Saturday 20 January 2018

Yes, It is Your Fault


"It doesn't' matter what others are doing. It matters what you are doing." 
~ Buddhist Quote

Although I have a Facebook account, I have never liked Facebook or the whole social media scene because I find that people say really terrible things when they're hiding behind their keyboards.

I only use FB for marketing but I have tried joining a few groups but every one I join turns out to be nothing like what it's supposed to be and there is always a ton of bitching and arguing going on.

So over time, I've dropped out of them all. But a few weeks ago I came across a group all about clean food and eating a plant-based diet, which is something I'm very interested in and it advertised itself as being all about empowering yourself and feeling good by eating clean food.

So I joined.

And guess what?

It wasn't about that at all. It seemed to be about people saying that they wanted to eat well, but then complaining about all the junk food they ate, while others would add comments that basically said, "There, there, it's not your fault." All of them blamed their bad eating habits on having "stressful" days.

Then one person said we cannot control what happens to us, but we are responsible for our response to what happens. Sage words. Or so I thought.

But then she went on to say that after she'd recently had a "stressful" day ( I use quotes because it sounded like just a normal day to me) she sat on her kitchen floor, crying while eating a whole packet of Oreo cookies (apparently she was crying because she didn't want to eat the cookies), but it wasn't her fault that she ate all the cookies because all the "stress" she'd suffered forced her to eat them.

So, stupidly, I responded by saying, "But you said that we are all responsible for how we respond to situations so doesn't that mean that it IS your fault that you ate them?"

And then I found out how painful lynching must be because I got so many hate comments all telling me how wrong I was and that they all weren't responsible for all their binge eating because it was out of their control.

What I found surprising (or not) was that they seemed to be of the collective opinion, that because they were all doing the same bad behaviour, it somehow made it not wrong to do. It was as though they thought that if others were doing it too, then it was justified.

And you might be wondering by now, what this all has to do with writing?

Well, I see this same attitude when it comes to negative behaviours about writing, like blaming procrastination or writer's block. It seems people go to forums and do Google searches and find a ton of information about how others waste time procrastinating or saying that they can't write because they have writer's block.

And that's enough to justify their own lack of writing. "I'm not the only one who can't write because I've got writer's block, so it's normal to not write at all. It's not me. Blame writer's block. We all have it. So it's not my fault. Not writing is clearly out of my control."

Well, I'm here to tell you that it is your fault. It doesn't matter what others are or aren't doing.

If you're not getting your writing done, it is completely your fault.

Can you imagine trying this same excuse in a courtroom? 

The prosecution barrister would say, "So why did you rob the bank?" And you say, "Well I looked online and others were doing it too, so it's not my fault!" And the barrister responds with, "Oh, I had no idea others were robbing banks too. Your Honour, we can't possibly jail this person for robbery if others are doing the same thing. Clearly, it's not their fault. They cannot be held responsible for their actions."

It wouldn't work in court, or anywhere else.

We are all responsible for our actions (or inactions).

No matter how you feel, you always have a choice.

Blaming something else (writer's block, procrastination) is just weakness and laziness.

And weakness and laziness are not virtues.

 But they are things that are within our control.

Writers write.

Whiners whine.

I'm not saying it's easy to write when you don't feel like it.

But you are a writer. 

So if you're not writing every day, it's your fault.

Take back control.



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Wednesday 17 January 2018

The Most Important Thing To Know Before You Write Your Next Book

There's a saying that writing is easy. Marketing is hard.

And it's true.

It's easy to write a book (even though it doesn't seem so at the time).

Getting it in front of the right customers is hard.

That's why the most important thing to know before you even start writing your book is to know your market.

In other words, who would be interested in the book you want to write?

You see, you don't write a book and then try and find people who might want to read it.

Instead, you find out who and where is your market, and then lead them to your book. Not the other way around. You don't lead your book to your market.

Here are three things to help you write a book and sell more copies:

1. Know you your market are. If you could see them, what would they look like? Also find out where they are and find a way to reach them.

2. Write to them using their jargon and terms of phrase. Look at books they're already reading to get a better idea of the language they use and to see what interests them.

3. How will they benefit from owning a copy of your book? You need to know this because it's how you're going to market your book to them by telling them how much better their life will be once they've read your book.

So before you write any book, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, you first need to know who your market is, what type of things they're interested in and how your book can benefit them more than any other book they've ever read.

Also, make sure that your intended target will actually buy a book. For instance, online gamers are really active online, but they don't usually read books. They just want to play games. And broke pensioners probably can't afford to buy an ebook, let alone know how to download one.

So choose your market carefully. Make sure they buy books. And make sure that they'll want to buy yours.





Desperate Buyers Only: An Information Product Creators Guide to Writing and Marketing So That People with Problems Will Buy
http://amzn.to/2FBXyd0




Tuesday 16 January 2018

The Different Ways to Self Publish Your Book

One decision that every author has to make is how to publish their book.

While trying to get a publishing deal with a publishing company does seem like the easiest option, so few books are published this way that it usually doesn't happen for most authors.

But because it's now so easy to self-publish that knowing what to do with your book after you've written it isn't a problem.

There are 4 ways that you can do it:

Pay a company to publish it for you (vanity publishing)
Publish it yourself as an ebook
Publish it yourself as a POD print book
Publish it yourself as an ebook & POD print book

You can also throw in publish your book as an audiobook, but for now, we're only talking about the written word.

So let's look at all three of the ways to self-publish.

First there is using a vanity publishing company. They do just about everything for you that a regular publishing company would do, except that you have to pay them to do it, and this payment could be several thousand dollars.

The upside to this type of publishing is that it's all done for you. The downside is that it will either take you years to recoup your financial loss, or you may not recover it at all. You see, publishing companies only make your book available for sale, they don't sell it for you, so you still have to do all the marketing yourself.

Next there's ebook publishing which is fast to do and doesn't cost you anything upfront if you use publishing platforms like Lulu.com, Amazon Kindle, or Smashwords. Each of these will allow you to publish your book in ebook format for free and Kindle even provides free cover creating software. You can also publish your book as a PDF document and allow customers to download it straight from your own website or blog.

POD self-publishing is also simple and fast to do but the interior layout of your book needs to be different than the ebook layout by using things like mirror margins.

You can use a separate POD publishing platform for this like Amazon's CreateSpace or use Amazon Kindle or Book Baby, both of which will allow you to publish your book as a POD physical book as well as an ebook.

But it all depends on how you want to do it and what kind of book you're publishing. For example, if you've written a romance novel, PDF ebook publishing is not the ideal way to do it (romance readers don't download read PDF ebooks), but print and Kindle are.

Just don't sweat it.

When you've written your book, self-publishing is easy.

The hard part if marketing it.



The 10 Day Ebook
Write your next ebook in 10 days or less and earn at least $1,000/month from it.
Guaranteed or your money back.
http://ruthiswriting.com/links/10dayebook.html

Monday 15 January 2018

What If...

What would happen if you wandered into a cafe with nothing but a notebook and pen just to see where it can take you?

How much writing do you think you could do?

How many ideas could you discover?

Just you, your steaming hot cup of coffee and nothing to do but use your notebook and pen.

Bliss.

That's what sometimes needs to happen.

 But it doesn't have to be a cafe.

It can be a travel mug of coffee that you take to the park, or go sit on a bench/chair in the middle of a busy shopping mall.

Try it for yourself.

I once sat on a bench in the middle of a busy shopping mall while I was waiting for someone who was in a job interview in one of the large department stores.

She got the job and I got heaps of writing done.

And the funny thing was that when she came out of the interview, she apologised that it took so long.

Yet I had been so busy writing that I thought she'd only been gone 10 or 15 minutes. But it was actually an hour and a half.

I had no idea how the time passed so quickly, but I got pages and pages of hand-writing done.

And so many new ideas my head was buzzing.

It was a great day for us both.


The 10 Day Ebook
Write your next ebook in 10 days or less and earn at least $1,000/month from it. Guaranteed or your money back.
http://ruthiswriting.com/links/10dayebook.html