My Necessary Daily Habit

 

By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin

 

While I've written about many aspects of the writing life in these articles, I'm going to give one today that is deeply personal and I haven't discussed yet is critical for life. One of my first actions every day is to plop my bathroom scale on the floor, stand on it and check my weight. During the early days of the pandemic, my number continued to climb. In fact, I had to go to a larger pants size and even some days squeezed into those pants.

 

A month or so ago, my wife and I decided to make changes in our eating. We got a new book about the South Beach diet and changed many of our eating habits. My daily weight number began to drop. A few days ago I got into my smaller pants so it is working. I'm not totally where I want to be for weight but I'm headed in the right direction. In the last 25 years, Christine has watched me go through this process at least four times. It is a daily decision to stay the course.

 

To be honest, I love to eat anything sweet and many other foods not on my current eating plans. Several weeks ago I saw my doctor and my blood pressure was elevated. He suggested I go on some blood pressure medicine and did not even mention about my increased weight. I have not taken the medicine and instead began to work on reducing my weight. I return to the doctor again next month to see what has happened with my intention to eat different foods and less salt and sodium.

 

Change is hard and I'm going against the genetics in my family. One of my relatives in the 1800s was over 300 pounds and it took several men to lift him in a chair for his baptism. Yes this story is a part of my printed family history. The men in my family have always been known as “big” which is code for overweight. The change is a moment by moment choice. I've also learned my weight has little to do with exercise (and movement is also important) and everything to do with what I eat.

 

Less weight affects my energy level and many other factors in my writing life. I expect my family doctor will be surprised next month when I see him. I hope you can see that accountability is important. Go through this process with someone else supporting your commitment to change. It will lengthen your life and your time on the planet to do more writing work.

 

This article tells about a personal choice I've made with my weight. What personal choices are you making? Let me know in the comments below.

 

Tweetable:

It's an unusual but necessary daily habit for this prolific editor and author. The change has been hard but possible. Get the details here. (ClickToTweet)

Get 10 Publishing Myths for only $10 +FREE shipping + over $200 of free bonuses.

The Real Test of A Writer

For my writing life, I've created some routines and habits. These habits are important because I do them without thinking and they keep my writing and my publishing details on track and moving forward. For example, I've written about using Refollow to follow 800 new people every day on Twitter. Using these tools consistently allows my numbers to keep increasing and my platform to grow.

I am a long-term coffee lover. In fact, I have a coffee pot in my office area. I fill this pot with water and coffee ahead of time. When I get up in the morning, one of my first daily actions is to turn on my coffee pot. Then as I begin my day, I enjoy my coffee. Yet today my coffee was filled with grounds. The paper filter went wrong and the entire pot of coffee was wasted and filled with grounds. It was a giant mess. Instead of enjoying my coffee, I had to clean the pot and begin again. I finally got my coffee pot working today but it took more than simply pressing the button to turn it on. Instead of a calm start to my day, I had an immediate mess to clean.

From my recent back to back trips to events (with only two days in between), I picked up a cold virus. While I try and wash my hands on the road and be careful, despite my best intentions, I get sick. I've been increased my water consumption and trying to get more rest (even sleeping during the day a few times). I'm on the mend yet several days last week when I called authors, I'm certain I sounded different. Yet I continued making calls, writing emails, answering questions and pushing forward with the work.

Throughout my travels and illness because of using scheduling tools, my social media feeds continued without interruption. The consistency and persistence is important and a quality that I've mentioned many times in these articles. These interruptions is one of the real tests for a writer.

Everyone has unexpected things happen such as illness or a technical difficulty or countless other things. When you are at this point of decision, you have two choices. First, the unexpected can throw off your schedule and sour your attitude and prevent you from writing or meeting any other task you have as a writer. Or there is another choice: you can move forward with your writing, find a work around, switch gears to a different task and keep going. For me as a writer, I've tried to make the second choice my default action. It doesn't always work and some days I get thrown off track. Normally I determine to keep going and accomplish the task at hand. Sometimes it is consistency for writing. Other times it is working with my Morgan James authors and answering their questions and making phone calls. Your tasks will be different than mine. My encouragement is for you to find the way to make the choice to keep going.

Many others will make the first choice and get derailed from the process. Their writing will not get done and they will miss their deadlines and the books will not be published. Or maybe it is in the marketing area and their book will not get pushed and promoted so people hear about it and purchase it. If you have gotten derailed, every day is a new day. I encourage you to start fresh and keep going.

Recently in Nashville, I was talking with one of my Morgan James authors. This author has gone through some personal issues about the time his book was released two years ago. Now he has weathered that situation and is refocused on his book and the promotion. In my view, it is never too late to for a book. Yes you missed the launch of your book but are you still passionate about the topic and message in your book? As the author, your passion will drive the on-going marketing and promotion of your book. Your publisher will press on to other books. Your choice is to begin each day new and dig into the expansion of your topic and promotion. You are the only person who can determine it is too late.

What has derailed you and how are you making a fresh start on your writing life? Let me know in the comments below.

Tweetable:

What happens when your writing gets derailed. Get ideas here for the real test of a writer. (ClickToTweet)

 

Can You Find The Way?

I watch the news when I work out on my treadmill and that news is generally dismal these days. It's easy to fall into a negative way of thinking about your writing or the publishing world.

This week I received a fresh reminder in Gary D. Foster's newsletter, Religious Market Update where he included this item from a four-year-old Publishers Weekly: "Tough Odds Although the data is 4 years old, it is basically unchanged in ’08: 950,000 titles out of 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies, while just 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. Only 10 books sold more than a million copies in ’04. Fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000. Nearly 200,000 new titles are published each year. (Publishers Weekly, 7/16/04)"

My encouragement to you is not to dwell on the statistics but look for a way to be the exception and succeed. It will take some diligent searching and trial and error on your part but it is possible. As a writer, your first task is to craft an excellent product with riveting page-turning excitement (whether fiction or nonfiction). Then once you have that product, you need to figure out how to reach your audience. Understand that more than 50% of the books sold are purchased outside of the bookstore. You will need to tap those non-bookstore sales channels.

Some times you can look at successful people and wonder if they know anything about failure. Just take two minutes and listen to what third baseman Brooks Robinson, newscaster Ted Koppel and singer Amy Grant have in common. Or watch what author Caitlin Friedman says about the challenges and opportunities in today's market.

It does not happen overnight but takes persistence and determination to find your way through the publishing maze.

As another resource for you, look into this link which gives 100 useful search engines for writers. I will not gloss over the truth that the days ahead can be challenging for writers yet there are ways to achieve your goals. Are you determined to find them?

What Happens To Unsold Books

Last night I was teaching another teleseminar as a part of the faculty of Virtual Book Tour Secrets for Alex Mandossian about book proposal creation. It's one of my favorite topics for would-be authors. Why?

I firmly believe the more you understand about book publishing, then the more you will be able to deliver what editors and literary agents need to successfully get your book idea into print. My encouragement to each listener is every agent and book editor that I know are actively looking for good projects. The more you know about what we are looking for, then the more likely you can deliver the right idea at the right time. I believe through information and education, you can gain the right elements and knowledge-base that you need to find success.

We spend a lot of time on the front end of creating a book to get it to the marketplace. Whether we are crafting a book proposal or pitching an editor or agent or negotiating a book contract or finishing up the requested editorial changes for a book or working with the marketing and sales department on their plans to launch the book, there are a myriad of details on this front end of the process.

During the question and answer section of my teleseminar, someone asked about what happens to the unsold books. If you've ever wondered about the answer, take a look at this column from Jonathan Karp who is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve, an imprint within the Hachette Book Group (one of the major New York Publishers). While the entire article is worthy of your attention and reading, I'm going to excerpt his first paragraph for this post. He wrote (and his emphasis in italics), "Many years ago, as a new editorial assistant at a venerable publishing house, I was warned by a senior colleague never to use a certain word when telling authors what would happen to their unsold books. The forbidden word was: mulched. My colleague, a compassionate sort, worried that the word might shatter the fragile psyches of authors who had toiled for years on their manuscripts. It was better to let them believe their work was being discounted, or perhaps donated to some inner-city literacy program. Today a tactful publisher might simply invoke environmental concerns and emphasize the global imperative of recycling to prevent the melting of polar ice caps, in effect telling authors: Destroying your book will save coastal cities!"

Make sure you see what Karp writes about the future of publishing and the continual search for quality. This piece is a clarion call for writers to craft excellent works--but also to actively be involved in the selling of that work--on the front end to the publisher through crafting a remarkable proposal but also after the book gets into print so it stays in print and isn't turned into mulch. Yes the reality is that some books are remainders but after they can't be remainder (discounted any more), they are destroyed. It's a sobering reality that most authors never want to consider.

Rather than end my post today on that sobering reality, I want to turn this topic into something that encourages you. After you are armed with this reality about the unsold books, I hope it will drive you to even greater determination to succeed with your book idea or novel or nonfiction project.

For that dose of weekly encouragement, I subscribe to Harvey MacKay's column. I read it in my local newspaper each week--and marvel at the encouragement. Then later in the week, I get the column in my email box (because I've subscribed--and you can too on his page). This week's column is called, "Those who itch for success must keep scratching." How true is that statement!

Like Jonathan Karp's work, I encourage you to read MacKay's full column but here's something that I will use to encourage you. He wrote, "Years ago, I wrote about a formula for success: Determination + goal setting + concentration = success. I received a letter from a Harvard graduate saying that I was missing a fourth quality—courage. His point was that determination could be undermined by the fear that comes with a new venture."

"Let me take that one step further. In my opinion, many people fail to achieve their goals not because they are afraid of the job at hand, but because they have grown so familiar in the comfort zone of their job, they are afraid to meet the challenge of a new job. I once heard someone joke that the road to success is marked with many tempting parking places."

What steps are you taking today to move ahead with your own publishing dreams? Carve out a few consistent moments to make that happen.