Month: February 2014

A writing buddy has sold
her first story.
Her editor asked her
if she had any questions
about the process.
My friend didn’t ask her questions
because she didn’t
“want to look like a newbie.”

WTF?

I have 68 stories published
under one pen name alone
and I ask a zillion questions.
I ask what is selling,
what ideas are they looking for,
what I can do to better suck readers in.
If I don’t ask,
I won’t know
and that will hamper my success.

Last month,
I sat down virtually with a best selling writer.
She drilled me with questions.
She wanted to know everything I did
and ended up sucking my brain dry.
I suspect that is WHY she’s successful.

Ask the damn questions.
Don’t worry about looking like a newbie.

You’re working on the next big thing.
You’re past the exciting first steps.
You’re in the
roll up your sleeves and work stage.

Then you have an idea.
This idea is even BETTER
than the idea you’re working on.
It is new and shiny and exciting.

So you abandon your previous project
and switch your efforts
to the new idea.
You do this again and again,
working hard
yet never truly accomplishing anything.

I’ve seen this happen
with entrepreneurs
and with writers.
One of my buddies
has twenty-three stories half finished.
I suspect she’ll have twenty-four next week
when she gets another ‘great’ idea.

The new product development team
at a major beverage company
taught me how to deal with
shiny new ideas.
We had a huge whiteboard
and, when an idea came,
we’d park it on the whiteboard.
We’d feel good
because we ‘did something’ with the idea
but this doing didn’t distract us.

I do this now.
I have a list of my top 100 story ideas.
When I get a new idea,
I stick it on the list,
drop another idea off of the list,
and then return to the story I’m writing.

Product ideas are only great
if we launch the product.
Fight the next product distraction.

I was lucky to have Larry Smith
as one of my professors.
I’ve never met a more passionate professor.
He was so passionate
that his classes were standing room only.
Students not enrolled in his economics classes
would sit in the audience,
simply to soak in his passion.

I doubt Larry Smith believes
he’s merely teaching economics.
Supply and demand
isn’t why fine art majors crash his classes.
He’s teaching about passion
because he KNOWS
only people with passion change the world.

As Larry Smith told Carmine Gallo
“Wasted talent is a waste
I cannot stand.
My students want to create technology.
I want them to create really ‘kick-ass’ technology.
I want them to be passionate
about what they’re doing.”

Be passionate!

Before I started writing
this 12 novella serial,
I plotted each novella.

I’m writing the third story
this week
and the first 2 stories
have veered away from the plan.
I’ve had to to adjust
the plots for the remaining 10 stories.

So what was the point
of plotting (planning)
the 12 stories (product launch)?

The key turning points (stages)
haven’t changed.
Their delivery dates might have been adjusted,
how they are accomplished might have changed,
but they still have to be completed.

Your product launch
won’t follow your initial plan either
but the key stages should remain constant.
There is a benefit to knowing
what these key stages are.

Start with a plan.

I was talking with a writing buddy
about how I’m struggling
with making my first story
in the multi-novella serial magical.

She asked
“Is magical necessary?
Isn’t good enough
good enough?”

The short answer?
No.

This is true in all industries
but especially true in entertainment.
Customers are seeking to be entertained.
Good enough bores them.

It is also especially true
for not yet established brand names.
Customers are taking a chance on us.
Why would they take a chance
on something that wasn’t magical?

Your product doesn’t have to be perfect
(as perfect is impossible)
but it DOES have to be magical.
It should change your customer’s world
in some way.

As my competition is delivering
solid stories (products),
my stories have to be magical.

Writing a magical story
from beginning to end
can be daunting.
It is easy to become overwhelmed
and give up,
submitting a good story,
not a magical one.

What I do is start
with the key scenes
(the first meeting, the first kiss, etc).
These are what filmmakers call
the money shot scenes.
These are the product attributes
that the readers (customers)
are truly buying.

An interesting thing happens
when I focus on these scenes,
all of the scenes around them
become magical also.
The magic spreads
until the entire story (product) is special.

I’ve seen this happen with
beverage development also.
We’ll spend time
making the carton graphics magical.
Then the employee in charge of caps
will wish his cap contribution
to be as magical.
If we had started with the quest
for a magical cap,
we’d appear silly
but once the rest of the product is magical,
a magical cap makes sense.

Fold in the magic.
Watch it spread.

I’m super busy,
as many entrepreneurs are.
One of the ways I save
a lot of time
is by batching tasks.

I often write a week’s worth
of client k posts at a time.
I only have to open the blog once.
I do all of my business reading at once.
I get into that mindset
and I stay there.
(I usually have a stack of possible ideas
I’ve accumulated during the week)

I do all of my social media
for the day
in one time slot.
This is especially efficient
as I use the same content
for more than one social media venue.

I return all of my reader emails at once.
Often readers will be writing
about the same story
(my latest release)
and I copy and paste some of the same content.

Consider batching tasks
to save time.