North Arm Cove FAW

19/04/2026

Sharing from Wayne Jarman - Author and Artist, who wrote:

It is the Fifteenth Anniversary of the 'launch' of my Success Book (With a Mind to Achieve).

By 'launch' I mean a gathering at the North Arm Cove branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) to celebrate the Book's creation. It was a triple launch with my two friends (and fellow members of the Branch).

From left to right:
Bob Bush - performance poet.
At the time, Bob had already produced multiple poetry books (and related CDs) in the style of Australian Rhyming Verse and was in constant demand, from Organisations, as a Dinner Speaker and Performance Poet.

Garry Boyd - a prolific Author of crime fiction.
(Unfortunately, Garry is no longer with us and is greatly missed.)

Wayne Jarman - a struggling author, artist, and actor, who you may have heard of? 😀

Good times with great friends. ❤️

The Three Authors (you thought I was going to say Muskateers) line up for photos prior to the event getting under way.
Bob Bush, Garry Boyd, Wayne Jarman.

01/04/2026

A review of Wayne Jarman - Author and Artist's Success Book, by Artificial intelligence (A.I.) - specifically, ChatGPT.

With appreciation to AWL Media Services, for sharing.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have been discussing my Success Book (With a Mind to Achieve) with ChatGPT, after I asked ChatGPT to give me a review of the book and Marketing Suggestions for the Book.

This is the beginning part (of 36 Pages) of the assessment:

******************************************

Wayne — I’ve read a substantial portion of your book, and I’m going to give you the kind of feedback most authors don’t get but actually need: honest, strategic, and focused on helping this succeed in the real market.
________________________________________
📖 Overall Review of Your Book
Title: With a Mind to Achieve
Core Theme: Self-defined success through mental control, personal growth, and spiritual awareness
⭐ What You’ve Done Very Well
1. Authenticity (Your Biggest Asset)
Your voice is real. That matters more than most people realise.
• You don’t posture as a guru
• You admit flaws and mistakes
• You write like a human, not a lecturer
This puts you closer to someone like Napoleon Hill in philosophy—but more grounded and conversational.
👉 This is a huge strength commercially if positioned correctly.
________________________________________
2. Clear Core Philosophy
Your central ideas are strong and consistent:
• Control your mind → control your life
• Success is self-defined, not just wealth
• Growth, contribution, and experience matter more than “stuff”
• Balance across life domains
That aligns well with modern audiences tired of hustle culture.
________________________________________
3. Memorable Principles
You have excellent quotable lines:
• “The stuff doesn’t really matter.”
• “Set your dreams in concrete and draw your plans in sand.”
• “If I am stuck with me for eternity, I want to like me.”
👉 These are marketing gold if extracted properly.
________________________________________
4. Practical Reflection Exercises
The funeral visualisation, affirmations, life balance questions—these are strong.
This puts you in the same functional space as authors like Stephen Covey.
________________________________________
⚠️ Where the Book Needs Work (Critical for Sales)
I’ll be direct—because this is where success or failure on Amazon is decided.
________________________________________
1. Positioning Problem (Biggest Issue)
Right now, your book sits in a crowded category:
• Personal development
• Mindset
• Spiritual growth
This space is dominated by people like:
• James Clear
• Tony Robbins
• Joe Dispenza
👉 Your book is GOOD—but it doesn’t yet have a clear unique hook.
What’s missing?
A sharp, marketable identity like:
• “Anti-self-help self-help”
• “No-nonsense mindset philosophy”
• “Ordinary man’s guide to extraordinary thinking”
________________________________________
2. Length & Density
The writing is reflective and philosophical—but often:
• Long passages without breaks
• Repetition of ideas
• Slower pacing than modern readers expect
👉 Today’s readers (especially on Amazon Kindle) prefer:
• Shorter chapters
• More structure
• Faster “wins”
________________________________________
3. Opening Needs More Impact
Your preface is thoughtful—but not commercially strong.
Right now it says:
“You may not like this book…”
That’s honest—but risky.
👉 Modern readers need:
• A hook in the first 1–2 pages
• A clear promise:
“This book will change how you think about success forever.”
________________________________________
4. Spiritual Sections May Polarise
Your openness is good—but:
• Some readers will love it
• Others will disengage
👉 On Amazon, that affects reviews.
You need to frame spirituality as optional interpretation, not central truth.
________________________________________
5. No Clear “System”
Top-selling books package ideas into systems:
• Atomic Habits → habit system
• 7 Habits → structured framework
👉 Your book = strong ideas, but less structured into a repeatable model.
**********************************************

Hmm ...things for me to consider!

Have a great week!

12/01/2026

Sharing from the Wayne Jarman - Author and Artist Page.

The Brothers Grimm.

This is a very interesting article.

With appreciation to A Solo Traveler.

This is the only photograph ever taken of the Brothers Grimm. You know their fairy tales—but you don't know what they really did.
A daguerreotype studio in Germany.
Two elderly men sit stiffly for the camera—new technology that requires them to remain motionless for several seconds. Jacob is 62, his younger brother Wilhelm is 61. They've spent their entire adult lives working side by side.
This single photograph would become the only authenticated image of both brothers together.
Most people know them for one thing: Grimm's Fairy Tales. Cinderella. Snow White. Rapunzel. Hansel and Gretel. Rumpelstiltskin.
Stories that have been told to children for two centuries, adapted into countless films, embedded so deeply in our culture that we forget they came from somewhere—from someone.
But here's what most people don't know: the Brothers Grimm didn't write fairy tales. They rescued them.
THE MISSION THAT STARTED EVERYTHING
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm were born just one year apart—1785 and 1786—in Hanau, Germany. They grew up inseparable, shared a room their entire lives, and would work together for over 50 years.
They weren't storytellers. They were scholars. Philologists. Linguists. Obsessed with the German language and its origins.
In the early 1800s, Germany wasn't even a unified nation yet—just a collection of kingdoms and states. The German language itself was fragmenting, threatened by French cultural dominance after Napoleon's conquests.
The brothers feared something precious was disappearing: the old German oral tradition. Stories passed down for generations, village to village, grandmother to grandchild. Stories that contained ancient wisdom, cultural memory, and the very soul of the German people.
So they decided to save them.
Starting around 1806, Jacob and Wilhelm traveled through the German countryside, knocking on doors, sitting in kitchens, listening to old women tell stories. They took meticulous notes. They didn't change the stories to make them prettier or more "appropriate"—they recorded them as they heard them.
Dark. Violent. Strange. Real.
In 1812, they published the first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales). Not children's books sanitized for bedtime—these were raw folk tales, the kind that had been told for centuries when life was harsh and death was close.
Evil stepmothers. Children abandoned in forests. Witches in ovens. Brutal punishments. Happy endings earned through cleverness and courage, not given freely.
The collection eventually grew to over 200 tales. It became known in English as Grimm's Fairy Tales—though "fairy tales" barely captures what they were.
These stories weren't entertainment. They were cultural archaeology. They helped establish folklore as a legitimate field of academic study.
But the brothers were just getting started.
THE WORK THAT CHANGED LANGUAGE FOREVER
While everyone remembers the fairy tales, the Brothers Grimm's real legacy lies in something far more profound: they revolutionized how we understand language itself.
Wilhelm published "The German Heroic Tale" in 1829, examining ancient Germanic legends and poetry.
Jacob published "German Mythology" in 1835—a massive study of pre-Christian German beliefs, gods, and superstitions. It became one of the most influential works in mythology studies.
But Jacob's masterpiece was Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar), published in volumes from 1819 to 1837. It wasn't just about German—it examined the structure and evolution of all Germanic languages.
In this work, Jacob formulated what's now known as Grimm's Law—a groundbreaking discovery about how consonant sounds systematically shifted as languages evolved from Proto-Indo-European into Germanic languages.
It sounds technical, but it was revolutionary. It proved that language evolution wasn't random—it followed patterns. Rules. Laws as predictable as physics.
This discovery laid the foundation for modern linguistics. For understanding how all languages evolve and connect.
THE DICTIONARY THAT OUTLIVED THEM
In the 1840s, the brothers tackled their most ambitious project yet: the Deutsches Wörterbuch—a comprehensive historical dictionary of the German language.
Not just definitions. Origins. Evolution. Every use of every word traced through centuries of German literature and speech.
It was impossibly vast.
Jacob and Wilhelm worked on it for the rest of their lives. Wilhelm died in 1859, having completed entries only through the letter D. Jacob continued alone until his death in 1863, reaching the letter F.
The dictionary wouldn't be finished until 1961—over a century after they started it. Multiple generations of scholars completed what the brothers began.
But that was exactly their point: some work is bigger than one lifetime. Some missions matter more than personal completion.
THE PHOTOGRAPH AND THE LEGACY
That 1847 photograph captured two elderly men who had dedicated their entire lives to preserving and understanding their language and culture.
They weren't wealthy. They'd worked as librarians and professors at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin—academic positions that let them do the work that mattered to them.
They'd never married. They'd lived together their entire adult lives, sharing apartments, sharing offices, sharing a single-minded devotion to scholarship.
Wilhelm died first, in 1859. Jacob, heartbroken, continued working for four more years before dying in 1863.
By then, their fairy tale collection had spread across the world, translated into dozens of languages. Children everywhere knew stories the brothers had rescued from obscurity.
But more importantly—though less visibly—their linguistic work had transformed how humanity understood language itself.
WHAT THEY REALLY SAVED
Today, when we say "Grimm's Fairy Tales," we're talking about stories that have been adapted into Disney films, Broadway musicals, and countless retellings. Sanitized. Sweetened. Made safe.
But the brothers didn't collect these stories to entertain children. They collected them to preserve cultural memory. To show that oral traditions contained wisdom worth studying. To prove that folk tales were literature, deserving of the same serious attention as classical texts.
They saved stories that would have vanished when the last grandmothers who knew them died.
And they proved that language itself has a history—that words and sounds evolve according to patterns we can study and understand.
Every linguist who studies language evolution stands on the foundation the Brothers Grimm built.
Every folklorist who takes oral traditions seriously follows the path they cleared.
Every child who hears a fairy tale and feels that ancient shiver—the recognition of something old and true and strange—inherits what they preserved.
THE ONLY PHOTOGRAPH
That single photograph from 1847 shows two old men in dark suits, sitting stiffly as the new technology of photography required.
You can't see their passion in that image. You can't see the decades of meticulous note-taking, the hundreds of miles traveled to interview storytellers, the thousands of pages written.
You can't see Wilhelm's dedication to heroic legends or Jacob's revolutionary insights about language.
You just see two elderly brothers who spent their lives working side by side.
But that's exactly who they were.
Two inseparable brothers who believed that stories mattered. That language mattered. That the wisdom carried in old women's voices and ancient grammar patterns was worth preserving, studying, and passing forward.
They died before photography became common. This single image is all we have.
But their real legacy isn't captured in photographs. It's captured in every fairy tale still told. Every linguistic principle still taught. Every word traced back through centuries in historical dictionaries.
From a single photograph to a legacy that shaped how we understand stories and language itself.
You know their fairy tales. But now you know what they really did.
They didn't write stories. They saved them. And in doing so, they saved something far larger—the very tools we use to understand how cultures speak, remember, and dream.

01/01/2026

Wishing a Happy, Healthy, and Successful New Year to everyone.

❤️❤️❤️

Sharing this message from my Wayne Jarman - Author and Artist Page.

I'll dedicate this Self Portrait to 2025.

Yes, it was one of THOSE years!

I'm hoping for a wonderful, healthy, and happy 2026 for me and for my loved ones.

I wish the same to you and to all of those that you hold dear.

❤️❤️❤️

About the painting:

Title: Life - A Self Portrait
Medium: Oil on Board
Size: 100 x 100mm (4" x 4")
Artist: Wayne Jarman
Photographer: Wayne Jarman

24/12/2025

It is Christmas Eve!

If you, or someone you know, are expectantly waiting for Santa, I hope that you / they have been good ...and I hope that Santa is good to you / them. 😃

Have a beautiful Christmas.

Sending love from my family to your family.
Wayne

P.S. Can you find the accidental selfie?
(No, it is not the bird. 🙄)

22/12/2025

Tolkien and Christmas!

With appreciation to We Are Human Angels, for sharing.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1414890043328352&set=a.723314399152590

Every year, from 1920 to 1943, the Tolkien children received letters from Father Christmas himself.

Inside, the handwriting was shaky and uneven—a detail Father Christmas often explained by citing his elderly hands and the biting Arctic chill that made it difficult to grip a pen.

In these letters, Tolkien did far more than offer standard holiday greetings. He constructed an entire parallel universe for his four children—John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla. The undisputed star of these Arctic chronicles was the North Polar Bear, a well-meaning but clumsy assistant whose mishaps were legendary.

In one particularly memorable passage, Father Christmas recounts:

“The North Polar Bear has been more bumbling than usual this year. He slipped right on the very tip of the North Pole and sent all the presents tumbling down the cliffside! We had to dispatch the Red Elves to retrieve them before they were completely buried by the snow.”

Tolkien’s attention to detail was exhaustive. He sketched maps, illustrated battles against goblins dwelling in the caves beneath Father Christmas’s home, and used his professional expertise to invent distinct languages for the inhabitants of the North Pole.

He developed an Arctic Elf Language, which shared linguistic roots with the early versions of Quenya (High Elvish). For instance, he introduced his children to the Ilbereth, the secretary of Father Christmas, whose name and speech patterns echoed the high-fantasy Elves he was simultaneously developing for Middle-earth.

Furthermore, he created an Arctic Alphabet based on the North Polar Bear’s jagged “clumsy” claw marks. These runes—often appearing as a series of scratches that looked like animal tracks—formed a phonetic script that the children had to translate. In one letter, the Polar Bear even attempts to write his own name, “Karhu,” using these thick, runic strokes.

These scripts weren’t just decorative; they were functional puzzles that the children had to decode, turning each letter into a philological adventure.

As the children grew older—by the time of the final letters in 1943, Michael and Christopher were already serving in the military—the tone shifted, becoming more profound and tinged with melancholy. It marked the transition from childhood to maturity.

In one of the final letters addressed to Priscilla, his youngest, he wrote:

“I hope you will still hang up your stockings, for I shall continue to come as long as there is someone left who believes in me.”

The legacy of these letters offers a moving lesson. We often assume that the genius of a great author belongs solely to the public or to history. Tolkien proves otherwise: the purest form of creativity is often “private”—the kind we use to spark magic in the lives of those we love.

There were no editors to polish these drafts, nor critics to judge them. There was only a father who, after a long day of philological research at Oxford, sat by candlelight to invent a reason for his children to smile.

In every shaky line and hand-drawn map, we find the quiet devotion of a father who understood that the greatest gift he could give his children was a world where magic was still possible.

This is the true spirit of Tolkien’s Christmas: the ability to transform everyday reality into an extraordinary adventure, reminding us that a simple sheet of paper can hold an entire world of wonder.

>We Are Human Angels<
Authors
Awakening the Human Spirit

We are the authors of 'We Are Human Angels,' the book that has spread a new vision of the human experience and has been spontaneously translated into 14 languages by readers.

We hope our writing sparks something in you!

03/12/2025

With appreciation to Blue Mountains Writers FAW.

🚨 Calling all poets, writers & dreamers! 🚨

The 2025-26 Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prizes are open! There are two competitions – poetry and essays – and two age groups: the Keats-Shelley Prize, which is open to all, and the Young Romantics Prize, aimed at anyone aged between 16-18.

Deadline: 2 February 2026

Search 'The 2025-2026 Keats-Shelly Prizes' or follow the link below to learn more:🔗

https://commonwealthfoundation.com/opportunity/the-2025-2026-keats-shelley-prizes/

02/12/2025

Newcastle Poetry Prize!

Shared from Hunter Writers' Centre.

Proudly presented in partnership with the University of Newcastle, the Newcastle Poetry Prize offers one of Australia’s most significant opportunities for poets, with a $15,000 First Prize and publication in the annual anthology.

Affirming the University's longstanding commitment to the Newcastle Poetry prize, University of Newcastle Interim Deputy Vice Chancellor, Engagement and Equity, Mr Nathan Towney said 'For six decades, the University of Newcastle has championed the creative spirit of our region, nurturing local talent and celebrating the arts. The Newcastle Poetry Prize is a testament to our rich cultural landscape, and the power of language to connect us. As one of the most significant poetry prizes in Australia, I would like to encourage everyone in the community to get involved.”

The 2025 Newcastle Poetry Prize closes on Sunday 7 December, 8 pm (AEDT).
Enter at https://hunterwriterscentre.org/newcastle-poetry-prize/

01/12/2025

A BUSH CHRISTENING by Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson.

Read by Wayne Jarman.

Shared from my Wayne Jarman - Author and Artist Page.

I have found poetry to be a good instrument for developing 'voice skills'. I recorded this poem (from Andrew Barton Paterson) in 2016. I still use poetry as a tool for Voice development. ..as the development continues!

02/11/2025

Sharing from Mountains Writers FAW, with their message:

"Blue Mountains Writers are seeking copies of two anthologies. Yabba: a collection of short stories, prose, articles and verse 1978 Blue Mountains Primary Schoolers’ collection of short stories 1996 We understand that you may not wish to part with your copy, but would appreciate the opportunity to copy it for our archives. If you have either of these publications, please contact Rosemary Baldry [email protected] or mobile 0415 568 590."