In RJ’s post about O.Ver.Whelmed, we were tossing around some ideas about how we manage all of our various tasks and responsibilities. A few people suggested I round up some of the ideas I have on the topic. I think it would be really cool if others posted how they make things happen as well.

I find that systematic task management takes a huge load of stress off me because I don’t have all those things lingering in my short term memory, pestering me to “remember this”, and “don’t forget that”, and “isn’t it time for an oil change?”. All of those things accumulate hour by hour, day after day, until I’m at a constant low boil of stress. David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, was a huge awaking for me on the idea that if I just get it out of my head and into a system that I trust will maintain it for me, a lot of that stress goes away. Honestly, I don’t know if I actually get more things done. Maybe, maybe not. But I certainly get as much done as I did before, and now I don’t feel like I’m brewing my own little ulcer baby.

Here’s a few topics to consider:

Commit

First you have to decide that you’re really sick of running half drowned in the chaos of daily life and you’re genuinely ready to create new life habits for yourself. Because at the root of any system is regular, dependable action. It’s like brushing your teeth, really. And if you’re not interested in making it a daily, committed habit, ye gods, don’t waste your time on a half-hearted attempt at learning how not to waste time.

 

( For those ready to get their pr0d on (that’s geek talk for productivity, folks!), click here and Dr. Jon will elucidate! )

I was typing this up in an email to anywherebeyond since she's renaming characters, but then figured everyone can probably appreciate it-- Nymbler.com is a baby naming site where you can type in names you like, and it gives you a list of similar names. I used it when I had to rename Silas in SISTERS RED and love it.

While authors may enjoy the art half of our industry, the business half can be confusing and overwhelming. For example, we could use a great mailing list, but where do you get the list?

The free way is called data mining, and anyone with some time, and an Internet connection, can do it! (And though this guide is written with the published author in mind, the same techniques can be used to build any kind of mailing list- agent searches, job searches, club searches- you name it, you can data mine it!

( This is relevant to my interests... )

The fine art of writing blurbs is not really fine or art. It's the ability to punch people repeatedly in the eye with the most interesting aspect of your script, story or novel.

As writers, we tend to think about too much when we're trying to describe our work. There are so many elements! This part is especially meaningful! Oh, and the backstory, did you ever see such a poignant backstory?

Nobody cares.

Okay, I lie. People do care- and they will care, *when they read the book*. And how will you get them to read the book? By punching 'em in the eye. Take this blurb for example:

Tormented by his father's death, a young man is torn when his mother's infidelity comes to light and he discovers that his own future is in peril.

Which is all right. It hits the major elements: dad's dead, mom's a cheat, kid's in trouble. That is a perfectly acceptable blurb- but not very exciting. Contrast to:

A father murdered, a family betrayed, a fall into madness.

Ahhhhhh, much better. They're both Hamlet, they both both describe the exact same elements of the plot- but one is hot and one is buried on page 252.

Because we care about all our elements, we tend to try to shove all of them into a blurb. Well, this is a guide to help you avoid that. If you take just one thing away from this article, let it be this: blurbs are not synopses, they are not summaries. They are ads.

Yes, they really are. They're ads, like any ad you see on tv, like any ad you read in the newspaper. They're advertising, and they follow the rules of advertising. Don't think about it like an essay; think about it like a commercial. To get you in the right mindset to craft your blurb, here are 5 rules and an admonition to get you started.

1- Don't give them what they came for.

There's no incentive to read the book if the blurb says "Hamlet's dad was murdered, and he feigns madness to try to figure out what to do while his mom Gertrude sluts around with his uncle. Hamlet drives everyone in his life away until his descent into madness becomes real. Given up to it, he murders his mother, and he, in turn is murdered, and thus, ends the legacy of the throne to Denmark."

It's useless as advertising, because you told everybody how it goes. Sure, some die-hard fans might show up to savor the execution, but you're not selling to die-hard fans. You're selling to people whose initial inclination is NO, an inclination you're trying to turn into a YES. So give them just enough to say... whoa, dude, but then what happens??

2 - Poetry counts.

No, I'm not advising you to write your blurb in rhyming couplets, but the basic rules of poetics should apply to your advertising. The sounds of words, the assonance, the consonance, the rhythm of the words- these are important in any writing, but especially important here.

Use short sentences. Avoid compounds; avoid semi-colons. The prose should be quick jabs, boxing- not wrestling. Draw people into the rhythm- people respond positively to a rhythm they can feel, that they can nod along to- has a great beat, and you can dance to it. That's what you're shooting for. And another thing- repetition works really well in advertising, joined pairs and triads are very appealing to the ear.

A father murdered, a family betrayed, a fall into madness.
(A) Father [strong verb] (A) Family [strong verb] (A) Fall [noun]

Compare to:

I'm a Pepper, she's a Pepper, he's a Pepper, we're all Peppers
Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?

So pay attention to meter, rhythm and sound- but also pay attention to sentence structure. You can be a little more lyrical, a little more dramatic with a blurb than you can a straight up synopsis or summary.

3. Brevity Pwns

One of the main failings of a blurb is that it fails to be a blurb. It needs to be a bite, not a dinner. One of the best ways to limit your word count, to really focus on what's important, is to use The Business Letter Rule: say everything you need to say in three paragraphs, with room for your signature at the end.

Your blurb should fit entirely in a one page business letter, with all the headings and signature line intact. If you're writing more than three paragraphs, you're writing too much. You're delving into execution, rather than exposition. Stop it.

4. There is no formula.

Except in that way that there really is a formula. Who's this about? What gets this story started? How does the MC get in trouble? And hey, wouldn't you like to find out how s/he gets out? Here's how.

You can structure the blurb any way you want- put the conflict first; put the precipitating event first. Switch it all around. But hit those elements, BAM BAM BAM, and resist the temptation to get sidetracked. For example, this is the blurb I wrote for the book I'm working on now, Vespertine:

WHO: [Charlie Ray West can see the future, but she can't control her visions- they happen unexpectedly and only at dusk.] PRECIPITATING EVENT: [When she foretells the death of a travelling preacher, Charlie Ray is stunned when it sets a blaze through the other teens in their God-fearing farm town of Paragon, Indiana.] WHAT STARTS THE STORY: [Soon, girls all over Paragon are 'having visions' and baring the community's dirty little secrets.

At first, they use their new-found attention for good, driving a lascivious gym coach and a known date-rapist out of town.] HOW DOES THE MC GET INTO TROUBLE: [But when they run out of predators, they seek out prey- the unusual, the different- the innocent. As the spark who started the fire, and the only one among them who truly sees, Charlie Ray is the only one who can stop them now.] READER LURE: [But will she stand against the inferno, or allow herself to be consumed by it?]

5. Don't ask lure questions that allow people to decline the offer.

Although the lure question is a great way to open or close a blurb, make sure you're asking a question that 1) the reader cannot answer and that 2) doesn't offer the reader an opportunity reject. Questions like, "Do you want to know what goes bump in the dark?" may have a nice rhythm, but the reader could simply say, "Nope."

Keep your lure questions focused on your story, unanswerable by anyone except your MC (and the enlightened reader, once s/he is so kind to read your book, thank you so much, gentle reader!) The only appropriate lure question can be answered by, "I don't know- I'd better read and find out."

And now, I offer the admonition.

6 - Don't lie.

Yes, you probably could spin your blurb so your post-apocalyptic mermaid story sounds like light women's fiction- but why? The people who want to read mermaid stories won't buy it because you didn't tell them it was available, and the people who like women's fiction will be ticked they got spec fic instead.

It serves no one- and especially not you- to lie about your goods. Your blurb should reflect the tone and sensibility of the story you're trying to sell. You can be funny- you can be light. Or you can be serious and dark. Whatever you decide- it should honestly reflect the source.

And that's how it's done, duckies. Don't give them what they came for. Poetry counts. Brevity pwns. Use the unformula. Don't let them say no. Your blurb should be one perfect taste of what's to come. Your book distilled; an amuse bouche.

Or... one good pop in the eye.

If you're like me, you have memory devices all over the place. Memory cards in your digital camera; thumb drives for easy portin'- and if you're like me, you've probably lost one or more of them. Bye bye vacation pictures, au revoir, latest draft.

But, oh, hello kitty- Daily Cup of Tech has a solution. You can install a few simple files- modifying the .ini file in your text editor.

If someone finds your lost drive, and pops it into their computer, a window comes up telling them it's lost, and provides them with your contact information to return it! How cool is that?!

Debs, I was chatting with Sarah Cross last week about health insurance for self employed, and seeing the "day job" post below reminded me to post this. Not sure if everyone knows about this great resource.

The Freelancers Union offers advocacy, networking, freelance job postings, events, discounts, and perhaps most important - group insurance for self-employed people (health insurance offered in 31 states; dental and other ins. offered nationally).

Membership is free and open to "independent workers — freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, temps, part-timers, contingent employees and the self-employed."

My husband signed up as a freelance web consultant so we could get the insurance. The health insurance rates are the most affordable I could find for self-employed. They are significantly cheaper than the Author's Guild and other self-employed options I researched. They have multiple plan options for both individual and family coverage including health, dental, vision, Rx, and even term life and LTD. Health plans range from basic/catastrophic care to comprehensive coverage. The plan my husband and I chose is significantly better than the plan I had at my last job working for a health insurance company, at $300/month less than COBRA!

You can learn more about the insurance plans here:

http://www.freelancersunion.org/insurance/index.html

And the organization in general here:

http://www.freelancersunion.org

Definitely check it out. Even if you don't need the insurance, it's still a good resource for discounts and networking.

Hi Debs... I found a few reports on teens and social media from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This organization has TONS of great information and reports for FREE (not just on teens but across all kinds of consumer demographics). The site's search feature isn't the greatest - it's hard to differentiate the full reports from the excerpts and press releases related to them - but here are a few good ones I found. Feel free to search for others - just be sure to check the report dates because some of them might be old (as an interactive marketing exec in my last life, I advise skipping reports about Internet and tech usage that are older than 2005 or even 2006).

At the bottom of each report page (after the summary text), you'll see a link to "View PDF of Report" that you can click to download to your computer. You can also see related content/releases (but again, some of these are kind of duplicated in the reports. You have to play around with it to get used to how the site organizes things).

I haven't fully read through these yet, but they look great so far:

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace

Teens and Social Media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media

There also seems to be a bunch of stuff on libraries, so if you have some time to spend, you can do some searches. But the above links should be a good start for stuff about our target audience!

Hope it helps, and I hope you're all doing great this week!

- Oh, Sarah

Two helpful things I've used in the last few weeks:

Photostamps - This is the answer to the "How did you get your book cover on a stamp!?" question. The actual answer is stamps.com - I ordered the pre-printed blanks, and weigh and print my own, but it's a pain in the butt. It costs a service fee each month, you have to download and use their clunky software, and I often end up having to add extra postage anyway. Which sort of defeats the purpose of the cover stamp.

(You can also accidentally misprint postage, and then, to get a refund, you have to mail it away and wait 6-8 weeks for it to be processed. Um. No.) So the WORKING answer to this question is Photostamps- same company, and they pre-print the postage for you. Voila, your book cover on a stamp and all you did was upload and buy.

But lo, I am not American, you American-centric harridan, you say? That's okay. Canada Post, Royal Mail, Australia Post all allow you to upload and design your own postage. Who knew mail could be so fun? Wheee!


***

Identifont - This thing is genius. It asks you questions about the font in question, and spits out a list of possibilities at the end. You'd think this is too easy to really work, but nay. In spite of the fact that I had only *two* capital letters as exemplars, Identifont still came up with the correct answer for me. Turns out, my tricky designer had used only the lower-case letters of the typeset.

Now why would you want to pick out an exact font? Well, maybe you don't (I admit, I'm a typography geek)- but when you go to have your book website designed, your fliers and postcards and bookmarks printed, your promo t-shirts and erasers and hats and stamps... wouldn't it be neat if they featured the same typography that appears on your book jacket?

In the interest of balancing my omgwhine! with something useful, today I present a quick guide on how to create a digital press kit that you can include on your website, or mail out on request.

( Press Kit Mania )

Yasmine Galenorn has a great post up on FFF today about the order of things from first sale to publication. It's right here and so handy!