5 Books With Soul

It is my great honor to be hosted by Rochelle Melander over at the Write Now Coach Blog. I am a long time follower and can't tell you how much I have learned from Rochelle.

Today I'm talking about 5 books that have taught me something. I picked five books that have stuck with me for a long, long time, and then explored why they did. It's because they have soul.

How does a book have soul, you ask? Which five books did I pick? Well, head on over to The Write Now Coach Blog to find out :)

Sarah Allen

When the Ideas are Buzzy and Fuzzy

It's been a bit of a hectic week. I spent basically the entire weekend dealing with computer issues. My computer was so infected by viruses that it would hardly start up, and everything I tried only made it worse. Thank heavens all my stuff was backed up, so I mostly kept my sanity. But it was still ridiculously frustrating, and there didn't seem to be any option that didn't involve spending lots of money. I decided to do a factory reset but it took me a few days to figure out how to do it without a backup DVD. Anyway. I am writing to you now from a clean and functioning computer.

Another thing. I feel at the beginning stages of not one, but many big projects. I'm trying to get serious brainstorming the next novel, and also a screenplay, which are the big things. But I also have these swirling ideas for YouTube videos and picture books and short stories and novellas and poems and just all these thing. I actually don't get that way very often, so its kind of weird.

I feel like my brain is on the static station. Like I'm trying to grasp at these ideas but they are fuzzy and buzzing around so I can't get a good glimpse. I think the frustration with computer issues and over-stimulation from half-baked ideas is at the root of the problem, and I'm trying to fix it.

I need to just sit down and make myself focus on one idea at a time. This is harder at the moment than it should be, but when I try and focus on one project I just keep thinking, oh, but this other thing is important too. Then nothing much gets done. This needs to change.

So. This is your friendly reminder to back-up all your stuff, and frequently, and a reminder to me that it is okay to focus on one project, and get it going, before I move on to the next. And that is what I'm going to do.

Keep writing!

Sarah Allen
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4 Ways to Recycle Your Best Blog Posts

One of my favorite concepts, for marketing and in general, is efficiency. I feel a sense of satisfaction when I know I'm using my ideas and efforts to their greatest advantage. So when we spend a good chunk of time brainstorming and crafting our top blog posts, I think its a good idea to get as much from those posts as we can. With that in mind, here are 4 ways we can reuse and recycle our best blog posts.

1. Blog to Book: If you've been blogging for a while and have a loyal following, a blog to book might not be a bad idea. I haven't looked into doing this too much myself, and it will be a while before I'm ready to take on a project like this, but this does the double duty of making more use from your blog posts and also adding a new book to your portfolio. I know the key here is to have a careful balance of recycled blog posts and fresh, new material that makes the book worth buying for your long-time followers. But with effort and a good-sized and good-quality backlog, you could make this work.

2. Readwave: This is a new site, and one I've only come across recently. But I've really liked what I've seen so far, and the concept is pretty cool. The idea at Readwave is to provide a feed of articles and stories that take less than five minutes to read (less than 800 words). The content ranges from articles on Indian women to funny stories about pets. If you have well-written and short blog posts, which many of them should be anyway, this might be a good place to put them to get some fresh eyes. I've just started, and have two posts up myself.

3. Inkpageant: At one time I used to put a good portion of my blog posts on InkPageant, and I'm going to start doing that again. This site is also aimed at providing a feed of the best quality blog posts, but it is specifically aimed at writers and the feed is links to the blog posts themselves, rather than republished posts. But this is an easy resource to take advantage of, so why not, right?

4. Image Covers: With modern communication becoming so image based, it might be to your advantage to create blog post posters, almost like magazine covers, and upload them to social media. For example, I did this with a blog post I did a long time ago, and this was the result:

 Pinterest especially will be your ally with this technique, but you can use it on most social media platforms as a way to simply catch peoples eye as they scroll through. And you don't have to be a graphic design genius either, in fact you can do it all online with a tool like PicMonkey. This can be a good way to revive some of your oldies-but-goodies that have been gathering dust in the archives.

So what do you think? Can you think of other tools or ways for us to reuse and repurpose our best blog posts?

Sarah Allen

Chuck Wendig Makes Me Feel Better

I just got off a Skype call involving my roommate and our college friend living elsewhere in the country. ("So in other words, becoming Relief Society president took all the evil over-lord out of your personality"*). We were all fellow English majors and when we happen to catch each other online and fall into a Skype call, the majority of our discussion centers on writing and our current writing woes and current projects. It's always fun, and always motivating.

Anyway, we're all sort of at this end of the beginning phase, where we've all been working at this for a good handful of years now, and we're starting to get a few books and many more rejections under our belts. I'm starting to think of it as the throwing rocks at the brick wall until it crumbles or someone on the other side finally notices and throws you a rope phase. Needless to say, it can be a bit disheartening.

It's nice to have company in this phase, and be able to talk about it and work through it with supportive friends. It's also nice to get a little confirmation and validation from those further along on the writing journey, which brings me to Chuck Wendig.

Chuck is always a hilarious and honest supporter and inspirer of the newbie writer, but his latest blog post was particularly helpful tonight. He talks about how long his own journey has taken him, and how even though he's now being called an "overnight success," that "overnight" only came after 20 years of hard, hard work. He says, "A writing career isn’t a short game — it’s a long con...It takes the time that it takes."

Part of our Skype conversation tonight was about Brandon Sanderson, and how he was on novel #12 before he sold his first novel, which was actually novel #6. We often hear stories like that, about how much endurance you have to have, and I'll admit, those stories scare me. We at the beginning of the journey are thinking, "Oh, yeah, I'll work as long as I have to but that won't be me. It won't take that much time or effort." Well, you know what, it might, but if Brandon Sanderson and Chuck Wendig's final destination is any indication, it will be worth the fight.

I guess I just wanted to say thank you to all the types of support out there, the awesome people in the blogosphere, and writers like Chuck who continually come back into the tunnel with a flashlight and promise us beginners that there really, truly is a very worthwhile light at the end of the tunnel, even if we can't see it just yet.

So keep the words coming! I will too, and I'll see you all in greener pastures soon enough.

Sarah Allen

*Apologies if you didn't get the joke...if you're that interested, this might help you understand a bit more.

3 Key Ingredients for Going Viral

Our goal as writers is to tell good stories, and tell them beautifully. Simple as that. However, writing stories will do us and the world little good if nobody reads them. We all hope to get our books out to as many people as possible, and as we writers in the modern digital age know, the job of doing that falls increasingly to the authors themselves. Meaning us. The most important thing we do is write, of course, but its also part of our job to get that writing out there in as big a way as we can manage.

That means going viral. As viral as possible. Infect to the north star! Okay, sorry, I'll stop. But seriously. None of us would say no to that kind of wildfire word-of-mouth spread that happens sometimes, right?

Clearly there is no, like, secret formula or anything for making something go viral or we would all be doing it. However, in his awesome TED talk, YouTube's trend manager Ken Allocca talks about three common traits in viral YouTube videos. And yeah, even though he's talking about YouTube video's specifically, we can apply these three ingredients to everything from direct book marketing to any social media we might do. Because everything helps, right?

So, without further ado, here are the three key ingredients for going viral:

1. Trend-setters: It's no secret, going viral can be a bit of a catch-22: you go viral by being viral. Celebrities and big names get the types of hits on all their content that we mere mortals only dream of. If you're Justin Beiber, every thing you say goes viral. What I'm saying is this: one of the quickest ways to go viral is to get a nod from one of these big-name trend-setters. Rebecca Black's 'Friday' video didn't go big until some big newscaster tweeted it.

How does this apply to writers directly? This strategy includes stuff like getting big-name reviews of your book or a big-name twitter mention. Obviously there's no guaranteed way to do that, and the worst thing you can do is become obnoxious about it (we've all seen what that looks like). So really I guess this one comes down to creating good (or otherwise noteworthy) content and praying for some luck.

2. Trend participation: Going back to the 'Friday' video. There were quite a number of people who got some big numbers by making parody videos. I'm sure you've seen a handful of them. Now, I am definitely not saying you should write to trends. There have been innumerable posts around the blogosphere about why that is a terrible idea, and I wholeheartedly agree. What I am saying is that you should find all the niches your books fit in and participate fully. This strategy also comes heavily into play as you do your social media marketing. Use appropriate Twitter hashtags and write blog posts about relevant news and trends. In short, find applicable discussions and find a way to join in. The higher quality your contribution to the discussion, the more attention it is going to get. In other words, this also comes down to creating quality content and praying for some luck.

3. Unexpectedness and remarkability: In another wonderful TED Talk by Seth Godin he uses the example of a purple cow. We see cows fairly often, while we're driving down the road, right? We don't particularly notice--or remark--them. However, if one of those cows were purple, we would stop and do a double-take. But then, if all the cows became purple, purple cows would cease to be remarkable. See what I'm (he's) saying?

You know those horrible videos where there's a peaceful scene, like a truck driving down a lush country road, and it goes on for a minute or so and then a terrifying witch face comes screaming onto the screen? So, those are obnoxious examples, but we need to do our best to be something like that. We need to create content that people remark on--that they remember, and talk about with there friends. That's how you get the ball rolling in the first place. This applies to both our book marketing and our books themselves. Make tweets and blog posts and YouTube videos and paid advertisements and interviews and, most of all, books, that are remarkable. Meaning this comes down to--you guessed it--creating quality content and praying for a bit of luck.

So yeah, if there were a secret ingredient to all this, it would be luck. My grandpa used to say luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and these three ingredients will help us take best advantage of all opportunities.

What are ways can you think of to use these three ingredients in your book marketing? Can you think of any great examples of people who have done this?

Sarah Allen