Justine Musk's Blog, page 38

help me with my big badass banana (and why you might want one for yourself)

I was on the phone with online marketing genius (among other things) Marie Forleo and she told me that my site immediately needed two things: an opt-in box and a Big Banana.

(I like to think of this as one of the [many] blogging mistakes I made so that you don't have to. I put off and I put off and I put off my opt-in box and my Big Banana. And now, how I shake my head ruefully at myself. Don't let this happen to you, boys and girls.)

An opt-in box is that thing you see just below my photo in the sidebar. It urges you to ENTER YOUR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS so that you can be on my List. Once you're on my List, I can email you stuff that you will hopefully find cool, interesting and useful. Theoretically, this will be my Newsletter. I'm psyched to finally be starting a Newsletter, although I'm not entirely sure what I'll put on it.

So any suggestions you might have are totally and eagerly welcomed.

A Newsletter is a chance for me to get a tad more personal, do updates and round-ups and also to go above and beyond the Tribal Writer blog: reflect on the blog posts and comments that happened that month and take a certain aspect of what we were talking about and go a little deeper. Since a Newsletter is, when you think on it, asking a lot of a person – to give up her email, space in her inbox, time and attention – I think it should deliver a little something extra. Another dimension, if you will, to your experience of the Tribal Writer conversation.

(And I totally want to do book giveaways. I love giving away books that I love, books I think are really cool, books that can work some magic in the world, or in your head. So if you're on my List, you can potentially get me to send you a book. For free.)

My opt-in box is powered by Mailchimp and I hired Amanda Krill to set it up for me. I still need to write the text for it.

And I still need to come up with my Big Banana.

The Big Banana is the thing that you offer your visitor in exchange for her email address: a free video or guide or ebook or PDF document that contains such dazzling information that the aforementioned visitor leaps – leaps, I say – to put herself on your fabulous List.

It would be easy for me to repurpose one of my older blog posts, or a series of blog posts, into a Banana. But I'd rather come up with something new, so that even if you've been reading me from the dawn of time you would still want my succulent piece of fruit. (I should probably rephrase that, but whatever.)

That way I can get you exactly where I want you: on my List (….cue maniacal laughter….) for highly nefarious purposes!

(Kidding. My purposes are not that nefarious, I only kind of wish they were.)

So could you help me with this? Say you're a dude (of either gender) who landed on this website. How can I help you? How can I tempt you? If you would be so kind as to comment below (or email me at soulful@me.com) , I – and my big, badass, so-far-nonexistent-yet-I-remain-hopeful Banana – thank you much.

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why tapping into your emotional sweetspot = your most remarkable creative work

1

One of my favorite anecdotes concerns bestselling author Steven Pressfield. He was a struggling screenwriter who decided he would only work on projects that he deemed 'commercial'. When that didn't get him anywhere, he decided Fuck it (I'm paraphrasing) and wrote exactly what he wanted to write. Which of course is when his career took off .

He had tapped into his emotional sweetspot.

2

Some people might think of it as 'passion' but I think it's a little more complex than that. Passion – as Brett Kelly points out – means strong and barely controllable emotion.

And as Cal Newport discusses in his book and blog, the whole idea of what 'passion' is or how to find it can be misleading. People think that first you identify your passion, and then you start to act, when in reality you act first, and then act again, and continue to act toward what interests and stimulates you until one day you wake up and discover that your 'passion' has found you. Marcus Buckingham would refer to this as "following your strengths": noting the activities that make you feel strong, energized, confident, and organizing your time (and your life) so that you do more and more of those activities and less and less of the activities that make you feel weak, exhausted, depleted, incompetent.

I have a passion for writing (and blogging), but there are times when I'm writing out of my emotional sweetspot, and times when I'm not. I know when I'm writing out of my sweetspot. It's a deep, visceral, 'full' kind of sensation that runs through the center of me. And I noticed that it's not only when I produce my best work, it's when I produce my most popular work. It's as if the sweetspot is a point of connection. It connects me to my subject matter, to the truth of who I am, and it also connects me to something else, something deeper – call it humanity, the creative spirit, the collective unconscious, whatever. Because when I write from the sweetspot, my work not only resonates with me – but with others.

3

So what is it, exactly?

I think of it as a special state of mind in which everything aligns: your strengths and interests and values and abilities. What's more, there's an overlap between what you offer and what the world (or some segment of it) wants to receive. It's a deeply creative place to be. It's not like being in the zone, exactly, but when you are in your sweetspot it's very easy to slip into the zone.

The sweetspot is where magic happens. It's where the juice is. And the fire.

I have a theory about why this is. The sweetspot is where different interests of yours intersect with each other, one body of knowledge melting through another and then infused with something that is exquisitely you: your personality, creative intelligence, worldview. As Fran Johansson points out in his book THE MEDICI EFFECT, it's precisely at this crossroads of disciplines that creative thought and innovation take flight.

One discipline contains one set of ideas that can be combined in only so many ways.

Another discipline contains its own set of ideas that can be combined in only so many ways.

Smash these two disciplines together, however, and you've got those two sets of ideas mingling with each other, forming new and interesting combinations that maybe haven't happened in quite that way before.

And this can lead you to something else that's pretty cool.

Your niche.

Your thing.

That thing you do, that unique brand of voodoo, that differentiates you from everybody else in your field.

Imagine if you were working out of your emotional sweetspot all the time. If you identified the actions and interests that put you there, and managed to slowly but steadily eliminate everything else.

If you subtracted.

If you stripped yourself down to the fire that burns so clean and pure at your core. If everything – or at least most of the things — you created came from that sweetspot.

You would know who you are.

(And you would develop one hell of a 'brand'!)

4

Okay, whatever. But how do you get there?

Finding your sweetspot = finding out the truth about yourself. About what you truly care about vs what you think you should care about, or want to care about, because of what you've internalized from family and friends and your culture in general. Perhaps you've built an entire career, or even a life, around those shoulds. At the same time, you recognize a wrongness about your life. It exhausts and depletes you. You feel a yearning towards something else, but you also know that following those yearnings would force you to change in ways that are damn inconvenient, and maybe costly, and might demand sacrifice.

There is no easy solution for that (or if there is, I don't have it).

Instead, think in terms of small acts. Small steps.

Schedule for yourself some free time, some wandering-around time, to expose yourself to things, to follow up on whatever interests you, even if it's as simple as buying a magazine to read over coffee. Feed your head with stuff that educates and stimulates you. Feed your soul with stuff that nourishes you. Pay attention to those moments in your day when you feel strong and confident and most fully and thrillingly yourself – and note what you were doing to make you feel that way. Pay attention to the people you admire. The people you feel drawn to. The people with careers that you would most like to emulate. These are all small things – clues and glimmerings – that will lead you down the path to your sweetspot. String these glimmerings together, and they light the way. When you hit that sweetspot, you'll know it.

And maybe I'll see you there.

image by Vladans

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should you be blogging to help your writing career (or is it a big waste of time)?

1

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a bit of a backlash against blogging and "building author platforms". Well-written, intelligent posts like this onepoint out – quite rightly – that blogging might be a waste of time.

But perhaps these posts operate from the wrong set of assumptions. They assume that the goal behind a blog (or social media in general) is "See me! Hear me!" = lots of traffic = book sales. So when this doesn't work – and it doesn't – they question the whole point of blogging.

First of all, let me say: your work needs to be excellent.

Your book needs to be excellent (and I don't mean it needs to be Pulitzer-worthy, it just needs to deliver on whatever that kind of story promises to that kind of reader). There seems to be this belief that a big noisy author platform can make up for mediocre writing, or that excellent writing won't matter anymore as we all self-publish online.

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit.

Hype doesn't do well on the web – it's too one-dimensional, too easily deflated –which means that big-money advertising and pumped-up blurbs will continue to lose their potency. Word-of-mouth will rule. People will take the stuff they like and pass it through their networks, which pass it on through their networks. The cream rises. (Fortunately for us, there are lots of different kinds.)

And we're all competing to rise.

More and more of us everyday.

2

Your blog also needs to be excellent.

Blogging is a skill and an art in itself. It requires practice. It's a different experience from writing fiction, and it makes different demands on the writer in order to satisfy different expectations from the reader.

Also, it's still a new form. Still in the process of discovering its identity. What microblogging – Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook status updates – have done is to draw away the bloggers who weren't quite right for blogging in the first place. Microblogs and blogs are defining themselves against each other in ways that can complement and work towards a greater whole. Microblogs can be about socializing and sharing in ways that pull people in and send them to your blog. Your blog can be about vision and substance. Your blog is your chance to write epic shit. (Your blog also sends people to your microblog. The best way for me to collect a jump in Twitter followers is to put up a worthy blog post.)

Writing epic shit is not the advice a lot of people will give you; they will tell you to write short posts as often as possible. If that fits your natural rhythm, and you can maintain a high degree of quality, then go for it. But I'm no longer convinced that that should be the ideal.

We tend to look behind us, at where the puck has been, instead of where the puck is now or (better yet) where it seems to be heading. Where frequency used to be important – back in the days when fewer people were blogging, when there was less clutter and less competition, and social media was at a different point in its evolution – I think the big thing now is share-ability. You need to write the kind of individual posts that people will bookmark, discuss, send through Twitter streams and Facebook networks. A great post has legs: it walks on for days and sends back waves of traffic. A mediocre post sits there. No one cares. Why should they? Too many options!

But here's the thing about traffic. It has to be the right kind. When you start out blogging – and I'm just as guilty as anyone – it's easy to obsess over your blog stats, how many unique visitors per day. Eventually you realize that that's the wrong focus.

Because what truly matters is your list.

What truly matters is the number of people that you actually capture (through collecting their email addresses). Who agree to let you push out stuff to them. This is called permission marketing, or opt-in marketing. It enables you to send people newsletters and announcements and special offers. It gives you another level on which to build relationships.

Which is what an author platform is: a network of relationships that can generate attention and book sales at any given time.

Writers who can do this will develop a powerful advantage.

3

These writers will also, I think, have an entrepreneurial mindset. They will see the blog as one part of a larger picture that isn't just about (indirectly) selling books but developing a career that mixes self-publishing with traditional publishing. They'll have the drive for self-education that social media and changing technologies require. They'll know to constantly tweak that approach, to experiment and evaluate and refine, and also to frame failure in a way that empowers rather than demoralizes. They'll understand risk: whether it's giving up advances in exchange for better royalty rates, or investing time, emotion and energy – their own personal capital – into creating something that comes with absolutely no guarantees.

They'll understand about vision and strategy.

Tweets share; blogs provide meaning and substance; facebook fan pages offer social interaction and feedback; videos and podcasts offer new ways of connecting with readers and new dimensions to their experience of you.

But here's the thing.

There has to be a point.

There has to be a larger meaning that people can buy into, and engage with, and return to. That improves their lives in some way. Makes the world a better place.

This is the great, amazing thing about a blog, an author platform: it's the chance to go beyond yourself, to express your values and idealism and Do Something Truly Cool.

Your vision needs to connect to your work. It needs to attract people who will prove to be ideal readers for your work (not all of them will, and that's perfectly fine). And because your work is excellent – remember? – these readers will become your fans, or true fans, or even your evangelists who will spread the good news about you.

I am not saying that you should try to make the world a better place just so you can sell books. Passion, authenticity and sincerity rule the day. Without them, your platform isn't sustainable.

I am saying that the two can work together in what Johnny Truant and Pace Smith refer to as profitable idealism. And that "profitable idealism" is on the rise.

4

All of this requires a deep level of soul-searching and self-awareness. You need to know yourself. You need to know your strengths, so you can build your use of social media around them. You need to know what you can offer people. You need to know where you're going and why. You need to know who your people are and where you can find them and how you can make them come to you, and then come back to you. It's about focused, high-quality relationships instead of a scattershot, as-many-people-as-possible approach. (Quality will eventually lead to quantity, and your online and offline efforts will complement each other and blend together until the line between them blurs to the point of disappearing. )

5

You are never just selling a novel. You're providing a rich, well-crafted emotional experience that the reader depends on for escape and enlightenment.

Your are never just selling yourself. You're providing a multi-faceted experience of meaning to the people who might – just might – develop into your devoted readership.

This is why the big box bookstores – that sell stuff instead of experiences — will disappear. This is also why individual bookstores that specialize in building community have the chance to rise again.

Writers who can give people the best and most powerful experiences – through their books and perhaps also their platform (both of which are excellent, remember) – and build their lists and networks of readers – stand the best chance of becoming truly influential. Influence is power. As ebooks dominate, and then become the norm, individuals (writers, editors and agents) can become their own brands and form their own imprints. They can publish and promote themselves – and others.

Again, not everybody can do this. Or will want to do this. Or should do this.

There is more than one way to get to Rome, if you know what I mean. You can go old-school, or new-school, or some combination of the two; you could develop a large audience or a small but very loyal, buying-everything-you-produce audience. One thing I've learned about writing and blogging is that you can't predict these things. You can only put yourself out there, be as excellent as you can, and speak from the heart. Build on what works for you, reject the things that don't, and carve your own path.

But it benefits you to listen, and look around, and pay attention to that hockey puck. It's good to know where it was. It's even better to know where it's going. You don't want it to smack you in the face.

'Cause that would suck.

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should you be blogging to help build your writing career? or is it a waste of time?

1

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a growing backlash against blogging and "building author platforms". Well-written, intelligent posts like this onepoint out – quite rightly – that blogging is never a magic bullet and often a waste of time.

But perhaps these posts operate from the wrong set of assumptions. They assume that the whole point of a blog (or social media in general) is "See me! Hear me!" = lots of traffic = book sales. So when this doesn't work – and it doesn't – they question the whole point of blogging.

First of all, let me say: your work needs to be excellent.

Your book needs to be excellent (and I don't mean it needs to be Pulitzer-worthy, it just needs to deliver on whatever that kind of story promises to that kind of reader). There seems to be this belief that a big noisy author platform can make up for mediocre writing, or that excellent writing won't matter anymore as we all self-publish online.

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit.

Hype doesn't do well on the web – it's too one-dimensional, too easily deflated –which means that big-money advertising and pumped-up blurbs will continue to lose their potency. Word-of-mouth will rule. People will take the stuff they like and pass it through their networks, which pass it on through their networks. The cream rises. (Fortunately for us, there happen to be a lot of different kinds of cream.)

And we're all competing to rise.

More and more of us everyday.

2

Your blog also needs to be excellent.

Blogging is a skill and an art in itself. It requires practice. It's a different experience from writing fiction, and it makes different demands on the writer in order to satisfy different expectations from the reader.

Also, it's still a new form. Still in the process of discovering its identity. What microblogging – Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook status updates – have done is to draw away the bloggers who weren't quite right for blogging in the first place. Microblogs and blogs are defining themselves against each other in ways that can complement and work towards a greater whole. Microblogs are about socializing and sharing in ways that pull people in and send them to your blog. Your blog is about vision and substance. Your blog is your chance to write epic shit. (Your blog also sends people to your microblog. The best way for me to collect a jump in Twitter followers is to put up a worthy blog post.)

This is not the advice a lot of people will give you; they will tell you to write short posts as often as possible. If that fits your natural rhythm, and you can maintain a high degree of quality, then go for it. But I'm no longer convinced that that should be the ideal.

We tend to look behind us, at where the puck has been, instead of where the puck is now or (better yet) where it seems to be heading. Where frequency used to be important – back in the days when fewer people were blogging, when there was less clutter and less competition, and social media was at a different point in its evolution – I think the big thing now is share-ability. You need to write the kind of individual posts that people will bookmark, discuss, send through Twitter streams and Facebook networks. A great post has legs: it sends you waves of traffic for days. A mediocre post just sits there. No one cares. Why should they? Too many options!

But here's the thing about traffic. It has to be the right kind. When you start out blogging – and I'm just as guilty as anyone – it's easy to obsess over your blog stats, how many unique visitors per day. Eventually you realize that that's the wrong focus.

Because what truly matters is your list.

What truly matters is the number of people that you actually capture (through collecting their email addresses). Who like your stuff enough not just to subscribe, but to put themselves on your list. This is called permission marketing, or opt-in marketing. It allows you to send them newsletters and announcements and build relationships with them.

Which is what an author platform is: a network of relationships that can generate attention and book sales at any given time.

Not everyone can do this. Or should do this.

But writers who do can develop a powerful advantage.

3

These writers will also, I think, have an entrepreneurial mindset. They will see the blog as one part of a larger picture that isn't about selling books so much as taking a certain kind of approach to a career that mixes self-publishing with traditional publishing. They'll have the drive for self-education that social media and changing technologies require. They'll know to constantly tweak that approach, to experiment, and to frame failure in a way that empowers rather than demoralizes. They'll understand risk: whether it's giving up advances in exchange for better royalty rates, or investing time, emotion and energy – their own personal capital – into creating something that comes with absolutely no guarantees.

They'll understand about vision and strategy.

Tweets share; blogs provide meaning and substance; facebook fan pages offer social interaction and feedback; videos and podcasts offer new ways of connecting with readers and new dimensions to their experience of you.

But here's the thing.

There has to be a point.

There has to be a larger meaning that people can buy into, and engage with, and return to. That improves their lives in some way. Makes the world a better place.

This is the great, amazing thing about an author platform: it's the chance to go beyond yourself, to express your values and idealism and Do Something Truly Cool. Your vision needs to connect to your work. It needs to attract people who will prove to be ideal readers for your work (not all of them will, and that's perfectly fine). And because your work is excellent – remember? – these readers will become your fans, or true fans, or even your evangelists who will spread the good news about you.

I am not saying that you should try to make the world a better place just so you can sell books. Passion, authenticity and sincerity rule the day. Without them, your platform isn't sustainable.

I am saying that the two can work together in what Johnny Truant and Pace Smith refer to as profitable idealism. And that "profitable idealism" is on the rise.

4

All of this requires a deep level of soul-searching and self-awareness. You need to know yourself. You need to know your strengths, so you can build your use of social media around them. You need to know what you can offer people. You need to know where you're going and why. You need to know who your people are and where you can find them and how you can make them come to you, and then come back to you. It's about focused, high-quality relationships instead of a scattershot, as-many-people-as-possible approach. (Quality will eventually lead to quantity, and your online and offline efforts will complement each other and blend together until the line between them blurs to the point of disappearing. )

5

You're never selling just a novel. You're providing a rich, well-crafted emotional experience that the reader depends on for escape and enlightenment.

Your platform is never just selling yourself. You're providing a multi-faceted experience of meaning to the people who might – just might – become your devoted readership, and even help you grow it.

This is why the big box bookstores – that sell stuff instead of experiences will disappear. This is also why individual bookstores that specialize in building community have the chance to rise again.

Writers who can give people the best and most powerful experiences – through their books and platform (which are both excellent, remember) – and build their lists and networks of readers – stand the best chance of becoming truly influential. As ebooks dominate, and then become the norm, individuals (writers, editors and agents) can become their own brands and form their own imprints. They can publish and promote themselves – and others.

Again, not everybody can do this. Or will want to do this. Or should do this.

There is more than one way to get to Rome, if you know what I mean. You can go old-school, or new-school, or some combination of the two; you could develop a large audience or a small but very loyal, buying-everything-you-produce audience. One thing I've learned about writing and blogging is that you can't predict these things. You can only put yourself out there, be as excellent as you can, and speak from the heart. Build on what works for you, reject the things that don't, and carve your own path.

But it benefits you to listen, and look around, and pay attention to that hockey puck. It's good to know where it was. It's even better to know where it's going. You don't want it to smack you in the head.

That would suck.

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why you don't know who you are until you know what you can do

I came across this idea that you can know what you want by first figuring out who you want to be.

True goals, what I think of as 'north-star goals', have a way of changing you. You need to push yourself past your comfort zone, do the things you fear, wrestle with the Resistance, acquire new skills, reach out to new people. You grow towards becoming the kind of person who achieved that north-star goal. So achievement and transformation walk hand-in-hand.

This reminds me of my favorite snippet of wisdom I came across last year, in a book on creativity by Sir Ken Robinson. I used it in a post, and it seemed to resonate with others the way it did with me:

You don't know who you are until you know what you can do.

And you don't know what you can do until you encounter the material, the people, the knowledge that you need to do it; until you put in the work required. And whether or not you succeed in the traditional sense, that process of putting a dream into motion is going to force you to grow.

(Sometimes that kind of growth is forced on us when our old life breaks apart in some way – a death, a divorce, a job loss, a financial collapse, a war – and we suddenly start exploring other aspects of our personhood that we didn't even know we had.)

So I took this idea and applied it to my writing. I've been working on a novel for what seems like forever: it is ambitious and complicated and involves an intricate backstory and a fair amount of research into everything from dance choreography to multiple personality disorder (actually known, now, as dissociative identity disorder) to reincarnation to atheism to male sexuality. I want it to be a compelling, fun, easy read — that is still rich and multilayered and gets under your skin and lingers with you afterward. So naturally I found ways to avoid working on it. The book challenges me, frustrates me, and sometimes makes me feel inadequate: why not just go to the movies instead?

What I've finally learned to do is accept my own so-called inadequacy: so what if I'm not quite sure how to write this goddamn novel? I will learn as I go along. I found a workshop with an excellent writing coach who gives me great feedback; I look to the novels that inspire me and take from them what I can. I know, now, that I will finish this book, and I think it's going to be pretty good (if I dare say so myself). I will transform from someone who couldn't write this book…into someone who went ahead and wrote it. And I'll be a much better, deeper writer for it.

I understand, now, why I felt the call – that deep inner longing, that drive, you know what I mean – to write this book. It was the book I needed to write in order to become the kind of writer (and person) that I want to be.

Here's someone else that I want to be: not 'just' a writer (although I think that a very fine thing in and of itself), but a writer/creative entrepreneur. The first time I admitted this to myself, I could hear my own inner laughter. It seemed, for someone like me, an utterly ridiculous notion. But these longings, these urges, come from somewhere: they are the breadcrumbs that lead us down the path to our own identity. So I signed up for a female-entrepreneurship program that is long enough and expensive enough to force me to take the investment (and thus my own ambition, half-baked and vague as it may be) seriously, and puts me into contact with a community of impressive, entrepreneurial-minded women who will influence me in all sorts of delightful ways. The more actions I take toward realizing my ambition, the less ridiculous that ambition starts to seem.

Hugh MacLeod, in his great new book EVIL PLANS, tells a metaphor about a white pebble that is apparently found in the bible (the metaphor, I mean, not the pebble). The spirit says to the congregations: To him that conquers I will give…a white pebble, and upon the pebble a new name written which no one knows except the one receiving it.

Hugh explains (the way a monk explained it to him), that "you have three selves: the person you think you are, the person other people think you are, and the person God thinks you are. The white pebble represents the third one. And of the three, it is by far the most important."

I choose to interpret God (or Goddess) as creative energy, creative intelligence. In the fulfillment of our own individual creativity is the manifestation of our identity, and the sense of deep peace, that one-with-the-world kind of feeling, that it brings. It is why material things alone don't make us happy. It is not enough just to meet our physical needs, or even to go above and beyond them to wallow in shallow hedonistic luxury (fun as that is); we need to love, and we need to make something, build something, bring something into being, that is uniquely our own.

That is how we learn who and what we truly are.

We learn our third name.

And until then, no one – no parent, no teacher, no colleague or spouse or boss or peer – no inner voice that we've internalized, no self-limiting belief we've mistaken for part of our actual identity – can dictate to us what that third name is, or could be, much less make us feel ashamed about it.

Sad thing? Most people live and die without knowing that they had one.

image by Carl Durocher

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this is your brain on fiction

1

Most aspiring fiction writers don't read enough fiction, which is like a fighter going into the ring with one hand tied behind her back. The game is over before it started. I've written about this before – Reading is the Inhale, Writing is the Exhale: Developing Writer's Intuition – and posted about it in various places and forums over the years, and I always encounter resistance (generally from aspiring fiction writers who don't read enough).

But this isn't surprising, since the culture itself delivers deeply mixed messages about the importance of fiction. Parents tell their kids to read books, because we all know that reading is good for you, and makes you smarter, but when the kids look to the parents to see what the parents are doing, they are…generally not reading novels. (They might even be trying to ban the novels that they're not actually reading.)

Part of this has to do with the way reading is taught in schools, which often works to destroy the very pleasure principle that drives us to do what we do. Studies have shown that extrinsic motivation (offering someone a reward, such as a prize or a good grade) tends to destroy intrinsic motivation (the desire to do the activity simply for the sake of doing the activity), which worsens performance instead of improving it.

And part of this has to do with the fact that the culture doesn't really understand the point of reading fiction. We prize efficiency, productivity, quantitative results, and 'being busy'. Fiction seems too self-indulgent, so we tend to say, I just don't have the time for it. (We do, however, have the time to watch hours of television a day, or go shopping, or aimlessly surf the Web, but whatever.)

We tend to say: I like to read books that actually teach me something.

Because in the end, what does fiction actually do for us? What's the ROI? It's not like it actually teaches us anything, or improves our lives in some measurable way…right?

2

The irony is that we are hardwired for narrative. We consume stories. We hunger for them, we gobble them up, we look for more. Television shows were invented solely to keep enough of us in one place long enough so that advertisers could sell us stuff that we don't need and were doing fine without. Stories can be scripted – like LOST – or unscripted – like THE BACHELOR, or when Brad dumped Jennifer for Angelina, it doesn't matter.

The brain is a funny thing. It doesn't always distinguish between reality and the simulation of a reality. On some level, the brain doesn't even distinguish between your friends and your favorite imaginary characters. (This might be why, when the 1980s show FAME killed off Nicole, I broke down and bawled like a baby. I was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time. This might also be why, in Victorian times, crowds swarmed the docks when the boats came in carrying the latest edition of Charles Dickens' serial novel. They cried out, "Is Nell dead?" and when the answer came back 'yes', there was weeping and hysteria.)

In fact, when you read about a character performing an action, your brain responds as if you were performing that action yourself. In so doing, your brain absorbs that experience as if it were your own and files it away in that repository of knowledge it can draw on in the future.

There is a survival benefit to this.

Say I'm a caveman, and you're a caveman, and you come back to the cave one day saying, Dude! I ran into this huge hulking beast with teeth that are like THIS BIG and it seriously tried to eat my head, and I had to run up into a tree and hide until it went away and I needed to piss like a racehorse. Maybe I've never seen such a creature before, or even known that it existed, but by absorbing your story I absorb your experience and thus enlarge the field of my own. The next time I leave the cave, I know to keep my eyes peeled for the huge hulking beast, and to hide in a tree if it attacks me.

Even our fascination with celebrities – the stories of their lives – can be traced to evolutionary advantage. Humans are social animals, and it seems to be the way of things for the less powerful to study the powerful, and for the powerful to ignore everybody but their peers. By studying those who influence and rule us, we could figure out how to navigate their routines and personalities so that we could, maybe, poach a mate or steal some food or copy their tactics or in some way advance our own situation.

Narrative organizes information and allows us to remember it. It's also through narrative that we impart meaning and value to events. In this way we do more than tell stories; we co-create the very reality that we live in. As any number of self-help books will tell you, if you want to change your life, you have to change yourself, and if you want to change the way you see yourself, you need to change the story that you tell yourself about yourself. Either your story empowers you – or it dooms you (a.k.a 'self-fulfilling prophecy').

We can not only use stories to transform ourselves, but to change others: to impact the way they see the world, to alter their own co-created reality.

Because here's the thing. We are not the rational creatures we would like to think of ourselves as being. If we made rational decisions for rational reasons, Americans wouldn't be nearly so overweight, addicted, or in debt as we are (and we are more these things than we've ever been in history). Our neocortex – that top layer of brain that enables self-awareness – is a relatively recent development. Our limbic brain (the middle, mammalian brain that runs on emotion) is much older and our reptilian brain (the bottom, primitive brain that runs on instinct) is older still. They've had a lot more time to figure out how to get what they want, which means our so-called 'rational' brain often gets co-opted, manipulated and overruled.

So in order to truly get through to another person, you have to enlist their emotional as well as their rational brain.

You have to charge your argument, your ideas, with emotion.

What better way to do this than through stories?

– to be continued —

image by Sophie Phelps

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why is fiction important (and not a self-indulgent waste of time)?

1

Most aspiring fiction writers don't read enough fiction, which is like a fighter going into the ring with one hand tied behind their backs. The game is over before it started. I've written about this before – Reading is the Inhale, Writing is the Exhale: Developing Writer's Intuition – and posted about it in various places and forums over the years, and I always encounter resistance (generally from aspiring fiction writers who don't read enough).

But this isn't surprising, since the culture itself delivers deeply mixed messages about the importance of fiction. Parents tell their kids to read books, because we all know that reading is good for you, and makes you smarter, but when the kids look to the parents to see what the parents are doing, they are…generally not reading novels. (They might even be trying to ban the novels that they're not actually reading.)

Part of this has to do with the way reading is taught in schools, which often works to destroy the very pleasure principle that drives us to do what we do. Studies have shown that extrinsic motivation (offering someone a reward, such as a prize or a good grade) tends to destroy intrinsic motivation (the desire to do the activity simply for the sake of doing the activity), which worsens performance instead of improving it.

And part of this has to do with the fact that the culture doesn't really understand the point of reading fiction. We prize efficiency, productivity, quantitative results, and 'being busy'. Fiction seems too self-indulgent, so we tend to say, I just don't have the time for it. (We do, however, have the time to watch hours of television a day, or go shopping, or aimlessly surf the Web, but whatever.)

We tend to say: I like to read books that actually teach me something.

Because in the end, what does fiction actually do for us? What's the ROI? It's not like it actually teaches us anything, or improves our lives in some measurable way…right?

2

The irony is that we are hardwired for narrative. We consume stories. We hunger for them, we gobble them up, we look for more. Television shows were invented solely to keep enough of us in one place long enough so that advertisers could sell us stuff that we don't need and were doing fine without. Stories can be scripted – like LOST – or unscripted – like THE BACHELOR, or when Brad dumped Jennifer for Angelina, it doesn't matter.

The brain is a funny thing. It doesn't always distinguish between reality and the simulation of a reality. On some level, the brain doesn't even distinguish between your friends and your favorite imaginary characters. (This might be why, when the 1980s show FAME killed off Nicole, I broke down and bawled like a baby. I was maybe twelve or thirteen at the time. This might also be why, in Victorian England, crowds swarmed the docks when the boats came in carrying the latest edition of Charles Dicken's serial novel. They cried out, "Is Nell dead?" and when the answer came back 'yes', there was weeping and hysteria.)

In fact, when you read about a character performing an action, your brain responds as if you were performing that action yourself. In so doing, your brain absorbs that experience as if it were your own and files it away in that repository of knowledge it can draw on in the future.

There is a survival benefit to this.

Say I'm a caveman, and you're a caveman, and you come back to the cave one day saying, Dude! I ran into this huge hulking beast with teeth that are like THIS BIG and it seriously tried to eat my head, and I had to run up into a tree and hide until it went away and I needed to piss like a racehorse. Maybe I've never seen such a creature before, or even known that it existed, but by absorbing your story I absorb your experience and thus enlarge the field of my own. The next time I leave the cave, I know to keep my eyes peeled for the huge hulking beast, and to hide in a tree if it attacks me.

Even our fascination with celebrities – the stories of their lives – can be traced to evolutionary advantage. Humans are social animals, and it seems to be the way of things for the less powerful to study the powerful, and for the powerful to ignore everybody but their peers. By studying those who influence and rule us, we could figure out how to navigate their routines and personalities so that we could, maybe, poach a mate or steal some food or copy their tactics or in some way advance our own situation.

Narrative organizes information and allows us to remember it. It's also through narrative that we impart meaning and value to events. In this way we do more than tell stories; we co-create the very reality that we live in. As any number of self-help books will tell you, if you want to change your life, you have to change yourself, and if you want to change the way you see yourself, you need to change the story that you tell yourself about yourself. Either your story empowers you – or it dooms you (a.k.a 'self-fulfilling prophecy').

We can not only use stories to transform ourselves, but to change others: to impact the way they see the world, to alter their own co-created reality.

Because here's the thing. We are not the rational creatures we would like to think of ourselves as being. If we made rational decisions for rational reasons, Americans wouldn't be nearly so overweight, addicted, or in debt as we are (and we are more these things than we've ever been in history). Our neocortex – that top layer of brain that enables self-awareness – is a relatively recent development. Our limbic brain (the middle, mammalian brain that runs on emotion) is much older and our reptilian brain (the bottom, primitive brain that runs on instinct) is older still. They've had a lot more time to figure out how to get what they want, which means our so-called 'rational' brain often gets co-opted, manipulated and overruled.

So in order to truly get through to another person, you have to enlist their emotional as well as their rational brain.

You have to charge your argument, your ideas, with emotion.

What better way to do this than through stories?

– to be continued —

image by Sophie Phelps

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On Conquering The Fear Of Criticism and Judgement

check out the book trailer to Joanna Penn's new thriller PENTECOST

Very pleased to present Tribal Writer's first (…drum roll please…okay, enough with the drums) guest post. And how fitting it should be by Joanna Penn, whose site www.thecreativepenn.com is absolutely indispensable for anyone trying to figure out how the *#&$^ to be a viable writer in these times that are a-changin', and who has been a great source of information and inspiration to yours truly. Joanna, as the kids like to say, "gets it".

Confession: this post SHOULD have gone up on Feb 7 to coincide with the launch of Joanna's new thriller of a novel, PENTECOST. Due to technical problems, this did not happen (technical problems being: I was recovering from food poisoning and coming back from a trip to the Congo on various planes* with no Wi-Fi). Sincere apologies to Joanna, and I'm psyched to post this regardless.

* how many planes does it take to get to Congo (and then back again)? Too damn many…

And now, I will shut up, and give you Joanna's post about the fear of criticism and judgement.

BY JOANNA PENN

When we write, aspects of our lives surface in scenes, swirling in language, glimpsed in the turn of a character's head. In fiction, we bring ourselves to the page and that makes our writing stronger but it means the line can blur between the book and the fragile author.

There are two fears that can prevent us from publishing our work, or leave us sleepless at night, afraid of checking email or book review sites. The fear of criticism is the fear of being hurt by comments saying our work is bad, the plot is weak, the writing is terrible. For a new writer, it feels like a direct attack.

The fear of judgement is perhaps less common, and relates to when your writing doesn't seem to fit the aspects of your public character. Maybe you are a church-going Christian and you're writing dark urban fantasy. Maybe you're a soccer-Mom and you're writing erotica. When I started writing a novel, my friends and family thought it would be an intelligent literary fiction piece, full of long words and deep thinking. I actually wrote a fast paced action/adventure thriller with violent death, explosions and religious mythology. Yes, I'm afraid of being judged!

If you feel the same way, here are five ways you can conquer these fears, or at least learn to cope with them.

Be brave.

You are one in a long line of writers who felt these fears. Don't be afraid. It's part of the journey. We are all complex creatures with facets that run beneath our public personas. As writers, we are charged with honesty, with writing what others would keep silent. So people will judge us and criticize. This is inevitable. But in everyday life, we're judged by what we look like, how we sound, how we dress, what school we went to, how we raise our children. We have learned to live with that criticism and judgement, so we must be brave and live with whatever comes in the wake of publication.

Understand the book is not you.

Some people say that using a pen name is a great way to separate you as a person from the book itself. You can also use a different company name for publication. Even if you don't want to do this, you need to learn to separate the book from you as a person, or even as an author. The book itself doesn't define you. If people hate the book, they're not saying you're a bad person, a shoddy parent or a fickle friend. Different people like different stories, that is the way of things. Remember, the book is not you.

Celebrate positive feedback.

For some reason we pay more attention to nasty, hurtful comments than we do to praise. One person who gives us a 1 star rating on Amazon is somehow more important than the 15 positive reviews others have left. Authors are fragile, especially when it comes to the first book. So as you write, as you build your platform, remember to keep your fan-mail in whatever form it comes. The email from someone who loved your blog post, the tweet that congratulated you on the book, the Facebook comment on your fantastic book cover. Forward all of this to a special email account, keep it in a Fan-Mail folder, or print and stick it in your diary. Dig out these positive messages when you are depressed and celebrate how far you've come.

Use your energy cycles for positivity.

If you read a negative review or a critical comment when you are already down, you will spiral even further into despair. I know that I become depressed when I'm over tired so it's a bad idea for me to do anything useful late at night. In the mornings, I'm chirpy and happy and able to brush off negativity so that's when I read reviews, comments or email that may contain niggly remarks. If comments stick in your head when you go to bed, try writing them down in a diary so you can clear your mind. There's no point dwelling on the bad stuff. See above for celebration of the positive!

Write another book.

I asked another author about the fear of judgement, about how people can mistakenly assume the book is based on the author's life somehow. He just told me to write more books. As you write more, you grow a thicker skin and the ability to deal with the fear. But also, as there are more books, your audience grows and you get more positive feedback. Readers don't assume all the books are based on your life somehow so they don't judge you as much. With only one book, it's easier for people to judge you.

So that's the answer, write another book and you'll conquer those fears. In the meantime, know that we're in it together as writers on the journey, and you're not alone.

Joanna Penn is the author of Pentecost, a thriller novel, out now on Amazon.com. 
Joanna is also a blogger at TheCreativePenn.com : Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing. Connect on Twitter @thecreativepenn

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is blogging and tweeting a waste of time? what writers should know about social media

* is social media a waste of a writer's time? it can be

* more & more authors will be coming online & doing the same kinds of things

* an effective author platform requires vision, depth & breadth

* breadth: you need to range across multiple platforms

* eventually you'll form 'social media magnetism' (maybe!) and your online life will take on a life of its own

* but that requires depth and quality of content, strategic insight into who you are & what you can contribute

* develop a vision for where you want to take your tribe, how you can improve their lives in some way, what coolness you can add to the world

* think of your author platform as an extension of your body of work

* I'm attached to the idea of using social media to help grow your creative legacy, discover & develop it

* is it a risk of your time and energy? maybe, depending on your tenacity & creativity

* sometimes the biggest risk is to do nothing at all

BONUS MATERIALS!

check out Dan Blank's new course about how to build your author platform. I'm a big fan of Dan's, and I'm psyched about this course.

….and on another note entirely, check out my first novel BLOOD ANGEL served up for your listening pleasure. It will make you a better, wiser, and sexier person. I swear…

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create a fascinating personal brand: lessons from Kate Moss

Hello people!

What I said, more or less:

A "hostile brand" is a brand that doesn't bend over backwards trying to be accessible or "mainstream". It plays up its differences as advantages and has an edgy, challenging quality. People tend to love or hate them. People also use them as identity markers: to engage with this brand makes a specific statement about who you are, or who you want to be.

Kate Moss is a cool example of this and someone we can take some lessons from.

#1. Cultivate your differences.

When Moss emerged on the modeling scene in the early 90s, she was beautiful — and different. Too short, too skinny, crooked legs, crooked tooth. In a sea of Glamazon sameness, your eye went to her. Because she was different. Because she intrigued. Because her very presence was a rebellion against that Glamazon ideal we were getting so tired of.

Moss also cultivated a very different sense of style, which she would become famous for. So:

#2. Cultivate your distinct voice.

Your 'voice' is your worldview, personality, the collective way you express yourself to the world. Kate speaks to the world through her sense of style, which has been hugely influential and widely imitated. Kate's style seems effortless, like she was born with it, but over the years a lot of thought and work went into its very deliberate development.

#3. Rebel against something.

Kate brought in the era of heroin chic, which in many ways was a rebellion against the excess and materialism of the '80s. Find something that offends you, pisses you off, and see how you can develop your brand against that, so that you represent something bigger than yourself. (For example — and I forgot to include this in the video clip — Mini Coopers aren't just these cute funny cars, but a statement against gas-guzzling SUV culture. The brand deliberately positioned itself as such.)

4. Evolve.

Kate's style has changed over the years, which has kept her fresh and interesting. She takes risks, pushes boundaries, remains interesting. But she never violated rule #5….

5. Always remember who you really are.

Through Kate's evolution of style, she has remained "recognizably Kate": she has stayed true to her "brand DNA", those essential defining characteristics, that 'voice', that uniqueness. Give up your uniqueness, you give up your identity. She has never tried to whitewash herself for the masses.

6. Be authentic.

Ah, that word again! But yes, be authentic. Kate got away with a major cocaine scandal a few years ago because she has always been authentic. She has always been edgy, a bit transgressive, a bad girl; she never presented herself as pure and virginal, a role model. She was a just a model, period. We were willing to overlook her flaws because she never pretended not to have them, and her career bounced back stronger than ever.

7. Find your fascination triggers.

Sally Hogshead wrote a really cool book called Fascinate in which she identifies the seven qualities we are hardwired to respond to: lust, mystique, vice, alarm, power, prestige, trust. At some point in her career, Kate Moss has triggered all of them. Love her or hate her, you know who she is. She fascinates.

Everyone naturally gravitates to two of these 'fascination' traits in the way that they relate to the world, and grab attention. Find yours, and learn how to take advantage of them.

8. Be comfortable with controversy.

Hostile brands are strong, unapologetic, and controversial: people tend to love or hate them. In her book, Hogshead makes the point that the more fascinating a brand or person is, the more controversial they tend to be. (Which also means that if everybody likes you…you're probably not that fascinating.) These are the brands that challenge our worldview in some way, that provoke us, that get under our skin. Even if we can't stand them (Donald Trump, anyone?), we can't help but pay attention.

So don't be afraid to be who you are. Turn up the volume. Stand for something. Say, "love me or leave me."

Just be sure that you do it with style.

For further reading, check out

Sally Hogshead and her book FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion & Captivation

DIFFERENT: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon

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