A Journey Worth Discovering - Why Getting Lost Is Your Best Path Forward

When Lost In The Forest, Hug A Tree

Just Make Sure You Get Lost First

This blog is many things. In part storytelling and in part instructional. I've written in the past about how to write and publish Amazon Kindle books using basic strategies on using Amazon's Kindle publishing. It's easy to upload and publish, but there is a whole slew of other things I'd like to write about on this blog.

This is a post about finding your way by getting lost first. 

As a teen, I spent a lot of time outdoors and growing up in Southern California affords quick access to many places.  Any point on the map, from the ocean to the mountains and deserts are but a short drive. 

In a matter of hours, you can go hike the forest, swim in a pond beneath ice-cold waterfalls, pack up the car, drive to the beach and catch a sunset surf-sesh. 

With family, we explored amazing wilderness parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone, as well as all points between. 

Often with my friends and their family, I'd spend a good portion of my early teen years hiking the John Muir Trail, the Cascade Mountains, Mount Whitney, among many other places. 

There were so many memories and lessons learned along the way.  To a great part, I'm sure it's part of who I've become. 

But one particular adventure above all that really formed my belief in teamwork and self-discovery. 

At 5:00 am, a group of 20 of us, me, my friends and their dads set off for a weeklong hiking trip through the Sierra's.

The day before we each went over our pack list, divvied up the food, water purification tablets, cooking equipment, tents, anything we could carry and need, with the dads taking the heavier items while we took the tents and our own bags, and together we all packed our gear.

We revisited our itinerary with everyone having a map and outline of where we'd be and when. One of the families staying behind was our emergency contact, with the day-by-day plan of our hike just in case something went wrong.  

Just in case. 

The Best Path Is Sometimes Unclear

The Best Path Isn't Always Planned

Once we loaded up our gear, we divided ourselves into the cars and trucks of our little convoy.  The dads drove themselves, sometimes without their own son in their car.  As kids, we divided ourselves by our friends and by our expected diversions.  

Some chose to ride together by what they planned to read, this was a time before Amazon Kindle books were even created, so it was real, hard bound books. Some of the boys chose their cars by the games they would play; others chose their rides not by what they wanted to do, rather, some chose who they'd ride with by who they wanted to avoid being stuck in a car for a few hours. 

As soon as everyone was settled in, our little convoy drove for a couple of hours to our base-camp, all of us watching the claustrophobic city open up to the broad horizons that stretched toward the surging mountains. It was summer, and we had turned our backs on the cluster and confinement of the city for a week of unfettered exploration. I dozed off a few different times along the way, 5 am being awful early. 

Once we pulled into the base camp, we parked the cars and stretched our legs a bit.  Some went off to shit in the woods, others merely to take a piss.  The plan was to set camp, stay for the night, then begin our 50-mile circular trek back to this particular spot.


The morning came a little too quick. Anyone who's slept outside on the cold earth knows the stiffness that comes with sleeping on dirt.  Even as a teenager it takes you a while to warm up, to stretch out the night stiffness that settles in.  The air is refreshing and recuperative, but there's something to be said for the beauty of sleeping in bed.


After a short breakfast, we broke camp and set out on the first leg of our itinerary. The terrain was rough, there were periods of where the trail had degraded to mere gravel.  Footing could be slippery, especially on slopes that didn't have switchbacks.

Photo Credit

We walked in the buddy system; each of us partnered with another teen, and you walked at whatever pace the slowest could muster.  Typically you chose to match speed with speed, but there was some partners content on drifting back.

The kids led the way, the dads trailing.  We all had a rule that if the last dad caught up, you had to clean the "latrine" at base camp.  So we hiked with momentum and a purpose.

About mid-day, the clouds rolled in, and the sky turned gray.  The change in the air was noticeable. When we had been able to be shirtless, now we were digging for our long-sleeves, and wondering about where we each had packed our rain parkas.

At once, the rain began.  Followed closely by lighting, the kind of lightning you hear during one of those storms that shake the house and scare the dog but never actually see.

Photo Credit

It wasn't long before the lightning struck a boulder not too far from where we were walking.  The shrapnel shot out, piercing what skin we had exposed from out of our parkas, pants, and packs. It sounded as if the thunder was a 12 gauge shot that went off next to your head.  It boomed around your brain, shaking the snot out of your sinuses and down your throat.

This wasn't the first time we were camping and hiking through horrible weather. The difference this time was that with the rain and lightning, we had lost the trail. We were wandering off course, and because of the lightning, we were running further off our path than we had planned. We had set out that morning to make our way to Purple Lake, but now we were surely lost. It wasn't long that we found a lake, and to this day I'm not certain it was Purple Lake, but it would suffice for the time being. 
That's because avid hikers know that if you lose your way in the forest, you want to stay in one spot so the search team can find you. 
And in short order, the dads were able to find our location and meet up with us, where we set camp and stayed through the night. 

The point of this discussion is that by writing your thoughts and publishing them, you have ZERO control over how they'll be received.  And publishing on any platform, whether a blog like this or using Amazon Kindle books as a platform for your story, you have ZERO control over how it'll be received. 

It's like planning a hike only to take the deer trail instead of the well-trodden footpath. 

As the writer, all I can do is to try and make the message as coherent as possible, one that I want to share and one that is hopefully read. Planning is essential, but often we get more out of losing our way, of walking down the deer trail than the road heavily traveled. 

It's often what we can't control that get in our way, and what leads to great discovery.  

Stumble a little through the underbrush, explore new things and find out that the path you first began has now led you down a whole new road. 

It's a journey worth discovering. 

If you're interested in reading about ways you can self-publish your own Amazon Kindle Books, or are interested in habit formation, you can check out those articles here and read a productivity and habit post here. 

How To Get Better At Damn-Well Anything

From Kindle Publishing To Sports And More, Become A Master At Anything With These Tips

This post started out as an answer to a question on Quora.

For those of you not familiar with Quora, it's a question and answer platform much like eHow or Answers.com that allows you to use social networking to get answers to your questions, or offering up solutions to the questions being asked.

The original question was how to get better at creative writing.

But honestly, these tips could be used to help you achieve efficiency in pretty much any task you'd like to improve on.

How To Get Better At Writing In 3 Steps

Some of what I'm going to discuss is how to get better in phases. 

The first is the process phase.  This is sitting down, doing the grunt work.  Digging the trenches that are necessary to build your story's universe.  It's the outline, the foundation, the skeleton of getting better. 

The second phase with getting better is called the craft phase of writing.  It's mastering the language and techniques.  It's learning how to edit your writing to make it crisp, or as Earnest Hemingway said "write one true sentence". 

Finally, you need to learn time management skills or as I call it, the life phase.  It's too easy to get distracted, allowing the outside world to interrupt what you're exploring in the inner-most crevices of your imagination.  So learning how to focus on one task then moving on will help you become more effective as well as more efficient. 

The Process Phase

The process phase is like these gears. 

They grind and grind, turning each other in unison, propelling the machine forward. 

If one doesn't work, they whole machine ends.

You need to write.  

The process of writing isn't one that you do only inspired. You need to sit down and work on writing everyday. 

If you want to get better at the process, you need to sit down in the chair (metaphorically speaking) and write.  

You'll learn as you go.  

But basically sit down and write. 

Write daily, regularly even.  

This is true of any task.  From writing, to playing the guitar, to playing basketball.  It's due to spending the necessary time, the hours, needed to get better. 

As I said, write daily, regularly even.  

Jerry Seinfeld talked about not breaking the chain.  He would post a calendar on his wall and make a big "X" every day that he wrote.  Eventually the process took on it's own importance. 

To learn and master a task, you get better by doing a task in specific time periods with highly-focused repetition.  Malcolm Gladwell discusses this as the 10,000 hour rule in his book Outliers: The Story of Success: Malcolm Gladwell: 9780316017930: Amazon.com: Books

But don't worry if, right now, you don't have a lot of time to write.  

You're learning how to get better.  It takes time. 

You need to build up the muscle, and that takes practice to build the endurance.  

Stephen King talks about how he began his writing career by prioritizing and finding time at lunch at his job. He talks about that in his outstanding book, On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft eBook: Stephen King: Kindle Store

Charles Bukowski wrote while working for the US mail department. 

Meanwhile, digital and ebook sensation Hugh Howey (hugh howey: Kindle Store) began to write while working at a bookstore, using his lunch hour to get some prose worked out. 

In that time Hugh Howey wrote his bestseller, WOOL to much acclaim and literally much fortune. 

So it can be done. 

The Craft Phase

To learn the craft of writing involves a few different things.  The first thing to consider is, again, sit down and write.  

Then edit your writing.  But get someone else to look it over.  Preferably someone with more than just basic grammar skills.  Get someone with the ability to take a red line through your most important prose.  Find a set of eyes more clear than your own. A set of eyes that can see the forest AND the trees. 

Then, take the time to think about what it all means, what you're trying to say. What is the larger picture, the broader message of what you're trying to convey.  

This is the theme of your work. 

For a doctor it may be the health of her patients.  For a mechanic it's fixing and maintaining the life of your transmission.  

To the teacher the theme of their work is to make an indelible imprint on the future of society, one student at a time. 

So theme is important. 

Meanwhile, you also need to get better at how to write. 

One major way to accelerate this growth is to mimic a master.  

You should write in your own voice, but should also try styles of those you admire.  

Just sit down, write the first 3 pages of a novel or story you like.  Imitate what someone has already done, and done well.  This is not to publish a plagiarized story, but to learn on a different level the song, the flow that a writer that's not you has already accomplished.  

Think about it in a different art form.  

Musicians learn to play other musicians songs.  

Classic painters are taught to outline and trace the lines and brush strokes of masters.  

The Guild Approach To Apprenticeship

In the past, there were guilds where artists spent years, ten years in fact, under the guidance of a master.  

There were guilds for masonry, guilds for artists, for tanners, for iron workers.  These were kind of like modern unions but ones dedicated to bettering the craft of the practitioners. 

But the work was grueling.  

The apprentice would clean, sweep up the studio, do whatever menial task that was needed to be done.  

It was the karate kid routine of cleaning the pigs stye, of cleaning the slop up for the master in order to make the master's job easier.  

But it also served a larger purpose. 

The master didn't teach the student about everything that they knew, rather it was up to the student to study and mimic the master until one day the student was able to move on from apprenticeship to craftsman.  

Over years of working on the craft, and only after all of those years would they move from craftsman to master. 

Why? 

To learn what works for others and gain the foundation and the fundamentals of what others have mastered.  

Actors take lessons from coaches. Even Academy Award winners take classes to get better. 

Singers have a teacher to make sure that the singer is hitting the right notes and staying in time.  

You learn by doing.  And you learn more by getting corrections from someone who knows. 

Perhaps it's time to bring back the guilds...

The Life Phase

This section is divided into two sub-categories.  The creative side and the discipline side.  

The ultimate battle between the id and the ego.  

In the life phase of getting better at writing, you need to live it.  

Live your life.  Go on walks, commune with nature.  Touch your feet on sand and your face into water. 

Observe the way the light reflects in the trees while the sun is setting.  

Record every moment of it.  Document it.  Write it all down, write it down over and over again.  

Sit in a park and listen to how people talk, touch, laugh and cry with each other.  

Somewhere these observations will appear in the story.  The'll appear when you need them the most, even if they only appear in one story and limited to a line in length.  

The second section of the life phase is time management. 

It's the ego of your creative side.  The one where, just like in the process phase, you sit down and get to work.  

But you need to be organized - one of ego's greater traits - when you do this. 

Life Happens.  

It happens to everyone, everywhere.  We have a finite amount of time on this Earth, and with it, we have a finite amount of energy to accomplish all that we want. 

And life doesn't care that you're spinning the All-American Masterpiece in your skull, waiting to unleash it on the world.  You have bills to pay, mouths to feed and jobs to get to in order to take care of those responsibilities.  

There's never a good time to get started, there'll always be something else that comes up.  

So you need to find a way to block out the time and sequester yourself within your world. 

Find a way to turn off emails and your phone.  For god's sake turn off your phone. And TV is a no-no.  It will suck the minutes and hours from you like a Vampire draining a victim.  

One technique to help is set realistic time goals. 

The Pomodoro Technique

 I've written about this before on the blog, and you can check out the articles by clicking HERE (The Pomodoro Technique)  and HERE (Time Management Tips).

What the Pomodoro Technique teaches is to set small standards of time with specific breaks built into the process.  

First, get a timer.  

Set it for a small, realistic amount of time you can work on your writing (or any other task).  

Second, sit down and write (or get to work). 

Third, and this is most important, when the timer goes off, take a specific break from ALL activities.  

STOP - that's the key.  When the timer sounds, you have to stop.  Get up and get away from what you were working on.  

The recommended start is 20 minutes of work, followed by 5 minutes of ZERO activities related to the work you were doing. It'll help you relax.  

   

 It's interval training for work.

Just like a workout plan, you need time to recover those muscles that you were exerting, and we all know that the brain is an organ but also one giant muscle. 

That means it needs down time after exertion as well. 

Anything you want to master is a process.  You wouldn't want a surgeon coming straight from High School to perform open-heart surgery on you, would you? 

Of course not.  

It takes years of practice, focused, attentive practice to master a subject.  But if you work daily, on small manageable tasks, you too can master what you're after. 

These 3 phases of task mastery we discussed will help you become better, faster.  

From the process phase to the craft phase and finally, the life phase, learning how to manage all three will help you. 

But you have to sit down and start.  That's the secret to any journey.

Get Your Free Ebook - Limited Time Only

Get Your Free Digital Download Of Mayonnaise and Other Stories

Shhhh...

I've got a secret, special deal for you. Click myBook.to/Mayonnaise  to get my collection of short stories, Mayonnaise and Other Stories FREE.

But it's only for three days. So you'll have to act fast.

Get Your Digital Copy Of Mayonnaise and Other Stories available on Amazon for FREE.

For three days only, you can get Mayonnaise and Other Stories from Amazon for FREE.

Starting Tuesday, July 28 and ending Thursday, July 30 at midnight the price for the collection of stories is FREE to you.


Just click on the image below to get to Amazon and download your copy.


 Mayonnaise and Other Stories

One More Thing...

You get three stories, priced at $1.99 for free.  But only if you act NOW.

In return I will only ask you one small favor...

Since you're getting these stories for free, would you please, please, please leave a review?

Reviews Are The Gold Standard 

All you have to do is click HERE to LEAVE A REVIEW

The review doesn't have to be much, just a simple rating - 5 stars would be awesome - and a brief sentence or two about the stories.

That's it and it'll go a LOOONNG way toward helping me with Amazon.

Get The Kindle Reader App

Kindle and Amazon have the largest selection of books on the planet.  I was going to make a superlative statement like in the universe, but that place is pretty freaking huge, so there may be a larger selection of books available, but none that I'm aware of...

If you don't have a Kindle, you can still read ebooks from Amazon on the Kindle Free App.

You can download the Kindle Free App for iPhones, Mac, and iPad


Kindle Reader App - It's Free! Just Click the Image to download your free app.

If you're one of those "Other" people that aren't in the Apple sphere of influence - you can download the Kindle Reader App for free as well.

Get The Kindle Reader App Free for PC and Android Devices


Thanks!  And remember, this is a special 3-day promotion, and after midnight Thursday July 30, the price goes back to $1.99.

What Does Joe Strummer, My Short Stories And Kindle Publishing Have In Common?

How To Position Your Self and Your Stories More Effectively

In this post, we'll be discussing the largest vacuum of a self-pubslihed writer's life - marketing.

We'll discuss the stories already released on Amazon, the promotions in place and what the strategy moving forward is.

It's one of the most difficult aspects that any creative or productive person has.  It's a challenge to produce the story, art, song or merchandise, but then getting it out into the world is an even bigger struggle.

In this post, we'll focus on a strategy that I've read about many times over from some well regarded brains in the self-publishing sphere.  Some of these ideas are directly from the guys at Self-Publishing Podcast and Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn.

Basically they claim that you need to build a larger and larger catalog to help your overall promotion strategy and later on in this post we'll discuss how that works in greater detail.

It's Not The Story That's Most Difficult

Obviously getting the story-draft written down presents a huge problem, even for the most accomplished writer, getting started can be overwhelming.

The Dangers Of The Blank Page

Staring at a blank page is just a daunting, scary task.  If it wasn't that scary, more people would write!

As I already said for any writer getting started is one large hurdle.  Like ten-feet high type of hurdle.

Then you have to find cover art, where to get the stories to readers and ways to promote them.

It's been said that for a self-pubslihed writer, it's 20% writing and 80% promotion.

My Short Story Updates

On Amazon I've a few stories available through Kindle Publishing in their store right now.

My strategy is and has been, to promote one for a month as I release more stories, then promote another one while working on new manuscripts.  Right now on Amazon there is two stand-alone stories, "The Ballad of John Walker" and "It's Not The Things We Say".  Also, there's a collection of more humorous, fun stories under the collection "Mayonnaise and Other Stories".

Some of you know about my short story "The Ballad of John Walker." Published mid-June 2015, the story has gained some traction in the last month and could stand to gain a little more in the coming months.



 The Ballad of John Walker - get your digital copy by clicking the picture!




What you don't know is I owe you all a full-hearted thank you for helping get it moving on up in Kindle Short Reads for Suspense and Thrillers. That's awesome and helps a ton!

For those of you that don't know about it, it's a short read that examines the dangers of living in a society ruled by surveillance and paranoia.


Another title that's out takes a more fun approach. A more humorous take, "Mayonnaise and Other Stories" is a mostly made up  account of living in the world today.  From the eyes of a ambitious child hell-bent on getting a pack of gum; to the power of OCD and the irony of judgement; to the follies of a delusional teen athlete.


And just released there is the short story, "It's Not The Things We Say".  An intense look at the power that miscommunication can take within a relationship. Whether its a child and parent, a boyfriend and girlfriend or any schism between loved ones, often it's not what we say as much as how we listen to each other.


So to wrap up, that's three short stories on Amazon that've been published to date.  The promotional efforts so far have been dedicated to the first short story, The Ballad of John Walker and it's been pretty labor intensive thus far.

Places it's been promoted so far:

• This blog
• Amazon's Kindle Publishing marketplace 
• Facebook, including Facebook ads (not a great R.O.I. and Facebook Groups)
• Google Plus Communities
• Daily Free Ebooks (yes, even though it's $0.99, it can still be listed on directories such as DFE)
• Good Reads
• Just Kindle Books (A small price to publish and promote)
• KUFADS - a British based ebook promotion service (a small price for a week's promotion)

So far the results have been a trickle but with a first book, a short fiction piece no-less, it's not to be a huge seller, but a starting point for a broader platform.

Moving forward, there will be lighter promotions on this story and more attention pushed to the "Mayonnaise" collection and "It's Not The Things We Say".

Gaining Momentum Is Hard, Maintaining Momentum Can Be Just As Hard

Why Newton Got It Wrong

Newton claimed that an object in motion tended to stay in motion unless some external force was applied to stop it.  Well that may be true for objects, but for most writers, once you get going, you reach a point where stopping is dangerously seductive - and the restart is almost impossible. 

After writing a story, the last thing I want to do is sit down and begin the editing process, much less begin a new story.

I'm fairly certain that's true for any artist or producer.  Build something, spend all that energy and emotion to create something and you're spent.  There's limits to the process.

Athletes are the same way.  There's only so much energy they have to spend.  That's why the build up their stamina over time and train in specific, detailed tasks to increase their endurance and improve stamina.

One technique to do this is called the Pomodoro Technique and I've written about how to utilize it to increase your productivity in a former post you can read HERE.

How does that work with marketing you wonder?  Well there's plenty of evidence that the more titles you publish, the easier it is for people, and fans, to find you.

What that means is that while it's no fun to turn around and work on the next story, or the next idea, it's critical for you to help build an audience.

Think about you favorite band.

Chances are, if they've been around for a while they have a number of songs and records out there.  They may be official releases, bootlegs, any thing that keeps you engaged and interested.  If they don't have material to release, they tour, play live shows to keep them in your minds.

With that in mind, I have three, potentially four more stories to release between here and September.

There's a working title that I'm working on through Wattpad, an online forum for authors and hope to garner some keen insights about the story while it's on that platform.

It's still an early draft, but you can see it on Wattpad under the working title "A Fine Day For A Swim".



 
Get the early draft "A Fine Day For A Swim" on Wattpad by clicking the link above.

The Goal Is To Get To The Finish Line In One Piece

This whole process is about writing a number of short stories to build a platform for something I'm working on next.  It will be a departure from the short story line I've been working on right now and one that still needs to be more fully developed, but this whole process has been to build a platform to move forward from.

I'll be releasing "A Fine Day For A Swim" in mid-August.  With its release there's an accompanying story "The Palm" that will be included with either another story in production or as a potential stand-alone story as well.

Finally there's two other stories that are being fleshed out right now.  One is under the working title "Shooter" and the other is without a title but would be the longest story included in the summer release calendar.

The Future Is Unwritten

So the final tally is two stand-alone short stories and 1 collection of stories already released with promotion being focused on just the first one so far. That first story being "The Ballad of john Walker", with "It's Not The Things We Say" being the other stand-alone.  "Mayonnaise and Other Stories" being the collection, with all three of them being available on the Amazon platform for the next 90 days in exclusivity, after which they'll be placed on a couple other ebook platforms and promoted in different ways.

"A Fine Day For A Swim" is next in the pipeline for release, and will be available in about a month, after some tweaks and edits.

It's sister story, "The Palm" will be released at the same time and will be either a stand-alone story, or included with "Shooter", depending on how things are shaping up at that time.

The last two stories in the plan will will out a couple weeks to a month after "A Fine Day For A Swim", placing the overall short story count at 6 to 7 stories.

Once that's over with, the gears are switching to a new program, and I'll be discussing that down the road after it's more fleshed out with a more clear strategy and timeline.

In conclusion, the heading to this section of the post is about the marketing strategy, or any strategy you set in to motion.

One of my favorite song writers was Joe Strummer, lead singer and writer for the seminal British Punk band - The Clash.

Along with songs that dealt with changing the political spectrum for the betterment of the working class, he wrote anthemic lines like "Let Fury Have The Hour, Anger Can Be Power, If You Know How To Use It".

But one of his greatest sayings was "The Future Is Unwritten".

Just the promise and hope in that line is enough for me to believe in the optimism in tomorrow.  And while 80% of my time is devoted to marketing short stories that, in and of themselves, are difficult to promote and sell, this line reminds me that tomorrow is a new day.

And that philosophy goes toward your marketing campaign as well.  Get your stuff out there and don't be afraid to make changes.

If something is working, go all in.  If something isn't working, then change tactics and direction.  And keep building up your catalog.  The more you do, the greater chance it can catch on with your audience.

You never know about tomorrow, the future is unwritten.

I Need Your Help With Something....

You Are The Most Important Factor With My Kindle Publishing Journey

Have You Heard - My Short Story The Ballad Of John Walker Is Out Now!  

It wasn't too long ago that I published the short story "The Ballad of John Walker" through Kindle Publishing.

June 16th, 2015 to be exact.  Right away it surged to the top of new releases, and since that point it's slowed down. 

The main reason?  Not enough reviews.

   Get your copy and leave a review!

Leave A Review On Amazon And I'll Email You A Free Beta-Version Of A New Story! 

First, thanks to everyone who picked up a copy!  Don't worry - if you want to grab a copy you can get it by clicking HERE.

Now what I need are Amazon reviews.  Every review is important for Amazon to recommend this story and future titles.  Amazon has a "bot" that looks for reviews as a way to value the titles on their bookshelves so it really helps my profile in the eyes of the Amazon bot. 

Here's what I need you to do: 

After picking up the story "The Ballad of John Walker" once you finish it, you'll be asked on the last page to leave a review.  

The more stars I get the higher that Amazon views the story.  It will ask you for a headline and quick worded statement.  

To make it easier for you, here's a suggestion of what to write: 

A short evocative read that will resonate with you long after you finish.   A suspense thriller that will shock you and make you consider the dangers of a surveillance state. This kindle short reads as a fast-paced mystery, thriller and suspense all in one! 

Or you can write something like this:

A gritty suspense thriller, The Ballad of John Walker will make you think long and hard about living in the modern security state.  What would you do if everything you had was taking away from you in an instant?  This short kindle reads like a answer to this what-if and serves as a clarion call for us all.

It'll take less than a couple minutes and will go a LONG way toward how the story gets seen by Amazon, their search engine and how it will rank with Kindle Publishing.

Leave A Review Get A Gift For YOU 

Finally to entice you even more, if you leave a review, shoot me a quick private message at my personal email address and I'll send you an early pre-release version PDF of my new short story "A Fine Day For A Swim" before I publish it! 

This short story won't be out until sometime in late August, so you get to be the first readers and FOR FREE! 

P.S. as a bonus, look for my new ebook, Mayonnaise and Other Stories - for only $1.99 reduced for a limited time from $2.99.

Get The Ballad of John Walker Now

Get Your Copy Of Mayonnaise and Other Stories Here (For a reduced price of $1.99 now)

Kindle Publishing: How You Can Get Started

Kindle Publishing For Self-Starters

In this post, I'm going to discuss some of the process that you need to getting your own stuff out into the world with Kindle Publishing.

There's a NY Times article I read recently quotes a small Michigan Publisher that claims over 81% of Americans say they have a book in them.  

Most of us will never write one, much less publish it.

But don't let the doubts or "experts" get you down.

Do You Have A Book In You?  

You probably do.

If you've ever thought to yourself, "If only so and so knew this, it'd be..." or maybe you have a special knowledge and experience in something unique, or perhaps you have tips on how to improve something, than you DO have a book in you.

Even if you've just daydreamed what it'd be like to be a princess or king in some faraway fantasy (except, of course, if you really are a king or princess) than yes you do have a book to write.

With Kindle Publishing, fulfilling your dream of writing a book and seeing it published is a lot easier than you think.

You just need to get started.

With ebooks, getting your stuff out into the world is no longer isolated to just a chosen few.

But there are a few things you need to know before you try use Amazon's Kindle Publishing to self-publish.

Do You Leap, Or Do You Look Before You Leap?

Are you someone who is the first to try something?  The first one to try out a new restaurant?

Perhaps you wake up every day, energetic and need to burn off some energy.

Or are you someone who likes to plan out every activity, every task in meticulous detail.  Perhaps you like to watch others, make mental notes about what works and what doesn't for them.

Well, I'm a little of both.  I like to take risks, but I also like to learn something in great detail before I jump.  I wouldn't go skydiving without first learning how to pack my parachute, and then personally pack it.

Actually, I probably wouldn't go skydiving.  Anyone that knows me also knows how much I "like" flying.

Whether you're someone who likes the challenge of learning on the go, or someone interested in all the details and enjoys watching sausage be made, then let me share with you some of the finer points of my process with writing and publishing my short stories through Amazon's KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

5 Basic Strategies For Getting Your Words Published Through Amazon's KDP Program

Straight from the horse's mouth of Amazon themselves, here some basic tips for kindle publishing that I'll be following (and wanted to share with you here):

1. Create Compelling Content:  Obviously writing something that readers would be interested in is a priority.  For non-fiction do some research (more on that type of research later) and find a problem that hasn't been addressed yet.  Or if it's something really competitive, find a way to spin information in your own way and make it interesting.  Tell a story that offers the problem for the audience and show them some tools to help solve that hurdle. 
2. Editing Means Reducing - Wash, Rinse and Repeat: Stephen King wrote in his book "On Writing" that the edit process should reduce the overall length of your writing by 10%.  So cut out an unnecessary section or passive terms. 
3. Create An Awesome Cover: Don't settle for trying to create a book cover for yourself.  People DO judge a book by its cover, so make it sleek, professional and polished. 
4. Tease Your Potential Reader And Describe Your Book To Improve Its Desirability: Book details offer an insight, a "sneak-peek" into your book, helps the reader get an idea of what its all about, and why they may want it. Do this well and advertising becomes much, much easier.
5. Promote Your Book:  Use ads, promote on social media including Facebook and Twitter to get the message out about your book launch. 

These are some of the finer points that will be the editing and marketing side of the process.  

These other suggestions I'll be exploring soon, and share how I develop my strategy as I get closer to launch.

If you ever have had a dream of writing your own book and worried that getting it published was one thing holding you back, it's much easier to launch your book than you think.  Especially with how popular the format of ebooks has become, it's simple.  

The traditional barriers that would have kept you from getting your thoughts, your words, your ideas out to the world are no longer that powerful of blocks.

There's a lot more that goes into the process and I'll be writing on that shortly, but don't let that discourage you.

You DO have a book in you and self-publishing through Kindle Publishing makes getting your words out into the world. 

You just need to get started writing.

Why Writers Should Think More Like Athletes To Meet Your Kindle Publishing Goal

Life Won't Help You With Your Kindle Publishing Goals

So Stop Waiting For It To Help

The greatest challenge to this adventure as a writer is just sitting down and producing.

I'm sure you understand.

Life has a way of throwing obstacles, hurdles and challenges at us.  This is a test for each of us.

One we MUST overcome.

It's true that the greater the challenge, the greater the importance to finish.

And that's true whether your challenge is to write kindle books, traditional books or other forms of self-publishing.

Why Writers Should Play Like A Champion

Think like an athlete.

They train hours upon hours.

They break down every muscle group, they grind to the point of fatigue and beyond.

They work to reach a level of failure.

They regroup, and strive for failure again.

But they know, that no matter how much they fail, they'll get back up and try again.

Why?

They have a passion to improve.

They understand that while failure can break them down, muscle tissue needs to tear in order to strengthen itself.

So they run an extra mile.  Or swim another set.  They lift another repetition at the end of a set.

With the knowledge that the process is bringing them one step closer to mastery.

The Challenge Is In Ourselves

We all have the same number of days in a week, and the same number of hours in a day.

The challange then is how we use our resources, our strengths, in those hours.

Are you willing to set aside the time necessary for what you want?  Or are you looking for reasons, for excuses, as to why you haven't done what you wanted to achieve?

Like an athlete, who schedules a time everyday to train, you must be disciplined at setting aside a block of time for what you want to achieve.

Writers Are Poor With Time Management Skills

Time management is a skill.

Like shooting a basketball or hitting a golf ball.  It must be honed daily, or the skills weaken.

So the challenge is setting aside some time everyday and working on your craft.  It doesn't have to be a big block of time.

If your goal is to write kindle books or some other type of book, time management skills are critical.

Stephen King has talked about how as an unknown writer, he would use his lunch break to work on his novel.

That novel became "Carrie".

Time Management And The Pomodoro Technique

Start small and build your creative stamina up over time.

Short, focused bursts of creativity with a managed time break is a good tip to help you achieve your goals.

This time management technique is known as the Pomodoro Technique.

Detailed in the early 90's the Pomodoro Technique is a strategy of beaking down a set of tasks into intervals of 20-25 minutes with a 5+ minute break from that activity.

You can apply this tactic in the early morning, late afternoon, or at night.  You can work in smaller increments, if necessary.

The task of writing can be difficult.

The challenge then is sitting down and writing.

Edit later.  But sit down and write.

If your goal of writing kindle books or other traditional publishing mediums is really important to you, you need to just write.

If time management is an issue, ask your self what 20 minutes you have free.

What can you, like Stephen King, do while on your lunch hour? How about before going to bed at night?

What time do you have to allow you to move one step closer than you started.

Marathon runners know not to look at how far they have to run, they focus their energy on putting one foot in front of the other.

Before long, they can't see the starting line but know they're that much closer to finish.