thought for the day…
Playing around with design #4
Happy Monday and here’s another in our series…
Playing around with design #3
Okay, moving right along is the 3rd in our series….. Too much? Not enough?
Playing around with design #2
Next pic in this little series…thoughts?
Playing around with design
So lately, I’ve been trying to learn a bit about design.
Turns out there is a lot to learn. But I have learned a few little tricks.
Last week I did a little series of creepy/scary/mystery-ish type images which I’ll post over the next few days.
Here’s the first one.
Feel free to share your thoughts, offer advise or to criticize them – feedback is super cool and I love it.
Something beautiful for you
Life has been so stressful lately and I’m sure we’re all feeling it. So instead of trying to stuff your brain with more words and thoughts, I wanted to just give you something truly beautiful to listen to. Magnificent! Enjoy!
If you are interested in learning about Cal Morris’s amazing music here are his links:
And no, I have no personal connection to Cal Morris whatsoever – just heard his beautiful music at a time when I needed something beautiful in my life. And I thank him.
Dancing with the light – instant stress reliever
Incredible. Worth the four minutes to sit back and dance in the light with these two amazing dancers.
What to expect when you self publish
Self publishing is a new thing to me. Very new. But I have to say even in a few days I’ve learned a lot. I humbly pass what I’ve learned onto you:
Things will go wrong. For example when I sent the check to the formatters to have my files converted to digital files, little did I know that Florida would have a week of heavy rain, flooding and delayed mail delivery. It set my schedule back nearly a week.
You’ll learn what sleep deprivation really means. I haven’t slept in two weeks. My dog is afraid of my cat hides and me whenever she sees me coming. Although the hallucinations are interesting and might make for some good inspiration for a horror story somewhere down the line.
You’ll have energy you don’t know what to do with. All the hype all the anticipation all the worry, excitement, and jitters do not go away after you press publish. Actually, it is set free and you’ll find yourself wandering around thinking you have something to do when you don’t. Everything you attempt to do will go unfinished and your attention span will have reduced to that of a gnat.
Your expectations won’t be met. You’ve told yourself you won’t expect anything. You’ll publish and see what happens. But you do expect things. No matter how hard you try to act casual, you won’t be feeling it. You’ll wonder why your aunt Myrna didn’t buy a copy of the book. Why everyone you ever met hasn’t called or sent you a congrats email, why everybody else is going about their business as though nothing has happened.
You’ll have yet another thing to obsess about. Yup, just what you need. A new obsession. That shiny object is known as the Amazon author dashboard. In real time, you can watch your sales and page reads change. Or not. Or not fast enough. You’ll tell yourself that you’ll only check it twice a day – first thing in the morning and last thing at night. But you’ll check it every hour. Every half hour. Every five minutes. It’s too cool not to be obsessed by it. It’s the magic of technology.
You’ll want to cry – if you’re a guy, you may want to punch something. You won’t necessarily know why you want to cry. And you’ll resist it. You’ll try to reason with yourself. Convince yourself there is nothing to cry about. That everything is going fine. But it won’t matter because all that stress, worry, anticipation will have you hopping around like a Mexican jumping bean. Let yourself. Cry. Cry it all out. Or punch something – not a human of course, but walls can be repaired, punching bags are made for such things. You’ll feel a bit better afterward. Really, you will.
You’ll feel like you should be doing something but you won’t know what it is. Leading up to publishing you’ve had a list and you proudly checked off each item as you accomplished it. Now, you don’t know what to do. Should you keep tweeting and face booking your carefully constructed promos banner one more time? Should you do the laundry that has been piling up for a month? Should you try to get your cat out from under the bed. Chances are you’ll just check your sales dashboard again and alternate that with playing online solitaire or mahjong..
You’ll think of details you should’ve added to the books, or edited out or changed. You may even be tempted to take the book down and do another round of edits before re-publishing. Your mind is a cesspool of shoulda, woulda, coulda.
How to get some perspective
Okay so this completely new world of self-publishing is exciting but now that you’ve done it, clearly you’ve got a case of the crazies. And if you don’t get hold of yourself, you may end up
It’s understandable. You’ve spent months maybe even years preparing for this and now that’s it has happened you don’t know what to do with yourself. The following may help:
Tear yourself away from all of it. Yup. Go to the beach, go hiking, check into a motel in the mountains for a couple of days. Unplug. Leave your devices at home, or at least locked in your trunk – and forget about all of it for a little while. You may go through a little withdrawal, but after a few hours, you’ll feel better.
Stop stalking your friends and relatives with helpful suggestions on how they can buy your book. Chances are, most of them probably will – eventually. But people resist being told what to do. If you leave them to their own devices, they’ll come around. And some of them won’t. And you have to be okay with that. Though this is a milestone in your life, it’s just one more detail that buzzes by them in a blur.
Come up with a plan. After you’ve gotten some sleep, some space and some decent food, sit down and come up with a rational plan on how you will promote your book (if you haven’t already). Even if you had a plan before publishing, now that you’ve had a taste of the reality, you may need to tweak it. If you simply don’t know what to do spend some time on blogs of those who have blazed the trail already: Anne R. Allen, Hugh Howey, Chuck Wendig and Joe Konrath all have great blogs filled with useful advice for self publishers.
Start your next book. This may sound crazy. You’ve just spent months, maybe years writing the book you just published and I’m suggesting you start your next one? Yup. That’s right. If you are in this for the long haul, the next book should be foremost on your mind. When readers discover you and like your work, they’ll want more. Be ready for them. It’ll also give you something to focus on and pour all that crazy random energy into and likely be a calming influence in your life.
Keep notes. After you publish, keep a log of all the promo actions you do – large and small. Because I guarantee if you see a spike in sales, you’ll want to know what caused it. If you have a record of the actions you’ve taken, you’ll be much more able to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Above all else, don’t become discouraged. Nothing happens overnight. Even though it may appear to be that way. It just isn’t true. There may always be the exception to the rule, but chances are you won’t be that exception. Chances are you are going to have to work hard, go through a lot of trial and error, fail and succeed continually to get to that sweet spot. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t good, that your books aren’t good, that people don’t want to read them. It just means there is a learning and experience curve. Slow and steady wins the race, or something like that.
Be proud of yourself. You did it. You had the courage and persistence to write that book, polish that book and publish that book. Of the millions of people who ‘want’ to write a book, you are one of the few who did. Be proud. That is an accomplishment. Now go write the next one.
Annie
It’s Easy to get Discouraged
It’s easy to get discouraged when you’re pursuing a creative goal. Life in general is hard enough—getting to work on time, feeding the kids, paying the bills. That alone can exhaust you and leave little time and energy for other loftier goals.
I suppose I’m one of the ‘lucky ones’ because to a degree I’m living my dream. I make my living as a freelance writer and when I’m not doing that I work on my mystery series. So I’m living the charmed life, right? Not so much. I still have to pay rent, pay bills, pay for taxes, healthcare – the same costs you have. And when unexpected costs arise those have to be covered too.
And then life happened – again
For example, a couple of weeks ago my car started leaking oil. Was it is just a minor irritation that was easy and inexpensive to fix? Nope. It was a seal or two or maybe three. And apparently that’s a big deal because they need to drop the engine and do major surgery. So…the money I’d carefully set aside for piddly things like editing and cover design got reassigned. Sigh. Back to the drawing board and time to get more work in the door. And so it goes.
In an earlier time I might’ve just stuck my head in the oven and wailed. I might’ve thrown up my hands and proclaimed it was just too hard. That no matter what I did, it was always one step forward and two steps back. Then given up. Because, you know – I’m one of those temperamental and over-dramatizing creatives.
This time I decided to forego that particular dramatization and just shrug, pull the money together and keep focusing on the goal. And interestingly enough I only felt bad for a few hours, instead of the usual two weeks of woe and worry. And that felt kind of great in a way. I didn’t let life victimize me. I just gave it a, ‘Meh,’ and kept going.
If you focus it will come
A little over a year ago, I came up with an idea for a mystery series and decided to go for it. Initially I was only going to write the first book, publish it, and take it from there. But somewhere during the process I decided I might as well write all the books in the series and publish them in rapid succession. I knew exactly what the next two books were about, so why wait? If readers liked the first book they’d want to read the second and the third, why not have them ready and available. Granted it was a lot to bite off and chew and there have been times when I’ve called myself names for going this route. But something kind of magical happened during the process (and continues to happen because the process is still ongoing) I became fully committed to the project. I simply decided that my priority was the series and that everything else would have to support it, rather than the other way around. No matter what, I was going for it and wouldn’t let anything stop me.
Kind of amazing what a decision like that can bring about. Instead of making things more difficult, suddenly things just sort of happened. Work appeared out of nowhere. A little networking enabled me to line up a cover designer and proofreader. Doors opened in the weirdest most unexpected ways. Go figure. All because I finally decided that this writing thing was my priority. Duh, took long enough, eh?
But it’s not a piece of cake
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not easy. Given my particular goal I have little time to socialize and generally sit at my computer 14-16 hours a day, every day, every week. I often forget to eat and sometimes don’t manage to get out of my pajamas. My friends have sent out search parties looking for me. But I’m happy. I’m doing what I was meant to do. I’m being who I am. Sounds simple but you’d be amazed at how hard those two little things can be to accomplish. And in this crazy journey I’ve learned a few things:
- You must analyze what went right as well as what went wrong. Otherwise you’ll never get anywhere.
- Will your heart always be in it? Hello no. But do it anyway.
- Sometimes the dark places are where we find our best work.
- Giving up is not an option.
- Life is a bully – it can beat you down. It won’t stop just because you surrendered. On the contrary, now it knows you’re a willing victim and it will really let loose.
- Creating anything beautiful in this world is hard as hell and downright dangerous.
- Having an original thought and uttering it is also dangerous.
- Everybody’s a critic – accept that and move on.
- Some people will love your work, others will hate it. Accept it and move on.
- Baby steps.
Art is hard but what else do you have to do?
Speaking your mind and saying (or painting, or drawing, or singing, or dancing) what you really think? Blasphemy. But do it anyway. Because you’re an artist. Because you’re an innovator. Because you’re an entrepreneur. Unlike most ordinary humans, you create stuff. Usually out of thin air. That’s your superpower, so use it baby. Revel in that. Understand that. Be that.
Stay committed and the rest will follow.
What discourages you about being a creative? How have you handled it? Share your thoughts and experiences with the rest of us.
Writer Chick
Copyright 2015
Anita Rodgers Mystery Writer 