The Upside of Waiting it Out

It was when I was the editor of the Maricopa Monitor in Arizona that I first recognized there was an upside to waiting for something to gel. 

Several times there was pressure from outside to print a story that felt “not ready” and my gut told me to hang on for a week or two.  On each occasion, given the extra time, a significant piece of the puzzle would be presented and suddenly the article would stick together in a way it hadn’t previously. 

After the month of writing 50,000 words, known as NaNoWriMo, I had more than the required words to be “successful”, but it didn’t feel right. It’s not that I expected the tale to spring forth whole and in perfect form. There was something intrinsically wrong with it. I’ve been sitting on it ever since. About two weeks ago, it came to me what needed to be done and I’ve gotten started on the revisions. It will be a much better book for the waiting. 

Yesterday, I had a transformative experience. For quite a while I have been unable to move forward on a number of things, including the promotion of my newly formed small business. I felt a serious blockage on it and on other aspects of the life I’m trying to build for myself. 

I was washing dishes last evening and as I scrubbed three major chunks of my life fell into place. I could almost hear them…clink, clink, clink. It was as much physical as mental. 

Does anyone remember Tetris, the Gameboy game of dropping puzzle pieces that needed to be fitted together to continue and it had to happen under a deadline? The sensation I had was similar in that I felt a bit of peace come over me when these slabs of existence presented themselves then nuzzled together in harmony. 

I now know where I’m going for the foreseeable future and it is good. I’ve found my path and I’d like to say it was through patient waiting. But it wasn’t. I’m the most impatient person in the world. Yet, somehow, I survived through it and I’m on the other side of that suspension of time. 

That, my friends, is the upside of waiting it out.  Congruence.

Why I Don’t Read Reviews

I’ve had several subjects on my mind for the past couple of months that I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to discuss on this blog, mostly for fear of being viewed as a pessimist, something I cannot imagine actually being.  The subject of reviews keeps resurfacing and it’s time to spill the beans – I do not read reviews. 

Not for books or movies or plays or anything else.  While I appreciate those who take the time to write reviews, it is difficult work and appreciated by many, I don’t ever go more than a sentence or two into one. 

Here’s why. For years, I would watch reviews of movies on television.  The thumbs up or down of Siskel & Ebert were a staple for a long time. There were the opinions of Gene Shalit, the wild-haired, mustachioed Mark Twain look-alike, with whom I found I most identified in taste and humor, presented as a regular spot on the Today show. Film reviews were and still are prominent on television, print and now online. Over time I realized that I rarely shared the opinion of most reviewers, with the exception of Shalit, and had often missed seeing movies in theaters that I ultimately saw on television and loved. 

The same is true nowadays.  I read several reviews of Indie books when I started out as an Indie author, two years ago, often ones I had already read. It was rare that I agreed with the reviewer. I either loved or disliked the books, sometimes in agreement with the overall judgment of the reviewer, but very seldom on the same points. 

Moreover, I found that if I read the reviews before I read the book, I was seeing the book from the standpoint of the reviewer, not my own. I did, more than once, re-read a book after trying to clear out the opinions of a reviewer and see it freshly on my own. 

As I said, for those that wish to have an idea of what they’re getting into ahead of time, the reviews are critical. I’m just not one of those readers.  I truly do thank all those who make an effort to give a review to books on Amazon, and/or blog their reviews. I know the effort is valued by many, many readers.

Who Are We Really Talking To?

For some time now I’ve been considering this question about social media. As someone who got into Twitter and Facebook because I’m a writer with a need to promote my books, and as a person who has been in various aspects of business all my life, it became important to me to assess my ROI (return on investment) of time, energy and money.

While our goal should be to reach readers, I’ve realized for some time that writers who tweet and share on Facebook are, in general, talking to other writers. Have you checked out your followers list on Twitter lately? I have and somewhere around 90% are other writers. Sure we sometimes buy each other’s books, but we are definitely not our target audience. They are out there, but we aren’t reaching them. Or if we are, the sheer numbers of Indie books are overwhelming them.

Additionally, I tried an experiment. I belong to a Facebook group of writers who try to support each other in a number of ways, one of which is to tweet book promos for each other. I listed a tweet for my novella, The Great Twitter Adventure, on September 27 of 2012. Many kind people have tweeted and re-tweeted that promo over the months, literally thousands of times. Six months later, I had my first sale – I gifted a friend the book.  I believe that this is a pretty good indication that simply tweeting our book promos out there will never accomplish what we really want – for people to buy and read our books.

So, what to do about this problem? I don’t have an answer to the problem, but as they say recognizing there is a problem is the first step to solving it.

There are only two avenues to reaching readers that I know of – Goodreads and advertising on sites like Kindle Nation Daily, which presumably Kindle readers will access to pick their next book. Thank goodness the competition with free ebooks is dying out. Perhaps soon there will be room for paid books on the world’s overburdened e-readers.

For those who find themselves trying to reach the reading masses, just know that you are not alone in this quest. No matter how an author attempts to present a sunny face, very few are making much at this endeavor.  If you’ve managed to receive a 1099 from Amazon, frame a copy. It will remind you that you ARE getting paid. But, in the meantime, strive to find a unique place among readers while maintaining your friendships with authors.  We do need to talk to each other, for support and companionship, but not to rely on each other to promote our books.

Be creative in your search for readers.  That’s what I intend to do over the rest of 2013. I’ll happily share whatever new things I find.

Don’t be shy. Please share your thoughts on this subject!

Two-Step To-Do List

Do you find yourself at the end of the day having gotten nothing much done? How about when you have a to-do list? Do you then find yourself getting all the easy or small stuff done but not those items you’ve been avoiding all along? I think I have something that might work for you.

Many years ago, I fell in love with Excel – well, actually it was Lotus 1-2-3, Excel’s birth mother – and life hasn’t been the same since. I use Excel for so many things – budgeting, tracking story ideas, record-keeping and during my last job I used it to facilitate projects. Now, I’ve taken the same system I used there and adapted it to my own life.

Here’s what I created first, my to-do list, a spreadsheet with the following columns: priority, task, deadline, requirements and completed. I simply assign a priority (currently from 1 to 4), a short description of what the task is, what’s required (i.e. money, postage, phone #) and then record the date I’ve completed it. I put a string of weekly tasks, like washing clothes, at the bottom of the list separate from the main body, so that I could just copy and paste those in every week and assign priorities.

Now you may think the completion date isn’t really important, especially for items like "clean the shower," but I urge you to get in the habit. Here’s why – the day will come when you can’t remember when you mailed that gift or filed your income taxes or the last time you had your propane tank filled and you will be grateful for the record. Don’t pick and choose either because you cannot anticipate what you will need to know. 

What to do with the completed tasks? That’s easy (and important): first sort your Sheet 1 (which I entitled “Current To-Do”) then cut and paste the completed items to Sheet 2 (Which I named – wait for it – Completed Tasks).  I sort the Completed Tasks sheet periodically by date, but I can search for words to take me right to the task I’m looking for when trying to locate the date I did something.

On Monday I instituted a new Excel spreadsheet, my Daily Schedule. Does this sound like overload? Well, it might be if I was being really good at completing tasks according to their assigned priority or completing every Priority 1 task each day. Guess what? I wasn’t. Why? Well, because I was effectively keep tracking of what I had to do with the To-Do List, but still managing to avoid those things that were a challenge OR I just didn’t want to do.

With the Daily Schedule I divided the day into 15 minute increments and entered some standard items into the morning and evening time periods, leaving me with a reusable schedule by saving it at that point. Then I saved it as the Daily Schedule for 1-21 and scheduled tasks into the leftover time slots. 

The other thing I added to this (off to one side) was a list of how many minutes I wanted to spend each day on various things like Twitter, novel writing, blogging, etc. I found that by adding up the minutes I thought it would take me to do the regular items, chores and the preferred items, I had to work 10 hours a day. This set a fairly realistic goal for me. I think if you add up the approximate minutes it takes you every day just to be a functioning human, you’ll be surprised and more realistic about what time is left for other things – like pursuing your dreams.

I work the to-do list against the daily schedule, copying and pasting items from the to-do to the daily, and so far, it’s working.

I know there are many people who aren’t particularly adept at or comfortable with Excel and would not recommend it to someone for whom it’s a struggle. However, if you use Excel in your life anyway, you might want to give this a try. I expect 2013 to be my best, most effective year ever!

Intentional Reading

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read all of the John Steinbeck novels. I’ve done pretty well so far, having read East of Eden, Cannery Row, The Red Pony, The Long Valley, The Pearl and even Travels with Charley, which isn’t a novel. I’ve just started The Grapes of Wrath. 

Last year I decided to read all of Jane Austen’s books. It was a wonderful experience. I find if you read one book after another, fairly close together, it’s a lot like watching a season of a television series in a marathon manner. Where there is repetitiveness you recognize it and as a writer that’s fantastic. It leads to a better understanding of how a great author thinks. Deep immersion in Austen caused me to become frustrated with the horrible restrictions on women of her time and truly appreciate my own freedoms. 

Since I published my first novel, Red Mojo Mama, I have spent a great deal of time doing obligatory reading as I’m sure many of you have. That is to say, I have owed it to a number of my compadres to read their works. While this has been enjoyable and informative, I miss reading an author I already know I love and especially reading enough of that writer to really appreciate their genius. 

I watched a PBS/Ken Burns special on Mark Twain recently and it has inspired me to read those of his books I haven’t already read and re-read those I have. I already know I love Twain, but now I want to study his use of dialog, how he captured the voice of his times. 

After reading Austen and Steinbeck, I think they had that trait in common with Twain, and that perhaps that is what makes an author magnificent – the ability to play back to the reader what a people and era sounded like. The authenticity of that speech and thought pattern captures the reader and won’t let go. 

So, while I will definitely continue to read the works of my brother and sister writers, I’m going to continue to make a point of structuring some “intentional reading” for myself periodically. It’s great for my inner scribe.