Time to Write

For inspiration, read; for greater inspiration, re-read

I have a friend who says he never re-reads a book because there are too many books out there he's never read. 

I understand his thinking, but i believe he's missing something. There are only a handful of books I re-read regularly, but with those I discover something new every time. It's not that the books are different, it's that I'm different. The things that are on my mind now are different from the ones on my mind the last time I read that book. If the book is profound, it will have different things to say to you each time you read it. 

 One of my choices is the sayings of Seneca. They are pithy but worth giving some extended thought. 

For instance, "A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature."

My interpretation of that is that we waste a lot of time trying to be what we're not. When we are young, we do that to fit in. When we are a bit older, we do it because we think it might earn us money and security. If we live long enough, maybe we get over the impulse.

From a writing standpoint, we may be tempted to write what we think will sell--it's vampire time! It almost never turns out well, unless we're the vampire-writing type to start with. In terms of pitching, we may try to turn into a extroverts when we're not. 

From my current re-reading of Seneca and that saying, it's about enjoying what is, while still striving for what might be. 

Is there a favorite work you'd like to re-read? Maybe it's worth the time!

(My other re-reads include The Courage to Create (Rollo May), No More Second-Hand Art (Peter London), The Art of Possibility (Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander). If you'd like to share some of yours, please use the comments section or email them to me at [email protected].)

The dangers of asking for feedback too soon

I had an email from someone who had read my "Your Writing Coach" book and said it had inspired her to start writing again. She said she'd written the first 400 words of her book and asked whether I could read them and give her some feedback.

I said no, partly because unfortunately I don't have time to read other people's work and give them feedback, but also because it was far too early in her process to get feedback. I can understand that she needed some some encouragement, and I did encourage her to keep going and trust her own instincts for a while.

Asking for feedback too early is dangerous because you are too vulnerable. You probably haven't yet settled into a style and you may find after you get into the story that actually you need a different opening. 

Typically, first drafts start too soon in the action. We often find that it helps to write ourselves into the story; for instance, we might describe how a couple gets ready for a dinner at their favorite restaurant, then we describe the drive there and how a careless comment creates some tension, and then we get to the dinner scene where an all-out argument breaks out. However, when we go back to do a second draft we realize it would work much better to start the story with the argument and we cut the first six pages. 

As somebody (I think it was me) once observed, "A first draft doesn't have to be good, it just has to be finished." The second, third, and fourth drafts are where we work on making it good as well. 

(Whatever you're writing, it's a good idea to protect it. I cover that in a special report I've written: "Stop the Rip-offs! Protect Your Material." For tips and more information go HERE.)

Guerrilla Creativity

"Guerrilla Creativity" review by Jurgen Wolff from jurgen Wolff on Vimeo.

Keep your writing chops alive even when you don't have time to write

I've been writing about the challenges of finding enough time to do your creative projects and today I'd like to mention another option that can keep your creativity flowing. 

There are times when you can tackle a big project, usually by chunking it down into smaller pieces. But there are also times when the pieces would have to be so small that they don't feel like they're worth doing. During those periods it's tempting to do nothing creative and after a while that becomes the norm. A year later you wake up and realize you've let your creative impulses lapse.

An alternative is to acknowledge you're in a period when you can't tackle a big project even in small pieces, and find other ways to express your creativity. For example, you could:

* write a haiku every day.

* write a short short short story--set a word maximum like 25 words or even ten words. Remember Hemingway's shortest short (sad) story: "For sale: baby shoes. Never used." If you draw a blank, pick three words at random from a magazine and build your story around those. 

* Write a ten-words-maximum portrait of someone you saw on the street that day: "Dapper businessman with umbrella and scowl."

I'm sure you can think of others. The point is to keep your creative brain ticking over. You may find when you have more time again some of these short exercises feed into a larger project. Try it and, if you like, send me a sample or two of your short-short pieces, either as a comment or directly at [email protected].

Don't let your creative drive become a source of stress

I sometimes get emails or hear comments from writers who have so much to do that fitting in time to write is a challenge. I do believe that if you really want to find that time, you will. However, it's also important not to turn something that should be a joy into a chore. Here's what branding/ad guru Simon Mainwaring said about that in a recent interview with How design magazine:

"No matter how we approach creative work, it should be fun. The arts are an enormous playroom where we get to behave like children, never looking for answers where we are told to, but instead heading off in unknown directions. The joy comes in the surprise of finding what we didn't know was there. There is great power in approaching life this way, leaving us free to discover the answers only creativity can find and, in so doing, revealing our shared humanity."

If doing creative work is only adding to your stress, that's a sign something needs to change. Maybe you need a bit of time off, maybe you need to take another look at some things to purge from your schedule, maybe it's time to delegate or outsource, or maybe it's time to consider a different creative outlet. 

(For help in focusing your efforts and leaving time for what's really important, see my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

Are you a writer? Here's the test...

I had an exchange some years ago with a woman at one of my workshops who said she didn't have time to write.

No time at all? Not an hour a day? Or half a weekend day?

No. 

I asked her how many hours she spent cleaning the house, doing laundry, doing dishes, etc. 

She said probably about eight hours a week.

I asked whether she could cut that down to four--a little dust isn't the end of the world.

She looked at me as though I'd suggested that she roll in the mud every morning. No, she didn't feel comfortable unless her place was spotless. 

I suggested she get a cleaning person to come in once a month to do one week's worth. 

She said she couldn't afford that.

I asked how many times a month she went out for dinner. 

She said once a week, with different friends (she was single). 

I asked whether giving up one of those meals out per month and inviting her friends to come to her place to have a pizza instead would save her enough money to pay a cleaning person to come in to do that week's cleaning and laundry. 

She said yes, especially since these meals usually included some glasses of wine beforehand. But it was out of the question: "I really enjoy going out to dinner with my friends! I want to get away from my four walls!"

I said, congratulations. You've just figured out you don't really want to be a writer.

Actually, I put it more diplomatically than that, but that was the gist. 

I'm not saying she made the wrong decision. She made the right one--for her. 

It may or may not be the right one for you. Your actions will tell.

(If you need some support for your writing, get my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline bookstores.)

From hang-up to story, novel, or screenplay

 Julia Cameron, writing guru and author of The Artist's Way, suggests that you can transform a hang-up into art. Her advice is to think of five secrets or events from the past that still bother you and write about one of them. 

It's a great starting point for a story, novel, or screenplay because there will be emotion behind it. The mistake that many writers make is thinking they have to tell the literal story of what happened to them--being bullied, or a shoplifting incident, or telling a secret a friend asked you to keep. Often it's much more effective to transfer the basic situation to another context, or to use it as a metaphor.

For example, the bullying incident could become a sci fi story about an entire race that is subjugated.

Telling a secret could become a more fanciful children's book in which a farmer tells his dog a secret, and the dog tells another animal, and the secret gets stranger and more alarming each time it's told until it makes its way back to the farmer as a totally different story.

If you're casting about for a new story to tell, or to inject new life into one that's gone a bit flat, looking how something bothersome from the past that might be integrated, literally or metaphorically, could give it the energy it needs.

(There are loads of tips on how to write in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nichoals Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers now.)

The 80 20 Experiment - day 7 - Wrap-up

Today winds up the one-week experiment in focusing on the 20% of my work that is most likely to provide the greatest value. I did achieve the three tasks I set yesterday: 

* Another sample column on creativity

* Another submission package for my novel

* Finish the rest of the sales pages for my November Las Vegas writing workshops

However, I'm writing this at 3.30am, so I can't pretend I did it on the schedule I'd planned...

The lessons I take away from this week:

I have more unfinished projects than I realized, so that's definitely a pattern to address;

As the statistics suggest, everything takes about twice as along as you think it will;

Something always comes up that you didn't anticipate and sometimes these happen in clusters;

This experiment is definitely worth staying with for longer. 

I won't write it up daily, but I'll carry on and perhaps give you an update in 30 days, by which time there could be some tangible payoffs from addressing that 20% more consistently.

I had an email from Nick saying he was able to do further the progress on his blog and also a plan he has for testing an affiliate marketing arrangement. My anonymous weight loss person reports she's lost two pounds already--well done!  My Wordpress-learning correspondent has finished watching the video tutorials, found a template he likes, and is installing it tomorrow. Congratulations, all!

If you have any feedback on your experiences, feel free to share them in the comments or email to me at [email protected]. 

I hope this exercise has been useful for you--of course you can repeat it anytime!

The one thing entrepreneurs and writers & artists have in common

 In a Harvard Business Review blog post, Dan Pallotta offered this scenario:

"Imagine Walt Disney at the age of nineteen. His uncle asks him what he plans to do with his life, and he pulls out a drawing of a mouse and says, 'I think this has a lot of potential.'"

The uncle would have laughed in his face. Later when Walt Disney proposed Disneyland a lot of bankers and others did laugh in his face. Not a great feeling. An awful feeling.

Pallotta's point is that vulnerability is one of seldom-discussed characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Visionaries also tend to be misfits, and you don't have to be in the Walt Disney class for that to be true.

Pallota associates vulnerability with a lack of cynicism.

The cynic says nobody will want that new, untested, maybe inpractical, new product or service or idea. The entrepreneur says "What if they do?"

The cynic says you can't really change things much, certainly not by yourself. The entrepreneur says "Some people have. Why not me?" 

I guess entrepreneurs and artists and writers have a lot in common. A certain amount (sometimes a lot) of rejections awaits all of them. And while being vulnerable sounds romantic, vulnerable people get hurt. The trick isn't to avoid it, the trick is to take it, learn from it if possible, lick your wounds...and start again.

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If you want to achieve something different, you may  not get a lot of support from family and friends, but you can get it on the Breakthrough Strategy online mentoring program. For details, see www.jurgenwolff.com.

The 80 20 Experiment - Day 6 - It doesn't have to be perfect!

 (This is a one-week experiment in using the 80 20 principle--to find out what it's all about or to join in, just go back to the post for August 2 and then scroll forward to all the posts with big numbers in them).

The video is done! By now it may sound like it should be some kind of Academy Award Winning production, when in fact it's just a three minute talk about creating great characters rather than stereotypes, but I was using an editing system I had to learn.

I did also write a sample creativity column. 

The other task was to do more research for the report I'm writing on crowdfunding (that's where people pledge a certain amount toward your creative project before you actually do it). And that's where I learned today's lesson:

It doesn't have to be perfect!

My natural impulse when I write a book or report is to want it to be as comprehensive as possible. I'd put out a Google Alert on crowd funding and have been surprised by how much new material there is about it on the internet--enough to keep me researching for another couple of weeks.

But when I thought about it today, I realized that what people want from e-reports and e-books is the most important facts--especially information they can act on now. They don't want a 300 page ebook with every possible permutation of the subject.

So I'm calling a halt to the research and getting on with completing the report.

Sometimes stretching the research phase is a way to avoid actually writing, of course, but I don't think that's the case in this instance. In this case it was more about perfectionism, which is an equally dangerous project-killer!

Maybe you can relate to this. Is there a project that you've either avoided starting because you feared you couldn't do it perfectly? Or one in which you've stuck too long to one phase of it, trying to get that perfect before moving on?

If so, repeat after me: "It aint' gotta be perfect!"

Thanks to the folks have have mailed me about their next steps: Robin is doing an outline, Nick is continuing work on his site/blog, my anonymous wight-loss correspondent has been replacing some of her high-carbohydrate food with low-carb, high-protein meals. 

For tomorrow my tasks are:

* Finish the rest of the sales pages for my November Las Vegas workshops, then we will be able to start enrolling people

* Submit my novel to one additional publisher (one of the two to whom I submitted the proposal earlier in this experiment emailed to say they no longer publish fiction--which wasn't mentioned on their web site)

* Write a second sample creativity column

If you're participating, let me know how you're doing and anything you're learning from the experience. 

From freemium to paid: the new marketing model

Authors are trying various ways to get their books seen and generate sales. One simple model is being used by Mark Boulton for his book, "A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web." It includes these elements:

* a version of the book you can read for free online (but not download)
 

* a sample chapter you can download (about 18 pp)
 

* a download of the whole book you can buy - pdf format costs £12 / about $18
 

* a hardcopy of the book you can buy (I couldn't find the link to the hardcopy and it seems to be out of print on Amazon.co.uk--only used copies for sale).

I think this makes good use of the "freemium" model but with a reasonable chance that people who are really interested will pay to download or get a hardcopy. Of course that is much more likely with reference books.

If you're trying to figure out a strategy for a book you've written or have in mind, this could be a good way to go. You could have the hardcopy version be Print on Demand, which means you'd have almost no upfront costs.
 

(If you want 100 examples of innovative but inexpensive marketing ideas, get my book, "Do Something Different," published by Virgin Books with a foreword by Sir Richard Branson; if you want more of a step by step approach, get my other book, "Marketing for Entrepreneurs," published by Pearson. Both available from the usual suspects.)

What Harvard says about breakthrough thinking

"Harvard Business Review on Breakthrough Thinking" reviewed by Jurgen Wolff, author of "Creativity Now!" from jurgen Wolff on Vimeo.

The 80 20 Experiment - Day 5 - Everything takes longer!

(To find out what this is all about, scroll back to Aug. 2 and then read forward the posts with big numbers on them).

There's a statistic going around in the productivity arena that everything takes 4 times as long as you think it will. I'm not sure that's an accurate figure but it wouldn't surprise me too much. (Another figure--and I'm making this one up but I bet it's true--is that it would take us twice as long to do something as we think it should take someone else to do it.)

I say that because today I did achieve the review of additional crowd sourcing material and do a mailing to my list (I made it about the 80/20 principle).

However, the video I set out to do still isn't done. I did make good progress but didn't complete it, partly because i"m still learning how to use iMovie9, partly because like most people I'm too optimistic about how quickly I can get things done.

Probably a good rule of thumb from now on will be to double the estimate; then, if it takes less time, it will feel like I'm being extra productive!

Geraldine joined the experiment today--her focus is on weight loss. She's made good progress in the past but has kind of stalled. Now she's going to use the 80 20 rule to gain new momentum.

If that's an issue you might like to tackle, I can tell you that the top 20% of your possible actions will come from changes in your diet (much more influential than changes in exercise, although of course getting exercise has many additional mental and physical health benefits). One of my friends discovered that simply cutting out eating chocolate biscuits every night was enough to make a big difference.

Robin joined, too,and he's making some adjustments to a writing project. 

My Wordpress correspondent reports he's taken the big step and put up a Wordpress blog and is starting to add plug-ins to individualize it.

If you're joining in, feel free to comment or--the method people have preferred so far--email me at [email protected]. You can start anytime.

Tomorrow is Sunday so I'm going to take the day off and feel free to wallow in any old 80% activities I want to (or no activity at all!).

For Monday, my tasks will be:

* Finish the video!

* Complete the additional research for the crowd funding report

* Write one sample for a possible syndicated creativity column (this is in the category of focusing on what's already successful, since such a column could help boost sales of "Creativity Now!" which is already selling pretty well. 

Writers: should your book be an app?

David Carnoy released his novel, "Knife Music," as a free book app. Apple objected to the presence of the f-word, so he replaced it with the letter F.

That "censorship" got him some additional attention and the book went to number 7 in the book apps category ("right after the Bible," Carnoy says in an interview with himself in Publishing Perspectives).

At that stage, the book was being downloaded 1,000 times a week, which led to selling about 1000 paperbacks and more Kindle versions (priced at $3.99). Those sold about 400 a month, for a total of 30,000 (hmm 30,000 times $3.99...not bad!). 

One caveat: this was in the early days of 2009, when there were far fewer books available in the Kindle format.

Now The Overlook Press is releasing it as a hardcover. But Carnoy hasn't stopped using digital means to promote the book. His new publisher is allowing him to release 150 pages of the book as a free sample on the iPhone and iPad and also on the sharing site, Scribd.

Carnoy's prognosis for book apps: "I think text-based single books as apps will slowly go away. But the app route makes sense for interactive children’s books, graphic novels, and other multimedia e-books. However, the reason I did an app again is that you can’t give away a lengthy free sample in iBooks right now or on the Kindle or Nook (unless you have a special arrangement with Amazon or Barnes & Noble). So the app was really a workaround."

And his thoughts on self-publishing: "self-publishing is about speed and control for the author. It’s all about online and going direct to consumers. The key thing you lose when you move to traditional publishing is control over pricing (and a significantly larger chunk of the royalties). It’s much easier to get people to take a chance on reading you when your book prices are low. That’s why you’re seeing success stories with some of these Kindle authors who are pricing their books at $1.99 or 99 cents. People are willing to take a look at those prices if your user reviews are good. You can do especially well if you have multiple books out (as long as people dig your stuff)."

(My books are on Kindle, too, including "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey.)

The 80 20 Experiment - Day 4 - First things first!

This is my chronicle of applying the 80 20 rule that says you should focus your energy on the 20% of what you do that brings you 80% of the value) for a week. If you haven't been following along, go back to the first post for more information on the 80 20 rule and how it could benefit you.

Doing the top 20%-related tasks first thing makes a great deal of sense and by not following that routine, I had my first failure so far. 

I did get my other videos up on YouTube and the additional sales page for one of my Las Vegas workshops done, but the new video remains unfinished. There were a couple of unexpected events today but also I failed to tackle the 20% stuff first.

One of the people who is participating reports that her walking routine is on track and she's also finding that it's important to do it in the morning, before the mind can come up with too many excuses (I've also found that to be true in terms of going to the gym).

Another participant has been doing his 30 minutes a day of watching Wordpress tutorials online and says he's just about ready to start applying what he's learning.

Another one is also focused on website activity and got his blogging, forums research, and signing up for ClickBank yesterday. Well done!

A new participant is Saul B., who commented that it's far too easy to forget the important things when they get crowded out by the urgent ones. That's something I have experienced, too and in my online mentoring program I always say that the hardest part of doing what we should be doing is just remembering that we're supposed to be doing it!

If you've been reading along and now want to join in, just go back to the first post in this series and start there, and let me know how you get on.

For me, the 20% tasks for tomorrow are:

* Finish the video!

* Do a mailing to my  list in preparation for the Sept. resumption of my Breakthrough Strategy online mentoring program

* Review and add to a report on crowd funding that's 80% ready to go.

If you're doing this as these posts are finished, you may want to take Saturday off--I'm working on a Saturday in anticipation of having a week's holiday in a couple of weeks.