Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

Now I’ve had chance to look at what John Reese is doing.  Of course he has a product to sell.  But as with all of these top marketers that’s not the only thing you can learn from them.  Now the trend is… Continue reading →

I woke up this morning thinking – oh great – my day off!

I’m off to Lichfield this morning to go to a couple of the Festival concert.  Then an awful thought struck me – I haven’t written my blog entry.  Part of me thought well what’s another day, the other part of me thought, no get it done because you need to stay regular with your posting.

So I’ve shot to the computer and checked my e-mails to find something of interest that’s happening.

6 e-mails all about the same event.  The latest product launch from John Reese.  I’m not an affiliate so haven’t any financial incentive to letting you know.  But he’s the guy who did the first million dollar day on the net a few years ago.  So if you’re interested head over to www.trafficsecrets.com to find out what’s going on.

By the way the festival is on for another week after this so if you’re interested google Lichfield festival and see what’s available.

Stephen Pierce offers many free videos and marketing resources at the following site.

http:www.dtalpha.com

He and his team keep up with online marketing in a way most of us don’t have time to do.  So he’s a good first step if you want to know what’s happening.

His Make More Money Monday series will help you sort out the useful and the not so useful.

I spent yesterday at the NLab Social networking Conference in Leicester.

As you’d expect from a gathering of academics and business people, a lot of ideas flying around about how to use social networks to the best advantage.

One of the best speakers was Jim Benson from Modus Cooperandi in Seattle.  He did his best to bring the ideas down to earth and give businesses some basic advice about how to tackle the problem of deciding what social networking is about, how it can be applied to businesses and how to deal with the problem of finding the time to do it.

Now I have to reflect on what I heard and try to put down some markers for my own business and the way I want it to go in the next twelve months.

What’s he been up to this week?

I was sitting peacefully having a cup of tea in our dining room with the back door open when

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Words For You helps a client meet a publisher deadline

I had great news from one of my clients today.

Last month I helped Lisa Spencer-Arnell and her colleagues from EICT Ltd, do the final edit on their book Emotional Intelligence Coaching (to be published later this year by Kogan Page).

Today I heard from Lisa that the publisher accepted their manuscript without asking for any further changes. Almost unheard of for a first book.

If you’re looking for interesting developments in the world of emotional intelligence and coaching then look out for EICT’s book. For more information visit www.ei-coachtraining.com

Well done to Lisa and her colleagues.

What stops you from writing?  Is it the fact that you actually have to write?

I love words.  I’m a word junkie.  I can’t remember learning to read and seem to have fallen into it without any problem at all.  And I was brought up on radio not TV and they say the pictures are better on radio.

So though I’m much stronger on words I do like pictures and like most children I probably started off with picture books. And that’s fine for children when there aren’t many words in their books. 

But what happens when you grow up and the world seems to have so many words in it that they overwhelm you?  Even with adult comics there are still acres of words out there.

Now with most word processing programs these days you have sophisticated forms of grammar and spell checking tools.  And I know more than one person who manages to hide their fear of words, by using the tools. 

I had a boss once who was dyslexic and used to run his letters past me before he sent them out.  It was a bit of challenge sometimes because he had a very individual way of putting things and I never was quite sure if he meant to use a word that looked odd to me.

He developed his own strategies for not having to deal with the words too much and I’ve met other word phobics who have their ways of dealing with the challenge. It’s said that’s why dyslexics are often innovative because they have to find new solutions that work for them.

What happens though if you know you should write a book?  Maybe people keep saying “oh that’s so good you need to put it in a book”.  Telling them you’re too busy at the moment to tackle it is one way.  Or saying it’s not quite ready to be in a book yet.  Or even better is “I’m working on it”.

“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”

Stephen Wright

Well you know there’s a lot of computer technology out there that can make life much easier for you.  I’m about to launch out into using voice recognition software.  For me it’s more about saving myself from RSI than anything else.  But as a tool for avoiding the problems of too much typing it could work for you.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you want to write a book enough, we can find a solution for you whatever your challenges.

Hi

Finally I’ve worked out all the subjects I’ll be covering in the How To Write a Book Workshop. Details are up on a special page on the website but to give you a quick look here are just 5 of the topics I’ll be helping you sort out:

1. Looking at the purpose and market for your book – I’d call this vital if you want an easier writing process.
2. Finding out how you can research what that market might be looking for – and is it the same as you want to tell them.
3. Why you must divide your writing stage into 5 separate stages.
4. Sorting out strategies to start your writing, keep going, (always more difficult once the enthusiasm has worn off) and then knowing when and how to stop.
5. When to involve other people… and the type you want to keep away from your project at all costs.

I’m putting as much into it as I can fit in within the 2 days, 28/29th June in Nottingham. Oh and I’ve sorted out pre and post workshop segments to give you the best possible chance.

So if you know anyone who keeps saying they will write a book, someday, this is probably going to be right up their street.

See the separate page How To Write a Book Workshop for more details.

Went to join over 50 women at the Smart Women networking event at Kelham Hall. It was the first time I’d been to Kelham Hall. Beautiful place, nightmare bit of road near it.

All credit to Julie and Kathryn, Scarlet Events (picture below) and Francince Pickering, Smart Women organised the whole thing. I did take a photo of Francine too but it didn’t come out well enough to transfer here. Sorry Francine. As you can see I’m still not too proficient at uploading these pictures! Meant to show you a picture with a room full of happy, involved women networking but haven’t managed that either!

I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of just one part of the workshop in June.Many of people’s problems with writing happen because they don’t distinguish between the different stages in a writing project.

Muddling those stages can slow you down or even worse stop you completely.  In the workshop I’ll be helping people work out the different mindsets you need for each stage.

Let’s look at the stages:

1. Research:

One of the unmovable bricks in my writing house is research.  Now this isn’t always popular with clients or writers come to that. But the more I work with clients, the more I realise that doing research about your project is key to smoothing the writing process.

Where and how you research depends on your project, your target audience and your understanding of your market.

2. Writing:

This is the fun stage.  The stage where you can let your creativity run riot and not censor it.  Of course you have to start and that’s a problem many people I meet tell me about. 

Fear of the blank page.  Even professional writers have it sometimes.  The difference between the professionals and the rest, is that they know how to beat it into submission!

3. Pause:

Can this be said to be a stage?  Yes I believe that you have to factor in a time when you’ve reached the end of a chapter, a section or the whole book and you stop. 

Rather than it being simply a time between the bits or the stages, you can learn how to use it to give yourself a flying start with the next stage.

4. Editing:

Ah editing!  Writers often hate this stage because they can’t bear to read over what they’ve written. 

I often think about what the sculptor Michaelangelo said about sculpting.  That it was a case of allowing the figure to emerge from a block of marble.

In the same way when you edit you’re allowing the book to emerge from the words you’ve written.

As always, when you know how to approach editing then it can be a much easier and more fun stage.

5. Reviewing:

And a scary stage for writers when you have to show other people what you’ve written.

But as you’d expect me to say by now, there are ways you can tackle this stage which help reduce the strain on your nervous system.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Doesn’t mean you don’t have to put some work in, but using this kind of structure helps reduce the time and gives you a process to work through.

Happy writing!