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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Happy Leap Day!

Have a glorious Leap Day!

This photo requires a bit of explanation. The monster eating the little fairy is a finger puppet. Elaine Ambrose, in her great talk about humor, handed out these little finger puppets for use when us writers got a bit stuck. What a great idea, thanks Elaine! 

Well, I'm working on the second in my trilogy of THE MALL FAIRIES. And I already had the little fairy. So once when I was particularly stuck with one chapter I saw the monster and fairy sitting on my desk. In a burst of inspiration, I made the monster eat the fairy. Now every time I look at this I smile and the smile bring more words.

Okay, dear readers, what do you do when the flow of words starts to trickle? Do you have monsters eat fairies?

Monday, February 20, 2012

The Magic Formula for a Best Seller.

This past Saturday I attended an excellent workshop by Dennis J. Smith on social media. There are new ways to self promote on the Internet every day, it seems. And since I've jumped into the eBook world with my entire cyber body and soul, with quite a bit of success, I've been following other writers' journeys and thinking about the whole "How to sell? What should I be doing to become a best seller? Do I HAVE to do every social network? Do I need to go to every conference? Do I--" You know the drill.Then there's the whole "this person did nothing and sold millions" and "this person did everything and sold tons" and then "I'm driving myself crazy trying to do everything and selling nothing."

The problem is that there is no magic formula for selling. There are far too many variables to say with certainty "if you do so and so you'll sell X amount." Now granted, my mom was right and "If you don't tell people, they won't know." And Dennis is correct that the other writers are doing social media, you bet. So no promotion is a mistake. Social media is a wonderful tool. But there's no way to tell if being on Google+ will sell more books or less than being on Facebook. Or if being on both will sell more of your title.

So how to have a best seller? Here's the secret, here's the magic formula: The writing always comes first. Let me repeat that. The writing is first, always. ALWAYS. The more you write, the better writer you become. The more you write, the more and better product you have to sell. The more you sell, the more you can cross promote. Etc. This doesn't guarantee a best seller. But the wonderful magic is: you'll be writing. You'll be doing what you love first. And wouldn't that be best?

How do you, dear reader, balance the need to promote with the need to write? Are you sometimes completely unbalanced like me? Any suggestions for what might be most effective for promotion? Or do you run screaming at any hint of that word?

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentines Day

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Above is a picture of Bruce's moms kitties having a Valentine's moment. And I wanted to remind all my creative friends out there that it's passion that creates!

So do you love or hate or don't care about this holiday?