So work keeps recommending books. It has not had a great track record so far, but who knows, maybe the next one is going to be the one that I finally like, right? Right?
Sigh.
So this book is another one of those books that tries to give you simplified rules for life with a big emphasis of “You are only stressed because you choose to me” which is a lesson that seems to be very popular with these books. This one adds on a very heavy spiritual-not-religious-but-only-talking-about-Christianity angle and at one point mentions Buddhism in a way that makes it clear that the author knows nothing about Buddhism? It was off.
I’m sure this kind of book is very useful and enlightening to some people. If it helps you to find peace in your life with just four questions, that’s fantastic. I am just ultimately not the demographic for this book, and I really need to stop taking book recs from CEOs.
Plotting is a technique that some people use to help write their stories. This is where someone will sit down before they write and come up with an outline of what their story will be, giving them the chance to look at the structure of their stories beforehand, or to give them a roadmap of what’s to come so that they do not get stuck.
If this sounds interesting to you, let’s get into some methodologies that people can turn to, from the most structured to the least.
If you really like structure, be sure to look up Save the Cat or Romancing the Beat, depending on what kind of story you want to write! These two methods will help you break your story down into arcs, sub-arcs, and in some iterations of them even down to what plot points need to happen on a chapter by chapter basis.
This is a basic story arc for your character that can follow. This works best in stories in which you have a single focal character who is going through a change and has to learn and grow. It will help to give you a structure to how to format the narrative and when to put which obstacles, as well as when to lend your character a hand.
Once you have that worked out, then you can break it up into chapters if that’s what works for you.
Timeline
A timeline plotting structure is a lot of fun for more complicated stories, often with many different things that have to be kept track of, such as a mystery or a thriller, or with multiple characters with overlapping and imperfect knowledge of events. This involves using something such as a spreadsheet or a calendar app and putting all of the events of your plot into it, moving those events around until they all make sense, then breaking up each plot point into a different chapter.
This method starts with an idea that you can branch off from! One idea leads into the next and into the next in a giant mind map until, in the end, you have a story idea that looks a bit like a snowflake that you can then work into a plot. Often this is a method used as a starting point and the story you come up with becomes a plot structured in a different way, though I’ve known a few people who have used this as a means to figure out their entire series.
Index cards
This is one of my personal favourites and one with the absolute lease structure to it. Take every one of the ideas you have and put them all on different index cards. Things you want to have happen in the story, characters, everything. Once you have all the ideas down, start to rearrange all of those cards until it turns into something like a plot, adding and removing ideas as you go, storing some of them for later.
What is your favourite method of plotting? Or do you plot at all?
Hey look, it’s a book that looks like it was written specifically for me! As someone who has absolutely zero chill and has had to force myself to chill out ((Chronic fatigue is awful)) this seemed like a good thing to look into. I’d like to know how to take it easy! It is not a skill I have!
I’m pretty sure this book is just cognitive behavioural theory written in a cute and punchy format, though, which is ultimately not a thing that works well for me. The idea of “Slow down, realize that there’s nothing you can do about it, and let that emotion go” is just not something that clicks well in my brain and is not a practice I can really adopt.
And the idea of logic-ing yourself out of stress is really the vast majority of the book, which made it a book very specifically not designed for someone like me. That is not to say it is a bad book, just that this was not a book that was ultimately for me. You may have better luck with it.
As many of you are likely aware by now, I’m a touch obsessed with Notion. As such, I have obviously made a template for how I do my writing projects now! It’s something that works really well for me so far, and here it is!
To start with, the set up to do list. I think I could have a lot of this auto-populated for each story, but I find it is useful to intentionally create each item just so that I am thinking about all of these things. Underneath that, of course, is the pitch! This is intended to be the elevator pitch of the story. ((Which is something that I struggle with immensely))
Next we have the board! I have a few other tabs for the calendar and any key documents that also pull out of the same list of things, but I work mostly out of the Kanban board. This is where I’ll put all of those checklist items and continue to add things as I need them.
And, of course, I’m starting to think a lot more about marketing for upcoming projects. Trying. I’ll try to put together three comp titles for each project, as well as trying to think about who the ideal readers might be. This helps to figure out how to write things like the Listing information and also helps to determine what the marketing strategy might also be.
I also have a table for Audience groups. This is relatively new, but I’m using it to try and determine if I could direct people who liked one series to another when they are done!
Lastly, we have finances! Not only am I trying to keep track of the products that will come out of this series ((The books and anything else that might be related!)) but also what the expenses might be. Expenses are things like editing or art assets.
And that’s basically how I keep track of it! Do you have a method to keep track of your projects?
How many self improvements books must I read before I figure out how to get my life together? All of them! Surely one of them will give me the trick to fixing my life!
This book, however, was not the one. That’s not to say it was a bad thing! It’s just that I have read a lot of these and the ideas tend to repeat themselves. I’m starting to think there’s only so much advice, and these sorts of books are very specifically targeted at someone who is disorganized and needs to create an organization system.
The framing of “Creatives are naturally disorganized and not like those people who have office jobs!” feels as dated as the references to the rolodexes, and there’s a strange amount of charts of data relating to women with children, which makes this feel very 90s-00s. It appears to be mostly a marketing tool, as it’s honestly a book full of strategies for anyone who feels in need of a starting place with a lot of options for things to try.
For me, though, I’ve read all the elements in this book before. It is admittedly pretty comprehensive, as I don’t think I’ve had a single book cover all of these strategies and topics before, but ultimately it was not the something new I was hoping for.
It might work better if you’re just starting, but ultimately this was not for me.
There is one main reason for this: Canadian shipping rates.
If you are in Canada you likely already know about this, but it costs more than any of the items in my shop just to ship something to someone even just down the street from me. It is absolutely ridiculous and I cannot afford to keep prices reasonable and expect anyone who wants something from me to be not shocked at discovering a $25 charge to ship. It’s not fair to you.
Given that I just design most products, I do have third parties that can ship items at a much better rate! Art of Where, most book retailers, even Redbubble can all offer much better shipping rates than I can hope to get access to.
That’s not to say everything is going to be done by a third party! Obviously, signed paperbacks will still be coming from me, and anything that is not created and made to order. The jewelry, the charms,the zines, all still coming directly from me.
Just know that these updates are very intentional and being done for the purpose of making sure you’re not paying double what you expect just so that it gets shipped to you.
Once more, I don’t look properly into the books I take out! I am getting pretty used to being very surprised by the books that I end up with. Means I’m reading a lot of things I probably wouldn’t have considered in the first place.
This book is actually a short story. A very long short story. We follow Stella who is back in town to help after a childhood friend’s brother died. She is reminded of something she’d long ago forgotten — a strange children’s show that she had forgotten she was part of. One where the creepy old man told stories that seemed to foretell the ends of the children he watched.
It is a delightful concept! It combines a bunch of ideas that I love to see, from something innocuous turning out to actually be sinister if you look at it longer than five seconds, to prophecies that are surprisingly direct even at the time actually but you weren’t paying attention.
I sort of wish it was a little bit longer to see more things wrapped up, but ultimately, I think it ended at just the right place. It’s creepier and leaves a better impression where it ends here.
Bonus content has become almost a requirement for authors these days. It’s one of the easiest and lowest cost ways to promote a book. It can also be very daunting if you get to the point where you are trying to promote your book and you didn’t think of this beforehand!
I am personally a big proponent for the idea that your bonus content should be something that is created alongside the process of creating the book, not before or after, and here are a few ideas that I’ve used before, and some that have worked for other authors.
Sketches
Does your creation process involve doodling or drawing sketches of anything involved with the story? Keep all of those! It’s a great insight into the behind the scenes process and, if your audience likes them, you can always clean then up or hire someone to create a nicer version of them to release as art.
Mood boards
If you need to put together a mood board or collect images for inspiration for your stories, that would be a fantastic thing to share with your audience. You can turn it into collages and give a little explanation on what about it inspires you. It doesn’t have to be long, it just needs to be something that reflects your process and give some insight into the story to draw the audience in.
Deleted scenes
The things that could have been! Deleted scenes are a fantastic way to thank your audience for checking out your work by giving them a look at the things that didn’t make it. This could be an alternate ending that you decided didn’t work, a scene that was just unnecessary, or something that you threw in because you just really wanted to throw a fridge at something. Audiences like to see the things that could have been and it’s good to keep anything you may want to get rid of. Just in case.
Stuff that didn’t make it in
If you do a lot of worldbuilding or if you have a lot of ideas that just never seemed to make it to the final story, tell your audience about it! Even if it’s just notes, it’s an interesting thing to put into a newsletter, a blog post, or something that is just for your audience that can give them a bit more insight into the wider world of the story beyond the fiction that they already enjoy.
What are some kinds of bonus content that you enjoy?
Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential
Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.
Is this another book picked up because it’s been on my saved shelf at the library for ages and I’m currently waiting on a bunch of holds that look like they are about to come in? Yes. Did any of the holds come in before I finished? Absolutely not.
The book follows Jess, a young woman living in the 90s and having what seems like a very typical life until one day something strange happens. One of her best friends drops a strange device that she’s never seen before and she starts to realize that her little town is not what it appears. She learns that she is the star of a reality show and has been since the day she was born, a secret kept from her all her life. Nothing in her world is real and Jess finds herself desperate to get to a reality she has never known.
Is this like a modern Truman show? Absolutely yes. I don’t think this shies away from the comparison at all, and I really did enjoy the execution of this. Jess feels very normal in contrast to the people slowly revealing themselves to be actors around her and it was interesting to see that there was an end date in place for Jess to learn the truth and leave potentially as a factor in this.
There are parts that feel less grounded than others. For the sake of the plot, she accepts what’s happening around her a lot easier than I would expect and is fully capable of getting around what are apparently trained military at one point in the book.
Even with all of this, it is a pretty fun read. I enjoyed it and the pace is pretty quick, so none of the strangeness overstays its welcome. And, well, I’m a 90s kid. I liked the references. You might enjoy it too!
So, it’s been about a month since I started looking at my life as a research project. It’s a daunting thing, because my life is full of all kinds of different aspects, so where do you even start with figuring out how to make it into whatever its ideal state is? What is ideal, anyway?
Luckily, I am no stranger to exploratory research! This is how I started.
Research
Naturally, I started off with a list of questions I wanted to ask about myself as I am now and what I think would make me happy. I put a couple questions down, each on a separate sheet of paper, and left them by where I eat (When I don’t eat at my desk) so that I could answer them when I was taking some down time during the day. I left some fun pens so and did this over the course of two weeks so I could do this when I was having different kinds of day and in different moods with different perspectives.
The questions I started with were:
What does is an ideal life?
What is a perfect day?
What do I like?
There were others, but these were the ones I found were the most useful.
Finding trends
At the end of the two weeks, I wrote all of the things I wrote down onto post it notes ((In Miro, because I am in tech and for whatever reason tech companies always seem to use Miro these days)) and started to group the ideas together.
You may notice that there are a lot of things that fall between groups. That is pretty normal, but I didn’t force these ones into one group or another. Sometimes one thing is meaningful for many things!
From these groups, I could figure out a series of areas of life that I found important. For me this is:
Environment
Experiences
Physical health
Mental health
Day to day
Creative freedom
Money
Relationships
Pets
Next steps
I also came up with a few initial next steps we can cover in the coming months:
Refining the areas
Determining the current status of these areas
Finding metrics
Creating some hypotheses
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