Author: Tanya

Mindset for pricing handmade goods

I’ve been making a lot of updates to the shop and I’ve come to figuring out how to list and price the jewelry I’ve been making. Jewelry has been something I actually can work on while I’ve been recovering from the brain issues, but I have never been good at figuring out pricing, even when my brain was functioning properly.

When I was able to do markets, I would sometimes ask the other vendors how to they figured out what to charge. Many of them were doing this in hopes of going full time, and it’s something I would like to look into eventually as well. They told me some variation of the same thing:

You need to value your own time and charge properly for your work.

It’s an idea I’ve been very resistant to. I’ve thought largely about making pricing competitively, and about only charging what I would feel comfortable with paying for an item myself. I’m someone who goes to multiple stores and tries to find a good deal or wait for a sale, so the lowest I could possibly go and just enough to cover materials and feel like it was correct for the item.

But that’s also not how I shop markets. That’s not what I do when I am looking at handmade goods, at custom jewelry, at things I know that was made by a person and not a factory. And that’s helped to shift my mindset.

I’m also very aware that, while none of them ever said anything about it, it was making things harder for everyone else around me. Undervaluing my own work can make everyone else look like they are overvaluing their own, especially if they have something similar or if someone with something similar comes in on a day I’m not there. It’s not good for anyone to do it.

So I’ve taken a lot of the general feelings out of the pricing, stopped choosing numbers based on what feels like a good deal, and turned everything into a mathematical formula. There’s a spreadsheet, though I’m now also considering making this into a whole program for myself. Now if only I could get into some markets and see if it’s worked!

September 26, 2022
Measure What Matters review

So I’ve had bad luck with business books that are recommended by CEOs and by the people I work for in general. So what about a business book about something that is pertains to something that has been a bit of a pain point and of particular interest to me?

This book is almost entirely about something called OKRs: Objectives and Key Results. This is a pretty straightforward concept in terms of metrics that measure success. You decide on an objective (We are going to be the best at thing) and figure out what will happen in order for that to be true (NPS score you will hit (Do not ask me about NPS, I will rant at you for an hour), number of purchases, conferences attended, etc.) and then use that as a bit of a guide for the future. Everything you work on should be towards moving those numbers closer to success.

I will admit that I read this in large part so that I could find something to throw at some of my coworkers who are a little new to the world of measuring success, and I think this is a nice foundational look at how OKRs could be used and integrated, as well as making the case of them being a successful methodology.

And, you know, I can use them for some of that life stuff.

It does absolutely make them seem like the only solution as opposed to part of a more robust strategy, but it’s a good starting point. Overall, good read, a lot better and significantly more practical than most business books out there.

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September 23, 2022
Should you use a pen name?

The question of pen names comes up when people are early in their publishing journey, as well it should! But it can still be a very difficult decision to make. As someone who started with a pen name and then switched to my real name, it can be a difficult choice to reverse. It’s gotten harder on some platforms over the years!

So to help, I’ve put together a quick quiz to help you with the choice.

Are you going to publish under a lot of different genres?

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] Of course!

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] Of course not!

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] Not sure yet

Could there be a conflict with your job? ie. Erotica when you work with children

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”4″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] Yes there is

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”3″}] I’m going to become an author, so it doesn’t matter

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”3″}] There is not yet, but might be in the future

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] There is not

Do you plan on doing live appearances? ie. Readings, in person signing events

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] Yes

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] Maybe

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] No

Is it important to see YOUR NAME on the cover?

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] Very!

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] Not that important

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] Not at all

Does your name fit the genre you’re writing in? ie. Does your name scream ROMANCE or SCI FI?

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] Absolutely!

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] Kind of

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] Not at all

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”1″}] I don’t know what that means

Could your name be confused with another author already writing in the genre?

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] It does!

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] Only kind of

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] Not at all

Could your name change in the future in a way that you’d want to update it professionally? ie. Marriage

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] Yes

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”1″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”2″}] Maybe

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”2″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] No

Do you want to use a pen name?

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”8″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”4″}] I want to so much!

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] Haven’t thought about it

[{“title”:”Use a pen name!”,”points”:”0″},{“title”:”You don’t need a pen name”,”points”:”8″},{“title”:”Maybe consider a pen name”,”points”:”0″}] I really don’t

Should you use a pen name?
Use a pen name!

Go ahead and publish under the name you’ve always wanted! It sounds like that is the right path, whether it’s to protect your privacy or just to make your books fit better in the genre you’re writing in. If you’re looking into a lot of different genres, it’s a great chance for you to use a bunch of different ones!

Share your Results :

Should you use a pen name?
You don’t need a pen name

It sounds like you don’t really need to go through the effort of coming up with another name for yourself, and it might actually be easier for you to just use your own name in the end.

Share your Results :

Should you use a pen name?
Maybe consider a pen name

You’re in a middle ground area where you might not necessarily need a pseudonym, but it might also be helpful. Consider an alteration of your own name initially, such as using your initials or a variant on your first name, and see how that feels before committing to anything.

Share your Results :

September 19, 2022
A Dead End Job review

I’ve been needing some fiction after all those books that are supposed to be bettering myself and my life, so I managed to find something that sounded like something I would write. Hitman who is not a good person spared from death so that he could take over for the Grim Reaper while he takes a holiday? Well, maybe not a book I would write, but still very much in my area.

This book follows Buck, a down on his luck average guy who also works as a hitman. He is set up on a job and ends up being spared from death by an overworked Grim Reaper and takes over trying to kill off the ones who refuse to die. In the process, he discovers the supernatural underbelly of Chicago and a civil war happening, as well as an adorable child who is definitely going to turn out to be dangerous.

I think I needed this book right now. It was a fun, light, and generally entertaining read that I didn’t feel the need to take too seriously. No heavy subject matter, nothing too intricate, but definitely with a few fun twists here and there. The pacing was quick and I did enjoy how Buck was portrayed as not a dark and serious hitman, but a guy who did it as a job and spent the rest of his time playing D&D and generally getting into other geeky hobbies.

Overall, it was a lot of fun! There’s not really a lot else to say. If it sounds interesting, it’s pretty quick of a read so check it out.

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September 16, 2022

My life as a research project: Hypothesis and metrics

Last time I got a whole bunch of ideas down and separated those into different key areas that I found important in life that I wanted to focus on. But there were a lot of items that fell into multiple different areas, so how did I deal with this?

First off, I accepted that life is complicated and sometimes things aren’t neatly categorized. That’s just something that happens with life. But it also means that I get to possibly improve two things at once sometimes, which is always good!

So with this in mind, I started brainstorming.

The hypothesis

Given that I had an idea of what would make my life amazing, I took these general ideas and started coming up with some hypothesis. Ideas of what I thought would make my life better if I did them, and made note of which areas these might fall into. They took the format of “I will be happier if” or “This will happen if” and I just wrote a bunch of them down.

Some examples are:

Hypothesis	Areas
I get a restful night of sleep every night.	Mental health, Physical health
I have a plan for the day.	Day to day life, Mental health
My chores are done regularly and not forgotten about.	Environment, Day to day life
My mortgage is paid off.	Money

I’ve also made some notes about why these would improve my life, but I’m going to move on to the next key thing.

How could I measure these?

The metrics

Something important about me is that I am not good at just sensing when something is improving. I am someone highly motivated by seeing numbers change and watching progress, so I knew I needed to have something to look at to determine if things were getting better.

Some of these were pretty easy to find metrics for. How much is left on my mortgage? Did I create a plan for the day, yes or no? Pretty easy things, and there were pretty easy ways to track and measure these.

Other things are not as clear. What counts as a restful night of sleep? Is that measured in hours? In how I feel in the morning? How easy it was to fall asleep? There’s a lot of factors, so I needed to brainstorm to come up with a bunch of them.

And, because I know these numbers might change as I figure out if I’m even tracking the right things, I didn’t stress out too much about anything. I just tried to gather as many metrics as I could to track and then started to think of what should come next: Figuring out my baseline and coming up with my first project.

September 12, 2022

The Four Agreements review

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.

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September 9, 2022
5 methods to plot your novel

What is plotting?

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.

Save the Cat or Romancing the Beat

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.

Hero’s Journey

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.

Snowflake method

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?

September 5, 2022
The Art of Taking it Easy review
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 out1 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.

Get it now
1. Chronic fatigue is awful [↩]
September 2, 2022
My novel project template for Notion
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.1

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 series2 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?
1. Which is something that I struggle with immensely [↩]
2. The books and anything else that might be related! [↩]
August 29, 2022
Time management for the creative person review

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.

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August 26, 2022