Do you understand what just happened?

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So I had a weird incident at work.  Luckily, I had a witness to the oddness.  We were on a conference call with another company, in the middle of answering a question that they had asked, and we were hung up on.  By both other people, located in completely different offices.  It was baffling.  Neither one of us on our side had any idea what happened.  It wasn’t heated, no one said anything rude or profane, we were just answering a mundane question about how our technology could be used.   They just blurted out ‘bye’ and hung up.  My colleague asked me, “Do you understand what just happened?”

I’ve had calls wrap up quickly before as the meeting approached the end time.  I’ve had calls end early because there was no mutual interest, but usually at that point there are excessive pleasantries to end a call scheduled for an hour seven minutes in.  This was neither of those cases.  It was just weird.

I guess I am grateful that it was so bizarre that even my colleague noticed.  If it had been a more polished exit, I might be spending the evening wondering what I did wrong, or how to hone my pitch to close the next call.  If the call had gone pseudo-normally, I’d be worried about how to persuade them to partner with us.  I’d be turning over the conversation for clues and planning our next move.  Instead, I can completely let it go.

I don’t know if there is a lesson here.    Should I strive to treat all calls in a more detached way?  Should I leave work at work?  Should I randomly hang up during boring conference calls?

Starting again…

habits, Starting, Writing

So, I haven’t been writing or blogging at all for the past, what, month?  6 weeks?  Something embarrassingly long.   So, I thought I would restart this habit, and do a public postmortem of why it failed the first time around.

I had two separate, but related habits for this year- the first was to blog 3x per week, and the other was to write 30 minutes each day for myself (not work related).  I’m going to talk about the writing one today and the blogging one later in the week.

Writing 30 minutes every day

Initially, I thought the writing would mostly be blog related, but I expected that eventually there would be space to work on a book or some sort of writing that would become a second source of income.  I also wanted to create more this year, and I thought that writing would be a natural and easy way for me to express myself.  So this tied in to two bigger picture goals (second source of income and creating) that I set for myself.

So why did setting this habit fail?  There are two things I identified.

  1.  No solid home on my calendar.  I didn’t like writing in the evening, because I was tired after work and it felt more like a chore that had to be accomplished before I could do something fun (like surf the internet).  I moved it on my calendar to the morning before work, but I never actually managed to write in the morning.  I mostly overslept and had no time to sit down and write.  Then I didn’t do it at night because I already over-scheduled myself there as well.  🙂
  2. Weak sense of reward or accomplishment.  I had a few different things in place to provide a reward.  I’m unusually motivated by checking things off a list or getting a sticker or whatever other trick you would use to motivate a 5-year old.  So, I set it up as a recurring task on my on-line habit tracker (I’m using Habitica currently) and I wrote it on my planner as an entire block of time that could be colored in when completed (yeah, weird, but this is almost as motivating as a sticker to me).  Apparently neither of these are sufficiently motivating given the magnitude of the task.  I also thought that starting a blog would serve as accountability.  However, the only people who read my blog are spammers and that is (unsurprisingly) fairly demotivating.

So, I am approaching this in two ways since there are two problems.  First, massive bribery.  I like pen and paper and ink, but I realized that my rate of purchasing these items vastly outstripped the rate I used said items.  So I’m on a temporary ban until I use up some supplies.  If I successfully write for 7 days in a row, then I get to buy some fountain pen inks for myself.  I already loaded my online shopping cart  with an excessive amount of ink- all I have to do is write everyday for a week and many bottles of ink will come my way.  (The bargain is actually that I need to check off all items on Habitica daily to earn the ink, but in practice, most days the only unchecked task is writing/blogging.  I don’t want another habit to slip as I ramp this up.)  The second approach is to put writing back on my calendar in the evening.  While there were a lot of reasons to put it in the morning, it didn’t actually ever happen.  So, hopefully back to evening will work.

Book Review of Stephen King’s “On Writing”

Book Review, Writing

I bought this book many years ago, perhaps when writing my novel.  I read it, enjoyed it, and passed it on to a friend with the recommendation to read it.  The book never returned.  When I saw it in the library, I wondered if it was as good as I remembered.

Stephen King is a very good writer.  I know that sounds like an odd thing to say, given his widespread renown as an author, and perhaps it is.  I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his work (outside this) or seen any of the movies based on his work.  But here, he makes the most mundane story extremely compelling.

The subtitle of this book is “A memoir of the craft” and roughly half the book is memoirish.

The first half of the book is a collection of anecdotes about King’s life.   Most of them are just everyday life/ growing up stories, yet you are left with an impression that King lead a wild and exciting life.  King entitles this first section “CV” and suggests that these events are key to understanding him as a writer.  I’m not sure this is true, plenty of people have had similar life stories and not become a writer.  There are two things that stand out to me though.  One is that King consumed wildly in the sci-fi/thriller/horror genre as a child.  This is key to learning what works and what doesn’t.   It also shows that he has a true passion for the genre in which he writes.  But what is even more illustrative is that King started writing and submitting his stories at a very early age.  He racked up a stack of rejection slips before he left high school.  He, like many others, put his 10,000 hours of mastery in before he hit it big.

King briefly discusses grammar & the mechanics of writing (“The toolbox”).   He illustrates his thoughts with snippets from other sources.  He does this deftly.  I’m reading another book about writing that employs the same tactic and it is driving me up the wall.  The clips are either extremely boring, or perhaps worse, vastly more interesting that the actual text.  Here, King’s examples are interesting enough that you don’t lose interest in continuing to read, and his writing is lively enough that you are eager to get back to his thoughts.

King has a unique perspective on writing ; he believes stories are like fossils.  The writer merely excavates them.  He hates “plot”; in his mind plot is artificial and a tool used by a bad writer.  Things like themes and symbolism likewise shouldn’t be deliberately planned in the first draft.  A good writer just, I don’t know, channels the story from somewhere.  As a consequence, he argues that the first draft should be written very quickly, so the author doesn’t have a chance to overthink it.  The draft should then be put away for several months, until it is completely forgotten.  (I guess I’m taking this to the extreme then; my draft has been aging for a decade!)  Then, editing can happen.  At this point, the theme or symbolism that was inherent will be detected by the author.  Now, it is perfectly fine to polish, edit, rewrite, and retune the work to emphasize the themes or symbolism.

I think King can write this way because he spent decades honing his craft and internalized the necessary components of a good story.  He doesn’t need to sit down and plot out the story; his subconscious knows how to construct a compelling plot.   I think this is common with experts; they just do it, and half the time they don’t even know how/why they did.  This does lead to problems when they try to teach, since they don’t exactly know their own process.  Magic just happens.

 

I don’t know that I agree with King’s rules on writing.  But I think his book is a beautiful illustration of mastery.

Self-publishing, a path to riches?

Course Review, Writing

So, I completed Chandler Bolt’s video series, and it is a pitch for his class.  There was some okay content in the remaining videos, but probably not worth the 1+ hour I spent watching the series.  Video 2 dealt with mechanics of how to write the book.  Chandler emphasized doing pre-work- mindmapping, outlining, etc before starting to write.  I think this is really an excellent strategy, especially for non-fiction.  He then suggests such things as dictating your book into an app (working off your outline) and paying to have it transcribed and edited.  While I think may be a useful approach for some, and especially those with handicaps that might prevent typing, I think that there more iterations of editing/improvement beyond get it on paper and pay (a low cost bidder) to edit it.  For me, it further reinforced the vibe that this course is for people who don’t care about writing, and don’t care to hone their craft.  The last real video was about marketing your book and the mechanics of becoming a Amazon best-seller. How you orchestrate a launch, pricing strategies, how to get reviews, how you should categorize your book on Amazon. Chandler’s demeanor totally changed in this video; he became noticeably more passionate and engaged.   This is some of the stuff that I would be interested in learning, and I would even pay for a course.  Chandler might even be a great teacher, based on how engaged he became.

But, philosophically, I don’t agree that everyone should write a book.  I don’t believe that the actual _writing_ part should be considered the least important part of the process.  I strongly believe that the internet and self-publishing are revolutionary and this allows voices that would not be heard before to have a platform.  The “long tail” wasn’t served well before, and I am grateful that we live in an age where it is.  But a writer has to want to write.  A teacher has to want to teach.  An artist has to want to create.

To vomit out a book to make some passive income sounds horrible to me. From what I could tell, most of Bolt’s students didn’t do all that well on the passive income side.  Usually they made a few thousand total, with steep drops after the first few months.  Most of the figures about how much money they made included things like increased consulting gigs/ gaining new clients based on the credential of writing a book.

At first glance, that doesn’t sound too bad- assume you get $5,000 out of the book.   I have a feeling that is a wildly generous figure.  I did a quick search for how much the average ebook makes, and found that 60% of self-published authors make less than $5,000/year.   Are they really all failing because they didn’t take Chandler Bolt’s course?

Let’s run through the math.  The course itself costs $600 or $2000 depending on the tier.  You can argue that maybe this shouldn’t be included in the estimate, but it is a real cost.  There are other costs involved too. If you do his dictation to the phone method, then you can add a few hundred for the transcription.   Two others mentioned in the video were editors and a graphic designer for the cover.  (Technically a graphic designer wasn’t mentioned, but the cover was mentioned as a critical factor.)  I really have no idea how these might cost- $500?  I’m sure a high quality professional would cost dramatically more, but assume you can find someone acceptable on Elance or Fivver or whatever.  So far, you are still coming out ahead- most of us would probably spend ~$1000 for a $5000 return.    The common timeline mentioned in the video was 3 months from start to publication, if you worked for 30-60 minutes every day.  If you assume an hour a day for 90 days, then you have spent 90 hours to set up this source of passive income (that will probably only last for 3-6 months).   I’ll do the math all the way for you- assume that with your costs, you net $4,000.  This means you earned $44/hour for your 90 hours of writing time.  That sounds really good.

I’d like a passive income as much as the next person.  But courses on generating passive income are modern day snake oil.  If it were really that easy, wouldn’t we all be doing it? So, I’m going to research the economics of self-publishing a little bit more.  How much does the typical book make, and how long does it continue to generate reasonable passive income?  I’ll post my findings here when I have them.

Who is Chandler Bolt?

Course Review, Writing

I love knowledge.  I love plans.  I like finding what other smart people have done, and copying their methods.  Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.  I’ve never met a mailing list that I didn’t sign up for.  Promise me all sorts of secrets?  All I have to do is give you my email?  Well, here you go…

Unfortunately, in the modern age, it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Maybe this was always so, but now the volume to sift through seems infinite.  One regular feature of the blog will be me inflicting some internet course on myself, and reviewing it for you.  Even if you don’t pay money for the course, you are spending your time & energy.  So, knowing what is valuable and what isn’t is important.

I recently received an email promoting the course Blank Page to Best Seller.  This is a free (other than your time and email) course that teaches you how to self-publish a book and make tons of money.  This is a free 4 video series with a downloadable pdf ebook.

A little googling reveals that Chandler also sells a course on how to publish an ebook (for $600 or $2000 depending on the level).  Most of the reviews I found were glowing, but by people who sell the course through affiliate links.

Chandler Bolt is our guru, because apparently he and his buddy slapped together 60 page book on productivity while snowboarding in Thailand.  Said book made Amazon’s best seller list- topping David Allen for some time.  As Chandler admits in the first video, the books is all the best bits of productivity wisdom he found from other places.  He argues that he is adding value by presenting only the best bits of wisdom.  The reviews on amazon are mostly positive, though you do find the stickler or two (or 10 ) who mention the massive amount of recycled content and lack of attribution in this book.

Chandler has a ton of books on Amazon.  Many are “guides to” cribsheet versions of his books, available for free.  I’m intrigued by a cliff notes version of a 60 page book, so of course I downloaded it.

Video 1 (~ 15 min):

The tone rubs me wrong from the start.  You can be a shitty writer, turn out a mediocre product, and make thousands a month?  That’s your opening?  Seriously??!!  What happened to craft?  As I mentioned, he eventually puts forth the argument that his selection of the the best productivity information is adding value, but the whole first half is who cares if you are a bad writer?  Is this merely a motivational speech designed to encourage those with low self-esteem?

I can’t bring myself to watch the second video or read the guide yet, so this will be a “to be continued…” post.

So, has anyone taken an internet course they found extremely useful?  Was it free or paid?  How did you go about deciding to commit the time and/or money?  I’d love to hear about people’s experiences in the comments.

 

 

Book Review of Pete Seeger’s “Story Telling Book”

Book Review, Writing

One of the first things I did when I decided to publish my book was acquire a bunch of books about writing and publishing.  In this frenzy, I picked up Pete Seeger’s “Story Telling Book” composed by Pete Seeger & Paul Dubois Jacobs.  It is a strange book.  I thought it would be about the craft of story telling.  Instead, it is  a book of stories to tell to children.  The bulk of the book is short stories, mostly already known, suitable for children with endnotes about how to make the story more compelling or creative (use scary voices, swap “boy” for “girl”).  Fairly frequently the story is modified from the original to emphasize values such as working together.

The book is divided in 6 sections.

Stories from my father- Family history type stories with tips on how to exaggerate the details to make them more compelling and stories that Pete Seeger’s father told him when he was a child.

New versions of old stories- retellings and modifications of old stories such as stories from the bible or fairy tales like “stone soup”

Stories from Sounds, Rounds, and lullabyes-  Stories that fill in the details about events described in songs.

Stories from American History-  This has both more family history stories and stories about legendary people’s lives

A few of my own stories- The only fully original stories in the book.  There is a lot of magical elements in both stories from my father and this section- talking lightbulbs and telephone lines for example.  They struck me as fairly formulaic, but I  guess that is the point of the book- formulas so you can be a storyteller?  To be fair, I did find the stories compelling enough that I read the book in a single sitting.  This may have made the formulas more obvious…

Story Beginnings- The first bit of a story- the rest of the story is left up to the reader.  Some are original (to Seeger or his father) while some are well-known (Goldilocks).

Okay, first, clearly this book is of no use to me and my quest to publish my book.  It has 8 fairly glowing reviews on Amazon from parents who have retold the stories to their children to much acclaim.  If you are looking to freshen up story hour, this might be the book for you.  If you already have stories bursting out of your head, and regularly use your “monster voice”  or “princess voice” as the story requires, you can probably safely pass on this one.

Being a writer

habits, Writing

I’m a writer.  I write technical documents for work and volumes of personal musings for myself.  I’ve also written a book-  50,000 words slammed together a decade ago as part of National Novel Writing Month.  I’ve never read it.  Writing the book was a project- a temporary endeavor.  When I accomplished the goal, the project was done, and I filed the book away as “complete”.

But lately I’ve been thinking about my book lately in the context of habits and goals.  The end point- writing X number of words by the end of November- isn’t the natural endpoint of a book.  It is at best a midpoint.  Next comes editing, workshopping, ???  I actually have no idea.  National Novel Writing Month was a huge amount of fun.  More importantly, it provided a framework (write X words in X time) that was easy to follow and easy to win. (Yes, I like to win.  No, that isn’t the point of NaNoWriMo.  Writing that much in a month is tough, but the endpoint is so close and so clear, it is pretty easy to power through to the end.

There is a lot of contradictory information out there about what to do next.  So,  I thought I would document my experience as I complete my book.  I’ll be looking at a lot of different resources ranging from traditional books to Reddit.  I’ll post my reviews of the resources here on the blog, and I’ll also let you know how things go as I progress.  I hope that this blog will be a useful resource for others when they decide to publish their books as well.

Along the way, I’ll digress and talk about habits, productivity, “side hustles”, and whatever else I try to apply to my life.   The end goal is a peaceful, productive, and creative life.  Getting there might be rocky, but hopefully I’ll find some tips and tricks that can make the next person’s life a bit smoother.

Psychological Obstacles & Habits

habits

The last block to good organization according to Morgenstern is Psychological Obstacles.  Again, I think that this applies more broadly to habit building in general.  This can be heavy stuff, but extremely rewarding.  I’m not sure that these obstacles can be easily categorized, but I’d like to focus on one category where I think a lot of people might have a block- alignment of goals & habits with personal vision & values.  A wordy title for sure, but I cannot come up with anything snappier at the moment.

Our goals, habits & resolutions paint a picture of who we think we should be.  However, in some cases this isn’t the same as who we want to be.  We put down goals that don’t actually resonate with our values or personal vision.  We put these goals down because something external is telling us we should.  Or we put down a goal that does align with our values or ideal self-image, but actually has no resonance with us.

Let me give you an example.  For years “Learn a second language” has been a goal of mine.  I work in a multi-cultural environment and I’d say at least 80% of my colleagues speak at least 2 languages, and a sizable fraction of them speak three or more.  I’d like to show my non-native English speaking friend and colleagues respect by talking to them in their native language.  I think that would deepen our relationship & friendship.  In my mind, learning another language would make me more worldly and sophisticated as well.   This would suddenly turn me in to one of those adventurous people who backpack across the globe staying in the homes of people they met while chatting at the local market.  Knowing a second language (in my mind) is also a signal that I’m not closed minded- I’m not an ugly American.   There is a lot of stuff behind this simple goal!

Yet, I still don’t speak a second language.  This resolution has been broken more times than I can count.  I’d buy CDs or download programs, commit to a practice schedule, start building the habit of practice, and break it within a month.  Why?  Because I don’t like learning languages.  It is a horrible, horrible slog for me.  I took years of French in school, and worked hard to get good grades, but it was my least favorite subject.  I also don’t like travel.  I’m not a spontaneous person, and backpacking across the world sounds horrible to me.  The underlying values (multi-multiculturalism, open-mindedness, respect, relationship building, sophistication)  are important to me, which is why this goal re-appeared on my list for so many years.  To not learn a second language seems like a refutation of values that are important to me.  But, there are other ways to live in alignment with those values that fit better with my life, my personality, & my preferences.  And now, this goal doesn’t appear on my list.  Occasionally, I think “I should learn a second language”, but a few moments reflection convinces me that this goal is still not something I actually want to do.

The converse could be true as well.  Upon thinking about a goal and seeing the deep connection to your values and your ideal self, you may realize that it is a much higher priority than you thought.  As an example, keeping up with household chores may not be the funnest thing for most of us,  and might seem like it is dictated mostly by outside expectations.  However, when I thought about how I felt when I walked in to a clean room, I realized that house-cleaning enabled tranquility.  For me, I experience increased calm in a neat and clean room and increased anxiety walking in to a messy one.  Housekeeping is something that I struggled with fitting in my schedule.  It seemed cleaning took too much energy.  I either didn’t have that energy, or I preferred to spend it elsewhere.  The last year I lived pretty chaotically.  However, as I started reflect on my values, and ways to reduce my stress and anxiety levels, I realized that housework was actually a really simple and important path towards calm.  And since I’ve starting thinking about these benefits of housework, it has been easier to do the habit of doing some cleaning & tidying up every night.

So, is there a Zombie goal on your list?  A goal that you’ve never managed to accomplish, but yet keeps coming back year after year?  Perhaps taking a few minutes to think about why you want to accomplish the goal, and if it is really something you want to do, will finally slay the Zombie goal- one way or another.