Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 37

Writing and the Unseen Impact

“What you see is all there is.”

That is how Daniel Kahneman describes the “availability heuristic.” Put simply, if we cannot think of a recent example of something, we discount its probability. If it doesn’t come easily to mind, it probably doesn’t happen.

With writing, sometimes what you see is nothing. Silence can dissuade us from continuing to write, honing the craft and building an audience.

Confronted with silence, we may assume that our writing has no effect at all. We look at the metrics (sales numbers, downloads, shares) and get discouraged. Without feedback, we assume that our thoughts and ideas are disappearing into the tidal flood of global information. That may well be true. Or not.

We cannot always see the impact our words have on others.

Unseen Effects vs. Metrics

Because we cannot follow our works into the world, we look to numbers and metrics to tell us what is happening. These metrics include:

Likes
Shares
Comments
Books purchased
Reviews posted

Likes and shares are great, but you and I both know that people sometimes share things that they do not actually read. Perhaps you have simply written a particularly share-worthy headline.

While you should track metrics, remember:

Metrics are the side effects of human actions. They should not be our goals.

Much that happens in the world does not appear in trackable data. People feel differently after reading what you have written. They may tell others about it, or share your work in person or through an email attachment. Perhaps they take an action “in real life” rather than in Facebook. We cannot see those actions.

When someone actually reaches out and tells you that about the impact of your words or actions, or  quotes a line from what you have written, it is startling, in a wonderful way.

Small Ripples

That post you share today might make an impact, perhaps not on thousands or hundreds of people, but on one or two. With those words, you have may have helped one person, shifted one perspective, changed one day.

That person might take action, shift another person’s perspective. You cannot know the effects of your words.

I’ve written before about your resonant audience. Your words won’t apply to everyone, but they will resonate with some. Perhaps those individuals will know how to reach others, who will reach others.

Sometimes we can see the ripples of our ideas, in an email from a stranger or a comment from a friend.

A stranger messaged me on Facebook recently, telling me that The Writer’s Process sits on her desk, marked and highlighted, and has helped her as she sets forth on her own book. The day I got that message was a very good day.

Do not be fooled by silence into thinking that your words do not matter.

Make the Unseen Visible

Last week’s post described writing a book as taking a leap of faith. There are many opportunities to look down, bail out, fall, and fail. The same is true for any sustained writing effort, like ongoing blogging.

That slow-motion leap of faith is sustained when we see the effects of our actions.

Have you ever reached out and told someone that their words have made an impact?

If you’re like me, you don’t do this as much as you could. I write and speak about authors that have been influential to me, but rarely write directly to those authors. (Daniel Kahneman, if you’re reading this, thank you for Thinking Fast and Slow.)

I’m making a conscious effort to change that, and to let people know when their words have moved me. I might leave a book review, respond to an email, or send a comment on Twitter. It doesn’t take a great deal of time, and it may feed the faith of the person doing the writing.

Your words and actions matter. Keep showing up.

Related posts:

Writing for Resonance: on finding your resonant audience

A Three Step Plan for Writing Your Book: about the leap of faith

Staying Silent or Finding Your Voice: writing about what matters

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A Three Step Plan for Writing Your Book

Writing a book takes a leap of faith: faith that you have something to say that other people will find valuable. Faith that the book you create will support your objectives. Faith that you can finish and publish the book.

But writing a book is a lo-o-o-ng leap. Sustaining that faith can be tricky when you have many chances to bail out.

As a child, I loved watching RoadRunner cartoons. Wile E. Coyote, in pursuing the road runner, frequently ended up headed off a cliff and remained suspended in air. The moment he looked down, he fell. I remember thinking, illogically, that if he didn’t look down, he would have made it to the other side.

 

Writing a book is kind of like taking a giant, cartoon leap: it requires Roadrunner-like faith that with continued, unstinting effort, you will reach the other side.

Gravity pulls us back to earth every day, in the many, seemingly urgent tasks that demand time and attention. You can get distracted. You can even bail out. Unlike Wile E. Coyote, you don’t crash to the ground. No one may even know that you have abandoned the book project.

The more quickly you commit to the work and make progress, the more likely you are to complete it.

For that reason, here’s my three part plan for getting your book done as quickly as you can, maintaining momentum without sacrificing quality.

Disclaimer: I see plenty of offers to teach you to “write a book in 24 hours.” Perhaps you could do that – but would you end up with a book anyone would want to read? If you’re pulling thoughts in from the top of your head, you miss the chance to deepen your own expertise while writing.

I’m assuming that you want to write a book that achieves one of the following objectives:

Reaching and helping other people
Spinning a great story (for fiction writers)
Perhaps, just perhaps, changing the world for the better
Advancing or changing your career

If this sounds like you, then follow this simple three part plan to writing your book.

Create goals and deadlines.
Do something everyday toward one of those goals.
Do that work first.

Create Goals and Deadlines

Scope out the work, create your plan, and establish goals and deadlines for the milestones in the plan.

Will those deadlines change? Almost certainly. But most of us need goals to provide  urgency.

Once you have a plan, commit to it. I tend to take my own self-imposed deadlines very seriously – sometimes too seriously, but that’s another problem. If you need more motivation, find someone to hold you accountable: a friend, a writing group, a coach, a family member.

Do Something Every Day Toward a Goal

Every day*,  work toward your goal.

You read that right – every day. Some days, you may show up for 15 minutes and read something you did the day before or make a few edits. That’s okay. This daily persistence keeps your background mental processes working on the subject of your book, which will make you more productive.

*It’s probably a good idea to take off one day a week for mental health. You may find that when you do, new ideas and thoughts will crop up.

Work on the Book First

A book is a long-term project. You can always let today’s work slide into tomorrow, and on and on. That’s one way to abandon your giant leap of faith. If you make a point of working on the book first, you maintain progress no matter what.

I have a tendency to prioritize other people’s needs in front of my own. Perhaps you do, too. To avoid that situation, make the writing your highest priority and do it first,  before you attend to the million urgent things demanding your attention.

On any given day, many things will seem more urgent. Few are as important. 

Work on the book first.

Simple, But Not Easy

That’s it. As I said, it’s a simple plan, not rocket science. Make a plan, commit to working toward it every day, and do that work first.

I never said it was easy. But if you work this way, you will make progress, and you stand a much greater chance of getting your book out into the world.

I covered these thoughts and others in a Nonfiction Authors Association (NFAA) Seminar recently, on the topic of “How to Write Your Next Book Faster.” NFAA authority members can listen to the discussion here. This group is a terrific resources for nonfiction authors.

(Gif via via GIPHY)

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The Ultimate Start-Up Guide: A Review

I just finished reading The Ultimate Start-Up Guide by Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent, and I must say I am surprised.

I expected great start-up marketing advice, and the book delivered. I’ve worked with Tom and Carol before, and they know their stuff

Knowing the authors, I also expected an engaging,  irreverent tone and style. The book delivers here as well, reading like a conversation with friends who won’t hesitate to say something if you are being a jerk.

What surprised me, though, was the scope the start-up guidance, as well as the sheer number of voices and stories rolled into the book, and the wisdom distilled from those experiences.

A Guide to Starting Up

The book’s structure follows the story arc of a start-up. It begins and ends with the founder, the entrepreneur, the would-be Steve Jobs. It then plunges into advice about failure – a constant presence in the start-up story.

Then it follows a start-up from idea through funding, launch, growth, and the endgame, incorporating guidance and stories for phase.

The authors have followed this path more than 40 times in their work as Crowded Ocean, and lived to tell the tale.  Beyond their own experiences, they have sprinkled the book with contributions from the venture capitalists and founders they have worked with. Those contributions, together with the authors’ advice, make this an indispensable guide for start-ups in any stage.

I’ve been exposed to enough start-ups to recognize the wisdom contained in this book, but still learned a great deal while giving it a careful read.

The Marketing Bits are Good, Too

Crowded Ocean practices what they call sales-based marketing, or marketing that supports sales and revenues. Here’s how they describe this marketing strategy: “If it doesn’t generate new sales, shorten the sales cycle, or make repeat sales easier, don’t do it.” Start-ups don’t have the luxury of doing anything else.

Wearing my subscription marketing hat, I must point out the part about making repeat sales easier. Even in start-ups, it’s not enough to chase the new sale at all costs – you have to take the long view of the customer relationship.

Reading the Ultimate Startup Marketing Guide is like sitting down with a start-up sherpa and savvy marketer. If you’re just getting started or well on your way, take this book along as a guide. You’ll be glad of the companionship.

Check it out yourself.

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Two Reasons Not to Revise As You Draft

You’ve heard many versions of this advice before:

Embrace the ugly first draft. Ann Handley, Everybody Writes
Write with the door closed, revise with the door open.  Stephen King, On Writing
Turn off the inner critic and be fearless. Me, The Writer’s Process

No matter how it’s phrased, the advice is sound. Resist the temptation to revise and polish your words while you write the first draft. Revision and drafting use different cognitive systems, and they can get in each others’ way.

Revising while drafting can shut down creative input and flow.

Using the Muse and Scribe analogy, if you try to revise and wordsmith as you set down the first draft, you’re giving the steering wheel to the Scribe. The Muse is likely to take off and do something else altogether.

But cognitive systems aren’t a compelling argument for many people. So, this post is for anyone who really likes to polish and choose every word as they draft, or who otherwise thinks they can combine drafting and revision and end up with a good first draft. You’re taking a big risk.

A Disclaimer

Can you truly separate revision from drafting? Not entirely.

Drafting and revision are the yin/yang of writing.

No matter how much you try to delineate them, a little bit of each happens in the other.

For example, you’ll think of a stronger verb as soon as you finish a sentence, or rephrase something as you draft. It happens. Likewise, when you’re in the revision phase, you may discover that you need to write a transition or come up with a new segment.

Few of us can completely separate these two phases unless we hand over the revision process to someone else entirely.

But once you open the door to revision while drafting, it can be difficult to close it. It’s so tempting to imagine that you’re capable of spinning out brilliant stuff at the first pass.

Most of us aren’t.

If you insist on revising and polishing while you write, you risk either wasting your time (stealing time from other writing) or compromising the quality of the finished work.

Wasted Time

Perhaps you prefer to polish and revise as you write. You may believe that you spend less time by doing it at once than by saving revision for a separate process..

That may work for something short, like a blog post. But what about a longer work with structure and linear flow, such as a paper, dissertation, or book?

The first step of the revision process should be reading through from start to finish and asking the big questions about order and flow. Even if you worked from an outline when drafting, the act of writing often reveals issues you were not aware of when starting.

If you’ve written a nonfiction book, when revising you should confirm the following:

Is the information presented in the right order, at appropriate depth for my target audience?
Have I left something out?
Does the text include unnecessary details or digressions?

You cannot always answer these questions until you have a little distance from the rough, first draft. If you let the work sit for a day or so and then return, you may discover that you need to pare down some areas, flesh out others, move sections around, and perhaps cut something altogether. A developmental editor may help you with this phase of your book.

Only after answering those questions should you start fine-tuning sentence constructions, choosing stronger verbs, and otherwise polishing and refining the prose.

What happens if you revised and polished the words while writing the first draft? That work is extraneous, and may be left on the cutting room floor.

Revising while drafting is like choosing the curtains before you build the house.

Compromising Quality

Suppose that multiple initial reviewers tell you that your book or research paper is best served by cutting out a section. But you have spent hours during the drafting phase polishing and fine-tuning the prose. You’ve come up with several clever, tweetable sayings based on that ontent.

If you revise and polish as you draft, you risk becoming so attached to the sheer artistry of your prose that you cannot bear to cut it out. As a result, you leave in content that does not serve the reader.

If you cut the section (as you probably should), you essentially lose all of that work, in which you have invested time, effort, and belief.

It’s hard to cut text that you have polished with care.

This is a variation on the Ikea Effect, in which we overvalue things we have helped to create. Cutting that section feels like a personal loss, and you are less likely to do it.

So there you go – two more good reasons to just write the ugly first draft and then get down to the business of revision!

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Need More Time to Write?

The biggest barrier to writing for many people is time – more specifically, the lack of time.

Writing takes time and attention, both of which are precious resources in the modern world.

For many years, I built my consulting business on the reality that even the most adept writers struggle to find that time in the modern workplace. Product managers or technical experts who were often excellent writers hired me because their jobs didn’t leave room for the work.

So I sympathize if you feel that you don’t have enough time to write. But in this, as many things in life, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Perhaps you cannot find uninterrupted hours, days, and weeks in your calendar. Most of us lead busy lives. But can you find 15 minutes a day? Half an hour?

If so, you can take advantage of the magical time-expansion properties of the daily writing practice.

Create a Minimum Daily Writing Practice

Set aside a small chunk time each day to work on a writing project. If you can only find 15 minutes, then find and take that 15 minutes.

Try to do this work early in the day; otherwise, more “urgent” tasks will take precedence over writing.

Then show up and write, think, outline, take notes, revise. Do whatever you can accomplish toward your writing goal in that chunk of time. If you can do more, great, but stay at least for your minimum dedicated time.

Maintaining a daily writing practice benefits you in many ways. It breaks the work into small chunks (the only way to do achieve something major or improve your craft.) It develops resilience, a necessary attribute for any writer.

But the daily writing practice also helps you find more time in a busy schedule. Here’s how:

You probably won’t finish much in your short writing period. You may just be getting started when your time is up. You might even stop right in the middle of a great idea or stream of thought.

Excellent! That’s that’s how you activate the magic of the daily practice.

Unleashing Your Mental TaskRabbit

I’ve written before about the Zeigarnick Effect – or the brain’s tendency to reserve processing for unfinished tasks. This minimum daily writing practice activates that effect by creating an unfinished project that you return to, every day.

Once you walk away from the daily practice, background processes in your brain continue working on the project while you go about your busy life. Those mental processes look for new inputs and patterns, make connections, and otherwise continue working on what you have done so far.

Think of it as hiring mental workers to rummage through thoughts, memories, and impressions for you, like a Fiverr or TaskRabbit in your brain. You may not realize what’s happening, unless you start getting ideas out of the blue or having crazy dreams related to your writing.

The net result is that you gain time spent working on the project, even if you’re not aware of it.

That’s like “free” writing time added to your day!

You weren’t actually putting words down, but the next time you sit down in your daily writing practice, you’ll be more productive because of the work your brain has been doing. And you can capture and work with the bursts of ideas and inspiration that happen between writing sessions.

Cash In On Your Free Writing Time

If you don’t have a daily writing practice yet, give this idea a try. Even if you can only set aside 15 minutes a day, commit to showing up at least six days a week. (You might find that on the seventh day, you get a pile of great ideas.)

Try setting a timer to keep you focused on the work at hand. I’ve started using TheRightMargin as my virtual writing desk: it offers a timer to track your time.

Try the daily practice for a full month and see if you notice a difference. Are you able to get more writing done? Do you generate more ideas, or write more fluidly when you do have the time?

Let me know how this works for you.

I created a short video about this idea:

Visit this page for a series of videos about the barriers to writing.

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Writing Productivity: Why Counting Words Can Mislead You

Whenever a group of writers gets together and the topic of productivity comes up, inevitably the discussion turns to “words per hour” or “words per day.”

“I once did 8,000 words in a day.”

“I can write 1,000 words an hour, easily.”

“I had a terrible session, only 500 words.”

This conversation might lead an insecure writer to believe that there’s some ideal benchmark of words per hour to achieve, and anything less is falling short.

I don’t believe that.

Counting words per hour or day has its use, but not as a measure of writing productivity.

What does it mean to be a productive writer?

Let’s say that you can crank out 1,000 words per hour, and work at this pace four hours ever day. Wow, you feel productive, right?

But if you don’t like what you write or if it doesn’t serve the purpose that you’ve set out to achieve, then that time is not spent productively.

If those thousands of words are never published, your real-world productivity is zero.

People who speak of words per hour are measuring the drafting phase of the writing process. But a rough draft isn’t the end game. The true measure of writing productivity is how many completed works make their way into the world – published works that meet the needs of the audience.

Real productivity is measured in finished work, not word counts.

The factors that contribute to real-world productivity

The first draft is only the midpoint of the writing journey.

Before you ever sit down to write, you think about the topic or research it. You may talk with people about it, rehearsing and exploring your ideas as you speak.

Next you plan and outline what you draft. You may also let the thoughts incubate, giving them time to simmer in the background processes of the brain.

These processes, which take place before you sit down to write, set you up for being productive in the drafting phase.

Then there’s the work entailed in getting the project out into the world: revision, editing, approvals, proofreading, publication. Projects that get bogged down in those phases may never see an audience.

The truly productive writer moves through this entire cycle as efficiently and effectively as possible. It doesn’t matter how many words per minute happen in the drafting phase if the products roll out the door on schedule and and reach readers.

A better use of the “words per hour” metric

Despite the title of this post, I do pay attention to roughly how many words I write during drafting sessions. The word rate offers a reasonable measure of how well I have prepared myself to write and adhered to my process.

The work you do in the early phases (researching, incubating, outlining) primes your brain for drafting. If I follow my process and do the groundwork, then the drafting is usually rapid and fluid.

Most of us have an ideal writing rate – the speed we compose in a state of flow or “in the zone.” I have some sense of what that number is for me, and it  becomes my personal high-water benchmark for a well-prepared drafting session. I also know what my usual writing speed is, under ordinary circumstances.

When you manage a high number of words per hour (compared to your normal speed), it’s probably because you’ve done the work ahead of time to set up the writing, so that you might get into the flow.

An unusually slow writing pace often signals a problem:

I haven’t thought deeply enough about the topic, or have an unresolved problem to address.
I’m not drafting in the right environment; for example, I’m distracted by other things, or not feeling well.
I’ve tried to short-cut the writing process and go straight to drafting. (Somehow I feel like it will save time.)

When this happens, I’ve learned to move on to other things, letting the unwritten draft “simmer”  in the background. Even if I didn’t manage to get many words written, I know that the struggle of trying to write is productive, as “immersion” in the problem represents the first phase in the overall creative process.

By all means, keep an overall eye on your “words per hour” during drafting sessions. But rather than claiming bragging rights, use this number track how well you’re managing your overall process. And don’t forget the end game: the quantity and quality of ideas that you put out into the world.

If you’re interested in hacking your writing productivity, listen to my upcoming teleseminar on writing productivity with Nonfiction Author’s Association on January 25, 2017, at 10 am Pacific.

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Subscription Marketing: January Edition

Value Nurturing: A LinkedIn Skill

If you read my marketing posts regularly, you’ll know that I’m an advocate of promoting the customer’s perception of value after the initial sale, or value nurturing.

Did you know that value nurturing is skill that you can add to your LinkedIn profile?

Seriously, check it out.

1.  On LinkedIn, choose Edit Profile from the Profile menu

2.  Scroll down to the Skills and Endorsements area. Click the Add skill box:

3. In the Add & Remove box, enter Value Nurturing.

Voila – it is now attached to your profile.

Send me an email, and I will endorse you for value nurturing. If you subscribe to these emails or have read the book Subscription Marketing, you’re ahead of most people.

More Value Nurturing Examples

The recent weeks have brought examples from competing ride share companies using data to add value to their services.

Uber: I’ve given Uber a hard time about how it has used its data in the past (the whole Ride of Glory thing.) But now the company is doing something truly valuable. It’s taking aggregated ride data, making it anonymous, and sharing resulting insights into travel patterns and traffic with city planners, municipalities, and the public. Check it out at Uber Movement. Way to add value through data, Uber!

Lyft: Uber’s competitor Lyft deserves some  value nurturing recognition as well. In January, the company sent me an annual summary of my usage – a great way to demonstrate value.

Clearly I am not a frequent Lyft rider.

Lyft also creates value from aggregated data in the Lyftie Awards, in which it shares the “most visited” destinations in the cities it serves. Browse through the awards for cities near you – it may inspire you to visit some local spots.

Still More Unusual Subscription Services

Today’s batch of unusual subscriptions comes  from the “Subscription Box” segment of the industry. Have you thought of subscribing to any of these?

Juice cleanse regiments (BluePrint)
Japanese Candy (JapanCrate)
3D-printing supplies (Maker Box, CubeForMe, ProtoCrate)

Subscription Economy Predictions for 2017

Zuora pays more attention to the subscription economy than most organizations or people. So when the company came out with its eight predictions for 2017, I paid attention. Read them here. Highlights include the end of car ownership and the Great Cable Unbundling.

Last Call for the Updated, Expanded Subscription Marketing Book

Several people responded to my call for stories or ideas that belong in the next, revised edition of Subscription Marketing – thank you! I learn a great deal from this community.

If you have something you want to see in the book, let me know. I’m wrapping up the content this month.

If you want to get this by mail, subscribe below.

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Leave Room for Curiosity

Like many people I know, I spent part of my holidays reading The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis’ wonderful new book about the relationship between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman as they laid the foundations for behavioral economics.

The book is way more interesting than I just made it sound.

Anyway, at one point (page 230, to be precise), a former colleague recollects several of Amos Tvserky’s sayings. This one struck me:

“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

Hmm. Good science leaves room for idle curiosity. So, I suspect, does writing.

What Does Your Schedule Look Like?

I am trying to figure out how best to achieve my goals in 2017.

My instinct is to set aggressive deadlines for the various projects I plan to do, and then work heads-down on each until it is done. This is how I approached writing books in the past, and it worked.

But loading up the writing schedule imposes a kind of tax, by reducing time for exploration and discovery.

When writing with the blinders on, I put aside good ideas for an undetermined future. (See last week’s post on what happens to unwritten ideas.) I set aside my natural curiosity and the desire to explore new topics to  meet those tough deadlines.

Tversky’s quote makes me realize the potential cost of this approach. “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

Right now I’m juggling a few projects, and want to make progress without shutting the door on other writing. I’m attempting to balance the work ethic of my inner Scribe with the curiosity of the Muse, as follows:

Setting “minimum daily/weekly progress” goals for a couple projects
Giving one project the lion’s share of attention on a weekly basis, but continuing to read about unrelated topics.
Leaving space in the schedule to work on other tasks like blog posts, personal essays, and learning.

It’s too soon to tell how it will work. Clearly at certain points, I may have to drop everything else and power through – for example, when revising a draft for publication.

How will it work? We’ll see. Check back at the end of 2017!

How do you plan to leave time and space for curiosity in your life?

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Saving Unwritten Ideas for Later

You get an inspired idea for a blog post, story, or screenplay. You can almost see it in your head. It’s good – very good. It’s so important that you decide to save it for some future time, when you can give it your full attention.

When you finally have the time, you open up the notes or revisit the idea, and blah!

You can remember the idea, but not the excitement. It doesn’t seem exciting or interested anymore.

Unwritten ideas do not age well.

What Happens to Ideas that Remain Unwritten

Ideas rarely have an expiration date. They do not go bad or get moldy like that yogurt you forgot in the back of the fridge.

An unwritten idea is more like that pair of jeans hanging in your closet – the ones that no longer fit like they should.

The concept is still fine, but you have changed.

Perhaps you’ve seen a different version of that idea somewhere, and that experienced colored your perceptions.

Or your perspective has shifted.

Most likely, your brain has gotten bored with those ideas and moved on to other things. The idea no longer matches the brain that produced them.

When you are excited about writing an idea, your Muse is working on the project, firing off suggestions, rummaging around looking for connections in your brain. This is the time to write. When you put it aside for long enough, the Muse moves on to other things, and the Scribe is left looking at an abandoned shell of an idea. (See this blog post about the Muse and the Scribe for background.)

What should you do with an exciting new idea?

Start Writing While the Muse is Engaged

If you think you’ve got a great idea and the thoughts are brimming in your head about it, then the future is now.

The initial concept is just the starting point in writing. Execution is what really matters. For execution, you need your creative, associative mental processes working in the background and collaborating on the effort.

The best time to write about something is when you feel enthusiastic about it. Even if you don’t know everything about it yet and still have research to do, dive in.

At best, this will keep your brain engaged on the subject, exploring the topic and feeding the ongoing excitement.

At worst, you may realize that the idea won’t pan out as expected. Discovering this fact sooner may be a blessing, as you it frees your mind to pursue other directions.

What if I Really Must Wait?

Sometimes you truly must wait to pursue a project. For example:

You are in the middle revising something major, like a book, when another idea entices you to write about it. (This could be an avoidance technique in disguise.)
You are months away from retirement and completely swamped trying to make your exit. That writing project belongs to your post-retirement future.

Even in these situations, it can pay to take the time to maintain a background level of progress on the idea. Keep stoking the fire of the unwritten idea.

Here are a few things you can do:

Take notes as they occur to you and add them to a file.
Do some freewriting  about the idea once or twice a week.
Do  related reading or research (and take notes).
Record thoughts and ideas as they come into your head.

Taking these small actions, even in ten-minute bursts two or three times a week, keeps the background mental processes working on the idea.

Then when you send off the book manuscript to the editors or leave that “farewell lunch” in your honor, you’re ready to embark on the new project. You won’t be starting starting at ground zero, the blank page, the empty slate. You will already be several steps down your new path.

 

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A Few of My Favorite Apps (for Authors)

In the spirit of the holiday gift exchanges, let’s share our favorite resources for writers and authors. I’ll go first.

This post includes a list of tools and apps that either make it easier to get your book out into the world (writing and publishing) or that simplify the task of creating and maintaining the online author platform so you can write.

In return, you can leave your suggestions in the comments, or send them by email and I’ll update this post.

So, here are a few of my favorite things:

(Are you humming yet?)

Writing and Publishing Books

Researching with Scribd

Scribd is my new literary and research love. It’s an online a subscription to books, articles and audiobooks. The catalog is pretty extensive, and I love that it combines ebooks and audiobooks. My only problem is that I haven’t figured out how to get it to carry my own books. Sigh.

Writing and Planning in The Right Margin

The Right Margin is an online writing environment that helps writers break the work into multiple tasks, build goal-driven schedules, and stay motivated to get the work done.  Plus, they have a great Slack community (WriterHangout). Check it out.

Maintaining a Freewriting Practice

No matter what phase of the writing I’m in, I maintain a practice of 750 words a day of freewriting. What better tool to use than 750words.com?  Because it’s web-based, I can write my words from almost anywhere, so there’s no excuse for skipping the practice.

Testing Titles, Covers, Descriptions with PickFu

Not sure about a book title, or trying to decide which cover will be more effective? PickFu makes A/B testing painless and, dare I say, fun? Well, I find it fun.

You create the head-to-head matchups, define an audience, and the results pour in. You get detailed input from people you don’t know – so they’re not trying to say what they think you want to hear. And it happens so quickly, you can run a virtual tournament of book titles to come up with the final contenders.

[Disclaimer – I signed as a PickFu affiliate because I’m a fan and regularly refer the solution anyway. You can go the site directly if the affiliate link distresses you.]

Creating Beautiful Ebooks with Vellum

Want to create a beautiful ebook for Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, or any other ebook reader? Vellum lets you do it quickly and easily.

You can write directly in the app or import a Word file, fix up the interior, choose the style you like, and export it painlessly into the right formats for countless ebook platforms.

It’s a MacOS application, and charges a small fee only when you are ready to export the book for upload to other services. The price is a great deal, considering that you don’t have to spend hours formatting.

Building and Maintaining the Author Platform

Author Website, Email, and More: Rainmaker Platform

Rainmaker runs my website and email list, and I’m just scratching the surface of what it can do. Using Rainmaker makes my life easier by putting everything under one umbrella. I don’t have to learn and integrate a bunch of different tools. That leaves me more time for writing!

Also, their tech support is wonderful. Learn more here. [Disclaimer: That’s a Rainmaker Platform affiliate link.]

Social Media Scheduling with Buffer

Social media can become a time sink pretty quickly.  Instead of letting social media drive my life, I spent some time each week scheduling posts in advance. Buffer lets me do that easily, while collecting new posts to share as I encounter them. I upgraded to the paid version for its ability to schedule bunches of posts.

I love the automated scheduling, performance analytics, and and the ability to look at a calendar by weeks and months.

 

Now it’s your turn.

What are your favorite tools? Share them in the comments, or send an email and I’ll update this post.

 

Sound of Music Gif via Giphy

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