Category: Status

“If you simply manage to write in spoken language, you’ll be ahead of 95% of writers. And it’s so easy to do: just don’t let a sentence through unless it’s the way you’d say it to a friend.”

Source: Write Like You Talk by Paul Graham

Elisabeth, Merianna, and Sam talk about the commodity of content and how authors should disseminate that information. They advise authors that they shouldn’t help the rich get richer, but help build their own audience.

Show Notes

• Chuck Wendig Rebooting the Novel
• Chuck Wendig One Star Reviews Sell More Books
• Cliff Notes
• Indie Web
• POSSE
• 4 Ways Writers Sabotage Themselves on Facebook
• Cory Doctorow
• The Martian
• Andy Weir’s The Martian
• Bonnie McKenzie
• The Enormous Impact of Facebook Indexing
• My Social Book
• What Will an Author Newsletter Do For You?
• MacGuffin Plot Device
• Fight Club
• A Beautiful Mind
• NanoWrimo

What Elisabeth, Merianna, and Sam are Reading

The post Thinking Out Loud 87: Own Your Own Content appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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Elisabeth and Merianna talk about their upcoming conference and why they continue to work in the field of publishing. They also talk about what makes you an expert and when you can call yourself an expert. Elisabeth reminds them both that: “That’s what we do, make it possible for people to get published.”

Show Notes

• Waze
• Great Valley Bookfest
• 5 Things You Should Know About Beta Readers
• The Shocking Truth About the Slush Pile
• Writer Igniter Writer Con 2015 COUPON CODE: wicon2015speaker for $50 off!
• Writing Loglines That Sell
• 10,000 Hours

What Elisabeth and Merianna are Reading

The post Thinking Out Loud 86: 10,000 Hours Worth of Expertise appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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Last night at a meeting in Lexington, I had a glass of ice water for first time in two weeks. 

We don’t have drinking water available in our home or at the office here in Columbia. We still do have a house with all of our belongings and memories, though. We also have bottled water.

I can’t express how much I now prefer a glass of iced water to a bottle of water. 

Show Notes

• Great Dane Doesn’t Want to Get Up
• Great Dane Doesn’t Want to Share Love
• Collie’s Talking
• Collie Singing to Puppy
• Survival and Adventure Stories
• Stormy Weather
• The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych)
• The Year of the Flood
• Oryx and Crake

What Elisabeth and Merianna are Reading

The post Thinking Out Loud 85: Alternate Universes vs. Altered Universes appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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Elisabeth and Merianna talk about building audience and expanding your market as a solopreneur. They talk about the stresses and joys of owning your business. They also talk about the progress in their own writing projects.

Show Notes

• 5 Rules of Solopreneur
• 9 Reasons There’s New Never Been a Better Time to Be a Solopreneurs
• Finding Your Voice as a Solopreneur 
• Elizabeth Gilbert on Big Magic
• The Mountain Goats’ Lead Man Writes About Pain

What Elisabeth and Merianna are Reading

The post Thinking Out Loud 84: Solopreneurs appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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Elisabeth and Merianna talk about developing the place as you write a manuscript and the dilemma of floating characters. They also discuss the stalling or need to take a break that comes after pressing send and how to overcome that and continue to write!

Show Notes

• A Bug’s Life
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
• What Happens After the First Draft
• Seventh Sanctum
• Smoke and Mirrors
• Trigger Warning
• American Gods

What Elisabeth and Merianna are Reading

The post Thinking Out Loud 83: Putting Characters In Their Place appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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“I am tired of apologizing!  As much as I know I should just listen to the Frozen soundtrack and just Let It Go!, there comes a time when letting it go is consent!  No more!  Mike Huckabee, if you want to claim to be a Baptist, a minister, even a Christian, please take some time to read the Bible!”

Source: I’m Tired of Saying “I’m Sorry!” | Didn’t Make the Sermon

Amen. It’s time for us to stand up and (re)claim what it means to be a baptist.

“We were never commissioned to demand that secular culture reflect biblical principles. We were commissioned to reflect biblical principles in the middle of secular culture, pointing to God’s redemptive story.”

Source: Christians Shouldn’t Be Culture’s Morality Police | RELEVANT Magazine

Good article that I wish more people of faith would read. There’s no shame in actually following Jesus and his example of communing with those who disagreed with him and who were labeled as “bad folks” in his culture.

Thanks for passing on, Merianna.

More than anything else, the strangest thing to me about Asheville is seeing the rivers run the wrong way (towards the Mississippi).

  

Our sister (is that sexist?) Harrelson Press does a lot of work with author marketing and promotion. One of the key points of that conversation involves authors needing to have their own site or web presence.

Reedsy looks like an interesting go-between to solve some of those issues and needs that authors have.

Anything to blow up the publishing industry and make it more author focused is a good thing.

What do you think, Merianna?

Reedsy just launched author profiles on its website where writers can collect and showcase their work on a single page. This way, Reedsy provides a simple way to share your profile on the web, much like an About.me link.

As a reminder, Reedsy unbundles the good old publishing company and provides all the services you need to self publish a book. The startup helps you find an editor, copy editor and cover illustrator to turn your draft into a book.

via Reedsy Launches Behance-Like Profiles To Let Authors Showcase Their Books | TechCrunch.

I have a similar conversation almost daily with clients or potential clients that involves the need for web sites. Not Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Twitter profiles, or Snapchat presence. A good ole-fashioned web site.

Many of our new clients bring with them at least something like a Facebook page. A small percentage of them may have a site set up on GoDaddy, Wix or the other number of “budget” website builders out there.

However, web sites are just as crucial for business success in 2015 as they were in 1999. Having a presence outside of social media silos means taking discoverability seriously. However, setting up a site is not the end of the story. The site needs to move and evolve with the ever-evolving web.

What many business owners overlook is the notion that having a web site also makes you a part of the conversation about your own name (or brand). Whether you intend it or not (or realize it or not), people will talk about you and your business. Having a site that will be indexed and ranked by Google provides you with the insurance and protection that you need if or when the talk turns to negative.

Don’t forget, we live in the era of the .sucks domain now. Here are a few good examples of cautionary tales that should raise the hair on the back of your neck.

“The biggest myth about Google is they’re somehow the first amendment,” says Fertik. “That there’s a natural order of things of how Google presents stuff that is inevitable, inexorable and correct. That whatever floats to the top of Google deserves to be there.”

via Welcome To The Outrage Machine – Digg.

I first encountered the Discworld books as a young reader trying to find something interesting at our public library, and they changed the way I thought about science fiction, satire, and our own world. I’m sad there won’t be more from him (his daughter might continue the series), but what a legacy (and a good way to leave this world)…

It is with immeasurable sadness that we announce that author Sir Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66. Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015.

via Terry Pratchett / Paul Kidby Discworld.

 

Columbia weather in March.