Write Well Me

Diet of Change

While I was in Dallas, I had the opportunity to connect with my aunt Harriett.  Recently retired, she's been struggling with her life.  She goes from being too busy to not being busy enough.  She's searching for that fulfilling, ideal, post-career thing to do.  She does some consulting and other work and is very involved with helping out her kids and grandkids.

As we talked about her struggle, she noted, "I wanted change, but not a diet of change."

It was a great metaphor, and one that I had never thought of before.  A diet of change - meaning that change is all we get, day in and day out. Change for breakfast, change for lunch, and change again for dinner.  Oh, and if you want dessert, guess what we've got?! Change!

Just like the phoenix, we need to change to evolve and develop.  But how helpful is it if we experience constant change? At some point, we need to stop and assimilate what's changed.  Figure out how it's affected us.  Try on our new skin.

Phoenix Rising

While I was in Dallas last week for my high school reunion, I also visited my alma mater, Southern Methodist University.  As I walked around, it hit me - and hit me hard - that attending SMU was the first instance of shedding the person I was and emerging as someone new.  Of course, thinking through this made me consider all the other phoenix instances of my life.

1989 - Going to SMU.  This was my opportunity to escape and be free from an abusive childhood.  I remember thinking very clearly that I'd go off to this new school, and even though it was in the same metropolitan area as where I went to high school, very few people would know me.  I could reinvent myself.  Instead of being the smart schoolgirl/nerd from the bad part of town, I could be... anyone.

2001 - The phoenix didn't come back for several years until I went through the AssistU VTP.  More than just a training program to help you start and maintain a virtual assistance business, it was a transformative program that fundamentally changed the way I saw myself, my business, and people with whom I connected.  While I had always been fairly self-confident, I now saw myself as truly valuable and as well as what I could do for my clients. 

2004 - A combination of coming on as AssistU's Chief Operating Officer and the resulting deep friendship I began with Stacy.  With Stacy, I've learned about intensity, connections, communication, and saying it all. 

2008 - I went to BEA.  I knew no one and was completely alone. I actually pitched my book to agents.  I still don't know where the heck I got that particular form of courage from.  A few months later, I went on to Dallas to exhibit at the eWomen Network Publishing Conference.  At the same time, events were set in motion that would lead to the next incarnation of the phoenix....

2009 - so far, the whole freaking year.  I'm looking at my life completely changing, in a way I've never anticipated.  I've gone from thinking I lived the perfect life, in the perfect marriage, in the perfect house to being on my own, completely responsible for my finances, safety, and well-being.  I'll figure out who I am and embark on a journey that I can't even fathom right now.

Perhaps we all are phoenixes at one point or another in our lives.  Maybe we have to be to truly evolve and grow.  Where has your phoenix shown up?

Your Book Is a Business

You're passionate about your message. Whether it's about frogs, women business owners, or creating financial stability, you have this burning desire to get your message out and help people (or frog lovers). The best way to do that is to write a book, right? Reach more people (and frog lovers) and, at the same time, become an expert in your field.

Writing and publishing a book isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's work. If you're a new author, you might think that the majority of the work is in writing the damn book. Not so. That's the easy part. It's in the post-final-manuscript stage that the real work begins. You might be thinking that you just have to find an agent or a publisher, and then you can sit back and relax, watch the publisher work its tail off to market your book, and wait for your royalty checks to arrive.

Whether you self-publish or go with a traditional publishing house, YOU are going to be instrumental to the publishing, marketing, and selling of your book. And that means that you have to shift your mindset around your book. While your book is fundamentally your passion, you have to start looking at it as a business.

First, publishers and agents look at your book that way. Their job is to sell books. They're only going to bring on books that will sell. They don't really care how passionate you are about frogs, women entrepreneurs, and financial stability. They have revenues and return on investment to worry about. Each book is a product for them. Can they sell it? What is the market? Is the author marketable? Will there be other ancillary books (products)? What are the other competing books?

For you to have a shot, you need to be thinking like a business owner, not just a writer. Here are some things to consider.

Platform - What kind of audience and following do you have right now? Do you publish an Ezine and have a database to which you send your Ezine? Do you speak? At what kinds of events? How many people attend your events? Do you collaborate with any other organizations and companies? Can you depend on them to help you get the word out? If you don't have a platform, what do you need to do to get one?

Target Market - Who is your book written for? The answer is NOT "everyone." You really have to think about the person who will read the book. Male or female? How old? Where does she work? Or does she work? Does she have kids? What's her annual income? What are her fears? What are her goals? What keeps her up at night? What is her passion?

Viability - What's the purpose of your book? What problem or challenge does it solve? Have you determined that there is a need? In other words, your book should solve an existing need, not create a need. What are its benefits? What are its features?

Marketing Plan - What activities will you engage in to sell your book? Book tours? Blog book tours? Book signings? Amazon book selling programs? How does your website fit into your marketing plan? How do you build your customer list? Do you give away any products or services for free? How does media (social and traditional) fit into your marketing? Do you have a plan, or do you just engage in activities haphazardly?

Sales Funnel - Your book is a business, and it's only one part of your business. How does it fit in with other products and services you offer? If you do speaking events, are you set up for back-of-the-room sales? Your sales funnel should include low-price services/products, medium-price, and high-end. What does your sales funnel look like? Is there a natural flow from one product/service in the sales funnel to the others? How do the other pieces of your business (website, blog, social media) support this?

More Than a Book - Many authors find that the biggest benefit of writing their book is that it lends them credibility and opens doors for other opportunities. If you're now a credible expert (because you've written a book) on frogs, women entrepreneurs, or financial stability, what can you do with that? What organizations and associations do you need to be pinging about using you, the expert? Are there workshops, workbooks, events that are natural follow-ups to the message in your book? Can you collaborate with other experts and "celebrities" in your field?

You might be a little overwhelmed by all the questions I've posed. It's not something you'll build in a day. Just like you didn't write your book in one sitting, you won't create the business of your book in one day either. If you're just starting out writing your book, then you can be looking at these areas and working on them at the same time. If you already have a book, then start building the business part of it.

Frog lovers, women business owners, and the financial world will thank you.

Guest Post: Top 10 Book Marketing Mistakes (That REALLY Happened to REAL Authors)

1. Generating great publicity without your book being available on Amazon.com. Our client was all over the radio discussing her book. At the end of her interviews, she diligently mentioned her book was available via her web site and at Amazon. Problem was, while she had started the process of getting the book into Amazon, she didn’t anticipate all of the steps she’d have to go through and details she’d have to provide, and in fact was not yet on Amazon. Even if you are selling your books through your web site and any other place, every author needs to be in Amazon because it’s the default go to place for book sales. Lesson: Make sure your book is available for sale on Amazon and that all of the kinks have been worked out before you launch your publicity campaign.
2. Counting on publicity alone to sell books. Publicity is an important component of your overall marketing campaign, but it alone won’t sell books. We generated tons of great print, online, radio and even some TV coverage for our client, which lent credibility to her and her business, but she only sold a small number of books. Had she booked some speaking engagement, participated in book signings and events, and conducted an online viral marketing campaign in addition to garnering publicity, her sales would have improved significantly. Lesson: Create a multi-faceted marketing approach that includes publicity, viral marketing, speaking engagements and back-of-the-room sales, event participation and book signings.
3. Insulting the media. Our client received a half day interview, plus a still photo and video shoot from her hometown paper, which has the second highest circulation in the region next to our big daily paper. Smack in the middle of the interview, our client tells the reporter, “Oh, I don’t read your paper.” Fortunately the reporter was a professional and carried on with her business. Two weeks later, our client was splashed across the front page of the paper with a fantastic feature article and photos, plus video footage on the paper’s website. Lesson: Even if you believe that the newspaper, radio show, etc. are not”big” enough, and/or even if you don’t read them, treat every reporter and every media outlet with respect and graciousness. Something great will probably come of it.
4. Promoting your book without a finished web site devoted to your book. Can you just say, “Duh?” Occasionally we get calls from authors who want to start their marketing campaigns before a book website up and running. We tell every author that we cannot launch a PR campaign for a book until the website is functional and has an online press room. Otherwise the media and your readers will not take you seriously. If you can write and produce a book, you can get a website together (which your PR person will help you with). Lesson: Make your website book the highest priority of your marketing campaign. It will be the umbrella to all of your other marketing efforts.
5. Just taking all the articles you have written and putting it together and calling it a book. Yes, we know writers who try this, and it’s a compilation of articles, not a book. Don’t’ expect this to be a bestseller. Lesson: Put some effort into your book. (And don’t forget to write a great title and jacket copy, and design a dynamite book cover.) It will be a much more professional and saleable product.
6. Listening to your mother when she says, “You should be on Oprah.” Eighty percent of our potential clients tell us they are Oprah material. The other 20% are realistic, key in on their target audience (which is usually not people who watch daytime TV) and are more successful in their publicity efforts. Just because Mom thinks your book is worthy of Oprah doesn’t mean that the producers do. Lesson: Oprah usually picks you, not the other way around. Be realistic about the media coverage you can garner and go after that.
7. Being fooled when the printer says the minimum order is 5,000. We have clients with hundreds of books sitting in their garages which they have paid for and can’t sell – not to mention their car won’t fit. With the creation of print on demand (POD), you can print books as you need them and are able to sell them. Lesson: Print a few hundred copies at a time to keep pace with demand.
8. Thinking your publisher is going to do all the publicity. Many clients approach us after the publisher prints their book, yet does next to no publicity. Publicists on staff at your publisher usually are promoting a minimum of 10-12 books at the same time and only promote your book for a few weeks after it’s published. Lesson: Whether self-published or with a publisher, be prepared to take charge of your own PR campaign, either by doing it yourself or by hiring a professional PR consultant.
9. Convinced the reporter or media personality has read your book. After a TV interview, a client commented to us, “they didn’t even read the book.” Don’t be insulted. Most journalists do not have time to read your book cover to cover. They will however, thumb through it and read press materials. Be grateful that you got an interview and help them out by highlighting some key points in your book. Lesson: During an interview, point out the most newsworthy aspects of the book or key things a reader will take away by reading it. Don’t rely on the media to do this.
10. Believing mainstream media is more important than the online media that “no one reads.” Many book authors still believe the only valid publicity is old fashioned hard copy print media. But online media, including media websites, ezines and bloggers, are quickly becoming more important than the mainstream media in getting your message across to your target audience. If don’t believe us, think about how many times Matt Lauer and “The Today Show” quote bloggers as key sources for stories. Lesson: Online media is a valuable and viable form of publicity for promoting and selling books.

Courtesy of: Joanna Brody www.brody-pr.com
...with REAL input from Jennifer Heinly, www.jandjconsulting.net

Writing Is a Process - Part II

I started Monday's blog post on the writing process about two years ago - I just never knew what to do with it.  I just started writing about this idea I had on the writing process and how many writers skip essential parts of the process.  I got to the end of the post (pretty much what you see here) and stopped.  Again, I didn't know what this was going to turn into.  I just started brainstorming and brain dumping. 

I thought it might be helpful for you to see my process.  It's unedited and unpolished. As all pre-writing should be.  :)

(Could include info on structures --> David and Goliath, Will it work, etc.  Show how you take a concept/theme and turn it into a piece, and that piece will/can look different depending upon the structure you use.)

(Could do the same with prewriting - smaller version of Ready, Set, Write.)

(Could do the same with intros and conclusions.

What is the purpose of this? An article? A mini course? An eBook? A short manual? It's definitely something I can give IAAP for their resources.  (I'm putting together something now that I think your members would find helpful.) Is it also something I would offer on the WWU website? Is it something I can develop into a teleclass? A teleclass I can give to VANA, AU, offer on my website?

My process for this article/manual

• Wrote these pages
• Started out with main point I wanted to include --> writing is a process made up of 3 separate, distinct steps
• While I wrote mostly in complete sentences, I didn't edit or search for just the right word.  I just tend to think in complete sentences.  And, to be honest, this topic has been percolating in my head before I even started writing it down.
• I included bullets as part of my prewriting --> they will not show up in the final product
• I wrote some notes on my purpose and the audience so that I could be more clear on what I should write, how detailed it should be, etc.

Can write this as a series of articles that can then be put together in one thing.

Your process doesn't have to be neat and tidy.  It doesn't have to be organized.  It doesn't have to be perfect. That's what the last step, editing and revision, is for.

Writing Is a Process

As I work with people at different stages of the writing process, I find that they're often surprised that there IS a writing process.  Most often, we imagine how a "real" writer works.  He sits down at his lovely, mahogany desk and gets out his pad of paper or his antiquated typewriter.  He flexes his fingers, and grabs his favorite fountain pen or starts typing on the keys.  Suddenly, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters fly onto the paper.  After some pre-determined time, Real Writer puts down his pen or takes his fingers off the keys, stretches, sighs a sigh of satisfaction, and gets up from the desk.  He brushes his hands together - another successful day of writing done and pages of manuscript in the hopper.

Unh-unh.

That's how we imagine it works, but it doesn't.  Writing is a process with at least three distinct parts.

• Prewriting:  Organizing your thoughts. Spewing out details. Deciding what you want to write about.  Determining your purpose, audience, message, tone.  Questions.
• Writing: Taking all the fodder from the prewriting step and starting to create form from mass.  This is where sentences, paragraphs, chapters start to materialize.
• Editing and revision: But wait! You're not done yet!  Editing and revision is the process of going back over what you've written and making it better.  It's not just pulling the weeds (the bad stuff) out of the garden.  It might also be deciding to plant more strong, healthy flowers  (the good stuff) in new places.  Editing and revision isn't all about making bad good.  It's also about taking what's powerful and strengthening that.

The problem is usually that we try to do all three steps at once.  I'm not talking about sitting down and prewriting, then writing, and then finally editing - in three separate, distinct chunks of time.  No, usually people try to sit down and start writing the final draft right off the bat.

Why is this a problem?

First, it stunts the creative process. You're trying to write full sentences and make them perfect instead of just getting the ideas down.  Instead of playing with ideas and having fun with them, you bring out the editor right away.

And the minute you start editing, you shut off the creative side of your brain.  You can't create and edit at the same time.  Creativity and editing use two different parts of your brain, and you can't do them effectively together.

To effectively edit, you need more time between the draft and editing.  If you go straight into editing mode after writing mode, you're still lodged into the writing mindset.  You're reviewing the words you've written with the lenses you've just written through.  Here's an example: you're telling your spouse about a conversation you just had with your mother.  The conversation is fresh, and you're replaying it in your head.  You hear your mother's voice, and you remember your responses.  You're still stuck in that conversation in your head as you try to recount it to your spouse.  Because you're intimately familiar with the conversation, you might forget that lovely spouse wasn't anywhere in it and you might leave out a few details.  But if you didn't have a chance to tell your spouse about the conversation until two days later, you'd probably be thinking about what to relate from a viewpoint of what background do you need to give, and what additional details does your spouse need in order to get the full picture.  You need that time in between writing and editing, too.

You need to be able to step back and see your writing as a single, whole piece, not as an extension of your mindset.

Structuring work. How do you do it?

My hero is Marie Schulz, the VA that Stacy and I share at AssistU.  She's online at 9:00 a.m., and she's pretty much offline by 5 or 6:00 p.m. at the latest. I've NEVER seen her online (or gotten an email or whatever from her) in the evenings or weekends. Sigh.

The way I used to structure my days (ha!) was to have a list of things to do, and then, theoretically, I could stop working when they got done. Uh huh. Well, with scheduling overoptimistically (I'll design this website in one hour) and then adding on a very full workload, I realized that didn't work so well for me. It's not that I worked 20-hour days until I got my to-do list done (I'm not stupid), but I'd feel like I SHOULD be working.

After a while, I got tired of always feeling like I should be working at night to get those straggling to-do's done or feeling guilty that I didn't. While I love, love, love what I do, I don't want it to rule my life.

So, now I'm looking at my to-do's AND a definite stop time. If it doesn't get done today, then it will get done tomorrow. And I'm done for the day.

Like Stacy, I try to schedule everything (tasks, projects) on my calendar as appointments (I have a separate Outlook calendar for this - I don't keep it in my main Outlook calendar. That may seem like duplicating work, but I find taking my week-at-a-glance as far as appointments and then adding them on to my "project/client work" Outlook calendar helps me prepare for the week and see what I need to do).

The big thing that I've had to realize (with the help of Stacy as my coach) is to set expectations with clients. 'Cuz if it's left up to me and my super-high expectations, I'll think it needs to get done RIGHT NOW. (Imagine a superhero disappearing - running so fast - and then coming back with the project completed, panting heavily.) They don't expect or even need that, and it's almost suicide to try to work at that breakneck speed. So, I give my clients (and me) a deadline of when I'll get that to them. And they've always been okay with that. Go figure. What a surprise that I'm harder on myself than anyone.

And I've been scheduling times in my day for other things - like writing and exercise and quiet time when I first get up. I'm also scheduling creative time where I get to work on my business instead of just in it.

We did this as a poll at AssistU, and asked our community of VAs how they structure their work days.  Here were their choices:

• With definite start and stop times. When the stop time comes around, I stop working no matter what.
• With a to-do list. When the list is done, my day is done.
• A mix of both.
• Some other way. I'll post more about it in the discussion below.

With those as your choices (or any other choices), how do YOU structure your work day?

Guest Post: Submit and Get Noticed--Two Tips for Publishing Your Book

Tip #1: Tweak Cover Design Conventions—But Don’t Discard Them Entirely

Business books don’t look like self-help books don’t look like fiction. This may seem obvious to some, but it is a common problem I see when we’re evaluating new books for publication or distribution. When consumers want to buy a business book, for example, they expect certain imagery, fonts, colors, and layout styles, whether they realize it or not. The best-selling business books often use large, simple fonts and bright colors to keep the focus on the title.

If your book cover or layout doesn’t make sense for its genre, it could hurt your sales. That means that it might be a better idea not to make the cover of a book about investing neon pink with pictures of your dog, no matter what your artistic sensibilities are. Now that’s not to discourage innovation—there is always a new and better way to do things. The mold can be broken, but for new authors this can pose a risk (although sometimes ugly covers work). Whatever the case, choosing a genre-appropriate cover will signal credibility and familiarity to customers, which can translate into more sales.

A quick way to get some ideas is to go to Amazon or your local bookstore to check out titles similar to yours that are selling well. Notice the styling of other books, what imagery they use, and what that conveys to you as the reader. If you like what you see, figure out a way to adapt those principles to your cause. A book can stand out to buyers by employing creative cover art and a well-thought-out interior while staying within the bounds of the genre.

Tip #2: Get the price right.

Oh, the headache of self-publishing. You want to realize your dream and publish your book, but you have The Industry to contend with, you have the cost of production, and you have to worry about wholesalers and distributors, and Amazon . . . and the list goes on. After all that time, energy, and money, it seems only natural that you’d want to earn back your costs through the price of your book. $22.95 sounds like a fair price for your paperback fiction after all you’ve put into this book, right?

Sorry, but wrong. If your ultimate goal is national distribution and book sales, you have to consider the price point as a standardized range that every author and publisher must work within. National buyers will have a hard time considering your book if, as a new author, you are charging $5 or $6 more for your book than the big names are charging for comparable titles. Also, a higher-than-average price point can drastically affect your sales. While you can charge whatever price you deem worthy, paperbacks are usually priced below $19.95 and hardbacks are usually below $24.95. There are all kinds of exceptions to this rule of thumb, based on genre, the size of the book, and the inclusion of photos and illustrations, but those numbers are a rough estimate for fiction and non-fiction like self-help, health, business, finance, and religious titles. Visiting a local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Indiebound.com for reference is an unbeatable way to see how similar titles are priced and keep yourself competitive. Remember: raising your price doesn’t necessarily raise your bottom line.

Katie Steigman reviews Greenleaf’s submissions for market viability and helps determine what books to take on as projects at GBG. She reads everything—the good, the bad, the ugly, and all genres from personal finance to cookbooks. To get the rest of the Submit and Get Noticed Tips and other book industry insight, become a regular visitor to the Big Bad Book Blog.

Complex Antagonists

As I've been writing my newest short story, I've been fleshing out why the antagonist, Anton, does what he does.  I've been struggling a bit with his motivations.  Not only do I, as the author, need to know why he's doing these awful things in this neighborhood (sorry, you'll have to read the actual story when it's finished to get more), but I KNOW it's going to impact the actual story.  Why he does what he does might lead Molly to solve the problem, might actually impact the ending of the story. Heck, there's no "might" about it.  It will impact the ending.

So, I've struggled with Anton's motivations.  One, because it's so important to the actual story, but, two, because I think a 3-D, complex character is much more interesting than a flat, purely evil character.  As part of the creative process, I'm listing as many reasons why he might do these bad things as I can come up with.  I'm up to about fifteen, and that fifteenth might be the winner.  I refused, however, to even list "he's just evil" as a motivation.  That's a cop-out.

My favorite characters and relationships in novels are those in which there's texture, multi-dimensions.  There has to be something there that the reader, and maybe even the other characters, can connect with.  Even with the bad guys. Very, very few people in real life are purely evil.  They all have fears, needs, motivations... and since we all have those things too, writing will have more impact if we can identify with those characters.

I'd love to start a discussion around your favorite "bad" character.  I'll start.  I love the demon Al in Kim Harrison's Hollows series. Sure, he's a demon, but he's not solely one-dimensional.  He's almost... human in his motivations.  By The Outlaw Demon Wails, Al is tired, and he appreciates the respect that Rachel shows him.  Yeah, maybe Rachel should do whatever she can to banish Al to the Ever After, but we, and she, almost feel sorry for Al.