Month: June 2009

Publishing Economics 101

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This post, by bestselling mainstream author Joe Nassise, originally appeared on the Genreality site.   

In which Mr. Nassise deconstructs the economics of publishing and gives many of us all the more reason to be glad we’ve gone indie.

Let’s say you’re a stock boy at the local supermarket.  You put in twenty hours of work during the week.  You are paid at a rate of $10 per hour.  At the end of the week, you’d expect to walk away with a check for $200 (minus a bit for taxes and such.)

Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that your boss decides not to pay you that way this week.  “I’m going to pay you a third of the money I owe you at the start of the week,” he tells you, “and a third roughly eight months from now, and then the final third somewhere in the next two years.”  As you begin to protest, he remarks, “and by the way, if you want to keep working here, you’ll be happy to get that.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of publishing economics.

Alright, maybe it’s not as bad as all that, but it’s close.  You see, a writer is paid for their work in an often varying scale of increments and understanding the hows and why of it all can be confusing to the newcomer trying to figure it all out.  I know it was for me.  So for the next few minutes, let’s take a stroll down the road of economics publishing style.

Let’s start with two very key terms – advance and royalties.

An advance is the money a writer is paid up front for the time, energy, and effort that goes into writing a book.  Just in case you were wondering, the typical advance for a first time fiction writer is usually in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $15,000, give or take a few thousand.  (In other words, a single book a year will earn you somewhere in the neighborhood of poverty wages.)

Now that advance is just that – and advance against future royalties.  A royalty is the percentage of the cover price that you get for every copy of your book that gets sold.  Again, things vary, but this is usually in the neighborhood of 5%-10%, depending on number of copies sold. 

The advance is money given upfront against money you are expected to earn by selling copies once the book is published.  Now a writer doesn’t get the advance money all at once – oh no, that would be too easy.  More often than not it is broken down into three, sometimes four, payments. 

This usually means you get 1/3 of the advance when you sign the contract, a 1/3 when you turn in the completed manuscript, and a 1/3 when the book is published.  Given that the time frame from sale to publication date can often be anywhere from one to two years, you can wait a long time for that money to come in.

Read the rest of the post on Genreality.

Is Google Making Us Read Worse?

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This post, by Scott Esposito, originally appeared on the Conversational Reading site on 6/20/08.

I tried very hard to take seriously Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic, which has the provocative, and lately rather fashionable, thesis that the Internet is changing the way we read. Google is making us all info-snackers in search of the quick answer; there’s so much content at hand that we can barely stand to get halfway through something before we’re jumping off to the next thing.

I’ll admit, certain aspects of Carr’s argument feel intuitively correct. And I’m seeing an awful lot of books lately about how dumb Americans are becoming.

But when an idea becomes this popular, when it begins to develop that plasticized reek of conventional wisdom, it’s almost begging to be refuted. This is an oblique way of saying that, at this stage in the Google-is-ruining-information debate, someone looking to write an article on how the Internet is killing our attention spans needs something more substantial than the bland assertions Carr brings to the table.

Or to take on this essay from another angle, when someone gets a basic fact like this incorrect, it’s an indication that he’s not being especially rigorous in his theorizing:

Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet.

One problem: Chinese doesn’t consist of ideograms. No, it consists of characters that stand for morphemes, which are similar to syllables found in languages formed with the Roman alphabet. That this small fact completely subverts Carr’s example is emblematic of the problems confronting the essay a whole. For more on this, just wait till we get to Nietzsche’s typewriter.

I picked up the information about the Chinese language while reading a book (one about the deciphering of ancient Mayan, another character-based language that doesn’t consist of ideograms), and the fact that I read said book all the way to the end makes me a sort of rarity, at least according to Carr’s anecdotal research into his friends’ Internet-ravaged reading habits. I maintain the ability to read lengthy texts despite regular exposure to the Internet, and among Carr’s circle that makes me pretty special:

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether.

Okay, a confession: I’m not special. I’m just normal, or maybe a little too smart for my own good. I’m not sure, but what I will state with full confidence is that anyone who uses the Internet regularly retains full capacity to read a book. It’s not very hard. What’s hard is leaping from Carr’s stories about his friends to any meaningful warning about the Internet’s effects on our reading habits.

Read the rest of the post on Conversational Reading.

The 32 Most Commonly Misused Words And Phrases

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This post originally appeared on the HELP! Educational Blog on 3/11/09.

Let’s get right to the point. Misusing words makes you look less intelligent than you really are. If you misuse words in your writing, it can damage your credibility and diminish the point you’re trying to make. Even worse, it could completely change the meaning of the sentence.

What follows is a list of the 32 most commonly misused words and phrases.

1. Accept/Except- Although these two words sound alike (they’re homophones), they have two completely different meanings. “Accept” means to willingly receive something (accept a present.) “Except” means to exclude something (I’ll take all of the books except the one with the red cover.)

2. Affect/Effect- The way you “affect” someone can have an “effect” on them. “Affect” is usually a verb and “Effect” is a noun.

3. Alright- If you use “alright,” go to the chalkboard and write “Alright is not a word” 100 times.

4. Capital/Capitol- “Capitol” generally refers to an official building. “Capital” can mean the city which serves as a seat of government or money or property owned by a company. “Capital” can also mean “punishable by death.”

5. Complement/Compliment- I often must compliment my wife on how her love for cooking perfectly complements my love for grocery shopping.

6. Comprise/Compose- The article I’m composing comprises 32 parts.

7. Could Of- Of the 32 mistakes on this list, this is the one that bothers me most. It’s “could have” not “could of.” When you hear people talking, they’re saying “could’ve.” Got it?

8. Desert/Dessert- A desert is a hot, dry patch of sand. Dessert, on the other hand, is the sweet, fatty substance you eat at the end of your meal.

9. Discreet/Discrete- We can break people into two discrete (separate) groups, the discreet (secretive) and indiscreet.

10. Emigrate/Immigrate- If I leave this country to move to Europe, the leaving is emigrating and the arriving is immigrating.

11. Elicit/Illicit- Some people post illicit things on message boards to elicit outrageous reactions from others.

12. Farther/Further- Farther is used for physical distance, whereas further means to a greater degree.

13. Fewer/Less- Use fewer when referring to something that can be counted one-by-one. Use less when it’s something that doesn’t lend itself to a simple numeric amount.

14. Flair/Flare- A flair is a talent, while a flare is a burst (of anger, fire, etc.)

15. i.e/e.g- I.e. is used to say “in other words.” E.g. is used in place of “for example.”

16. Inflammable- Don’t let the prefix confuse you, if something is inflammable it can catch on fire.

Read the rest of the post on the HELP! Educational Blog.

Stepping Out of Character – Point of View Made Simple

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This article, by Marg Gilks, originally appeared on her Scripta Word Services site. In it, she discusses how to tell when your point of view has shifted, and how unintentional shifts in POV can undermine your characters and make your work difficult to understand. 

Dalquist was shaking with rage, tears streaking down her face. "Get out," she whispered. Then she lunged for the other woman, shrieking, "Get out! Get out!"

Tamlinn managed to hide her surprise at the doctor’s reaction; she’d expected an angry denial, not near-hysteria. With an exultant laugh, she dodged Dalquist and ran for the door to the head. It hissed shut behind her.

Shaking uncontrollably with the roiling emotions the other woman had dredged up, Dalquist collapsed onto the bed, sobbing, and covered her face with her hands.

Yikes! Reading this excerpt from my first novel now, I’m not surprised that agents bounced it back to me so fast, the glue was barely dry on the stamp.

If you can see what’s wrong with this excerpt, congratulations. You understand point of view (POV). If not, don’t feel bad; of all the skills a writer must learn, maintaining point of view seems to be one of the hardest. As a freelance editor, I see POV slips in almost every manuscript I work on. Once attuned to it, a careful reader will even notice subtle POV switches that slip past editors to wind up in published novels.

What’s wrong with the above excerpt?

Paragraph one is ambiguous. Who’s the POV character? The tears streaking down Dalquist’s face could be either felt or seen. Referring to "the other woman" implies that this scene is from Dalquist’s POV. But then, in paragraph two, we are inside Tamlinn’s head, privy to her thoughts. There is no way that Dalquist can know what Tamlinn had expected, so Tamlinn must be the POV character. However, in paragraph three, our POV character, Tamlinn, has left the room; the door has shut behind her, leaving the reader behind to see what is impossible for Tamlinn to see. More, the reader knows not only that Dalquist is shaking — something Tamlinn could have seen, had she stayed — but that she is shaking because her emotions are in turmoil. Tamlinn may have suspected rage, but "turmoil" suggests more. This is Dalquist’s POV.

Every scene should have only one POV character, and everything must be filtered through that POV character’s perceptions. Only the POV character can know what he or she is thinking — he can’t know what anyone else is thinking, so the reader can’t, either. The POV character can’t see what’s going on behind her or what the person on the other end of the phone line is doing while they are talking, so the reader can’t know what’s going on in those places, either. Keep that in mind — stay firmly inside your POV character’s head — and you’ll rarely have trouble with point of view.

But, isn’t it so much easier just to tell the reader what character X is thinking, rather than trying to show it in ways the POV character (and thus, the reader) can see and understand? Why stick to the one-point-of-view rule?

Let’s look at that again, and we’ll see a hint: isn’t it so much easier just to TELL the reader what character X is thinking, rather than trying to SHOW it in ways the POV character can see and understand?

Yup: "show, don’t tell."

"People become, in our minds, what we see them do," says Orson Scott Card in his book, Characters and Viewpoint. We believe what we see more readily than what we’re told. And what are readers learning, watching through our POV character’s eyes? They’re learning about the characters. Firstly, they’re learning what character X is like by viewing his actions, and secondly, they’re learning about our POV character by how he perceives character X’s actions.

Yup: characterization.

Read the rest of the article on the Scripta Word Services site.

What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

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This article, by Steve Outing and Laura Ruel, originally appeared on Eyetrack III. While the article is geared toward the designers of news websites, it provides invaluable insight into how visitors’ eyes track across any website—information you can put to use when designing or redesigning your own website or blog.

News websites have been with us for about a decade, and editors and designers still struggle with many unanswered questions: Is homepage layout effective? … What effect do blurbs on the homepage have compared to headlines? … When is multimedia appropriate? … Are ads placed where they will be seen by the audience?

The Eyetrack III research released by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools could help answer those questions and more. Eyetracking research like this won’t provide THE answer to those questions. But combined with other site metrics already used by news website managers — usability testing, focus groups, log analysis — the Eyetrack III findings could provide some direction for improving news websites.

In Eyetrack III, we observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content. In this article we’ll provide an overview of what we observed. You can dive into detailed Eyetrack III findings and observations on this website — use the navigation at the top and left of this page — at any time. If you don’t know what eyetracking is, get oriented by reading the Eyetrack III FAQ.

Let’s get to the key results of the study, but first, a quick comment on what this study is and is not: It is a preliminary study of several dozen people conducted in San Francisco. It is not an exhaustive exploration that we can extrapolate to the larger population. It is a mix of "findings" based on controlled variables, and "observations" where testing was not as tightly controlled. The researchers went "wide," not "deep" — covering a lot of ground in terms of website design and multimedia factors. We hope that Eyetrack III is not seen as an end in itself, but rather as the beginning of a wave of eyetracking research that will benefit the news industry. OK, let’s begin. …

At the core: Homepage layout

While testing our participants’ eye movements across several news homepage designs, Eyetrack III researchers noticed a common pattern: The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page.

 

How a typical site visitor's eyes move across a web page

(image copyright Eyetrack III, The Poynter Institute)

Depending on page layout, of course, this pattern can vary. The image above is a simplistic representation of the most common eye-movement pattern we noticed across multiple homepage designs. (In other words, don’t take what you see above too seriously.)

Now also consider another Eyetrack observation: Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page — especially when they are in the upper left, and most often (but not always) when in the upper right. Photographs, contrary to what you might expect (and contrary to findings of 1990 Poynter eyetracking research on print newspapers), aren’t typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen — both in order viewed and in overall time spent looking at it.

A quick review of 25 large news websites — here’s a list of them — reveals that 20 of them place the dominant homepage image in the upper left. (Most news sites have a consistent page design from day to day; they don’t often vary the layout as a print newspaper would.)

We observed that with news homepages, readers’ instincts are to first look at the flag/logo and top headlines in the upper left. The graphic below shows the zones of importance we formulated from the Eyetrack data. While each site is different, you might look at your own website and see what content you have in which zones.

Read the rest of the article on Eyetrack III.

An Author's Field Guide To Internet Trolls

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This is a cross-posting of an entry from my Indie Author blog, dated 6/8/09.

‘Author Platform’ is the buzzphrase of the moment. If you’re doing a good job of creating and maintaining that all-important communication channel between yourself and the public, it’s only a matter of time before the web trolls descend upon you to ruin things for everyone.

Herewith, I present a relevant excerpt from Ms. Gertrude Strumpf-Hollingsworth’s “Encyclopedia of Annoyances, Bothers and Frustrations”, which provides a valuable natural history lesson in the identification and management of the species most likely to darken an author’s virtual doorstep. 

Introduction

The Internet Troll (webicus infuriatum) is a hardy, highly adaptable family of parasites with established populations all over the web. Most leading Techno-Naturalists classify it as a viral organism due the fact that it reproduces by infecting members of targeted populations. Once exposed to webicus, susceptible individuals soon display the aggression, vitriol and boorishness which are the identifying hallmarks of all Trolls.

Hiding behind a pseudonym, webicus will quickly become the dominant element in any online ecosystem which provides it with a steady supply of attention and argument. In fact, webicus is so skilled in monopolizing these resources that it frequently drives off larger, but more peaceable, local populations. While all Trolls are destructive, there are perhaps none so pernicious as the subspecies which target author websites and online writer communities. Armed with a voluble nature and much larger vocabularies than other Trolls, these are particularly troublesome. 

The Queen Bee/King Drone (lordicus cliqueium)

Behavior: Lordicus begins by befriending charter members and site owner/administrators alike with its initial friendliness and offers of assistance. With favors banked and loyalties established, lordicus reveals its true nature when another community member voices a dissenting view, or becomes as well-liked as lordicus. In either case, lordicus and its followers close ranks to attack or freeze out the other member, claiming to speak on behalf of the entire community.

Control: The only effective method of lordicus control is a strongly-worded email from the site owner or administrator. Lordicus’ response is invariably a dramatic, martyred leave-taking from the site, after which it will continue to lurk and foment dissention among other members via off-site communications.

Identifying Call: A shrill, “Who do you think you are?”, sometimes followed by a low-pitched, “Nobody cares what you think, anyway.” 

The Puffed Pedant (self-importantia verbosia)

Behavior: Self-importantia is known for its lengthy, patronizing deconstructions of other members’ writing, in which it takes great pleasure in pointing out every broken rule of grammar, plotting, characterization and the like, regardless of whether or not said rules were broken intentionally, as a stylistic choice. Given that s.i. is never a published author in its own right, one might expect other community members to routinely disregard its remarks. However, s.i. posts with such smug conviction that it effects a sort of Jedi Mind Trick on the least experienced and most gullible members of the community.

Control: Since s.i. doesn’t technically overstep a site’s Terms of Service, there’s little the site owner/admin can do to put a stop to its antics. It was once thought that exposing the Pedant to the works of Kurt Vonnegut or Anthony Burgess would humble and silence the creature, but field studies have proven it will merely label such works “the exception that proves the rule” and emerge both unscathed and uneducated by the experience. Depriving s.i. of the attention, argument, and writing samples it craves usually proves more effective.

Identifying Call: A repetitive, clucking, “Do your homework.”  

The Prickly Recluse (hypersensitivium rex)

Behavior: This species is known for its uncanny ability to incorrectly interpret the tone or meaning of any other member posts, regardless of how innocuous those posts may be, invariably choosing the most negative or insulting meaning possible and taking that meaning entirely personally. From there, hypersensitivium will repeat and repost its incorrect interpretation in an effort to rally support and sympathy for itself.

Control: First-time victims generally interpret the Recluse’s behavior as innocent misunderstanding, and will usually attempt to resolve the matter with an apologetic, clarifying post. However, since hypersensitivium will misinterpret the palliative post as well, such efforts are destined to fail. A warning post or email from the site administrator will generate one last, self-pitying post from the Recluse, followed by several weeks of absence from the site. It is from this latter behavior that the Recluse gets its name. 

Identifying Call: A sharp, striking, "How dare you!" 

The PubPro Mimic (wannabeum knowitallia)

Behavior: This type of Troll masquerades as a publishing industry professional with many years of relevant experience, yet never offers any proof of its claims and simply ignores all requests for such. Nevertheless, using its supposed trove of expertise as bait, wannabeum easily attracts a cadre of insecure writers looking for a “secret handshake” or other insider knowledge that might give them an edge in getting published.

Since wannabeum lacks the expertise to which it lays claim, its haughty assertions about writing, getting an agent, publishing and bookselling are largely false. Even so, any attempt to correct the Mimic directly, or even to merely post an alternative viewpoint, will backfire in a firestorm of belittling recriminations from the Mimic, which will rely on its claimed expertise as all the support or proof its posts require.

Control: Catching wannabeum in a resumé lie will cause it to immediately vacate a site, but this is nearly impossible since wannabeum never posts under its real name and is careful to keep the identifying details of its claimed career experience vague.

Identifying Call: “If you’d worked in the publishing business for as many years as I have, you’d know how ridiculous you sound.”

The Equalizer (evenus stevenus)

Behavior: Evenus is the self-appointed score keeper and referee of any community it inhabits. Evenus keeps constant track of who has shared good or bad news, who has posted congratulations or sympathy, and whether or not such congratulations or sympathies are adequately effusive and timely. Anyone failing to pass the Equalizer’s test is subjected to the same kind of freeze-out favored by the Queen Bee / King Drone, but unlike that species, the Equalizer keeps the impetus behind its attack secret for as long as possible. Often, Evenus deprives its victims of this information for so long that another member of Evenus’ circle is ultimately the one to reveal it.

Control: As with the Puffed Pedant, since Evenus doesn’t technically break any site’s Terms of Service, little can be done to discourage it. One can either ignore Evenus or strive to steer clear of it.

Identifying Call: frosty silence.
 

The Sock Puppet Master (bittera duplicator)

Behavior: Perhaps the most pathetic of all the Troll species which favor author communities and websites, bittera creates its own support network by setting up multiple user accounts. It uses these accounts to create negative or attacking posts about others and their work, then uses its other accounts to second its own opinions in a masturbatory fashion.

Control: No specific action is necessary. Bittera will eventually reveal itself as a fraud by losing track of its various aliases, posting in the tone or style of one persona while logged in as another. Once exposed, this Troll will immediately delete all of its past posts, close its many accounts and move on to a new site. It may reappear months later to set up a new collection of accounts and aliases, but only when it’s sure its past activities have been forgotten.

Identifying Call: mockingbird-like repetition of, and agreement with, anything posted under any of its many aliases.

The Fake Friendly (condescendiosa passive-aggressivium)

Behavior: This Troll openly attacks and insults authors and their work, and when called to account for its unacceptable behavior, claims its remarks have been misinterpreted and it meant no offense.

For example, in a thread about the merits of giving away free ebook copies as a promotional gambit, following the post of a member extolling the virtues of free ebook copies, it may post, “If your book was any good, you wouldn’t have to give it away.” When the other member responds with understandable anger and offense, the Fake Friendly will defend itself by retreating behind a response along the lines of, “I didn’t say your book actually is no good, I’m just saying that you deserve to be paid for quality work.”

Condescendiosa can keep this back-and-forth dance of insults and re-interpretation going indefinitely, but its most maddening behavior is its penchant for claiming the moral high ground by recasting its abuse as simple, well-meaning honesty, which it says others can’t tolerate on account of being overly sensitive.

Control: Much like the Sock Puppet Master, this type of Troll is always the cause of its own undoing. As it slashes and burns its way through the community, systematically training its disingenuous focus on member after member, condescendiosa eventually finds it has more enemies than cohorts and vacates the premises.

Identifying Call: “You’ll never make it as a writer if you don’t develop a thicker skin,” and “I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”
 

April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat.

Sandy Nathan's NUMENON Wins the 2009 Silver Nautilus AND a Silver Medal in the IPPYS!

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Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money

NUMENON (Book 1 of the Bloodsong Series) is an astonishing spiritual adventure. Critically acclaimed and beloved by readers, Numenon has now won FOUR NATIONAL AWARDS. (You can read about them below.)

ISN’T IT TIME THAT YOU READ NUMENON?

You can also buy Numenon directly from Sandy Nathan’s website, and get great deals:

A message from Sandy Nathan:

“I’ve been thrilled and shocked and grateful this spring as the book contests announced their winners. Numenon won two more national awards in prestigious contests. All the information about Numenon’s wins is below. I’d like to invite you to read my book. I spent years writing it and fine-tuning it until it said what it was supposed to say. More years getting it published. Now you can reap the fruit of my work and read my book at your leisure.

“I’m hard at work rewriting, re-visioning, Mogollon, Numenon’s sequel. I think you’ll agree that the promise of Numenon is more than delivered in its sequel.

“I appreciate all of you who have purchased Numenon and given me such wonderful reviews. Please let your friends know about Numenon if you’re so moved. We authors need a boost, too!

“All the best on your journey,

Sandy Nathan

NUMENON’S BOOK CONTEST WINS:

 

Numenon, by Sandy Nathan, is a Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner!

Numenon, by Sandy Nathan, is a Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner!

 

In May 2009, Numenon won the 2009 SILVER NAUTILUS AWARD for INDIGENOUS/MULTICULTURAL FICTION. The Nautilus Award was established to “change the world one book at a time.” It is devoted to “Recognizing Books and Audio Books that Promote Spiritual Growth, Conscious Living, and Positive Social Change and stimulate the ‘imagination’ and inspire the reader to ‘new possibilities’ for a better world.” Previous Nautilus winners include: Deepak Chopra, M.D., Thich Nnat Hanh, Jean Houston, PhD., Eckhart Tolle, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Andrew Weil, M.D.

(The bestselling book, The Shack, was also a 2009 Silver Nautilus Award winner.)


 

INDEPENDENT PRESS SILVER MEDAL

INDEPENDENT PRESS SILVER MEDAL

 

NUMENON has just received a Silver Medal in the 2009 IPPY Awards, claiming its fourth national award. The “IPPY” Award is one of the oldest and largest book contests for independent presses. This year’s awards attracted 4,090 entries from throughout the U.S. and Canada, plus most English-speaking countries worldwide. Medal-winning books came from 44 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, eight Canadian provinces, and six countries overseas.

Book contest judges noticed Numenon before it was published. As an Advance Reading Copy (ARC or galley), Numenon WON in two contests:

THE BEST BOOKS OF 2007 AWARD in VISIONARY FICTION, USA Book News. The Best Book Award is a large, prestigious contest entered by the major publishers as well as independent presses.

THE 2007 NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD in RELIGIOUS FICTION. The Indie Excellence contest stresses true excellence produced by independent presses.


Unlock Writer’s Block – What Worked for Me, from Sandy Nathan's Your Shelf Life

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sndy

Sandy Nathan, award winning author, rides her horse for the first time after having her ankle fused. Little did she know that getting over writer’s block would be harder.

I wrote an introductory article on unlocking writers block a few weeks ago. (The one illustrated with photos of us trying to get a horse into a trailer.) After three weeks of vacation in New Mexico, I’m home and happily and productively working on the rewrite of Mogollon, sequel to my award winning novel, Numenon.

What did it take for me to break through the dreaded block?

Well, I stepped in a rut in the driveway with my fused ankle about three days into my vacation and spent the next two weeks in great pain and unable to walk. Before that, I had in a kidney infection along with a major flu.

That’s right, I had a kidney infection at the same time as the flu.

Is suffering necessary to break through writer’s block?

It was for me.

I put a longer and deeper write up of my experience these last few weeks on my personal blog (SandraNathan.net). Here, I summarize a few key learning points that may help you deal with your dragons:

1.    Accept and surrender. If you’re unable to write what you want, or reach the depth that you know you’ve got with your writing, acknowledge it. You don’t have to like it or embrace it, just accept the fact you’re blocked. And surrender to the fact. Journal about it. Write a blog article or entire book about it.
2.    If you don’t accept your blocked state and surrender to it, you can search the Net for tips and techniques to deal with writer’s block and paralysis. You’ll find lots: Try them all. Maybe they’ll work. Chances are they won’t. When you discover this, accept your block and surrender to it.
3.    Hit bottom. I did this in my idyllic New Mexico escape, bruised ankle propped on pillows and my foot and lower leg––all the way to the knee––looking like an angry eggplant. That was after I got over the kidney infection and flu.
4.    Truly give up. Hand your whole life over to your Higher Power. If you don’t have a Higher Power, make One up.
5.    Note that the universe really is in control of your life, not you, despite what The Secret says. Healing is a combination of grace and self effort. When you surrender, the spooky stuff starts happening. For instance, when I finally hit as bottom as I’ve been in recent years, I decided to read by book club’s selection for the next month, which was:
6.    Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza. This best-selling book tells the story of how Immaculee Ilibagiza survived the murder of one million of her fellow Tutsi tribe members by rampaging Hutus. She hid in a 3 X 5 bathroom in Rwanda with 7 other women for 3 months. This book is a miracle, the finest example of contemporary Christian mysticism I have read. It jolted me into contact with my spiritual roots and provided the ground of my healing.
7.    It’s also evidence that writer’s block is not the worst thing that can happen to you.
8.    Neither are low book sales.
9.    You don’t have to be obsessed with your on-line sales, the number of blogs you write on, your web site stats, or anything about the world of writing.
10.    Life would go on if you never wrote another word.
11.    You might even enjoy your life more.

 

Freedom is letting go of attachment and aversion.

Freedom is letting go of attachment and aversion. No more: "I gotta have it," alternating with "I’d better run from him/her/it." Freedom is our birthright.

This is freedom. Once you attain this knowledge that you don’t need to write and the inner state that goes with it, the fountain of creativity inside of you may start to bubble again. You may get new angles for the book you were working on. You may WANT to write. You may be able to write.

Or not. You may want to run screaming from the literary world.

Try my method: Drop everything. Get to a dead stop. See what your soul says to you about your writing and your life. Do what it says.

I’m back at work writing, but in a different way. No more pounding the keyboard until my shoulders won’t move and my wounded ankle feels like it’s poured full of molten lead. No more obsessing.

I’m doing things differently and letting the immense love and good will of the universe carry me forward. If my stuff is supposed to sell, it will because people find value in it––and in getting to know me.

In God we trust, right? That’s the title of that other article I wrote about my recent three weeks of high altitude spiritual regeneration in Santa Fe.

Two more tips that could radically improve the level of peace in the world and might even help your writer’s block:

1.    Watch where you put your feet. If you watch where you put your feet, you won’t step in it. It can take many physical and metaphorical forms. The rut in the driveway that nailed my already screwed-down ankle taught me the wisdom of simple truths: Watch where you step.
2.    Keep your ankle above your heart. This is a variant of an Eastern spiritual practice. In Eastern religions, worshipers pranam, bow, to their gurus, sacred objects, or representations of deities. The pranam involves either going down on one’s hands and knees and touching one’s forehead to the floor or a total prostration, lying face down on the floor with your hands over your head––a full pranam.

The pranam honors the sacred and forces one to put one’s head below one’s heart. That is, a pranam puts the rational, judgmental function of the intellect below the empathetic, intuitive, compassionate function of the heart. This is a good thing. Few people get in trouble because they’re too compassionate.

My episode with my ankle indicated that keeping your ankle above your heart can be an equally powerful means of attaining surrender, peace and nonviolence. Could those Hutus have murdered all those people if they’d kept their ankles about their hearts? No.

You can’t do much lying on your back with your ankle above your heart. This posture does provide a perfect opportunity to catch up on the meditations you’ve missed since you started writing seriously twenty years ago. You can contemplate existence like crazy.

With your ankle above your heart, your ankle’s swelling will go down, and so may that of your head. It’s a humbling thing, lying with your leg in the air. Humbling enough to allow your soul to talk and tell you what it thinks of the way you’ve been living.

Your soul may point out certain deficiencies in your behavior that have contributed to your inability to write anything but checks. Your soul may suggest alternative behaviors. In my case, if I didn’t run myself into the ground and chase foolish …  (Contemplation can be brisk.)

Writing and lifestyle are interrelated, or so my ankle and heart told me.

In words my editor sent me (from Ephesians): Live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

In God I trust, while walking the walk.

If you want the longer form on my personal blog, click here to go to Sandra Nathan.net

The Evolutionary Argument For Dr. Seuss

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This article, by Laura Miller, originally appeared on Salon.com on 5/18/09.

Why do we often care more about imaginary characters than real people? A new book suggests that fiction is crucial to our survival as a species.

Why do human beings spend so much time telling each other invented stories, untruths that everybody involved knows to be untrue? People in all societies do this, and do it a lot, from grandmothers spinning fairy tales at the hearthside to TV show runners marshaling roomfuls of overpaid Harvard grads to concoct the weekly adventures of crime fighters and castaways. The obvious answer to this question — because it’s fun — is enough for many of us. But given the persuasive power of a good story, its ability to seduce us away from the facts of a situation or to make us care more about a fictional world like Middle-earth than we do about a real place like, oh, say, Turkmenistan, means that some ambitious thinkers will always be trying to figure out how and why stories work.

The latest and most intriguing effort to understand fiction is often called Darwinian literary criticism, although Brian Boyd, an English professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the author of "On the Origin of Stories," a new book offering an overview and defense of the field, prefers the term "evocriticism." As Boyd points out, the process of natural selection is supposed to gradually weed out any traits in a species that don’t contribute to its survival and its ability to pass on its genes to offspring who will do the same. The ability to use stories to communicate accurate information about the real world has some obvious usefulness in this department, but what possible need could be served by made-up yarns about impossible things like talking animals and flying carpets?

Boyd’s explanation, heavily ballasted with citations from studies and treatises on neuroscience, cognitive theory and evolutionary biology, boils down to two general points. First, fiction — like all art — is a form of play, the enjoyable means by which we practice and hone certain abilities likely to come in handy in more serious situations. When kittens pounce on and wrestle with their litter mates, they’re developing skills that will help them hunt, even though as far as they’re concerned they’re just larking around. Second, when we create and share stories with each other, we build and reinforce the cooperative bonds within groups of people (families, tribes, towns, nations), making those groups more cohesive and in time allowing human beings to lord it over the rest of creation.

The popular understanding of evolutionary biology can be sketchy even among (I’m tempted to say especially among) its most enthusiastic lay proponents. That’s why it’s important to point out that, whatever you’ve heard about "selfish genes," the secret to humanity’s success lies less in Hobbesian competition than in individuals’ capacity to cooperate, and even to act altruistically. While there are short-term benefits to individuals who behave selfishly — say, by stealing or hoarding food — the long-term benefits of sharing usually outweigh the quick payoff, provided that everybody else in your group also participates fairly. Human beings are what biologists call "hypersocial," more social by far than any other animal, and the major product of our deep investment in sociality is our culture: our language, tools, political institutions, clothing, medicine, sculpture, songs, religions, etc.

In short, humanity itself is an element, like the weather or seasons, that each of us needs to negotiate in order to survive. We’re innately skilled at reading each other’s intentions, judging a person’s position in the current social hierarchy, checking the emotional temperature in a room, detecting when our companion isn’t paying attention to us, and so on. Those who are especially adept at this are said to have good "social skills," but the average human being is a pretty impressive social navigator even when not conscious of what she’s doing. It’s only the rare exceptions — people along the autistic spectrum, for example, whose social instincts and perceptions are impaired — who make us aware of just how essential these abilities are when it comes to getting by in this world.

Read the rest of the article on Salon.com.

Publishing Comparisons (POD vs. POD)

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This post, from Timothy Pontious, originally appeared on his The Pencil Place blog on 5/26/09. In it, he provides a pretty thorough survey of POD publishers.

I had my mouse cursor hovering over the Upload button at lulu.com, but I am truly thankful that I took more time to research the POD / self publishing / vanity publishing horizon before I settled on a publisher for my current project. No, I’ve not settled on that publisher(s) yet.  Thanks for asking.  I was originally leaning toward lulu.com, but all bets are off at the moment. 

There may be several dozen ways to organize this data, so I didn’t. This is a semi-random info dump of what I’ve found so far.  Some entries are lump-able into categories, and others just kind of stand on their own.  

Since I don’t have a legal department, I’ll issue a disclaimer anyway.  This information is all gathered recently across many web sites. For all I know it is already outdated somewhere.  This information is for rough comparisons only. Your mileage will vary.  

Most of these publishers are a mix of paper/digital, so I did not differentiate unless there is something unique in their approach.  

NOTE ->  All places where I report the cost of a copy of a single book for an author, it is either a 5.5" x 8.5" or 6" x 9" paperback trade book – color cover and black text on white paper @250 pages (or similar as described on their page).   I’ve tried to give similar data where it is available, in a similar pattern in the text.  It is extremely difficult to match apples and apples across these many web pages.  

The other cost I list is the minimum cost for your first hundred books, which is the minimum setup fees and book costs with NO additional services selected.  Also no discounts are accounted for, and my math may be fuzzy, but I tried to be consistent. 

Publetariat Editor’s Note: While an estimate of your cost for the first 100 copies is a useful bit of information for making comparisons between publishers, do not assume the companies profiled in this article will actually require you to order a minimum of 100 books. Many POD publishers don’t ask you to buy anything more than a single author copy for review prior to releasing the book for sale. Check with each individual company to verify its minimum order policy.   

Mind your security while you browse these sites. Some of these pages are truly horrific throwbacks to not only Web 1.0, but Windows 98 or something.  They tease with a little information and require you to register so they can send you more data.  I did not bother registering with these sites, assuming they either didn’t know how to spell "Internet", or they were up to something else evil.  Really folks, this is the 21st century. Put your data out where we can find it, or some of us are just not going to play that game and you’re losing authors. Allrighty then?  

I may also have missed some significant publishing vendors.  Let me know and I’ll include them as an update.  So here we go.  

POD and Self Pub (paper/digital) Publishers (in no particular order)

Most of these entries have editorial, layout, book design and marketing packages that can be purchased. Sometimes the packages are bundled.  

iUniverse [http://www.iuniverse.com/] has a separate service for everything.  If you’re the author who needs a lot of services, the kind of traveler who demands room service and excellent concierge service, this is perhaps your publisher.  I would not be surprised if they have services for their services.  Setup fees range $599 – $2099.  Author cost per book (for our example size as stated above) is $11.19.  The minimum cost per the first hundred copies (your promotional stash) is $1718.  Layout, design and editorial services are abundant.  They don’t seem to have much of an author community, but they do have author podcasts going.  They also offer hosted web sites to market your book.  Only books, no other media. 

Lulu [http://www.lulu.com/]  also offers a suite of services for editing, layout, cover design, and etc.  There are no setup fees, but the services can rack up the cost quickly. The author cost for one book is $8.53. The cost per the first 100 is $853.  Lulu also handles CDs, DVDs, audio books, PDF downloads, and some other media as well.  There is an authors forum area, and they brag about their technical support.  For a confident author with an editor friend and a graphics friend, Lulu can be a low cost entry point effectively.  Lulu has storefront pages for your book collection that is a fairly staid template with your customized background image.  

Authorhouse [http://www.authorhouse.com/]  opens their setup fees from $598 to $1298.  The author cost for a book is $9.83. The minimum cost for the first hundred books seems to be $1581.  Authorhouse will grant a free ISBN number, but they didn’t say anything about US Copyright registration.  They also brag on their technical support.  

Scribd [http://www.scribd.com/]  Scribd is the single eBook-only venture I came across (but that is not what I was looking for so that’s appropriate).  You may upload any document to Scribd, and readers can read a sample online for free.  If they purchase that book, they may read it all online, or download and therefore print it.  The author may set any price, and keeps 80% of the revenue.  This is seemingly a streamlined system (I’ve not tried it yet) and the home page is already throwing books at the viewer’s browser, which I like as a marketing approach.  The downside is that the browser must load the iPaper application, which streams the document to the browser, and therefore takes a bit of time to load.  This feature has taken some heat in some forums I was reading through.  Scribd has a fairly complete FAQ area to welcome new authors, so that’s a plus.   

Selfpublishing.com  [http://www.selfpublishing.com/]  This is one of the sites that requires registration, so I didn’t investigate it very thoroughly.  One odd thing is that a hosted ISBN is $99, and an indie ISBN is $125 and the barcode is another $25.  You can buy 10 bar codes in a block from the source on the Internet, plus bar codes, for that amount.  If you have nine more books in you, I’d venture elsewhere.  

CreateSpace [http://www.createspace.com/] This one also requires registration a little sooner than I would have preferred.  The author cost for a book is $3.66 (or less if you upgrade your package). They offer a free hosted ISBN, and an indie ISBN for $35.  They pay royalties as follows:  Retail is list price -20%, and Amazon is list price -40%.    They offer hosted web sites for your book.  One big plus is that they handle multiple media formats (including the only video service I found so far).  CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, so if you publish here the next step for marketing should be a breeze! 

Read the rest of the post on The Pencil Place blog.

John Sayles, Novelist, Seeks A Binding Contract

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This article, by Josh Getlin, originally appeared on The Los Angeles Times on 5/26/09.

The writer-filmmaker is shopping a sprawling work of historical fiction, but no big publishers are buying. Such is the cautious state of publishing today.

Reporting from New York — For 40 minutes last month he held them spellbound, reading about America in 1898. John Sayles didn’t just give the crowd a taste of his new novel, "Some Time in the Sun" — he performed a comedy about tabloid newsboys in New York, playing 26 characters with thick, period accents.

"WAR!" Sayles boomed in the voice of a 13-year-old newsie thrilled ("Trilled!") that the Spanish-American War had boosted his daily street sales: "Remember the . . . Maine! Jeez, the way they played it out — Day 1, the ship blows up. Day 2, who blew the ship up? Day 3, we think we know. Day 4, we sent down our experts!"

When it was over, the audience at City University of New York’s Gotham Center gave Sayles an ovation. But then he was humbled by a question from a woman in the front row: When would the book be out?

"I’ve been done with it for six or seven months, and it’s out to five or six publishers," he said quietly. "But we haven’t had any bites yet."

John Sayles, Oscar-nominated creator of "Return of the Secaucus 7," "Lone Star," "Matewan" and other movies, is having trouble getting a book deal.

The situation is almost entirely traceable to the publishing industry’s economic woes, and it’s raising eyebrows, because Sayles was an accomplished fiction writer long before he made his first film. Weighing in at a whopping 1,000 typed pages, "Some Time in the Sun" is his first novel since 1990’s "Los Gusanos."

"This is really astonishing," says Ron Hogan, senior editor of Galleycat.com, a website devoted to publishing news. "I mean, this is John Sayles! You’d think there would be some editor who’d be proud to say, ‘I brought the new John Sayles novel to this house.’ "

Anthony Arnove, Sayles’ literary agent, sent the novel out on a first round of submissions last fall, and recently sent it to another group of editors. His goal is to land a deal with a deep-pockets publisher who can promote the sprawling, epic tale about racism and the dawn of U.S. imperialism.

Sayles’ 1977 novel, "Union Dues," was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. "The Anarchists’ Convention," his comic short story about aging Jewish lefties, has become an American classic.

But that’s ancient history in the publishing world, where an industry-wide deep freeze is getting colder by the day. The kind of deal Sayles might have landed several years ago — when publishers might have taken on his new book for the prestige factor, or a sense that the economic gamble could be worth it — is more difficult now.

It’s a jittery moment for writers and publishers, as sales plunge (down 4.2% in the first quarter of 2009) and the big houses lay off swarms of veteran editors. As the economic collapse continues, a novel like "Some Time in the Sun" becomes an increasingly harder sell.
 

Read the rest of the article on The Los Angeles Times site, and this companion piece, Life’s Too Short For Thousand-Page Novels, on The Guardian UK Books Blog.

Great Characters – Their Best Kept Secret

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This article, by James Bonnet, originally appeared on The Writer’s Store site.

Have you ever wondered why characters like Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, Achilles, Scrooge, Dorothy and Superman go on forever? The real secret of their immortality lies in something you’ve probably never equated with the creation of a great character or a great story — the quintessential.

But if you fathom the secrets of this remarkable quality, you can use it to make your characters truly charismatic and merchandisable and just about everything else in your story more fascinating.

According to the dictionary, the quintessential is the most perfect manifestation or embodiment of a quality or thing. It is the ultimate, good or bad, best or worst, example. The world’s fastest runner is the quintessential runner. The world’s deadliest snake is the quintessential deadly snake. Hitler is the quintessential megalomaniac. Einstein is the essence of mathematical genius. He is symbolic of genius.

Applied to story, it means making the story elements the best example of that element. And that is, in fact, what great stories are all about. Great stories, myths and legends are dominated by quintessential elements.

Zeus is the most powerful god. Helen of Troy is the most beautiful woman. Achilles is the greatest warrior. King Arthur is the most chivalrous king. Camelot is the most fabulous kingdom. Excalibur is the most powerful sword. Samson is the strongest man. King Herod is the nastiest tyrant. King Solomon is the wisest and richest king.

It is the key to their success. Why? Because if you make something the most extraordinary example, you will make that idea more intriguing. A secret chamber is fascinating in itself, but you could make it even more fascinating by making it the most intriguing secret chamber of all time. The black hole of Calcutta is more fascinating than an ordinary prison. A perfect murder is more fascinating than an ordinary murder, and the most perfect murder of all time is more fascinating than your run-of-the-mill perfect murder.

If your story is about ghosts, injustice or romance, taking that subject to the quintessential will make that subject more fascinating. In ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ the subject of love is taken to the quintessential. It is the greatest love story of all time. ‘Harry Potter’ is about the most extraordinary magic the world has ever seen. ‘Gladiator’ is about the greatest tyranny. The Roman Empire is itself the quintessential empire. ‘The Perfect Storm’ is about the storm of the century. ‘Titanic’ is about one of the world’s worst disasters. All of which adds considerably to our fascination and interest in these stories.

The quintessential can be applied to any element of your story but is especially effective when applied to the professions and dominant traits of your characters. If you take these dimensions to the quintessential, you will make your characters more intriguing. They will make an important psychological connection and that will add significantly to the power of your work.

Read the rest of the article on The Writer’s Store site.

Why Self-Published Music Sux

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This (satirical and comic) piece, by Zoe Winters, originally appeared on Publishing Renaissance on 6/2/09.

I feel the need to talk about this troubling issue I’ve seen cropping up. It’s self published music. You see, Britney Spears may not be the height of all musical talent, but there is a certain level of quality we know we get from her music since it’s produced by a big record label. It doesn’t matter if you know who her record label is, it’s just important that you know she has one. This means she has been vetted.

Other people have put their money into her, and so therefore we can trust her far more than we can trust a garage band we’ve never heard of. Why doesn’t the garage band have a recording contract? There is SO much music out there and so much of it self published now, that we have all this crap we have to wade through. I mean do you seriously seriously think that people have the time to listen to a full song before deciding whether or not to buy your self-produced CD?

And with all the vanity self-publishing music companies out there that allow people to put their music up, well it’s a problem. Youtube anyone? Holy crap what were people thinking there? And now even iTunes just lets any joker who thinks he can write and play music to just… put it out there for SALE!!!! OMG

And here we, the unsuspecting customer are supposed to just trust it. There are even some bands who go so far as to make up their own record label. And that’s lying. Because you’re not allowed to start a business with a business name. Even though it’s perfectly legal. If you start a flower shop and you name it Awesome Flowers instead of your name, then that’s lying. Cause we think it’s a real legitimate flower shop instead of just someone who started their own business. If I don’t know who your recording contract came through, I can’t trust your music. I can’t just test it out cause that would be too hard to do. Why should a consumer be responsible for checking out a product before purchase?

Now, I will admit that it’s become increasingly difficult to get a BIG recording label (even though that’s the ideal we ALL strive for and no one has any other goals or dreams), and so sometimes it’s a little bit respectable if you have a small recording label, but the most important thing is… you can’t be your own label. You need to get a neighbor down the street or something to start a record label and sign you. Then it’s legit see? Cause a different person from you is running the show and paying the bills. If you’re the one paying the bills and investing everything in your own work, how can we trust you? How do we know you aren’t just self-absorbed and delusional? I know other businesses work on this initiative principle, but music isn’t the same. Music is different, just trust me on this one.

Self published music just isn’t the same as big record label music. And no matter what any of these “indie musicians” (like who do they think they are calling themselves that? Like we can’t see through that) say, it’s just always going to be this way. They don’t have respect, they’re never getting respect, so they may as well give it up now.

And do you know why they aren’t getting respect? Because most of them suck, and most of them think they automatically deserve respect, just for creating something and working hard to package and distribute it. Well get in line buddy! I am making my music the legit way, and you should too.

Who ever heard of a world or culture where a mega-corporation didn’t first approve all artistic expression and turn it into a mass consumer commodity? That’s how shit should be done, dude. And if you don’t agree, well, you’re just delusional. This country was NOT founded on any kind of dreams of independence or doing your own thing. We are all supposed to follow. So get back in that line and follow. Some day if you’re good enough, a big record label will smile down upon you and make all your dreams come true. And then we’ll respect you, because you will have done something respectable. Instead of this fake self publishing music stuff you’re doing now.

Read the rest of the article on Publishing Renaissance.

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature

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This list, by Bruce Sterling, originally appeared on Wired.com’s Beyond the Beyond blog on 5/30/09.

1. Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is globalizing and polyglot.

2. Vernacular means of everyday communication — cellphones, social networks, streaming video — are moving into areas where printed text cannot follow.

3. Intellectual property systems failing.

4. Means of book promotion, distribution and retail destabilized.

5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.

6. Core demographic for printed media is aging faster than the general population. Failure of print and newspapers is disenfranching young apprentice writers.

7. Media conglomerates have poor business model; economically rationalized “culture industry” is actively hostile to vital aspects of humane culture.

8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.

9. Digital public-domain transforms traditional literary heritage into a huge, cost-free, portable, searchable database, radically transforming the reader’s relationship to belle-lettres.

Read the rest of the list on Wired.com’s Beyond the Beyond blog.

Demystifying The Creative Process

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This post, from Charlie, originally appeared on his Productive Flourishing site on 9/29/08.

“I’m not creative.”
“I wish I could be more creative, but I don’t have it in me.”
“Why are some people creative and others aren’t?”

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard those statements or questions…

The truth is almost everyone has creative potential. What separates good creatives (or dormant creatives that get lucky) is that they’ve learned how to walk through the creative process. The irony is that most of them don’t know that there is a documented process, yet they’ve developed habits and processes that allow them to walk through the process. On some brute level, they understand the process, though they don’t know how the process works.

A large part of the problem is that there is an air of mystery and mysticism around the creative process. Because people assume and reinforce the idea that some have creative potential and others don’t, those that do harness their potential and work through the process become all the more “different.” And because so few of us see that leveraging our creativity is inextricably linked to how we make money, we let our creative process devolve into a daily crap shoot.

So, let’s take a few minutes and demystify the creative process.

The Four Steps of Creativity

We’ve known for a long time that the creative process can be broken down into four distinct processes, most of which can be fostered and augmented. The processes are:

  1. Preparation
  2. Incubation
  3. Illumination
  4. Implementation

I’ll spend some time on each step.

Preparation

This is the first phase of what most call work. A writer, for example, prepares either by writing, reading, or revising earlier work. A musician plays scales, chords, or songs…a painter messes with paints or visits an art gallery…an entrepreneur researches problems to solve….a programmer plays with code. In each example, the creative is going through relatively mundane processes.

The reason I say most call this phase “work” is because these processes may or may not be inherently enjoyable. They’re also fairly mundane and tedious, but the creative has learned that this process is necessary to plant the seeds that lead to…

Incubation

This would be the mystical process if there were one because you often don’t know that you’re percolating an idea, or if you do know you’re working on one, you don’t know when it’s going to come out. It’s at this phase that your conscious and subconcious mind are working on the idea, making new connections, separating unnecessary ideas, and grabbing for other ideas.

This is the phase that most people mess up the most with distractions and the hustle and bustle of daily lives. Modern life, with its many beeps, buzzes, and distractions, has the strong tendency to grab the attention of both our subconcious and unconscious mind, and as result, the creative process stops and is instead replaced by more immediate concerns.

However, from this phase comes…

Illumination

This is the “Eureka” moment that many of us spend our days questing after. When it hits, the creative urge is so incredibly strong that we lose track of what else is happening. The driving impulse is to get whatever is going on in our head down into whatever medium it’s intended to go.

The most frustrating thing for me is that the “illumination” moments happen at the most inopportune times. They invariably happen when I’m in the shower, when I’m driving by myself, when I’m working out, or when I’m sitting in mind-numbing meetings that I can’t get out of. Of course, the bad part is as I said above: the impulse is to get the idea out as soon as possible, so it’s not at all uncommon for me to stop showering, driving, or working out and run to the nearest notepad – and, in meetings, I start purging immediately anyway. I’ve yet to gain enough clout to excuse myself from the meetings, but I’m working on it.

Read the rest of the post on Productive Flourishing.