to do.”
  • I love the construction sign clip that flashes up the words “Work Zone!” I think it gives a nod to my site with my vacation postcard logo and my NarratorsRoadmap.com.

During a tour of the New York Public Library, we learned that the lion statues out front are named Patience and Fortitude, with Fortitude being the one closest to 42nd Street. I stood by the one named Patience because Drew and I agree that I could use more patience in my life!

We bought DJI Mic 3 wireless microphones for our live video shoots in New York. In past years, I had tried several lavalier mics and had not been satisfied with the sound quality from them. Drew researched wireless mics and discovered that podcasters use this DJI mic. It interfaces with a phone, making it an easy and portable choice.

At the end of the video, you’ll hear an F-major harp glissando, which I played on my Lyon & Healy Style 11 harp. I set my B and E pedals to sharp, which is the lowest pedal position. Instead of 7 tones in the scale, you only hear 5 of them: F, G, A, C, and D. It feels and sounds like magic to me!

Transcript with Video Description

[March 2021 calendar]
One day during the pandemic lockdown, Drew and I were watching a

[woman lecturing in sculpture gallery of a museum]museum’s
lecture over Zoom. The host mentioned a person and event that were on the periphery of the subject.

[handwritten Curiosity!]
I perked up with curiosity!

[Google what happened to]
I Googled the person to learn more. I thought the story would make a great book,

[Google is there a book about]
so I looked for one in the public domain that I could narrate, produce, and publish as an audiobook.

[pages turning in a book]
I found a book on my topic.

[woman’s hands thumbing over tops of a number of books]
Then I found another one. I discovered some other related titles and decided I could edit parts of them together and create a new book.

[blue neon lightbulb created in outline with the filament spelling IDEA]
But wait! If I’m going to write a new book, why not add my own research and conclusions to it,

[vivid multicolor hearts]
especially since I LOVE this kind of research?!

[Online Course in neon]
I went through a Research Methods for Writers course offered by my library.

[pan up from bottom to top of a stack of newspapers]
I’ve pored over 1000s of newspaper articles and

[Ancestry.com search for Immigration and Travel]
scoured Ancestry.com for factual evidence like passenger lists on ships.

[live shoot outside the New York Public Library, main 5th Avenue branch]
And now I’m here in New York at the world famous New York Public Library, ready to do more research on this exciting book project!

[live shoot outside New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on Amsterdam Avenue]
And today my research is taking me to the New Public Library for the Performing Arts, which is near Lincoln Center. I hadn’t actually been to this part of New York before, so that makes this research trip even more exciting.

[live shoot outside Columbia University, New York]
My research scavenger hunt in New York has now taken me to Columbia University. I’m so excited to be here, and I can’t wait to see what I’m going to find!

[white and orange construction barrier with words Work Zone]
I still have so much research and writing to do, and I look forward to sharing my first book with the world as soon as possible!

[Coming Soon in red neon on black background, with a single letter revealed at a time]
It’s even more exciting to me because it’s going to be a full cast audiobook, and I’m even planning the website.

[my postcard logo]
I’m Karen Commins, and I hope you’re living the life of your dreams! (harp glass)

The post I’m Writing a Book! appeared first on Karen Commins.

Rather than making New Year’s resolutions that were quickly abandoned, I’ve absorbed and applied a few guiding principles and actions over many years. Changing my thoughts and words have made a dramatic positive difference in my overall happiness and throughout my life.

Guiding Principles

1) Joel Osteen always says, “We can’t expect victory and talk defeat.”

2) Wayne Dyer always said, “We can’t get enough of what we don’t want.”

3) These 2 sentences are openings to the broad topic of mindset. Manifesting anything we want in our lives starts with our thoughts. Saying and writing our thoughts sends them out into the universe and gives them creative energy. Therefore, it’s vital that we are ever vigilant to think, speak, and write our words in the direction we want our lives to go!

Also remember: However we fill in the sentence “I AM ___” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!

4) In 2016, I saw a video of Mike Dooley, who writes the notes from The Universe. He compared the manifestation process to a GPS system. You have to enter your destination (a BIG goal) and then put your car in gear. Don’t worry if you’re going the wrong way because you’ll get guidance! He said:

Guidance will be forthcoming.
You’re going to quickly hear — perhaps over Barry Manilow – “Make a legal U-turn!”
And you’re going to hear that until you get on track.

Dooley said to adopt a mantra like “Every day, I’m getting closer.” He said you can get excited about the details, but don’t make them the end result.

It can be so difficult to stay unattached to a particular outcome and let the Universe fulfill your desire in its own way and in its own time. If you’re interested, I offered examples and many resources about affirmations, visualizations, and outcomes in Narrator’s Cup of Joe — Woo Woo Blend.

5) Wayne Dyer always said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

6) What you put out in the world comes back to you and in a time and way you didn’t expect. If I kept saying to the Universe with great angst thoughts and words like “Why not me? What’s wrong with me?”, that’s going to keep showing up for me. It’s an endless loop. You’ve got to throw a wedge in there to change that loop because it’s a perpetual, negative cycle. It’s a terrible act of self negation, because then you start thinking things like:

• Obviously, people don’t like my voice.
• People just don’t like me.
• They don’t think I’m a good person.
• They think I’m not reputable.

These thoughts have no basis in reality! However, concentrated focus on and repetition of them make them part of your identity! As Wayne Dyer, Mike Dooley, and other spiritual teachers/leaders have said:

What you think about expands. Like a cold, the more you talk about something and more emotional weight you give it, the more it becomes part of you.

Actions I’ve Taken to Develop and Maintain a Positive Mindset

1) During Kristine Oller’s Jan. 2018 webinar about mindset, I asked her how to break my habitual thinking of comparing myself negatively to others. She said:

• old ways of thinking were prompting my compulsion to check social media and make comparisons
• look at the story you’re telling yourself and then collect proof that the OPPOSITE of that story is true — find five pieces of evidence to “force your mind to become creative and flexible.”

I realized that I was using those posts to gather evidence in the old “not good enough” story! I would see something on Facebook which the inner enemy would seize upon and start re-counting for me the auditions I had not won, awards I had not earned, money I had not made, publishers I had not worked for, etc.

I wrote down 8 ways that my story is different and sooo much better than the one the enemy was using! Take THAT, inner enemy!

2) Celebrate my own accomplishments, not just on social media but in a real way.

3) When my brain wants to seize on something and get in a downward spiral over it, I repeat out loud this quote from Paulo Coelho: “Stop being who you were and change into who you are.”

4) Tell myself in the mirror each day all the positive “I AM” statements that I can dream up. Write them down and then think about them and repeat them out loud through the day. Louise Hay’s book MIRROR WORK is an excellent guide for this type of mental reprogramming.

5) Write a compassionate letter to myself and re-read it out loud as needed. I am a much harsher critic of myself than I ever would be to anyone else! My letter is full of encouragement and praise that I wrote as if I were writing it to another person. It helps to re-read it when that “little girl inside” thinks things are unfair. This idea is an exercise in the book SELF-COMPASSION: THE PROVEN POWER OF BEING KIND TO YOURSELF by Kristin Neff.

6) Change the second thought to one that makes me feel better.

It’s very low and very disempowering when I’ve felt hurt, disappointed, frustrated, and angry because I feel like I’m being rejected by the world and/or people don’t like what I have to offer. We cannot help that first thought. It comes barreling in, unbidden, and we’re not in control of that.

We are in control of the very next thought! We are in control of our choice of what are we going to do with that thought we just had. I choose to think in the next thought of things I wrote in my compassionate letter. It’s a perfect antidote because what we see on the outside is a physical manifestation of what’s going on inside.

The It Works! booklet by R. H. Jarrett is a good primer for changing your thinking to create the life of your dreams. I especially recommend you read Brad Jensen’s review even if you don’t get the booklet.

Wishing you radiant health, unbounded prosperity, and every happiness in 2026 and beyond!

The post Change Starts With Your Thoughts and Words appeared first on Karen Commins.