A Cure for Procrastination

by Margaret Lepke

Procrastination seems to be the bane of many writers, and it was the first word that popped into my head when I asked the Lord for a topic. Much has been written about it already, but maybe another angle won’t hurt.

I used to be the queen of last minute sprints because I left things too late. ‘I have weeks to finish this... There’s no hurry... I’ll just get a drink (or a snack)... I’ll just do this or that or the other before...‘ I always had a lot of reasons why I didn’t have to start right away, and none of them were meant to be excuses. My brain just had this uncanny ability to fudge facts when it came to time management, and the result was inevitable: last minute writing dashes that just had to succeed somehow. I can’t recount how many nights I spent sitting at my computer, typing away madly, trying to make up for lost time. But most of that is now in the past because of two unexpected encounters.

The first one involved a conversation with a dear old family friend. She lives overseas, and we stay in touch by phone. Not only is she an old friend, she is also a literally old friend; in her 89^th year when she told me this story: ‘We had a festival down at the harbour yesterday, and I was looking forward to going all week. But when the time came, I didn’t feel too great and started making excuses:  I don’t feel like getting changed…I could watch it on TV tomorrow… What’s an old woman doing walking around the harbour at night anyway… But you know me; I’m like a weed that keeps popping up. My body won’t obey as it used to, but I told that inner Schweinehund of mine to shut up and ship out.' [Schweinehund = pig dog = a metaphorical antagonist that lives within.] We had a laugh. ‘You can’t allow yourself too many excuses,’ she continued, ‘otherwise life passes you by. You have to make yourself get on with it. So I told myself, Just do it!  I got up, got dressed, hopped on the 8 o’clock train, and ended up having a jolly good time. Guess when I got back home? It wasn’t before midnight.’

This old lady has always had a great deal of spunk and humour – two qualities that by God’s grace helped her survive the horrors of war. Throughout my life I have admired her for both, and so I took my cue from her spunk and started addressing the ‘pig dog’ that lives within me (don’t be fooled, we all have one). As I took charge and gained more and more control over this ugly adversary, I also remembered a folksy proverb my mother used to quote: ‘Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.’ In German it has a perfect rhyme that makes it memorable, and as you can see, I haven’t forgotten, even after many decades. Every reminder helps.

The second encounter involved the Word of God when I looked for scriptures that might help me keep up the momentum. ‘Go to the ant, you sluggard,’ I read, ‘Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.’ Proverbs 6:6-8 (NKJV). The sluggard part hit me like a thunderbolt (the NLT uses lazybones) - I certainly didn’t want to be one of those! - and then Ephesians 5:15-17 sealed the deal: “Be very careful then how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” I had no more excuses.

For those of you who are interested in actual strategies for managing procrastination, here’s a great link: http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/resources/infopax.cfm?Info_ID=50. As for me, I decided to follow my friend’s Just do it! method and determined not to let that pig dog win. I now write to-do lists and place the most unpleasant tasks at the top. Then I take a big breath and tell myself, “Just do it!” and get started. Once on a roll, it’s fairly easy to keep going, and I love ticking off task after task and having a clean slate by nightfall (most nights, anyway). No more big projects looming over my head, misplaced anxieties or late-night pressure sessions. If I do stay up late these days, it’s because of choice, not because of necessity.  

And finally, the biggest bonus of all: I achieve so much more! I’ve even found time to develop a new website to publish resources by various authors. It’s a work in progress, and there are lots of articles and eBooks on my list still waiting to be polished and uploaded, but without procrastination I will get there in good time – and that’s exciting. You may like to download and study the FREE eBook  Eternity to Eternity by Dr John Ecob. He did a superb job and included many excellent charts.

Now I will schedule this blog post for Monday and hope that at least some of what I have written will be of benefit to you...

Margaret Lepke reaches many people through her blatantly Christian professional website.

She blogs at Dr Margaret’s Treasure Chest  and is currently developing an Internet platform for sound Christian teaching at BiblicalPublications.org

My Love Of Serials (not Cereals)

Today I’m spreading my love for writing serials, and not just because I’m currently publishing one. That just happens to be an added bonus.

Serials, unlike series, are the TV of fiction. Each episode is a nice, neat story that takes the reader through the usual ups and downs, and leaves them with some feeling of completeness. However, each episode is part of a larger overarching plotline - the season if you will. 

Being an avid TV and movie watcher myself, I understand the subtle difference between those times when you want to curl up and spend an evening meeting new people and finding out all about them, and those when you just want to have a quick chat with friends, catch up on what's happening in their lives, and still get to bed early. This is when you want a serial.

I hear you asking some questions, well let me answer them for you.

Isn't it just a novel that's been broken up? 

Golden rule of serials:

All serials can become novels, but not all novels can become serials

Imagine Lord of the Rings as episodes. Now imagine those few where Sam and Frodo are walking across the marshes. In the next episode: they are still walking across the marshes. And the next? Yup, still walking. It takes very specific pacing to make a serial episode work, and not all novels have it.

But why would someone want to read one when they could read a novel?

We are busy. 

Everyone is busy. 

How much of the general public have a two hour block to sit down and read? In part that's why chapters are now being shaped around the 20 minute read - the train journey to work. But something that gives closure in the space of a TV episode has appeal for a lot of readers. 

Why would I want to write one?

The answer to this is simple - it's amazing fun. Yes, it's much harder to plot out the pacing than a novel, but the advantages make up for this. Two of these include:

Quality time. Have you ever finished writing a book and felt a small part of you die because you're not travelling any further with your main character? Serials put that off for a very long time. 

Subplots, it's all about the subplots! With a single novel, you really have to restrict how much you diverge and how many characters you have. In a serial, as long as you can handle all the reigns and wrap them all up by the end, you can go to town on the fun. 

But what about as an author - someone who wants to sell books? 

People are more likely to buy it. One episode is a low investment for a reader, both in money and in time.

Sad but true: very few people like spending money on new authors, but giving a book away for free is painful, and not very economically viable in the long run. However, giving away a complete episode for free, when there are 10 more, isn't such a hardship. This gives you a way to win them over before they have to fork out.

Starting a new book is a large commitment, one that often doesn’t payoff. Over the years I've lost my faith in humanity/new authors. I'll start a book saying I'll give the author a chance. The next night I'm still giving them a chance. Eventually I realise it's not going to get any better, and I'm never going to get back those hours of my life. In comparison, I'm always happy to watch the first episode of a new TV show, and if it doesn't grab me, no harm done. 

What's your serial about?

Why thank you for asking, so kind! I wanted to have fun and I wanted something that was really suited to the episodic format. So I chose a Christian Chic-lit about online dating - nicely tying into one of my non-fiction works on how to write an online dating profile. Laurie is an example of how not to. 

Laurie Barker is 29, single, unpublished, overworked, and underpaid. But she doesn't mind. Really she doesn't, she's sure God's got it all worked out. But when Yannie, her younger sister, announces she's getting married ... in seven weeks, everything changes. Laurie has less than two months to find a boyfriend and make her life perfect. Oh, and work out how to break it to her family that she's not sure why they think she's dating famous author Timothy Farren, but she hasn't actually even met him. It's time for a Laurie Master Plan. 

One of the things I loved about writing this as a serial was the chance to really play with her faith. In my own Christian experience, I've found that God likes the long-game. Each episode is our perception of time, that God needs to get it all fixed up now. The full arc of the story is more how God likes to roll: giving you a lesson, waiting to see if you'll learn it, and then giving it to you again if you didn't. 

Episodes 1-3 of Virtually Ideal are now out on Amazon Kindle. Episode 4 will be coming out in a week or two, if students stop asking me to proof-read their essays. And just you guys, I'm making Virtually Ideal Episode 1: Date or Die free online at Amazon.com.au tomorrow. (It's listed for the 13th, but that's US time.) But don’t stress if you miss it, or want to offer a few free copies on your blog; send me an email and I'll give you the epub.

So, tempted to try your hand at serialising?

Buffy Greentree
b_greentr@yahoo.com
Check out my author page on Amazon

Available on Amazon.com.au

CHESTNUTS by Rita Stella Galieh

Winter time is chestnut time.  Who can resist these delicious potato tasting nuts once they're baked?

And I wonder why they say an old joke or story is a chestnut?

But they have another side to them. The sweet inside nuts, besides their brown shell, are covered with nasty, large prickles. Pity the growers having to remove these but it must be done.

I couldn't resist this parable similar to the whole area of Writing. I'm sure every one of us who desires to write has to suffer many trials before cracking the actual kernel. Besides the numerous steps of getting your story into shape before you can hope for publication, then begins the tricky hunt for an agent or publisher.

Many of us have felt the discouragement of disinterest, or outright rejections. Worse still the acknowledgement the story is great, but perhaps your platform is minimal or non existent. Or that particular genre is not the trend right now. So what's the next step? Give it up as being too hard?

Most of us are very aware that before finding success, we have to wade through a pond of failures. The inventor's attitude is, 'These are just ways of not doing it' and they persist until they find the way that works. Mind you, we writers have all all the rules set out beforehand and supposedly we know what we shouldn't do. Then ... some author writes a best seller that seems to break all the rules. It helps if they have published before as they have already won the confidence of the publishers.

Now this is the time to step back and work out what's really important to you. And never give up!

To quote my Canadian writer friend, Christine Lindsay:
'When life happens
Admit you can only do so much.
Do what you can and leave the rest to the Lord.
Trust God that your writing career is in His Hands.

Don't let life happen and growl that it is hampering your writing career. But instead rest in the Lord and you just might be amazed at how he takes your efforts during your weary times and blesses you.

EMBRACE your life, the good and the bad.
REST physically and mentally.
TRUST God for the outcome.'

So when you're on the point of tearing out your hair, (as I've been at times) grasp the advice and promise of Proverbs 3:5 and 6.
 
Rita Stella Galieh is enjoying the challenges and rewards of Independent Publishing.

The 2nd edition of her Victoriana Trilogy  has seen her dream realised. As an art student at her convict built college, she wondered about its history. Research revealed the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt had visited there. One of the jailers joked about the local cat, meaning the cruel cat'o nine tails.

The Bloody Code was an all encompassing method of punishment for any offence deemed illegal. Often felons were sent to the gallows or faced transportation to England's brutal prisons in the Southern Hemisphere. After tracing the life of one innocent woman, on whom she based her story, this became the theme of her novel ... Signed Sealed Delivered. Book 2: The Tie that Binds, Book 3: A Parcel of Promises.

See ritastellapress.com     for information on both print and ebooks.

Launching Your Book Baby

Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

CWD/ACW Cross-Post

Christenings, twenty-first birthday parties, weddings, ship launchings, bridge openings, house warmings—all ways to celebrate new beginnings.

Having a book launch provides a great opportunity to celebrate your book, make a splash, spark initial visibility, and it may be the one time people don’t mind if you raving about your book.

So what makes a successful launch?

Be clear about your goals.

What do you hope to achieve with your launch. Is it primarily to celebrate your achievement and/or to bring your book to attention of potential readers and fans and/or to make some initial sales?

 Who is your target audience?

A family history may (or may not) be targeted more at the extended family rather than history buffs or members of the historical society.  An e-launch of a book aimed at techno-challenged seniors may not be the best choice.

Be prepared

• Make sure your book is properly edited, critiqued, formatted and ready to publish in time for the launch.
• Talk to your publisher (if traditional published) to work out what they offer & what they expect from you.
• Start planning well before hand— the type of launch, who you’ll invite, giveaways etc.
• Have a budget— this might be small or large but you don’t necessarily have to spend big to have a successful launch.
• Maybe form a ‘street team’ —a group of people who are enthusiastic about your book and who are prepared to review and promote it via word of mouth, sharing links etc. and therefore create a buzz early on.
• Make sure you have enough books on hand (if physical launch)—allow leeway for delays or mistakes in printing/sending.
• Reviews—arrange reader reviews (through advanced reader copies) several weeks before the launch.
• Announce your launch—through social media, your website, email list etc (your platform).

Decide on what kind of launch

Most people, when they think of a launch, think of a physical one—with a physical venue and physical (print) books but you can also have an e-launch (or maybe combine it with another event).

Physical launch

• You need to arrange a time and date, venue, decorations, suitable refreshments and activities or entertainment.
• Send out invitations to friends and family, fans and readers, and other interested parties.
• Advertise—on Facebook (unpaid & paid), announcements of new releases (e.g. ACW), other social media, blogs, among groups that might be interested in your book, local media etc
• Make sure you have enough books for people to purchase on the day.
• Have activities, giveways—maybe takeaway items with your brand or book title such as bookmarks, T-shirts or coffee mugs.
• You could have a launch theme (does your book have pirates, horses or dragons in it; or maybe it’s set in an exotic location or celebrates a certain kind of cuisine.)
• Unless you are big name author or celeb—it’s probably best not to charge entry. If you do charge, include a signed copy of the book in the price.

Pros of a physical launch— a sense of connection, you have the books there to sell and they can be a lot of fun. Besides, not everyone is on social media.

Cons—not everyone can attend especially if they live at a distance and it can be more expensive and take greater organisation.

E-launches

It is possible to have a virtual-launch (eg Facebook or Twitter) and these (depending on your target audience) can be quite successful.

While I’ve heard of Twitter-parties, my experience has been with Facebook launches.

• Set up the event (date and time) on Facebook & invite interested parties to (virtually) attend and suggest inviting friends who may be interested.
• With an anthology—different authors can have 5 min intro and then each offer giveaways, prizes etc —which can result in a very fast-paced exciting launch with lots of offers and interactions.
• If you are the only author—you can invite other authors will similar book/readership to participate and/or just do it yourself. Make sure you have a list of questions for competitions or discussion:
•    About you as author & the writing process
•    About the book or book series, its characters and or narrative world
•    Related to the setting, the themes or issues
•    About the reader—their favourite book or genre, tastes, or opinions
• Tie in the giveaway into some activity—signing up to email list, liking author page or twitter account, Giveaways can be vouchers, or free books/short stories/illustrations or services (editing, providing a graphic) or inclusion in next book (ie they can name a character)

Combo:

Have an event on Facebook & with posts leading up to the physical launch.

Tie the launch in with other promotional activities.

A launch works best if you tie it in with other (ongoing) promotional activity.

• Blog tour— a ‘tour’ of participating blogs in which your new book (and you) are showcased, you can have giveaways for each blog and/or one big one at end of tour. Treasure hunts (with questions or comments on each blog needed to win). You may want to look at ways at keeping the different blogposts fresh and interesting—a different set of questions to answer, an excerpt from the book, or an interview with one of the main characters in the book (if fiction) or some interesting titbits of research about the culture, setting or period.
• Giveaways— leading up to the launch maybe set up a Rafflecopter giveaway or other giveaways on your blog. You could also do a Goodreads giveway or Amazon promotion.

Follow-up:

The launch is just the start. It takes time to build traction in the market, to get visibility— so you should continue to promote your books (without putting everyone off by a constant, annoying ‘buy my book, buy my book’ drone).

Look for opportunities:

Encourage reviews if you can, guest blogs, book signings, visits to groups connected to your target audience (schools, family history groups, women’s groups).

Don’t despair—remember the long-tail of publishing:

In the past books had a definite (and short) shelf-live. Unless a genuine best seller, a book often had a 6 week turnaround in the bookstores. So it was important to make a big splash at the beginning.

These days, with e-books, online buying and print-on-demand (POD), a book effectively never goes out of print. It remains available for purchase long after the launch. So even if your launch rates barely a blimp on the radar and you don’t make any Amazon best-seller lists, if you continue to promote your book/s, it’s possible to build up a visibility over time. This works best if you have more than one book, so keeping writing is also important (and because, after all, that why you are a writer in the first place).

And when all is said and done, while we can plant and water, it is God who 'gives the growth'. (cf 1 Cor 3:5-9)

Have you launched a book or participated in the launch? What things would you recommend as part of a successful launch? 


This post was also published on Australasian Christian Writers on 6 June 2016

Jeanette O’Hagan enjoys writing fiction, poetry, blogging and editing. She is writing her Akrad’s Legacy Series—a Young Adult secondary world fantasy fiction with adventure, courtly intrigue and romantic elements. Her short stories and poems are published in a number of anthologies including Glimpses of Light, Another Time Another Place and Like a Girl.

Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and, more recently, a Master’s in writing. She loves reading, painting, travel, catching up for coffee with friends, pondering the meaning of life and communicating God’s great love. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

You can find her at her Facebook Page or at Goodreads or on Amazon or on her websites  JennysThread.com or Jeanette O'Hagan Writes .

Emerging from the Rubble

For every creative soul there comes times of discouragement and confusion; perhaps even that horrid question: ‘Should I just give up?’

Well, should I? I’ve been published for twenty years, and enjoyed huge success—relatively speaking—in the Australian Christian market. I couldn’t write fast enough, and the re-prints kept rolling in. I didn’t realise that I was riding a wave, and that somewhere around 2007, the wave began to beach. Things didn’t immediately collapse at that time, but with the introduction of the wonder medium, the eBook, the Australian Christian market began to stutter, then cough, then choke.

Concurrently, with this change, Australian Christian writers began to emerge. Writing groups, like Christian Writers Downunder and Omega Writers, began to form and gain momentum. We had conferences where we could listen to some excellent advice on just about anything writing (including how we should avoid using the word ‘just’). Groups like Wombat Books and Even Before Publishing got legs and started to walk. 

But unfortunately, none of us seem to have got to the running pace in the Australian Christian Market.

From my own experience of small independent publishing, I’ve seen the huge support of the Christian Booksellling Association of Australia (CBAA) dwindle by degrees. Part of it has been because of the digital changeover, and some of it (in my case at least) has been because a good part of my audience and support base of twenty years ago were people 60+. Twenty years on, and these people have gone on to the Lord.

So where does that leave me? Where does that leave any of us who have been educating ourselves in the art of writing? Australian Christian writers are more abundant now than when I first started, and the quality of writing is improving all the time. And yet, the better we get, and the more of us there are, the less the opportunities to get that piece of work into the hands of readers.

Sometimes I feel as if the whole thing has collapsed into a heap of rubble, and we are left, picking over the ruins, looking for signs of life.

At a recent conference, I was chatting with a pastor’s wife, and she told me the story of her son. He is a young man who has a music degree, made it to the finals of one of the television singing competitions, had been leading their church music team and is a competent worship leader. He made the choice to go to Nashville in the US to see where else God would take him. This young man and his wife found themselves in a church in Nashville—ironically, it was a church run by a well-known Australian worship leader. This church has exploded, and there are a lot of Australians gathering together there. One morning, the worship leader asked for anyone in the congregation who was a worship leader to stand. No less than fifty people stood up. The young man could see that his chances of becoming a worship leader in this church were not high, and yet he had committed himself to serve in the carpark team.

As I listened to this story I thought, wow! There’s nothing apparent there for him to hope for in terms of his gift, and yet still he chooses to serve.

Then, last week, I caught up with a movie producer friend of mine, and we sat and talked the Australian film industry, which shares many similar frustrations to the Australian Christian book industry. He told me a story from a documentary he saw. The film team were in a Hollywood producer’s office and the camera zoomed in on one corner of the office. Piled up to waist height on both walls in the corner were manuscripts waiting to be reviewed—from the last week! AND apparently these were only the scripts that had a catchy log line and pitch. The rest had been discarded. Wow!

So, in this day and age where everyone can write, and write quickly; anyone can set a manuscript, and put together a cover, and publish online; how does my work or your work find an opportunity to bless others? The competition is ridiculous.

Actually, I don’t have a definitive answer. I’m still troubling through the variables myself. Should I give up?

One thing I do know, if I am picking through the rubble of a collapsed industry, then I must find the survivors, and give them nourishment, however that might be. If I am serving the Lord, and that comes in the guise of cooking a meal for a sick neighbour, or giving courage when I have opportunity to do so, then that is what it is. After all, I do believe the Word of God when it says:

^“5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.”

Proverbs 3:5-7New International Version (NIV)

Meredith Resce is author of 17 published titles, including The Heart of Green Valley series, and Mellington Hall. 

 Please connect with Meredith on her facebook page or website

www.meredithresce.com