Month: August 2011

Shakespeare is a must read
for most high school students
but how do you make
Shakespeare interesting
to the iPod generation?

One creative English teacher
is doing this
by mixing Shakespeare
with social media.

He has set up a chat room
for his students
where
he posts questions
and assignments.

Students earn marks by making comments
and by replying to comments
made by other students.

Because students don’t want
to look like idiots
in front of their peers,
they go to class
and pay attention.

And by framing it
in a familiar, fun environment,
old Shakespeare becomes new Bill.

Can you make an old product
new again
by selling it with social media?

Every day
I receive at least one email
from someone
who doesn’t know me
yet hates me.
She tears my books apart.
She tells me to do the world a favor
and stop writing.
She (and she is a different person every day)
spews awful words,
and tries to crush me.

Success comes with many costs
but one of the most challenging costs
to deal with
is the attraction of haters.
It is difficult, almost impossible,
to create
in an environment of hate.

One of my buddies,
a New York Times bestselling author,
hires someone else to deal
with the haters.
She tells this employee
she doesn’t even want to hear about it.

What I do is
only allow the haters access to me
AFTER my creating is done.
I don’t read emails
or check message boards
or look at reviews
until I’ve reached my creation quota
for the day.

When you’re successful,
some people won’t like you.
Learn to deal with it.

Seth Godin has more thoughts on this.

I was on a publisher chat today.
The chat was for
all of the publisher’s authors
yet only 3 authors (myself included)
showed up.

One author decided to
give a book away.
Great.
I don’t have a problem
with that.

When her contest was done,
she asked the other author and I
if we’d be giving books away also.

What the hell?
If we said no,
we’d look like greedy, selfish people.

So the other author gave a book away.

I didn’t.
I don’t give entire books away
to individuals.
I give linked shorter stories away
to everyone.
So that’s what I offered up.

The thing is…
even though I had a response,
I didn’t like being put in a corner.
I hated it, in fact.
I thought it was sneaky
and underhanded of her.

Before you put someone
in the corner like that,
THINK about it.
Think
“Do I truly want to
make an enemy of this person?”

A buddy and I
are managing two different not-for-profit writing groups.
We inherited these groups
and the small number of members
belonging to them.

My buddy marketed her group like hell,
recruiting members,
THEN she started providing content
for this group.
She had a challenge getting members,
and
she had a challenge retaining members,
because she didn’t have content.

Being a blogger,
I took a different tactic.
I concentrated on providing content.
I got the existing members involved.
I built a community.
I didn’t lose any members,
and by the time
the content and activities were self-perpetuating,
and I had time to look for new members,
I didn’t have to.
Members, gained by referrals,
were finding me.

It is easier to sell product
when you have an actual product.
Product development starts
with product.

One of my buddies
is worrying about whether or not
she is too harsh
with the author feedback
for a writing contest.
She worries she’ll turn the writer off writing.

Not possible.
Not if the writer truly wants it.

We all experience harshness,
especially at the beginning of a venture.

When I was a child,
I’d tell people I would be a millionaire.
Some people would laugh
and tell me
“You’re not smart enough.”
“You have to come from money
to get money.”
or the ever popular
“You’re crazy.”

I was a CHILD,
and this harshness didn’t stop me.

When I started writing,
I entered a contest.
I received a mark of 32%,
and the feedback
“Watching grass grow
is more interesting than your book.”

That didn’t stop me.

And if it had stopped me,
I’d know that writing wasn’t for me.

Being on the receiving end
of harshness is great.

If someone snickers at your business concept,
and you quit working on it,
you know the business
isn’t what you truly want.
It saves resources,
resources you can allocate
to something you DO want.

Harshness has never stopped
the truly driven.

Authors often tell each other
“Protect the writing.”
Writing is our core activity.
If we don’t produce fresh words,
any marketing, editing, writing relationship building,
activities
are pointless.

Many of us write first thing
in the morning.
That is our most important activity
so that is the activity
we complete first.
We don’t check email.
We don’t take calls.
We protect the writing.

EVERY business, industry, job
has a core essential activity.
It is the activity
that MUST get done.

You should know what
that activity is.
(If you don’t know,
ASK)
You should contribute
to that activity
(if you are essential
to the essential activity,
you have job security).

And you should protect that activity
from the other
non-essential resource-eating activities.

Protect the writing.