#i have to keep stopping myself from going on 2 hour research tangents on what exactly byakkos fit is

[adanaac]

love to do wiki work. hate doing it. love hating it. hate loving it.

(my fun little js project that im way too proud of. i love to click buttons)

[thedenofravenpuff]

Updates on the Health Department

Been a while since I last updated on how things are going.

Last year my pain and fatigue was finally explained with the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a disturbance in the nervous system that still hasn’t been fully explained to this day, on what it comes of.

I was written up to see an expert, but was half a year’s wait for my appointment. Last week I finally get to meet the specialist and put under an hour of interview to better pinpoint the details on my specific case.

Great doctor, was very professional but also very engaged and caring through the whole talk, and even praised me for already doing my own research and thoughts on my condition to best answer her questions, so the interview didn’t had to go over time to be completed.

After that was an hour of lecturing me about the conclusion from the interview, on the details for my case of fibromyalgia specifically. She was very thorough and explained in great detail which direction we would be going for treatment and why, including telling me what would not be done and why.

Different options were given for me to consider and then we’ll work from there.

New waiting lists to see a physiotherapist and a psychologist, both specialized in the field of BDS (Bodily Distress Syndrome) that’s the umbrella that covers things like fibromyalgia too.

A strict description of how to change my daily life and how long I’m to expect to go as soft as possible with hope that my body will recover enough to start improving again. Aim is to keep me working at my job still, but with more focus on my limits than what I’ve managed so far.

Gonna talk to my GP to get on part time sick leave, to cut my daily hours without losing my full wage, to see less everyday at work might keep me active without suffering my the lash back of my body collapsing from fatigue. If it works we’ll have a good case to convince the state to put me on the flexjob program, instead of sick leave, to make it more easy for my workplace to work around.

Aim is to cut down my full sick days by keep my active enough while rested more than I usually allow myself. And remove the stress from worrying about my job security. Denmark is very focused on keeping people with chronic illness or handicaps on the job market because it shows a better effect on the health in the long run, rather than just leave people with conditions stuck at home doing nothing.

I’m told that I should expect the full course of treatment to take at least 1-2 years if done right. 50% usually feel a better life quality and 25% even gets better to meet the normal for those not dealing with chronic illness. That’ll be the aim, joining those numbers and get a good life going. Maybe even feel cured one day, just from balancing my body right.

But only time will tell, only just started. And it’s going to be slow. I had already slowed down but the specialist made it clear I hadn’t slowed down enough, why I kept having more and more sickdays.

I’ve sat down with my boss at work to insure my workplace are informed on what my needs are and what tools they’ll have access to too, to not suffer a loss from my inability to work full time. Luckily he’s made it very clear that the company recognizes they rather keep me than let me go for inconvenience. I’m one of the most experienced member of our department with the most training in our specific field, and the one with most patience to train up new workers. So that’s a nice boost to know they still see me as valuable enough to keep.

Seeing me taken aside to talk to the boss, a coworker afterwards all worried took me aside to ask if it had been a talk about getting fired. That absolute relief on his face when I assured it was the other way around, me having a talk on the conditions to keep me working, was heart warming. To know boss and coworkers alike just want to keep me even if I can’t keep up the pace anymore that I used to.

Very welcome boosts to my self esteem and positive thinking, which I’ll need to continue battling this illness. Is not going to turn over night, I have a battle ahead of me of just trying to rewire my own way of thinking to stop pushing myself too hard.

I just hope to get enough energy back that I can draw more consistently again. Just these last couple of days I’ve had enough fatigue to make it too difficult to hold a pencil steady long enough to draw a proper piece. I’m very eager whenever I have energy long enough to draw a full piece, as art as my hobby means so much to me.

Why I still don’t open for commissions to new clients, it would just make me stress myself unnecessarily if I can’t get to the wanted productivity.

But enough rambling for now, already written a wall of text as is.

Been a long journey with still plenty more ahead of me to come.

Thanks for getting this far in this long tangent on my health X3;

[norcalbruja]

Spirit world non-updates: Executive dysfunction, yay

All right, so about the whole “I need a few days to actually TELL THE SPIRITS I NEED TO LEAVE FOR X AMOUNT OF TIME:” In addition to my lack of boundaries, the memes for autism/adhd constantly talk about being unable to start things and that’s something I definitely have issues with.

Like, this would only be one or two steps for most people: “a) Tell the spirits ‘do not disturb’ and b) don’t do anything for X time,” but for me it’s a bunch of smaller steps:

1) Break through or climb the metaphorical wall that’s in my way for non-routine tasks (plus some of the “routine tasks that I don’t like”). Usually it works if I attach the task to something that I DO like, so I basically soften myself up into “doing stuff” mode. Example: “okay, play some Red Dead Online or Stardew Valley for an hour, and THEN figure out when start my break.”

2) decide on a date for starting / stopping the break, and mark it on my calendar so it’s official.

3) metaphorically sit down with the spirits and tell them that I’m not talking to them from X day to Y day.

4) remind myself to continue not-talking to them, because I lack boundaries AND I’m forgetful as fuck.

Dionysus actually tried to initiate the break on his own, either last night or the night before then, but I was like “WAAAIT, I NEED TO WRITE THIS DOWN SO I KNOW YOU LEFT TODAY!” and he just chuckled and went “oh boy, I skipped too far ahead.”

When I mentioned the Discord group’s concerns that my half-baked poetry drafts were offending the gods, Dionysus also went on a... Rant(TM).

He technically agreed with me, but what he FOCUSED on was unexpected.

---

“Hang on, I keep quiet about Tagalog culture, but they think the art and insanity god is offended by a crazy girl’s rough-drafts? I KNOW how to tell fiction from reality! And crazy people are a LOT of my worshipers, so I’m PROBABLY used to dealing with folks who get the wrong ideas! Do they know how NICE you are with your blasphemy or hubris, whichever one they checked the dictionary for? I’d think ‘asking Ariadne, a woman, for permission to have a relationship with her husband’ or writing about how ‘a man talks about common interests with YOU, a woman,’ would disqualify you IMMEDIATELY from intentional harm or excessive boasting! Women didn’t get opinions in Ancient Greece! Men didn’t ask their wives for permission to boink someone else! If I was like my father or if I'd ruled men instead of spirits, I could have taken you as a war-bride, a concubine, ‘the farm-girl that His Majesty sleeps with,’ and that’s it! I wouldn’t ask EITHER of you how you fucking feel!

“And if however many years of research and the utmost bow-and-scrape politeness towards the gods is needed to avoid blasphemy or hubris, then what about all those Greek pagan bloggers, untainted by your pop-culture weirdness? Rick Riordan? The Xena and Hercules writers? Hollywood? If we haven’t wrecked enough of their lives to confirm that blasphemous writing or questionable god-spouse claims are badwrong and Must Be Punished, or at least we have the TIME to go smiting humans for that, then why would we be homing in on you, Miss Can’t Get A Break?!”

Keep in mind, dear readers, that I did not literally hear a long and intact monologue, even from the actual theatre god. He was stewing for a couple of days, and it dribbled in a few sentences at a time, most likely because the subject matter is... uncomfortable, to put it lightly.

As my poem denotes, Dionysus usually tells me I’m NOT crazy, so even his secondhand jabbing about other people who think so is unpleasant, and his tangent about Ancient Greece’s miserable treatment of women was, uh... very painful.

Look, Dionysus is not a COMPLETELY warm and fuzzy god, as his tendency to show up as Greek Anakin Skywalker shows, and he certainly has myths where his morality is questionable, but compared to the OTHER Greek gods (especially his father), his stories show him as remarkably compassionate towards women.

Also, new development: Dionysus often wears either the comedic or the tragic “theater mask” now. An oversized one that he could probably use as a breastplate, if he shifted it a couple feet lower. Think of “Kitty from Courage the Cowardly Dog” for the mask-to-person ratio.

I have seen his non-pop-culture form several times (curly brown/black hair, clean shaven, neon-blue eyes, very much a “younger version of Zeus”) and I definitely don’t die since it’s still a “don’t burn humans alive by accident” dilution of what he actually looks like, but, um... the mask is spooky, and I think going easier on his pop-culture filter and the sudden creepiness for good measure is to prove that, well, he’s not a figment of my imagination.

I wouldn’t think of THAT method to “distance myself” from a potential trickster pretending to be a god.

---

And one thing that struck me about the Discord group’s response to the Buwaya, is that they’re concerned about how she showed up AFTER my baby-step wards got set up. They were like, “some of your stuff doesn’t sound right, but we also have no idea why you’re clearly going through horrible shit like the demon-child births, or why the crocodile came up AFTER you started warding.”

And while I was trying to digest the stuff they were typing, I was just thinking, “well, that’s a problem. All I know is the obvious stuff like ‘I realllllly don’t like birthing demon-children, and literally all the other spirits try to help me remove / kill them asap once they’re out.’ Or ‘the crocodile is intimidating as fuck, but she is also helping enforce my boundaries and certainly not trying to eat me, plus she can dig out the demon-children in a much less traumatizing way than how they force themselves out.’”

Because yeah, one thing Lola mentioned is that the demon-children make their expulsion/births as unnecessarily painful as possible, because spirit-world or not, that’s going to make my monkey-brain go “NOPE NOPE NOPE, THAT’S GONNA HURT,” and then I’m forced to keep them around.

As for "how can an entirely new crocodile-spirit can get through my wards against spirits with ill intent, even as awkward and barely-assertive as they are,” I have asked if Lola is the croc/dragon character I wrote about from The Crocodile God just in case.

She got highly offended that I’d worry about her being a liar OR not being “an actual spirit,” and in her words: “I got through your wards because I do not have ill intent! And I am not in your head! You ask the nuno who they are?! Your ancestors by spirit?! Anak, if I was pretending to be a crocodile this size, at my age, the real ones would come after me soon enough!”

And after the mess with me forgetting that ‘anito’ did not always have a clear-cut meaning of ‘a given people’s deity / pantheon,’ Lola was insistent on which use of ‘nuno' she meant, because sometimes it means ‘goblin / spirit,’ and other times it means ‘ancestor.’ 

So I was like, “Lola, they actually have good advice--I shouldn't be trusting random spirits RIGHT AWAY anymore.”

And she went, “NAPAKA BUWISIT. Of course they tell you good advice--speak properly, fix your writing, put up wards against strange spirits--but what they’re doing with it is making you afraid of everything! What use are all their classes if they do not recognize my people?! They say the words that ‘reptiles are guardians,’ ay, but they don't remember it when I come to you! I have not lied to you! I’m too old to take any character’s face! They can disbelieve your stories and blog and strange speech, that is their right, but then they think I’m lying or just in your head?! What lack of faith they have in the buwaya! What damage they do to you! It took my son five years to get you to look for Tagalog spirits, and now you’re worried that we’re all tricksters or thoughts in your head!”

And honestly, I did not like the reminders that I thought the Tagalog gods were dead for years, but Lola’s particular BRAND of affront just makes me feel strange, like how Dionysus mentioned how I can’t be hubristic for my poem because Fictional-Me cares about another woman’s feelings, and that bare minimum of “asking a married woman if she’s okay that I want a relationship with her husband” is leagues better than what happened in Ancient Greece, or even with his own family.

Lola’s angry, sure, but she’s also UPSET that the Discord group doesn’t think she’s real OR that she’s here to help. If I had to transcribe her remarks to me literally, it’s a constant stream of, “THEY DON’T EVEN BELIEVE ME?!” Like, she’s constantly griping about THEIR disbelief in HER, not just that I’m nervous myself.

So I went, “Well, how does the Water-Spirit fit in with everything? He lied about being Haik, but he also turns into a crocodile / dragon.”

She surprised me because... well, her energy shifted in an unexpected way. See, while the Water-Spirit himself is pretty used to me questioning him lately, Lola just felt upset on his behalf. She was giving off major "what did I just tell you, anak?" vibes.

But she also knows I’m confused as fuck right now, so she looked at him very intently, not even opening her mouth or anything, and he just flinched and automatically spilled out something like, “Please, Lola, I am a water-spirit, the same as your kind. I lied about my name, but not about everything, please, please, please.”

She didn’t seem QUITE satisfied with that, but she just shrugged and left him alone very pointedly.

[thisnerdsadventures]

2020 is over (finally)

So obviously 2020 was a bit of a shitshow and everyone is eagerly awaiting 2021 as if it will automatically grant us mercy because of the hellhole that 2020 was. Honestly - same, I really have such low expectations for 2021 that they make my 2020 resolutions seem like such high reaches.

Even though 2020 was ... 2020, I still feel like I did accomplish to some extent my goals for the year. I didn’t write them out on this blog, but I think broadly, my goals were

to work out more - I definitely think I did this on and off. Like many, I took up running, and actually stuck with it for a while, so I’m very happy about that. I think I’ll keep that as a goal for 2021, and probably every year, otherwise I won’t actually keep myself accountable on it lol

to follow through on things more - this was the high key most vague goal I have ever published on the internet omg, but I think this was in reference to how I always flake on my hobbies halfway through, like if I’m trying to learn a language or write music or actually learn photography skills. I think I did accomplish this - my Duolingo streak is up to 200 (though not in Mandarin smh) and I dropped my mixtape a few days ago. I think I would say I did a good job here.

advocate or something?????? - something something Amplify!!?!??!? there was definitely a very solid attempt here, and i have no idea what this was referring to anyways, but I definitely feel like this is a long-term goal for the next 5, 10 years regardless.

How the year went:

Honestly in the beginning of it all, I wasn’t feeling 2020 very much. There was a lot going on in my life, and I wasn’t feeling my classes. I think I just needed a bit of a shakeup. And then there was a shakeup, and I was like, “no, not that kind of shakeup.” And then we went home, and then I graduated from college, I interned at Google again, I started my MEng in Cambridge, had fun with my friends, got a full-time job for next year, went home again for the winter, and now we’re here.

For better or worse, the main theme of this year was definitely “reflection” -  a whole ton of it. With so much time at home, I had a lot of time to think and overthink everything in my life, past present and future. I thought about my friends from years past and why we didn’t talk anymore. I reflected a lot on my MIT years, how I wish I had made a couple key decisions very differently, and how that would’ve affected my present. I thought about all the things I should’ve done. I thought about who I was, and how I changed, and how it took me years to finally find a skin I was comfortable in. I thought about my current friends and whether they’d stick around. I thought really hard about how I treated other people and how they treated me, and whether that was ok. I journaled a lot, and read a lot of poetry to find answers, and failed to find them. I thought about whether I’d have friends in the future. I thought about whether people were supposed to feel alone in this world, or whether I’d find a home in New York, where I’m going next year.

And I changed a lot of my expectations from life - after some time, finally I started to expect less of myself in a time where getting things done is literally impossible sometimes. From other people, I expected less, and am unsure how to feel about reaching that conclusion, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. From life, I expected it to give me nothing and to throw everything bad possible in my way, because for a while, it seemed like that’s what it was trying to do. (That actually sounds really depressing, but it means that I started making the moves to make my life better on my own, and I don’t stop anymore to wait for the universe to magically make it happen.)

A lot of this reflection surrounded events in my life - finally, mentally letting go of people in the past (i.e. giving up on them lol), losing a friendship, feeling incredible loneliness and anxiety during the pandemic, failing to find fulfillment in my research. I wonder if COVID didn’t happen, if 2020 would’ve gotten better for me. I think a lot about how I was supposed to go to Europe, go to Michigan, go to New York, visit DC, Seattle, Chicago, etc. I think a lot about if COVID didn’t happen, would I still have the friends I had, would I still have made the friends I did, would my expectations of myself and others have changed in the ways they did? I don’t know. My mental health would probably not be in shambles though. I’d probably sleep easier at night. To be honest, I think a lot about this post, and I have no real, solid conclusions about 2020, it was a very rough year, and the only thing I can say is “I’m glad I’m alive, and that’s all the good I need to extract out of it.” 

But of course, there were some pretty key highlights that still happened, so I’ll just bullet that here

I interned at MSFT! Everyone was very very nice, though it fully cemented the fact that I absolutely do not want to do data analytics, ever

I took this negotiation class, which will likely be the peak class I took at MIT, which is fine tbh. Honestly wish I took more adventurous classes at MIT, but that’s a topic to dissect another day

I actually got published this year lol, first authored a paper, I sometimes forget about this [x]

I spent like literally 80 hours helping my friend campaign for the undergrad assoc election over 2 weeks, which was a really strange tangent in my life

I graduated!! from MIT!! What a dream <3 honestly still shocked they accepted me

I became the CTO of amplify, our nonprofit org

I interned at google cloud and absolutely rocked my internship project

I chaired for the alibaba committee for mitmunc china (virtual)

I started my Masters program

I joined this new club on campus, which is our campus chapter of the google developer student club, which is really just me refusing to actually ever leave google

I became an interviewer for MIT

I got like 6 job offers and accepted an offer to work at Stripe next year!

I dropped a mixtape lol and have some exciting stuff planned in a couple weeks re:music if things go through

Ah, I should have some goals for next year:

graduate with my Masters! can be from Killian, or from living room. I have an entire photo shoot with my friends for grad pics and you know I have an entire countdown waiting for the day I can post those pictures

continue to learn languages! because what else am i going to do with my time. maybe this will finally be the year i learn mandarin....... nope that’s setting the bar too high

read more! I should read more. I really should because it is embarrassing how little I read. I should really read more. I should have a goal of reading 12 books next year ! Yes, we are setting the goal low, but again, low expectations!

Actually, I also want to apply to some MBA programs, so I’m writing that down here to manifest it

See my friends again - I have pretty reasonable hopes that 2021 will let us at some point see each other, whether it be during the spring, the summer, the winter, maybe exactly one year from now on 12/31/21, idk, but it will happen! Manifest that

Make like 2 friends..... ok make one (1) new friend.,,,,,

Let go of old things from 2020 that I miss or wish would happen. Open myself to new things.

please, please 2021, be better lol

[honestly-weird-weirdly-honest]

The Things I Want To Do

Hello Internet :)

Be warned, this is going to be one of those obligatory This Is What I Want To Blog about posts...

I have wanted to start a blog for a while now, but I never really got to it because I am a horrible procrastinator and I really suck at selfdissipline... 

So to give myself the mental kick in the ass that I apparently need to get shit done, I am going to blog about my projects and hopefully create a sense of accountability for myself. And if I manage to entertain or inspie or educate someone along the way, that will absolutely make my day.

So without further ado, here ar the things you can expect to see coming up on this blog (this list has no particular order or meaning to ist order. All of these projects theoretically have equal meaning to me, none have priority over the others, and they absolutely do interlock with each other, so keep that in mind.)

Project Number 1: Getting healthy and losing weight

I realized a few years back (more like 10, but who's counting...sigh) that I kept gaining weight and my health and fitness was going down at the same time.

Needless to say, I was not happy with that, and I have tried to lose weight several times. Mostly it worked for a few weeks, then I sort of lost track and went back to my bad habits.

So right now, I weigh a shocking 100,5 kg (~221lbs) and have a body fat percentage of around 58%, and I would really like to get back to a normal weight and body fat Percentage, think like 58 kg (~128lbs) and maybe 15-20% body fat.

( I am not 100% sure about the body fat percentage, I'm still researching what a normal healthy range ist there, and there are a scary amount of contradicting numbers out there, so that might take a bit.)

I'll go into more depth on how I got where I am weight wise and what I plan to do about it, but aside from losing weight I really want to gain back my fitness. Wouldn't it be great not to feel like coughing up a lung after a short run to catch a bus...

So what I'll be doing is basically:

- trying to figure out how to lose weight effectively and permanently

- changing the way I eat, including the scary amount of caffeine I drink each day

- stop smoking

- working out to gain back my fitness

- and documenting the whole shebang for you to follow along. 

Project Number 2: Mental Health and depression

I have been struggling with depression for the past 7-8 years, and while I am currently Ok-ish, I want to start documenting my moods, educating people on depression and healthy coping mechanisms.

Now before someone goes on the "You need professional treatment"-tangent, I know, I have been in treatment, and I am currently trying to find a therapist to work with again.

But waitlists are a bitch, so this is sort of my version of self-help.

I don't really have a plan for how I want to go about this project yet, it might end up being some weird stream-of-consciousness word vomit type thing. I don't really know yet, and I don't want to overthink it, so I'll just let that happen as is goes.

Project number 3: Book reviews

I have always loved books. Literally always. I would beg my parents to read just one more story before bedtime, would fall asleep listening to cassettes or CDs with kids stories, I learned to read before I started first grade.

When I left school I didn't have much time for reading anymore, because my apprenticeship had me commuting between 3 cities, so I spent a lot of time driving around, working or studying for exams.

I started to listen to audiobooks on my 8+ hour drives and while doing necessary but annoying task like cleaning and such, and now I have a collection of about 290-ish titles in my audible library, and I am still buying 2-3 books a month.

In the past few years I have found a few great books, several good books, some utterly horrifyingly bad books, and to be honest, with most I didn't know which it was going to be, because a lot of reviews you can find online are not what I would like them to be, so I'll just write the reviews I would like to read when picking out my next book.

Project number 4: Costumes and Sewing

Now I am not a trained tailor, so some of my sewing projects are not as good as I would like them to be, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

I sew my own costumes for LARP, which is one of my big hobbies that I spend a lot of time on, either at cons or making costumes and props and so on.

So for this Project, you will be seeing walkthroughs of my projects, Work in Progress pictures, some of my already finished garments and possible adjustments of them as I hopefully use weight, and whatever else I think might fit in under this caption, like how I find a look that I like ( I mostly do fantasy costumes, but I like to incorporate some historical aspects) or my adventures in pattern drafting (which are wild, let me tell you).

So yeah, these are my 4 big projects that I will be keeping track of with this blog.

I have no idea what sort of schedule I will be able to keep, but I'll figure that out along the way.

So for now, if you are reading this, welcome to my brain, and I hope you've enjoyed my weird rambling introduction to what I want to do here, and I hope you'll stay for what comes next.

[cowardsanctuary]

Into the Object Hole:

Why is Nearly Every Object Show Flash-Animated?

(warning: a big, gigantic ramble generated by the mind of a comic artist)

I’m asking this question because I was bitten by the “Object Show” bug myself! It’s become a niche but easily replicated genre of its own within the animation community. Starting with the eponymous Battle For Dream Island (a show I think we’re all familiar with), we’ve seen many creators follow suit in the seemingly simple formula of having a bunch of inanimate objects participate in a game show-esque competition.

This is not to claim that Object Shows are unoriginal or overdone at this point: on the contrary. With the advent of resources for learning writing, animation, et cetera, I feel there’s a massive amount of potential that this community has, until now, mostly neglected. Battle for BFDI is, from what I can tell, reveling in its own, unique premise in the way it wants to. Inanimate Insanity’s second season has, as of late, recognized its potential to communicate a story about change and growth within individuals and the world around it. Unfortunately, I haven’t watched many shows, but I feel I’ve gotten my point across.

In another post, I asked about shows that didn’t use Flash, so i’m going to be responding to those before I embark on my tangent.

@apcwoc said:                                                                                                                            djshjksjhhdj most of the shows are probably done on flash because a lot of them were started when the og creators where much younger and flash is the easiest and most reliable to use when people start out animating            

that’s a common thread i’ve been finding!! one of the earliest object shows, Animation Island by legotd61, was created a year after BFDI—and at the time, legotd61 was 7 years old. granted the animation & visuals aren’t the most jaw-dropping thing in the world, but they were a kid so it’s automatically charming. in like, a kid sense.

@demi-gray suggested Modern Objects as a non-asset-using show!

Unfortunately, it still relies on assets for arguably the most important visuals: the characters! They do use the capabilities of Flash more extensively than other shows (that I know of), which makes watching the characters do their thing a lot more fun and engaging. The unique style compared to other shows definitely helps out a lot as well!

@payjayisgod said:                                                                                                                            i mean, i do frame-by-frame all the time, but for the sake of saving time i’ll be using assets for the bodies (gonna try doing everything else with frame-by-frame) in my own series i’ll be making with some friends ^^“ if you wanna see my animations my youtube is Icedog McMuffin :0c                            

PLEASE show me your show when you do it, because your animations are!!! really cute!!! also i’d LOVE to see stuff that takes the path of Modern Objects: with asset bodies, yes, but everything else is done according to the needs of the visuals. Use your medium to the best of its ability!

@dottival said:                                                                                                                            I once saw someone who Wanted to do frame-by-frame, but they never got their show off the ground. Mostly because they never really started??

you can’t just. tell me this. and not say who this person is (unless they want their identity under wraps, which i’ll respect)!!!! I’d love to ask them about their thought process towards their show, unless they didn’t actually plan much. I want to do some... ReSearch....

Speaking of planning, the thing that enchants and haunts me most about object shows is how much is going on behind the scenes. This is for any animated show, really, because as a bitty comic artist, I had no clue where to begin. I’ve started to draft and worldbuild for my own show, but I can’t help but wonder how much of it is done for other object shows.

(this is a thumbnail for a setting on my show!)

The medium, by default, demands attention on the characters at the forefront. The premise generates interest, the aesthetics (aren’t necessary but) lead viewers in, and the subject(s) of the show is what keeps audiences engaged. No matter what the creator(s) choose as the subject, they must make sure it’s polished to their best abilities, while ensuring other elements of their medium is properly balanced.

If you’re creating a character-driven narrative, for example, you’ll want to focus on the development of your characters. And, since it’s easiest to relate to concrete characters, that’s what novice content creators focus on developing as their content’s primary subject (and what professional content creators master).

However, the development of, say, a character is more often than not put into the hands of the viewers. How? Viewer participation: having the audience vote off who leaves a competition.

An interesting concept as, typically, animated shows require oodles of planning in order to convey the story it wants to the best of its ability. This makes the typical object show a challenge (forgive the word-play) to pull off properly, despite being deceptively simple enough of a feat on the surface. Character development can be volatile, as any character can be booted off (depending on how well you can predict a character getting eliminated).

Following this, the difficulty of creating a cohesive and well-written story through the Object Show format is very, very high. After all, you need to place time in your resources as wisely as possible, in order to avoid taking too much time on an end product you may not even like a little while later. The elimination of one character may upset a part or the entirety of the show’s plotline, if a creator is not careful.

Inanimate Insanity’s writing was able to excel at its greatest the moment viewer voting was dropped. One of the best shows in this genre (in my opinion), Modern Objects, isn’t even an object show: it’s formatted like a sitcom, and focuses primarily on characters and comedy. The one object show I was able to find that was primarily frame-by-frame animation (thank you, @bfb-basard!), Race to the Mansion of Tomorrow, is 100% script-driven; meaning, no viewer participation. This is the same for a few other shows as well, though I am not aware of them at this point of time.

(a snapshot of my animation process: this is for an animation of my OCs Milt and Malt, put to the audio of Big Bill Hell’s Cars.)

So why Flash? The answer is because it’s just easier. Not in the sense that the animators of these shows are lazier, but because animating in Flash saves time. Unless you’re putting all your stops into your show, or the contestants will always be present / aren’t quite as important to the narrative, you absolutely cannot afford to waste time and energy on things that can get thrown away later. Either that, or you don’t know where a character or a plotline or what have you will build up to, so you want to make sure whatever you do make isn’t wasted.

(Granted, I always feel there’s always time for weird plots to be resolved until it’s the very end, but retcons are also an option?)

You see this video? It’s a pretty simple animation of just a little softball walking around.

It took me 2 or 3 hours, give or take, to finish. Nearly every frame is unique, and I drew them all with my hands and my tablet, nothing else. All moving parts are either animated in 2′s or 1′s—the latter of which being 1/24th of a second. There are 35 drawn frames overall, stretched out onto 127 individual frames that constitute the entirety of the animation.

In other words, this clip is 5 seconds long.

If you want to finish an object show within your lifetime, let alone within 5 years, then Flash will be your best friend. It’s good, revolutionary technology that will make your life easier. With Flash, you don’t have to draw things over and over and focus instead on the motion, not the artwork.

Not only that, but being able to finish in a timely manner will help smaller content creators as, since we’re small and have small audiences, not everyone has a long enough attention span to hang onto you for decades. Certain shows like BFB and Inanimate Insanity have the advantage of popularity, so they can take their time with both the show and life (but they’re still rushed by their audience anyways so it’s a double-edged sword).

If you want to tell a story, consider what medium you tell it through wisely. Animation isn’t the only way, but I know for a fact that, if I get there, my show will be frame-by-frame. Why? Because I consider the artwork and the motion in my story just as important as my characters, if not moreso. You might not.

You can make it 3-d animated, claymation, traditionally animated, digitally animated, Flash, frame-by-frame, what have you. You can write your show as a novel, a script, a screenplay, a radio play, what have you. You can illustrate it as a children’s book, a comic, a graphic novel, or even an illustrated novel.

One of my favorite shows, up there with Modern Objects, is a comic by @swabsbloo​ called Escape From Abject Reality (which you can read on it’s own blog at @efarwebcomic​! Please read it! PLEASE READ IT! PLEASE!!! PL). Swabsbloo takes the premise of object shows and simultaneously puts it on its head while playing it straight: a bunch of objects wake up in an oddly absent field, only to figure out they’ve been trapped in a game show-themed death trap controlled (...?) by a(n apparent) sociopath named Snake Oil. You should read it. You should read their comic.

Hell, does your object show even need to be an object show? You can create stories that are beyond inanimate objects, or stories beyond competitions. Again, Modern Objects isn’t a competition show. You can base your characters off of objects as well, without needing to make them explicitly an object. The show I mentioned earlier, Race to the Mansion of Tomorrow, takes this latter approach for the most part!

As a storyteller, what I obsess about the most is storytelling. I love seeing all forms of it, and the potential that this community’s genre has astounds and fascinates me. The way in which we view the story doesn’t have to be important, but I find the ones I enjoy the most are the ones that utilize its medium to the best of its ability. It doesn’t have to be the best, it just needs to try.

So what do you want to try?

[coolrandomness]

My life with ADD

Let me start this off with something I read that I wish I could site a reference on, but it was so long ago that I don't have one. In order for our brains to make long-term memorial, or eyes have to be focused on what's in front of them. With that being said, I don't remember a lot of details about my childhood up until I was in high school. A lot of my memories come from stories I was told and the few times I was actually focused enough on to make a lasting memory. This is so bad that for most of my life I was convinced that my parents never had "the talk" with me until a was an adult and talked to my mom about it and she assured my that she talked to me and my sister at the same time. I just didn't (and honestly still don't) remember any of it.

To continue this, I can't tell you what age I was when I went on ADD medication or what it was, other than I don't think it was Ritalin but who knows I could be wrong, but that after that doctor appointment I started having my own memories of my life. Now, not all of them are perfect, in fact if my childhood best friend tells me we did something that I don't remember I will believe her over my own failed memories, but a lot of my life went from one big blur to less blur with a little bit of clarity thrown in and my brain slowing down enough for me to actually keep up with it. That was also when I found my first coping mechanism in music.

I went to a small privet school that heavily relied on self motivation, of which I had/barely have any of. I found out that the work I couldn't do in a 7 hour day stuck at one desk in a quiet classroom, I could do in my bedroom in 2 hours if I had some music on to help distract my brain a little. I started sneaking my mp3 player (yes I'm that old), into school and I was able to get most of my work done there instead of having to bring most of it all home.

My biggest breakthrough was when my family moved my sophomore year and I was aloud to go to a public school for the first time in my life. I went from having to try to be self motivated for everything to having a dedicated teacher for each subject having more concrete deadlines to meet. I was also able to get up and move every 45 minutes instead of having to be at the same desk all day every day and that was a huge deal for me. Plus being able to take an elective that I chose instead of only taking what was required was a huge help for me and gave me something to look forward to every day. I know that a lot of people high school was terrible, and don't get me wrong it wasn't a walk in the park for me, but it was one of the best things that could have happened for me. I had some amazing teachers who saw the potential that I honestly didn't even see in myself and pushed me to see with I was capable of. I was able to find who I really was without feeling like I had to fit in some little box and as far as my ADD goes, it's helped me get off of my meds.

I want to say it was half way through my sophomore year, but it might have been a little later, I was able to stop taking my meds. My parents saw the positive changes in me and they let me slowly stop taking my ADD medication. I know that I am extremely lucky to have the parents that I do and that they advocated for me and my health instead of seeing a "problem" and just replying on medication to "fix" me. When they saw that I didn't really need it anymore they monitored me slowly going off of it instead of just making me stay on it or letting me try to quit cold turkey.

I haven't taken any kind of meds for my ADD since I was in high school. I'm one of the ones who "grew out of it." Now I put that in quotes because I don't want it to sound like I don't still struggle with ADD, because I do, I personally have just found ways to deal with it that it doesn't effect me like it did when I was a kid. I still have a hard time focusing and have to make a conscious effort to pay attention to conversations and things happening around me. I will go from being hipper focused on a hobby to not touching it for months at a time. If I sit down to do anything that requires my attention I have music playing in the background just so I'm not sitting in silence because I know my brain will be distracted by every tiny sound that is made around me. I will go off on a million different tangents while trying to tell a story just to explain every bit of background history just to get lost in my own thought process and forget what the original point was. I have to have something to fidget with or chew on at all times or I will bite my nails, sometimes until they are infected, just to keep myself busy. My emotions hit me very hard, I can't just lighting feel something. I'm either all in or all out, there's not really a middle ground for me and because of that I know that I'm at risk for depression so I have to work very hard to keep myself from spiraling into that. I have nights that I just can't sleep. Sometimes it's my own fault and I drank something with to much caffeine to late in the day when I shouldn't have and sometimes it's simply because my mind is going a million miles a minute or won't let me get rest, much like tonight. I have little ticks that help me release pent up energy that I hid so well that I had to point them out to my best friends. I found enough ways to deal with my ADD that even the person I work with the closest with thought I was kidding with I said I had ADD and had to hear it from my mom (who I also work with) before she realized it wasn't just a joke.

Having ADD isn't something that I say jokingly or lightly because on top of all of this, I hate when people use it as an exuse for not being able to to something or to unnecessarily medicate a child. Yes there are some kids that need it. I was absolutely one of them, but sometimes parents need to realize that they're kids are just being kids. My honest goal out of this isn't for pity or for someone to focus on that last line (if anyone even made it this far) and think I'm suddenly shaming parents, because that's not my goal. My goal was to put my personal story out there and to show that there are amazing parents out there like mine who are trying to advocate for their children to help them have a childhood that they will love and remember. My hope is that every child who has to be on ADD meds will grow out of it, but I know that's not realistic. Some people will never find all the coping mechanisms that work for them like I did and be able to stop medication, and that's ok. As long as they are able to live their best life, that's all I care about.

I know this is not full of scientific research and statistics to back up all I'm saying, just know that it all came from the heart, and a sleepless night where my brain wouldn't let me sleep and was just like "hey, you should tell this to all of the internet" (lol). I'm not sure that this will even help anyone, but if it even gives one person clarity about what having ADD is like, then it's worth it. Thank you to anyone who actually read this all the way to the end, honestly I'm not sure if I have enough attention span to have stuck this out myself.

[thehollowprince]

Hey, it’s the “coding” anon here and honestly that answer to my question was excellent and the exact reason I come to your blog. I would absolutely love to hear you go on about the fetishization of m/m relationships!

This has been sitting in my inbox for over a week, and I want to apologize. I'm sorry for taking so long to get to this one, but I'm overworked at the moment. I've been pulling 60+ hour work weeks, by myself and I haven't had off since the first of December, so I'm a little tired. But I'm here and I'm ready to murder this bitch of a subject.

For starters, and for context, in case anyone who sees this doesn't follow my blog or, if you do and don't really pay attention, I am a gay man, so a lot of this comes from my own personal experience.

Now, onward my fandom soldiers.

M|M Fetishization & Objectification

I've only been super active within fandom spaces for the last couple of years. Before that, I just scrolled through Tumblr and reblogged gifsets and fluffy headcanons and whatnot, but even then I noticed a trend in fandoms that made me uncomfortable. That trend was the overabundance of gay men (chatacters) in fandom works, especially when there either weren't any gay men in that show or book or whatever.

I'm not at all saying we need less of that. I want and need more gay characters in the things I watch and read. That's actually one of the criteria I look for before I start a new show, or a book series or comics. I want to see myself represented in the media I consume, even if it is only this one tiny piece of who I am. But the problem for me arose when I saw all these fan works and headcanons and gifsets and thesis length metas about gay or bi male characters that were neither of those things in their original source material.

The biggest examples of this occured in fairly popular shows that I loved at one point, but do to a combination of bad writing and then the horrible fandom, drove me to actively dislike and avoid them. And that's always a sad thing, when you end up losing the love you had for something because others just won't let you enjoy it as it is.

Those two examples are Teen Wolf and Supernatural.

For years I watched people go on and on and on and on about Stiles Stilinski and Dean Winchester and how they were bisexual and so on and so forth.

There's nothing wrong with headcanoning a character as gay or bisexual, especially when those characters are severely lacking on screen and on paper. The problem arose when the fandom at large started to ignore the ACTUAL gay or bisexual characters that are in these shows and focus solely on their headcanons as the only representation in the show.

To start with Teen Wolf, we had, in the first season, an openly gay character that everybody in the school loved, that being Danny Mahealani. This character was introduced as gay from the very start, but oddly enough, there is almost no large fandom meta or fics or anything about him. In fact, a lot of his traits and qualities ended up transferred to Stiles, such as his intelligence and overall popularity. Hell, even Danny's attraction to Derek was stolen and transferred to him. These aren't things that Stiles is overall known for in the actual canon. He's clumsy and socially awkward and on the outskirts of the school like Scott (the main character) and has been obsessed (to the point of being considered a stalker) with one girl since elementary school, but somehow, in fandom, Stiles is suddenly the genius polyglot queer with severe depression who has a crush on the broody muscular werewolf who just wants somebody to love him.

Fandom created this portrayal of the character that didn't exist anywhere in the fandom except for his appearance. The reason I saw behind this was twofold. 1: fangirls (fandom is mostly female) want to see two "hot" guys kiss and get it on because they get off to it, much in the same way that straight men get off to lesbian porn. 2: Stiles (or any of these headcanoned characters) becomes a sort of self insert.

What I mean by that second one is that women and girls find a male character that's not "too masculine", usually kind of gangly or skinny, somewhat on the effeminate side. Someone that they can project their ideas and insecurities and so forth onto so that they can that pursue that relationship with the hunky manly man that they want to bang.

You may be asking yourself, "Why don't they just use one of the female characters as a self insert?" and I'm here to tell you that I have neither the time nor the experience to go into detail about internalized misogyny and how effects the way women do almost everything, even watching and interpreting their media.

But the reason they chose the male character is that, years ago, during the dark days of FF.net there was a lot of self insert OCs that infiltrated almost every level of fanfiction. Which caused the fandom gatekeepers to rear out of their hibernation and just shame anyone who tried to introduce an Original Character to this already beautiful world and ruin it with their lusts. Thus the OCs slowly disappeared and identifying with the male sidekick was born. And this is generally where we get the whole "my smol gay son!" bullshit. (side note: please keep in mind that 75% of shows are male characters and their problems, which is another cause for female fans to identify solely with men.)

So, for years, I watched Danny, and then his boyfriend Ethan, being shoved aside in fandom spaces so that the fans could focus Sterek (Stiles and Derek) despite the fact that both characters were stared to be heterosexual and that, on screen, they expressed nothing but mutual dislike for one another, if not outright hatred. This got so bad that Sterek, the crack ship whose members had no romantic or sexual interactions whatsoever, managed to beat (by a very large margin) actual gay ships from both this show and others in a fan poll. It got even worse when the character of Danny was written off the show (with no explanation) and we were introduced to the character of Mason.

Mason Hewitt was everything that fandom!Stiles was. He was smart and funny and openly gay and crushing on a hot werewolf. He even did the research that the fandom loved to attribute to Stiles, literally everything that the fandom had Stiles doing in fanon, but somehow the love for him (Mason) wasn't that big of a note in the fandom. I mean, Mason was even a major plot point of season five and the pack's mission to stop the Beast, but i heard nothing but cricket chirps from the fandom.

You'd think that after Stiles was written out of the show for the last season that maybe Mason will get some love now, right?

Wrong!

I didn't think it was possible to get any worse, but the fandom proved me wrong. Because instead of focusing all their pent up energy on Mason and his boyfriend, Corey, who had a number of cute moments in that final season, these fans focused on another crack ship that had no basis anywhere except in their fantasies. That ship being Thiam, which is based, once again, around two characters who actively dislike, if not outright hate, each other and even physically assault one another. But no, that apparently is a display of affection by someone who is emotionally stunted and just needs love to blossom and be his true self.

You notice how often the fetishization of homosexuality (even if only imagined) intersects with woobification?

You'll notice, if you look at Danny and Mason, that they're both POC, with Danny being brown (Hawai'ian) and Mason being black. Now, as I've said before on this blog multiple times, I am the Whittest White Man to ever White, so I don't have any qualifications to talk about fandom racism, so I'm just going to leave that little nugget there for you to think about and interpret how you will.

Moving on to Supernatural...

Before we start with this one, understand that I have not watched this show outside of an episode here and there since season eight, because I realized that no, this show wasn't going to get any better, so if any of this is contradictory to what has happened over the past six seasons (god, this show needs to die!) I do apologize.

Dean Winchester... I never really liked this character, especially as the show went on and I started to actively dislike and then, hate him. So it was annoying not being able to go into any aspect of the Supernatural fandom without coming across a post about Dean and his issues or his Bi sexiness or how his brother was mean to him.

Also, people, understand that this wasn't a new revelation for me. My dislike for Dean and the fandom's obsession with making him bisexual just so they could hook him up with Cas wasn't an overnight decision. I was there...

I was there at the Beginning, when this show first aired, when the ONLY constant characters on this show were Sam and Dean. I endured the hellfire that was Wincest and its infection of almost the entire fandom. Like, that right there, that was one of the most extreme cases of m|m fetishization I've ever seen, because the fandom needed to get off to two guys being together so badly that they turned to actual brothers for want of any other male character.

That's why Destiel immediately became so popular, because here was another guy that we saw with semi regularity that wasn't rated to the Winchesters, obviously they were meant to ship them.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "I thought this bitch was going to talk about gay fetishization, not his dislike for one character?" to which I'll just say I very easily go off tangent. But all of that is relevant because, come one of these later seasons, there was a scene where Dean was at a bar and the (male) bartender hit on him, and he didn't react negatively or homophobic.

Oh, my God, I watched my dash and the tags explode in post after post, meta after meta, about how Bi Dean was canon confirmed! Now he and Cas will HAVE to be together, because its canon that Dean likes guys. and Cas is an angel, who doesn't follow human sexual limitations, and... blah, blah, blah.

Cut to a few years later, and we're introduced to a character named Max Banes, a witch and hunter, who is openly gay and flirts with Sam in his first appearance. Where were all of his metas and fanfics and headcanons? Granted, he only appeared in two episodes, but I have watched people in this and other fandoms build mountains our of molehills, going on and on about how two male characters weren't actually straight and how they were destined to be together because the once wore similar style shirts a couple of seasons apart, or because of a carnation in a jacket pocket that signified love via the Victorian flower code (or something like that), or how the wallpaper of that room they shared a scene in was a subtle clue to their true desire for each other, etc.

And I'm not exaggerating there, those are actual examples I've seen in fandoms over the years.

But back to Max, why is it that he was left along the wayside, despite fitting most of the criteria that fandoms love in their m|m ships while Dean had entire thesis level posts about that time he shared a glance with Castiel or he let a bartender hit on him and not get upset?

And its not just these two shows, not by a long shot. If you were to go into literally any fandom of a certain size or bigger, you will come across fans putting two straight characters together because of "the chemistry" they have. Even if those characters are confirmed to be straight - especially if those characters are confirmed to be straight. Because when these loud fans don't get their crack ship that they rub one out to, they scream queerbaiting and homophobia and oppression, harassing the actors and producers and directors and writers.

Here are some others that just pop to the front of my mind...

Asher Millstone from How To Get Away With Murder (saw him shipped with Connor a lot, despite Connor's actual boyfriend)

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from BBC's Sherlock

Tony Stark from Marvel comics (all because of one panel where he said "ladies and gents" when he announced he was off the market

Literally any male character in the MCU, which is his we get the things like Stucky and Stony that permeate the fandom on almost every level (and some leeway is given here because of the MCU's lack of wueer characters)

Klaus Mikaelson and Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals (honestly, I was surprised that people in the TVD fandom weren't immediately all over Josh and Lucas, because they're literally everything that fans want and use in their headcanon gays)

Kol Mikaelson and Jeremg Gilbert, also from TVD

Elia and Filippo from Skam Italia (despite there being, once again, actual gay characters on this show. Hell, the entire second season was dedicated to a character coming out of the closet and being with a guy)

Etc.

I could go on and on but then this post would seem infinite.

Closing thoughts, please keep in mind that I am just one guy and that my opinions don't represent everyone in fandom spaces. But also bear in mind, that my frustrations are well founded and valid from my own experiences in the fandom.

My sexuality and the fact that I'm attracted to men is not a toy for a bunch of sexually repressed fangirls who think two guys being together is hot.

[neurodiversitysci]

An inside view of ADHD: What your doctor probably didn’t tell you

This started life as a more accessible version of my ADHD list for writers, and turned into a two-part series. That’s how ADHD works sometimes. 

This is part 2.

1. ADHD is an executive function disability.

Executive function is hard to define, even for researchers. However, all agree it’s a set of skills that let us control our behavior and respond flexibly to a changing environment. Executive function skills include:

Executive functions are like the conductor in an orchestra, while the different parts of our brains are the musicians. 

Each musician in the orchestra plays beautifully alone. But to sound good when playing together, they need a conductor. The conductor keeps them playing with the same timing and the same style.

Similarly, each part of our brain functions pretty well independently. But when we need to do a new or complex task, we need multiple parts to work together with the right timing. To do that, we need executive functions.

2. We may have a distinctive way of thinking and talking.

People with ADHD might think in a web instead of a straight line. Here’s a blog post that illustrates the difference.

Each connection between ideas is logical, but because we zigzag through it, our train of thought looks disorganized to people without ADHD who do not share our “mental map” of the world. 

We move through our mental web through associations. 

A stray thought, another person’s words, or something we see or hear can remind us of something else. Because we’re easily distracted, we often go off on tangents. Because we have poor short term memory, we then forget what we were talking about previously.

We also talk fast, trying to pack all the necessary background information in our web into the shortest amount of time, before people get impatient.

As a result, when we talk to people without ADHD, both people often get frustrated.

But before you blame yourself and apologize for the communication problem, know that nothing is smoother and more energizing than a conversation between people with ADHD who think this way!

It feels exhilarating, and the energy builds increasingly as we talk. Everything the other person says makes perfect sense. We can go on for hours and never run out of things to say (or return to the topic we started with). We can finally be ourselves and talk comfortably, without worrying about irritating or confusing the other person.

Another positive to our thinking style: it’s ideal for “divergent thinking,” for making creative associations that wouldn’t occur to most people.

Priti Shah’s research team finds that ADHD adults excel at certain types of divergent thinking, which can help them outperform neurotypicals on both creativity tests and real-world creative achievement.

3. ADHD is a production disability, not a learning disability.

Because we think in a non-linear fashion, it’s harder and more time-consuming to explain our thoughts to other people. You first have to figure out what to say (and what not to), and put it in an order other people will understand, before you can speak or write.

If the inside of your head looked like this, you’d have trouble communicating your thoughts, too!

That means that deadlines are a lot harder for us to meet, even if we can remember them (a big if!).

ADHD is often categorized as a learning disability in education systems, but that’s a mistake. Many of us have no difficulty getting information into our brains. Our difficulty is with production: expressing what we know by a deadline, in the correct format. 

Some consequences of this:

1) A person with ADHD may well be brilliant in class discussions and in-class quizzes, but perform poorly on long-term papers and presentations. It’s because of how our brain works, not because of the amount of effort we put in!

2) For a person with ADHD, the content of schoolwork is easy, and if we turn it in on time we’ll get an A. But turning it in is harder than the homework itself. 

3) As a result, we have an all or nothing pattern of achievement. We either ace or fail assignments depending on whether we manage to turn them in on time and format them correctly.

 4) We also have all or nothing effort. There’s no way to gradate effort because if we put less effort in, we won’t finish and turn in the assignment at all. People often say “just do the minimum,” but that doesn’t work for us.

4. What other people think is “hard” is often easy for us, and what they think is “easy” is often hard.

Homework isn’t the only case where the “hard” part is easy for us, and the “easy part” is hard.

Free to Be says:

I have difficulty with some of the boring paper shuffling tasks but am really good at creating websites, brainstorming, creating presentations and new systems. Does anyone out there feel that people treat you as less intelligent because we have difficulty with simple tasks?

I wrote a post discussing “the complex is simple, the simple is complex” phenomenon here.

5. Boredom is torture, and we get bored REALLY easily.

Boredom feels like Chinese water torture. Every second is a drop of water.

Boredom feels like being in a sensory deprivation tank. You feel like you’re going crazy.

All of us find boredom more painful than the average person. But we vary in how often we experience boredom, and how we deal with it.

Some are constantly bored, and highly aware of their search for stimulation. Others, like me, think they’re never bored, because they always keep themselves occupied. 

In my youth, I always carried a book to read and a sketchbook to write in, and I’d read even while crossing the street. At the breakfast table, if conversation was impossible, I would read the cereal box.

Only when I started learning to cook did I realize that I can get bored and desperate to wander off within less than 30 seconds.

6. We often have bad memory.

I’m not sure why, but people with ADHD often have a bad memory.

In particular, our memories aren’t useful or deliberate. That is, we can remember random details from our childhood or trivia about our interests. But we have trouble remembering what we did on a particular day, when someone’s birthday is, or even our own phone number.

Poor working memory is common, and linked to lower brain activity than neurotypicals in the frontal lobe.

Having a bad memory affects more than academics:

We might be constantly writing things down.

We might worry about how to organize this record of our lives, and what would happen if it were destroyed in a natural disaster.

We might worry about whether anything we experience is “real” or meaningful if we’re almost guaranteed to forget it.

7. We have especially bad prospective memory, which is remembering to remember.

One of my most frustrating ADHD difficulties is my failure to “remember to remember.”

Without extensive strategies to remind myself, I remember errands I need to run at times I can’t do them, and forget about them when I can.

When I was a kid, my mom tried to teach me the strategy of “when you’re angry, count to 10 before you do anything.” I couldn’t use the strategy because when I was actually angry, I wouldn’t remember the strategy existed. 

Thus, we ironically forget to take stimulant medication for the very reasons we need it in the first place!

8. A double bind: We need habits to function, but have trouble making them.

Because we can’t “remember to remember,” we have trouble making new habits. We can’t consistently remember the habit at the time we’re supposed to do it.

That’s a problem because habits make everything easier for us. 

When tasks are automatic, we don’t have to make decisions and use executive functions--the things people with ADHD struggle with most.

9. We can’t process visual clutter well.

In everyday terms, “visual clutter” is when there’s so many objects with so many colors, textures, and shapes that all your brain stops seeing any of the things. All it sees is an undifferentiated mass of “stuff.”

Researchers have a slightly different definition of clutter, measuring small decreases in response time and accuracy rather than the experience of “objects turning into a mass of stuff.” But they find that neurotypicals have trouble processing visual clutter, too.

People with ADHD just have more difficulty processing clutter in everyday life, produce more of it, and have more difficulty cleaning it up.

 10. It’s hard to remind ourselves to do things without creating visual clutter.

Some people mistakenly think putting post-its everywhere will solve our “remembering to remember” problems--even people with ADHD.

But too many post-its become visual clutter.

We might stop looking at them to protect ourselves from being overwhelmed.

Or, we might be so overloaded by clutter that we look right at them and don’t register their existence.

Visual clutter paradoxes apply to more than just post-it notes.

If objects in my home aren’t visible, I forget that they exist. They don’t even need to be in the back of a closet; they can be in an opaque drawer or even a shelf I don’t use all the time. I even forget about food in the back of the refrigerator sometimes.

So, you would think I need to make all my things visible. But then I still can’t see them, because they just look like clutter.

(You would think the solution would be to get rid of most of my stuff. But the decisions involved would take hours and leave me exhausted. Remember, clutter is just un-made decisions).

11. Organizing our lives is harder for us than for most people because we keep running into double binds.

We’ve just discussed some double binds people with ADHD run into when they try to organize themselves:

We need habits, but have trouble making them.

We need visual reminders, but too many of them just turns into clutter we can’t process.

We only remember what we own if it’s visible, but we can’t process any of our things if too many are visible.

We need to own few objects so as to avoid clutter, but it takes a difficult, exhausting amount of executive function to get rid of extra stuff.

As a result:

We often put huge amounts of effort into making our time and space organized, and still fail.

Most ADHD adults research, invent, and tinker with organizational systems our whole lives. Most don’t work because of these double binds, and we keep changing or replacing them. This can look, or be, inefficient. 

Well-meaning advice from well-meaning friends, family, and coworkers doesn’t work and leaves everyone frustrated. 

Even advice from professional organizers and life coaches might not work well if they aren’t trained in dealing with the double binds created by ADHD.

12. Look at both extremes.

Some of us can multitask well, but are terrible at focusing on one thing. Some, like me, are the opposite.

Some of us feel stifled by structure, while others, like me, try to plan everything in advance. The first type of person fits many people’s stereotypes of ADHD people as “spontaneous” and “disorganized.” But because of ADHD, I rely on routines and schedules to function.

Some of us have IQ in the “gifted range” (top 2% or so), while others have low IQ and severe developmental delays (children who are born prematurely, get lead poisoning, or have fetal alcohol syndrome often have ADHD).

Some of us can see the big picture brilliantly, but miss many important details. Others focus intensely on the details but lose the big picture. Others, like me, can do either, but not both at once.

Some of us are artists, some are scientists, some are both.

We can be the best students or the worst.

We can be social butterflies or socially awkward penguins.

13. We’re consistently inconsistent.

Our functioning is inconsistent from day to day and even moment to moment. Not surprisingly, we fear that others will fire us or reject us because we’re unreliable. 

But also, we may feel that we can’t rely on ourselves. This diminishes our confidence, motivation, and self-esteem. 

If we feel unable to rely on ourselves, we might feel that we have to rely on other people. We might resent our dependence, and fear that if we mess up one too many times, they will leave us.

Research calls our inconsistency “intra-individual variability.” Ironically, they find that inconsistency ranks among the most consistently observed ADHD traits.

14. When life gets hard, we can stop being able to do things we “know how” to do.

When our lives are going well and the people in our lives support us, we often function well in school, at work, and in our relationships. Some of us do so well that our ADHD is invisible.

But when difficult life transitions happen, some of us seem to suddenly fall apart. I call this “hitting the wall,” and Laurie Dupar calls it a “tipping point.”

Basically, we can no longer compensate for our disabilities, because we no longer have the time or energy to use the strategies that worked for us in the past. In fact, our old strategies might even be counterproductive. Our ADHD traits become more obvious, and we stop being able to do things we could before.

Common tipping points include: 

going to college

being promoted at work

marrying

having a baby

going through menopause.

ADHD can turn even the joyous milestones of life into a struggle.

15. Many of us develop anxiety.

More than half of us develop anxiety.

We’re prone to overthinking, and may have trouble controlling our thoughts.

We have to worry about others misunderstanding us and calling us lazy, stupid, flaky, or rude.

We are inconsistent, and worry about the effects on ourselves and others.

Some of us develop an exhausting habit of “constant vigilance” to avoid making ADHD mistakes like losing things, forgetting belongings, running late, math/writing errors, etc.

16. We usually have other conditions along with ADHD.

People with ADHD are more likely to...

Have other developmental disabilities, such as autism.

Have learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, dyscaluclia, or nonverbal learning disability.

Have difficulties with sensory and motor processing, such as sensory processing disorder and dyspraxia.

Develop mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder.

Have certain physical and neurological disorders, such as tics/Tourette’s syndrome or night-time bedwetting ( “enuresis”) into late childhood or adolescence.

As children, exhibit behavioral problems, which may be diagnosed as so-called “oppositional defiant disorder.”

Self-medicate to the point of developing substance abuse, such as alcohol or nicotine dependence.

Personally, I believe that our difficulties with self-regulation go way beyond high-level abilities like executive function. 

We have difficulty regulating even the most primitive brain functions (such as maintaining alertness). Some of us even have difficulty maintaining homeostasis of bodily functions. 

For example, I overreact to small changes in light, atmospheric pressure, temperature, blood sugar, hunger, thirst, or sleep, with migraines, pain, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty thinking and moving quickly. 

Difficulties regulating sleep, including falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up well-rested, correlate with and probably explain some ADHD symptoms. 

(For this reason, anyone evaluating someone for ADHD should always inquire about sleep, because some people may look like they have ADHD when they don’t purely because of chronic lack of sleep! But people with ADHD also often have sleep difficulties). 

In other words, if someone has ADHD, they probably also have disabilities or difficulties with self-regulation that affect other areas of life.

17. Our family members are likely to have ADHD or autism, diagnosed or otherwise.

Many people report being diagnosed with ADHD after their own children were diagnosed.

ADHD is highly heritable, meaning that it’s highly likely that someone with ADHD traits will have children, and parents, with similar traits.

The same genes can also predispose someone to both ADHD and autism. So families that contain autistic people often contain people with ADHD, and vice versa. My own family is one of these.

18. Not everyone with ADHD views their condition the same way.

Some of us see ADHD as uniformly disabling. They believe it prevents us from using our talents and passions.

Others see ADHD as a gift that must be managed.

People with each of these viewpoints sometimes see the opposite as harmful to people with ADHD.

Still others view ADHD as a trait like any other, which can have positive or negative effects depending on how one chooses to use it and whether it fits the environment.

Personally, I see ADHD, in general, as a set of traits. However, I see my own as mostly negative. I like my creativity and ability to hyperfocus. However, I believe my ADHD traits interfere with using my talents, and would be impairing in any environment. (What benefit could inconsistency and self-regulation difficulties possibly have, in any environment?) But there are environments where my ADHD traits would be less disabling, and I’m trying to find and create them.

19. ADHD can be a serious disability.

On the surface, ADHD looks like something “everyone deals with.” But as this list suggests, it can cause serious problems in school, work, and relationships.

The large-scale MTA study followed hundreds of girls and boys with ADHD into adulthood, and found the following outcomes:

Higher rates of self-injury and mental illness

More adolescent substance use

More eating disorders

Poorer relationships with peers in adolescence

Poorer relationships with parents and partners in young adulthood

ADHD has also been linked to:

Lower test performance

Poorer education and work performance

Greater risk of accidents

Obesity

Researchers and the media tend to describe these problems as the result of ADHD traits themselves, especially impulsivity.

But I believe the way we treat people with ADHD has a lot to do with the bad outcomes.

Many of us, especially those diagnosed late in life, develop crippling shame and self-hatred. This alone can lead to poor school performance, mental illness, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, and underachievement at work.

 20. But people with ADHD are awesome!

People with ADHD can be creative, energetic, passionate, thoughtful, smart, academically skilled, empathetic, spontaneous, entrepreneurial, and more.

Famous people in every walk of life have diagnosed ADHD, and many past geniuses had traits.

Like other disabilities, ADHD colors how we experience and act in the world, and it adds unique struggles to our lives. But ADHD does not diminish us or make us less human.

***

Thank you for reading. If this post helped you understand ADHD better, please share it. Let me know if I’ve missed important ways ADHD has affected your life.

[williamlwolf89]

How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2020

Want to learn how to write an ebook like a pro? It’s not just what you do, but what you DON’T do that can make or break your work.

Admit it.

You’ve thought about writing an ebook.

In fact, you’ve already imagined the front cover.

You can see the main title and, underneath, your name.

And when you picture it, you feel a ripple of pride.

An ebook would be a big step up for you as a writer.

Because while blog posts and freelance writing gigs are great ways to express your ideas and earn a side income, you can’t help feeling they’re a little, well, fleeting. Lightweight even.

But your own ebook? That’s more substantial. It’s taken more seriously. It has more gravitas.

And having an ebook with your name on the front transforms you from a mere writer into that more impressive beast — an author.

But how do you become an ebook author without falling victim to the same mistakes that sabotage the attempts of so many other writers and bloggers?

Why Most Ebooks Are Embarrassingly Bad

On the surface, writing ebooks seem relatively easy.

Lots of writers seem to be doing it, so how hard can it be?

But in reality, most ebooks that see the light of day are horrible. Embarrassingly bad.

That’s because your average ebook author doesn’t have a clue how to write an ebook. They can’t afford to hire a ghostwriter, and they don’t have the support system a traditional author would be given by their publisher when writing a book.

They do their best, but they don’t know what they don’t know.

The good news? We can learn from their mistakes. In this post, we’re going to show you the common mishaps first-time authors make when writing an ebook.

In other words:

Want to write an ebook like a pro? Avoid these 21 common mistakes:

Table of Contents: How to Write an Ebook Like a Pro (Don’t Do These Amatuerish Things)

Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

Starting at the Beginning

Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Designing Your Own Front Cover

Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

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1. Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

If you want to create a premium ebook, you can be tempted to pick a “hot topic” thinking that’s where the money is.

Likewise, when creating a sign-up bribe, you might think you need to entice readers with the latest information about an emerging topic.

And if you’re self-publishing using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), it’s easy to think you need to target one of the most popular categories.

But picking a topic like this is a BIG mistake.

If you know little or nothing about your chosen topic, creating an ebook will be a huge amount of work. You’ll have to do a ton of research on Google, interview experts, and perhaps even pay a real guru to get you up to speed.

What to do Instead

Write about something you actually know about — which almost certainly means tying your ebook to your blog’s core topic. You’ll not only save a ton of time on research, but you’ll also have a ready-made audience for your writing.

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2. Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

I’ve fallen into this trap myself (twice) and I’ve seen a heck of a lot of other bloggers do the same.

It happens when you realize there’s a topic you know your readers need, and you know you can write the perfect book that will genuinely help them.

Sounds great, but people don’t always know what they need. And your sense of what it is might not be spot-on either.

What to do Instead

Don’t give your readers what you think they need. Give them what they know they want.

How? Run a survey, and ask your readers to choose between three or four ebook topics.

(This is also a good opportunity to find out how much they’d pay, whether they’re beginners or more experienced, and what specific questions they need your help to answer.)

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3. Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Planning isn’t just about deciding what you’re going to write and what order you’re going to write it in.

Because when you decide to create an ebook, you’re not just a writer; you’re also a publisher (and marketer). You have to write and publish.

If you don’t start thinking now about how you’ll sell your book — whether that means selling it to make money or just selling the concept to your readers — you’ll run into problems later on.

What to do Instead

Draft your sales page while you’re planning your ebook. Make it sound as attractive and useful as possible (try Jon’s list of power words, and make the reader the hero of the story) … and use that pitch to drive the writing process. This will make your ebook much stronger and will make your life much easier when you launch it.

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4. Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Once your survey results are in, you might be tempted to start writing straight away.

Whoa there.

Jumping into the writing at this point will cause you serious problems. You’ll find yourself repeating things, or wasting time exploring ultimately unhelpful tangents.

What to do Instead

Plan your ebook before you start writing.

This means having a clear outline that has, at the very least, a title for each chapter. Yes, that might seem a bit boring, but it will make the writing stage far easier (and more fun).

This doesn’t have to mean opening a blank Google Doc or Microsoft Word document and writing a linear outline. Try freeform brainstorming, mind maps, or index cards as creative alternatives to help get your ebook ideas flowing.

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5. Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

With your first ebook, it’s easy to think you need to deliver the definitive ebook — the only one your audience will ever need.

If that sounds like a good idea, ask yourself this: “What will I give them next?”

Chances are, you won’t write just one ebook. You might write several in the same series, or you might create a short starter ebook for free, and then write a more advanced one to sell.

Even if your ebook is destined to be your subscriber incentive, if you give your readers everything they’ll ever need, why would they come back to your blog?

What to do Instead

Go back to your survey and determine what aspects your audience cares about the most. Focus on those. If you have lots of extra ideas, great! Keep them in a separate place and use them for your next ebook. Or explore them in a detailed blog post.

If you inadvertently miss something crucial, you’ll find out when you get feedback, and you can add a new section or chapter to address that point.

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6. Starting at the Beginning

Although it might be the first chapter in your book, your introduction almost certainly isn’t the place to start writing.

It’s hard to know what to include until you’ve drafted the majority of your book, and you don’t want to get bogged down at this early stage.

If you start with the introduction, you’ll often end up writing far more than you need to. And let’s be honest. No reader relishes the sight of a long introduction — they want to dive into the real content.

What to do Instead

Don’t begin with the introduction; start with your first “proper” chapter. Once you’ve drafted the rest of your book, you’ll know what needs to go in the introduction.

Also, a lot of “introductory” material can go at the back of the book – I strongly recommend having an About the Author page at the back, because it’s a great opportunity to point readers to your website, mailing list, and so on.

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7. Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Although your ebook is probably a high-priority project for you, it can be genuinely tough to carve out the time for working on it regularly.

But if you don’t write consistently, you’ll never build up any momentum. You may write for a few hours to begin with, but then end up taking weeks off … and never getting back to your ebook.

What to do Instead

You don’t have to write thousands of words at a time. One of my clients wrote a short chapter every week, without fail, and finished her ebook within a few months.

Find a consistent time each day, or several times a week, to work on your ebook. You might like to try the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes writing, 5-minute break) to use your time effectively during short writing sessions. Anyone can write for just 25 minutes.

If you know you have a problem with time management, address that now; it’ll pay off for years to come.

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8. Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

If you’re writing regularly and staying focused but making slow progress, then you’re probably trying to edit while you write.

Perhaps you find yourself typing a couple of paragraphs, then changing your mind and deleting them. You might even be stopping every sentence or two to make minor tweaks.

This is a serious drain on your productivity as a writer.

What to do Instead

If you change your mind about a whole paragraph or section, leave it in as is, but jot a note to yourself about it. You may find, on re-reading, that it works perfectly well.

You might find it’s helpful to use a full-screen “no distractions” text editor. I like Dark Room for this — as it doesn’t have those distracting red and green wiggles that your typical word processor adds when it doesn’t like a word or phrase.

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9. Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

After you’ve been working on your ebook for weeks, perhaps months, you may find that you’ve not made the progress you’d hoped for.

Whatever the exact cause (illness, workload, etc.), you’ve hit a wall. You aren’t even halfway through the draft, and there’s a long way to go.

When you go through a patch like this, it’s quite tempting to just give up — to cut your losses and leave that ebook draft abandoned on your computer.

But that would be a huge mistake. Because this is often a sign that things are about to get easier.

What to do Instead

Push yourself to reach the halfway point. Once you’re halfway, natural momentum kicks in, and you’ll speed up as you approach the end.

Be sure to remind yourself of your motivation for starting the ebook in the first place: what’s it going to do for you and your blog? How will it help your readers — the people who you’ve come to know and care about?

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10. Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

While it’s important to not let your ebook stall after the first draft, you don’t need to rush into editing. Some writers dive straight into the editing phase — but then they struggle to get perspective, and may quickly feel burned out.

What to do Instead

Let your ebook “sit” for at least a couple of days (and preferably a full week) before you begin reviewing and editing. That way, you’ll come to it with fresh eyes and a new perspective — you’ll be able to see what’s already good, and what needs a bit more work.

With a little distance, you’ll be able to see your work from the perspective of a reader, not a writer.

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11. Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Many ebook authors start their edit using the same file they used for the draft — for example, MyEbook.doc.

While that’s not always a problem, it’s seriously frustrating if you cut something you later want to put back in.

Worse, if you manage to delete, lose, or somehow corrupt that master file, all your hard work could be gone for good.

What to do Instead

For each new draft, create a new version of your file — MyEbookV2.doc, MyEbookV3.doc and so on. And create regular backups. A simple way is to email yourself a copy of the latest version from time to time.

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12. Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

If you start your editing by looking for minor typos, you’ll miss much more significant issues.

By focusing on the micro detail, you may fail to address major problems with your book — like “Chapter 15 is way too short” or “Chapter 7 should come after Chapter 10.” These often require a bit of perspective (see Mistake #10).

What to do Instead

Read through your whole ebook, preferably in .pdf form, on paper, or on your tablet, before you begin editing.

In other words, read it in a format where you can’t easily make small changes as you go along to force yourself to concentrate on the bigger picture.

Make a note of any issues you need to fix, like chapters in the wrong order, repetitive information, tangents that need deleting, and new sections you want to add.

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13. Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

When you’ve been working away on your own for (probably) several months, seeing mistakes can be tough — from the big picture issues to the small details like missing words or misplaced apostrophes.

But many first-time ebook authors are either too inexperienced to know the value of an editor or figure it’s a luxury they can’t afford.

Even if you’re not in a position to pay for a full edit, that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.

What to do Instead

Consider paying for an editor to review just the first few chapters of your ebook. Many problems the editor identifies will probably occur throughout the ebook and you can fix them yourself once you know what to look for.

Recruit volunteers to help edit: ask your readers, or members of any blogging community you belong to. Be prepared to repay the favor!

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14. Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Once you’ve made any major changes and addressed the suggestions of your editors, your book is almost complete.

But before it’s ready to publish, you’ll need to do at least one complete read-through to catch any remaining typos or errors. A writing tool like Grammarly or a different grammar checker can help.

However, you’re probably the worst person to catch those errors.

You’ve likely become so familiar with the content and its layout that you’ll miss typos that will be obvious to someone else.

What to do Instead

If you can afford a professional proofreader, or if you have a talented friend who can help out, brilliant.

If you have to do most or all of your proofreading alone, here’s the secret: don’t proofread your ebook in the same environment you wrote it. Try changing the font style and size and printing it out, or reading it on a tablet. You’ll be surprised at how errors stand out.

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15. Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Quality matters, but if you’re onto your fifth proofread and you’re spending ten minutes debating whether or not a particular sentence needs a comma, you’re wasting time.

Even books from major publishing houses have mistakes from time to time. You may never have noticed this, because (like every reader) you don’t pause and scrutinize every word.

What to do Instead

Give yourself a deadline for finishing the editing phase, and accept that catching 99 percent of your mistakes is good enough.

Don’t agonize over the possibility that a typo may still be present. Readers aren’t likely to notice, and if someone does point out a particularly glaring mistake after publication, it’s simple to update your ebook.

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16. Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Even if you started out with a specific end goal in mind, be sure to review your options once you’ve finished your ebook.

An ebook that started life as a subscriber incentive might in fact make a great premium product, or serve as an authority-building book in the Kindle Store.

But if you don’t at least consider other options, you might miss out on a huge opportunity.

What to do Instead

Depending on the final destination of your ebook, a range of different ebook formats are available to consider:

If you’re giving your ebook away as an incentive for joining your email list, then .pdf-only is simple and straightforward.

If you’re positioning your ebook as a premium product (e.g., at least $10), you can just create a .pdf … but you might also want to offer .epub and .mobi formats. You could also include multimedia bonus material on a password-protected webpage (e.g. audio interviews, short video tutorials).

If you’re publishing your ebook on major retailers’ sites, you’ll need a lower price (usually $9.99 or less) and to publish your file in the appropriate format for the store.

And don’t assume that a particular option is right for your ebook just because it’s what you’ve seen other bloggers doing.

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17. Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Just like a blog post title, an ebook title must grab attention. It’s going to be the first (and quite possibly the only) thing your potential ebook reader sees.

When I wrote my first full-length ebook, I planned to title it Writing Blog Content. That’s what it was about, after all! But it’s not exactly sexy.

A wise friend (Charlie Gilkey) jumped onto Skype with me and spent a while hashing out better titles. We eventually went with The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing … a much stronger, more compelling title.

What to do Instead

If you’ve had a working title in mind since the planning stage, now’s the time to figure out whether it’s truly good enough. You might want to ask your blog readers to vote on different titles.

The same goes for the headline on your sales page — you’ll probably want to put something a bit more intriguing than just the title of your ebook.

Jon’s Headline Hacks report is packed with lots of inspiration and advice.

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18. Designing Your Own Front Cover

Like it or not, everyone judges books by their covers.

Unless you’re a professional designer, creating your own ebook cover design is a hugely damaging mistake.

Your ebook will look amateurish, and readers may well be put off from buying it.

This is especially true if you’ll be selling your ebook on Amazon (or other e-retail sites) where most potential readers won’t have any prior knowledge of you.

If you need some examples, plus some handy templates you can use, take a look at Venngage’s 17 eBook Templates and Design Tips (From an Expert Who Sold 10k+ Paid Copies).

What to do Instead

If you can afford it, hire a designer. This is a crucial investment, and you’ll likely sell enough extra copies to more than pay for the designer’s work.

But if you really have to create your cover yourself, keep it simple and straightforward, and look at lots of examples of good and bad designs.

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19. Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Your ebook might be a reader’s first contact with you. And even those who downloaded your ebook from your blog might forget where they got it.

So failing to link your ebook back to your blog is a big mistake. You’re missing an opportunity to drive new subscribers to your main email list or to a separate list that tells your current ebook readers about your next book.

What to do Instead

Include a page at the back of your ebook — after “About the Author” — that lets readers know where to find you online.

Be sure to link to your subscriber landing page, to your next book’s sales page, or anywhere else online you want to send them — e.g., your social media profiles.

Also important is giving your readers an easy way to send you feedback for your ebook, such as a dedicated email address or a link to a contact page.

And don’t be afraid to link to relevant blog content within the body of the ebook itself.

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20. Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Even if a reader already knows you, they won’t necessarily trust that your ebook is any good until it has at least one review or testimonial.

Whether your ebook is available for purchase or simply a reward for new subscribers, people probably won’t trust its value unless they can see that other people have read it and found it useful.

And if you’re in a niche that’s known for having a few sleazy operators, or one where ebooks are rare, then failing to provide social proof is an even bigger mistake.

What to do Instead

Be proactive — send out review copies to bloggers in your niche, and to any of your blog’s readers who’ve commented regularly or emailed you recently. Add positive reviews to your sales page and, if possible, use photos of the reviewers to boost credibility.

And if you can, send out your review copies before you launch your ebook – preferably at least a couple weeks before. This gives people a chance to read your book and get a review ready on or soon after your launch day.

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21. Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

Many bloggers are uncomfortable marketing their ebooks so their “launch” simply involves a new link on their blog and a couple of low-key posts on social media.

But even the best ebook will wither and die without some determined promotion.

And the truth is that if you’re not willing to market your ebook when the hard work of writing it is complete, you’ve basically wasted all that time and effort.

What to do Instead

You’re proud of your new ebook, right? So start acting like it. (If you don’t feel a swell of pride about your work then go back to the writing and editing phases until you do!)

Despite any preconceptions, you can effectively market your blog without coming across like a used car salesman.

Here’s how…

Mix up your promotional messages with lots of useful and interesting content.

If you’re giving people useful information at the same time as promoting your ebook, you’ll feel less like a pushy salesperson.

If your ebook is on Amazon Kindle, you can create some buzz by giving it away free for short periods.

If this is your first premium product, make sure you tell your existing list about it and consider offering a discount for existing subscribers.

Write guest posts for popular blogs in your niche and direct readers to a dedicated landing page for sign-ups or for the sales page for your ebook.

You might even look into ways to do something more interesting and innovative, maybe creating videos, offering special extras, or getting readers involved.

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

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Writing an Ebook Doesn’t Have to Be a Dream

Lots of mistakes are lurking out there to trip you up on the path to publishing your first ebook, but the potential rewards are great.

You can get more subscribers for your blog, more authority in your niche, and even earn more money from your writing.

And now that you know the most common mistakes, you can avoid them with ease.

But of all the mistakes you can make, one trumps them all:

Not even trying.

Or telling yourself that you’ll write your ebook someday.

But you’re not going to make that mistake, right?

You now know how to write an ebook. Grab your calendar, take a look at the next week, and choose a day to begin.

Because in just a month or two, you could easily have a finished ebook … one that could supercharge your email list, position you as an expert, or start bringing in a steady income.

When will your ebook journey begin?

The post How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2020 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/ebook-mistakes/

[claudeleonca]

How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2019

Want to learn how to write an ebook like a pro? It’s not just what you do, but what you DON’T do that can make or break your work.

  Admit it.

You’ve thought about writing an ebook.

In fact, you’ve already imagined the front cover.

You can see the main title and, underneath, your name.

And when you picture it, you feel a ripple of pride.

An ebook would be a big step up for you as a writer.

Because while blog posts are a great way to express your ideas, you can’t help feeling they’re a little, well, fleeting. Lightweight even.

But an ebook? That’s more substantial. It’s taken more seriously. It has more gravitas.

And having an ebook with your name on the front transforms you from a mere blogger into that more impressive beast — an author.

But how do you become an ebook author without falling victim to the same mistakes that sabotage the attempts of so many other bloggers?

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

Why Most Ebooks Are Embarrassingly Bad

On the surface, writing an ebook seems relatively easy.

Lots of bloggers seem to be doing it, so how hard can it be?

But in reality, most ebooks that see the light of day are horrible. Embarrassingly bad.

That’s because your average ebook author doesn’t have a clue how to write an ebook. They can’t afford to hire a ghostwriter, and they don’t have the support system a traditional author would be given by their publisher when writing a book.

They do their best, but they don’t know what they don’t know.

The good news? We can learn from their mistakes. In this post, we’re going to show you the common mishaps first-time authors make when writing an ebook.

In other words:

Want to write an ebook like a pro? Avoid these 21 common mistakes:

How to Write an Ebook Like a Pro (Hint: Don’t Do These Amatuerish Things)

Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

Starting at the Beginning

Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Designing Your Own Front Cover

Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

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1. Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

If you want to create a premium ebook, you can be tempted to pick a “hot topic” thinking that’s where the money is.

Likewise, when creating a sign-up bribe, you might think you need to entice readers with the latest information about an emerging topic.

And if you’re using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), it’s easy to think you need to target one of the most popular categories.

But picking a topic like this is a BIG mistake.

If you know little or nothing about your chosen topic, creating an ebook will be a huge amount of work. You’ll have to do a ton of research, interview experts, and perhaps even pay a real guru to get you up to speed.

What to do Instead

Write about something you actually know about — which almost certainly means tying your ebook to your blog’s core topic. You’ll not only save a ton of time on research, but you’ll also have a ready-made audience for your writing.

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2. Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

I’ve fallen into this trap myself (twice) and I’ve seen a heck of a lot of other bloggers do the same.

It happens when you realize there’s a topic you know your readers need, and you know you can write the perfect book that will genuinely help them.

Sounds great, but people don’t always know what they need. And your sense of what it is might not be spot-on either.

What to do Instead

Don’t give your readers what you think they need. Give them what they know they want.

How? Run a survey, and ask your readers to choose between three or four ebook topics.

(This is also a good opportunity to find out how much they’d pay, whether they’re beginners or more experienced, and what specific questions they need your help to answer.)

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3. Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Planning isn’t just about deciding what you’re going to write and what order you’re going to write it in.

Because when you decide to create an ebook, you’re not just a writer; you’re also a publisher (and marketer). You have to write and publish.

If you don’t start thinking now about how you’ll sell your book — whether that means selling it for money or just selling the concept to your readers — you’ll run into problems later on.

What to do Instead

Draft your sales page while you’re planning your ebook. Make it sound as attractive and useful as possible (try Jon’s list of power words, and make the reader the hero of the story) … and use that pitch to drive the writing process. This will make your ebook much stronger and will make your life much easier when you launch it.

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4. Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Once your survey results are in, you might be tempted to start writing straight away.

Whoa there.

Jumping into the writing at this point will cause you serious problems. You’ll find yourself repeating things, or wasting time exploring ultimately unhelpful tangents.

What to do Instead

Plan your ebook before you start writing.

This means having a clear outline that has, at the very least, a title for each chapter. Yes, that might seem a bit boring, but it will make the writing stage far easier (and more fun).

This doesn’t have to mean opening a blank document and writing a linear outline. Try freeform brainstorming, mind maps, or index cards as creative alternatives to help get your ebook ideas flowing.

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5. Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

With your first ebook, it’s easy to think you need to deliver the definitive ebook — the only one your audience will ever need.

If that sounds like a good idea, ask yourself this: “What will I give them next?”

Chances are, you won’t write just one ebook. You might write several in the same series, or you might create a short starter ebook for free, and then write a more advanced one to sell.

Even if your ebook is destined to be your subscriber incentive, if you give your readers everything they’ll ever need, why would they come back to your blog?

What to do Instead

Go back to your survey and determine what aspects your audience cares about the most. Focus on those. If you have lots of extra ideas, great! Keep them in a separate place and use them for your next ebook. Or explore them in a detailed blog post.

If you inadvertently miss something crucial, you’ll find out when you get feedback, and you can add a new section or chapter to address that point.

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6. Starting at the Beginning

Although it might be the first chapter in your book, your introduction almost certainly isn’t the place to start writing.

It’s hard to know what to include until you’ve drafted the majority of your book, and you don’t want to get bogged down at this early stage.

If you start with the introduction, you’ll often end up writing far more than you need to. And let’s be honest. No reader relishes the sight of a long introduction — they want to dive into the real content.

What to do Instead

Don’t begin with the introduction; start with your first “proper” chapter. Once you’ve drafted the rest of your book, you’ll know what needs to go in the introduction.

Also, a lot of “introductory” material can go at the back of the book – I strongly recommend having an About the Author page at the back, because it’s a great opportunity to point readers to your website, mailing list, and so on.

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7. Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Although your ebook is probably a high-priority project for you, it can be genuinely tough to carve out the time for working on it regularly.

But if you don’t write consistently, you’ll never build up any momentum. You may write for a few hours to begin with, but then end up taking weeks off … and never getting back to your ebook.

What to do Instead

You don’t have to write thousands of words at a time. One of my clients wrote a short chapter every week, without fail, and finished her ebook within a few months.

Find a consistent time each day, or several times a week, to work on your ebook. You might like to try the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes writing, 5-minute break) to use your time effectively during short writing sessions. Anyone can write for just 25 minutes.

If you know you have a problem with time management, address that now; it’ll pay off for years to come.

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8. Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

If you’re writing regularly and staying focused but making slow progress, then you’re probably trying to edit while you write.

Perhaps you find yourself typing a couple of paragraphs, then changing your mind and deleting them. You might even be stopping every sentence or two to make minor tweaks.

This is a serious drain on your productivity as a writer.

What to do Instead

If you change your mind about a whole paragraph or section, leave it in as is, but jot a note to yourself about it. You may find, on re-reading, that it works perfectly well.

You might find it’s helpful to use a full-screen “no distractions” text editor. I like Dark Room for this — as it doesn’t have those distracting red and green wiggles that your typical word processor adds when it doesn’t like a word or phrase.

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9. Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

After you’ve been working on your ebook for weeks, perhaps months, you may find that you’ve not made the progress you’d hoped for.

Whatever the exact cause (illness, workload, etc.), you’ve hit a wall. You aren’t even halfway through the draft, and there’s a long way to go.

When you go through a patch like this, it’s quite tempting to just give up — to cut your losses and leave that ebook draft abandoned on your computer.

But that would be a huge mistake. Because this is often a sign that things are about to get easier.

What to do Instead

Push yourself to reach the halfway point. Once you’re halfway, natural momentum kicks in, and you’ll speed up as you approach the end.

Be sure to remind yourself of your motivation for starting the ebook in the first place: what’s it going to do for you and your blog? How will it help your readers — the people who you’ve come to know and care about?

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10. Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

While it’s important to not let your ebook stall after the first draft, you don’t need to rush into editing. Some writers dive straight into the editing phase — but then they struggle to get perspective, and may quickly feel burned out.

What to do Instead

Let your ebook “sit” for at least a couple of days (and preferably a full week) before you begin reviewing and editing. That way, you’ll come to it with fresh eyes and a new perspective — you’ll be able to see what’s already good, and what needs a bit more work.

With a little distance, you’ll be able to see your work from the perspective of a reader, not a writer.

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11. Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Many ebook authors start their edit using the same file they used for the draft — for example, MyEbook.doc.

While that’s not always a problem, it’s seriously frustrating if you cut something you later want to put back in.

Worse, if you manage to delete, lose, or somehow corrupt that master file, all your hard work could be gone for good.

What to do Instead

For each new draft, create a new version of your file — MyEbookV2.doc, MyEbookV3.doc and so on. And create regular backups. A simple way is to email yourself a copy of the latest version from time to time.

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12. Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

If you start your editing by looking for minor typos, you’ll miss much more significant issues.

By focusing on the micro detail, you may fail to address major problems with your book — like “Chapter 15 is way too short” or “Chapter 7 should come after Chapter 10.” These often require a bit of perspective (see Mistake #10).

What to do Instead

Read through your whole ebook, preferably in .pdf form, on paper, or on your tablet, before you begin editing.

In other words, read it in a format where you can’t easily make small changes as you go along to force yourself to concentrate on the bigger picture.

Make a note of any issues you need to fix, like chapters in the wrong order, repetitive information, tangents that need deleting, and new sections you want to add.

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13. Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

When you’ve been working away on your own for (probably) several months, seeing mistakes can be tough — from the big picture issues to the small details like missing words or misplaced apostrophes.

But many first-time ebook authors are either too inexperienced to know the value of an editor or figure it’s a luxury they can’t afford.

Even if you’re not in a position to pay for a full edit, that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.

What to do Instead

Consider paying for an editor to review just the first few chapters of your ebook. Many problems the editor identifies will probably occur throughout the ebook and you can fix them yourself once you know what to look for.

Recruit volunteers to help edit: ask your readers, or members of any blogging community you belong to. Be prepared to repay the favor!

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14. Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Once you’ve made any major changes and addressed the suggestions of your editors, your book is almost complete.

But before it’s ready to publish, you’ll need to do at least one complete read-through to catch any remaining typos or errors.

However, you’re probably the worst person to catch those errors.

You’ve likely become so familiar with the content and its layout that you’ll miss typos that will be obvious to someone else.

What to do Instead

If you can afford a professional proofreader, or if you have a talented friend who can help out, brilliant.

If you have to do most or all of your proofreading alone, here’s the secret: don’t proofread your ebook in the same environment you wrote it. Try changing the font style and size and printing it out, or reading it on a tablet. You’ll be surprised at how errors stand out.

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15. Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Quality matters, but if you’re onto your fifth proofread and you’re spending ten minutes debating whether or not a particular sentence needs a comma, you’re wasting time.

Even books from major publishing houses have mistakes from time to time. You may never have noticed this, because (like every reader) you don’t pause and scrutinize every word.

What to do Instead

Give yourself a deadline for finishing the editing phase, and accept that catching 99 percent of your mistakes is good enough.

Don’t agonize over the possibility that a typo may still be present. Readers aren’t likely to notice, and if someone does point out a particularly glaring mistake after publication, it’s simple to update your ebook.

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16. Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Even if you started out with a specific end goal in mind, be sure to review your options once you’ve finished your ebook.

An ebook that started life as a subscriber incentive might in fact make a great premium product, or serve as an authority-building book in the Kindle Store.

But if you don’t at least consider other options, you might miss out on a huge opportunity.

What to do Instead

Depending on the final destination of your ebook, a range of different ebook formats are available to consider:

If you’re giving your ebook away as an incentive for joining your email list, then .pdf-only is simple and straightforward.

If you’re positioning your ebook as a premium product (e.g., at least $10), you can just create a .pdf … but you might also want to offer .epub and .mobi formats. You could also include multimedia bonus material on a password-protected webpage (e.g. audio interviews, short video tutorials).

If you’re publishing your ebook on major retailers’ sites, you’ll need a lower price (usually $9.99 or less) and to publish your file in the appropriate format for the store.

And don’t assume that a particular option is right for your ebook just because it’s what you’ve seen other bloggers doing.

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17. Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Just like a blog post title, an ebook title must grab attention. It’s going to be the first (and quite possibly the only) thing your potential ebook reader sees.

When I wrote my first full-length ebook, I planned to title it Writing Blog Content. That’s what it was about, after all! But it’s not exactly sexy.

A wise friend (Charlie Gilkey) jumped onto Skype with me and spent a while hashing out better titles. We eventually went with The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing … a much stronger, more compelling title.

What to do Instead

If you’ve had a working title in mind since the planning stage, now’s the time to figure out whether it’s truly good enough. You might want to ask your blog readers to vote on different titles.

The same goes for the headline on your sales page — you’ll probably want to put something a bit more intriguing than just the title of your ebook.

Jon’s Headline Hacks report is packed with lots of inspiration and advice.

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18. Designing Your Own Front Cover

Like it or not, everyone judges books by their covers.

Unless you’re a professional designer, creating your own cover is a hugely damaging mistake.

Your ebook will look amateurish, and readers may well be put off from buying it.

This is especially true if you’ll be selling your ebook on Amazon (or other e-retail sites) where most potential readers won’t have any prior knowledge of you.

For plenty of examples of both good and bad covers, take a look at Joel Friedlander’s Monthly e-Book Cover Design Awards.

What to do Instead

If you can afford it, hire a designer. This is a crucial investment, and you’ll likely sell enough extra copies to more than pay for the designer’s work.

But if you really have to create your cover yourself, keep it simple and straightforward, and look at lots of examples of good and bad designs.

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19. Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Your ebook might be a reader’s first contact with you. And even those who downloaded your ebook from your blog might forget where they got it.

So failing to link your ebook back to your blog is a big mistake. You’re missing an opportunity to drive new subscribers to your main email list or to a separate list that tells your current ebook readers about your next book.

What to do Instead

Include a page at the back of your ebook — after “About the Author” — that lets readers know where to find you online.

Be sure to link to your subscriber landing page, to your next book’s sales page, or anywhere else online you want to send them — e.g., your social media profiles.

Also important is giving your readers an easy way to send you feedback for your ebook, such as a dedicated email address or a link to a contact page.

And don’t be afraid to link to relevant blog content within the body of the ebook itself.

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20. Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Even if a reader already knows you, they won’t necessarily trust that your ebook is any good until it has at least one review or testimonial.

Whether your ebook is available for purchase or simply a reward for new subscribers, people probably won’t trust its value unless they can see that other people have read it and found it useful.

And if you’re in a niche that’s known for having a few sleazy operators, or one where ebooks are rare, then failing to provide social proof is an even bigger mistake.

What to do Instead

Be proactive — send out review copies to bloggers in your niche, and to any of your blog’s readers who’ve commented regularly or emailed you recently. Add positive reviews to your sales page and, if possible, use photos of the reviewers to boost credibility.

And if you can, send out your review copies before you launch your ebook – preferably at least a couple weeks before. This gives people a chance to read your book and get a review ready on or soon after your launch day.

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21. Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

Many bloggers are uncomfortable marketing their ebooks so their “launch” simply involves a new link on their blog and a couple of low-key posts on social media.

But even the best ebook will wither and die without some determined promotion.

And the truth is that if you’re not willing to market your ebook when the hard work of writing it is complete, you’ve basically wasted all that time and effort.

What to do Instead

You’re proud of your new ebook, right? So start acting like it. (If you don’t feel a swell of pride about your work then go back to the writing and editing phases until you do!)

Despite any preconceptions, you can effectively market your blog without coming across like a used car salesman.

Here’s how…

Mix up your promotional messages with lots of useful and interesting content.

If you’re giving people useful information at the same time as promoting your ebook, you’ll feel less like a pushy salesperson.

If your ebook is on Amazon, you can create some buzz by giving it away free for short periods.

If this is your first premium product, make sure you tell your existing list about it and consider offering a discount for existing subscribers.

Write guest posts for popular blogs in your niche and direct readers to a dedicated landing page for sign-ups or for the sales page for your ebook.

You might even look into ways to do something more interesting and innovative, maybe creating videos, offering special extras, or getting readers involved.

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

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Writing an Ebook Doesn’t Have to Be a Dream

Lots of mistakes are lurking out there to trip you up on the path to publishing your first ebook, but the potential rewards are great.

You can get more subscribers for your blog, more authority in your niche, and even earn more money from your writing.

And now that you know the most common mistakes, you can avoid them with ease.

But of all the mistakes you can make, one trumps them all:

Not even trying.

Or telling yourself that you’ll write your ebook someday.

But you’re not going to make that mistake, right?

You now know how to write an ebook. Grab your calendar, take a look at the next week, and choose a day to begin.

Because in just a month or two, you could easily have a finished ebook … one that could supercharge your email list, position you as an expert, or start bringing in a steady income.

When will your ebook journey begin?

About the Author: Ali Luke is the author of Publishing E-Books For Dummies, and writes for Learn SEO Fast. If you’d like more help with the “plan-write-edit” process (not just for ebooks!) then check out her free video training, The Writing Process for Bloggers — no opt-in required.

The post How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2019 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/ebook-mistakes/

[podcastcoach]

Focus Is More Important Than Microphones

Every podcaster has one thing in common: they all have 24 hours in the day. Today I'm going to share a ton of research and strategies to get your more productive. Last week I talked about five things that you think will grow your audience but don't. This is continuing on with that theme of determining what you want to do, and then getting it done. One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln is “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

If you have no focus, it doesn't matter what microphone you have if you can't get it together.

My Own Personal Struggles

Growing up I was what some might call "A weird little boy." I remember driving my Mom nuts as I would be in the kitchen talking on the phone. We had a bunch of 16 oz coke glasses that I would fill up with water and tune and then play as I was talking on the phone. I always described myself as "Creative" but I'm sure if I was in elementary school today that would pump me with enough Ritalin to put a Rhino to sleep. As an adult, I tried going on some medication but the more focus I achieved was washed away by the energy that was sucked out of me. With this in mind when I get my creative juices flowing, I can be hyper-focused and lose all sense of time. To me I define that as "fun," but when you look up at the clock and it's 3 AM, and you have a big presentation the next day that is a problem.

For the most part, much like many programs, admitting you have an issue is step one. I have a clear indicator and that is my desk. The more messy it is, the better the chance I need to pump the breaks.

Pumping the Breaks

Slowing down seems backward, but when you find yourself behind in tasks, etc and everything in your mind and body is saying "Push through" and you want to throw on your Superman or Wonder Woman outfit and start writing checks your body can cash. The result is you become more purposeful, focused, and you get more stuff done.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

6:24

Whatever the goal is, you need to know it. I would recommend writing it down (more tools later). Take some time to think about it. If you don't know where you want to go, how will you know when you get there? If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.

Setting Priorities

The book First Things First by Steven Covey he talks about Important VS Urgent

Important activities have an outcome that leads to us achieving our goals, whether these are professional or personal.

Urgent activities demand immediate attention and are usually associated with achieving someone else's goals. They are often the ones we concentrate on and they demand attention because the consequences of not dealing with them are immediate.

Something that is urgent and important is a crisis. It's pressing problems with deadlines. Something that is important but NOT urgent would be things such as exercise, relationship building, personal growth. If you ignore these important things, they later become important AND urgent.

Some things that are urgent but NOT important might be interruptions, phone calls (some of them), some email, some meetings

Some things that are not important and NOT urgent would be busy work, time wasters, some pleasant activities.

How to Know When To Delegate?

9:02

In episode 159 of the Resourceful Designer, Mark had some great questions you can use to make this simple. First, you have to identify all the things you do in your podcast/life. He suggests using post-it notes or an index card, but you're going to need a place for two piles. Then take each task and answer the following questions

Go from task to task and ask yourself, Does this bring me joy or Do I like doing this one particular task?

Am I good at this particular thing?

If you answered yes to BOTH questions, put it in pile number one. If you cannot respond yes to both questions, put it into pile number two. Separate your collection into these two piles.

Pile Number 1: Things that I like doing, and I'm good at

Look at the items in this pile and ask, If I continue doing this thing will it help my podcast grow? Will it help me achieve my goal?

Start two new piles. One will have all the items that will move you forward, and the pile of things you are good at and you like doing are things you are not saying no to, but not now.

Pile Number 2: Things that I don't like doing, or I'm not good at

Look at the items in this pile and ask, If I continue doing this thing will it help my podcast grow? Will it help me achieve my goal?

If the answer is yes, then these are the things you need to delegate.

Capturing and Organizing Your Thoughts

12:45

Brilliant ideas come at the most inconvenient times. I get great ideas in the shower. You NEED to capture these and organize them in a way so you can use them later. Here are some tools:

Evernote: I use this tool. It's free (there is a paid version at $7.99 a month). I have a folder called SOP Ideas. I have a folder called "Marketing Crap" that is filled with all those ebooks I get that I will read later. The thing I love about Evernote is I can use it on my phone, my tablet or computer and it all syncs together. They have a tool called "Web Clipper" that allows me to take a web page and save it in Evernote with a few clicks. They recently added a feature that makes it super easy to connect your gmail to your Evernote. See https://evernote.com/blog/introducing-evernote-gmail/

OneNote: This is Microsoft's version of Evernote. It's not bad. It is also free. If you are paying for Microsoft Office you have it.. If you are a big Microsoft user (outlook, word, excel) you might play with this tool.

Trello: Trello is another free (or paid) version that is much more visual as instead of folders you have cards (think index cards). Trello premium is $12.50 a month

Common Features: Evernote, OneNote, and Trello all have the ability to have topics and subtopics. They all have the ability to share information (which is great for collaborating with co-hosts)

Whatever tool you want to use is fine. The bottom line is you need a tool. I've got a course on organizing your information that spotlights these tools.

Where Is Your Time Going?

16:41

Want to see how you spend your time?  Check out Rescue Time which helps you understand your daily habits so you can focus and be more productive.  Rescue Time is free. The Premium version is $9 a month and allows you to track your time off the computer as well.

Another way to do this is to set your alarm on your phone to go off in an hour. When it goes off write down (maybe in Evernote?) what you were doing. I know when I did this the first time many years ago I was surprised how much time I spent watching reruns of TV shows I had already seen.

My Favorite To Do List

19:09

While there are a number of Todo apps, my favorite is todoist. Much like Evernote, I can have Todoist on my phone, tablet or computer and they all sync together. Also like Evernote, I can take an email and turn it into a task.

You can organize your task into projects. You can assign due dates and be sent reminders. There is even a reward system. You can set how many tasks you want to accomplish a day and earn points. This somewhat makes your to-do list a game. If you've been using tasks in Google, this will sync with that system. It's very powerful.

The todist software is free and the premium is $3 a month.

Why You're Getting Frustrated

Studies show that every time you check email, a social feed, or respond to a notification, your mind requires 23 minutes of re-focus time to get back on task. People that multitask are actually  40% less productive.

Finding Focus To Knock Off Your To Do List

When it's time to record, here are some things you can do that might make things easier:

Have a set time to record so your family knows not to interrupt.

Put your phone on do not disturb and have it out of site.

Have a distraction sheet. If you're working on something, and a distraction pops in your head, write it down and get back to your task.

You Can Stay Focused For 25 Minutes, Right?

25:32

Some times we need a boost. I've heard and tried the Pomodoro technique. Here it is in a nutshell

Pick a task you need to accomplish.

Set a timer for 25 minutes and start working

When the timer rings, take a 5-minute break

Repeat steps 1-3

Ever four cycles, take a 25-minute break.

Handling Distractions

Inform the other (distracting) party that you're working on something right now.

Negotiate a time when you can get back to them about the distracting issue in a timely manner.

Schedule that follow-up immediately.

Call back the other party when your pomodoro is complete and you're ready to tackle their issue.

If you find yourself thinking about something that just won't go away, have a sheet/note and write it down and get back to your task.

Why This Method is Working For Me

For me, it's only 25 minutes. It is not that whatever tangent I want to take is being put off forever, it's being put off for 25 minutes. By taking breaks, you keep yourself fresh. You avoid burnout. Studies show that people who work in distracting environments have more stress, a higher workload (cause you're not accomplishing as much), higher frustration, and it requires more effort. When you start to go down a rabbit hole, you can stop yourself and say, "I can do that in __ minutes."

No, I Can't Stay Focused For 25 Minutes

28:17

If you're having a hard time staying focused then I have some additional apps, that are really keeping on track.

PomoDone App

PomoDone is the easiest way to track your workflow using Pomodoro technique, on top of your current task management service. It ties in with just about every To Do List tool (Trello, Todoist, Evernote, Asana ) so you can track how much time you spent on a task. Once you realize how long something takes, you can better schedule it in the future. For example, I've put in 58 minutes on an article I'm working on for the Podcast Business Journal. At this point, I've got an hour and 20 minutes into this blog post (I haven't even got to press record yet).

By seeing how long you are spending on items, you can make much better decisions going forward.

Using the PomoDone Chrome extension, you can blacklist certain websites during the timer period. Once Timer is active (ticking), you will not be able to access the blocked websites. You can always turn this function on and off in the Extension's option, as well as configure the blacklist of the websites.

If you want to setup up times that differ from the25 standard time, you can do that ( I have times of 5, 25, 40).

Also if you're not using any other to do list tool, you can use this as your to-do list. The tool also works on iOs and Android.

As I almost exclusively use chrome, I use this app. Keep in mind if I want to jump on Firefox I can go to any site I want ( you can always turn off the blocking feature)

Tomato-Timer

https://tomato-timer.com/ is a free tool if you want to take this idea for a test spin (or you can just set two timers on your phone. One for 25 minutes and one for 5).

Freedom

33:08

Freedom.to is an app and website blocker for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS. Start sessions on-the-fly or sche­dule your Freedom time in adv­ance. Plan out sess­ions that recur daily or weekly. With Freedom, you'll make produc­tivity a habit.

This tool is a little more "hardcore." It blocks websites on both Chrome and Firefox, as well as on your phone. If you want to go "Super Hard Core" there is an option to lock your session (meaning you can cheat).  You can test run Freedom for five session then prices start at $6.99/month

Get Your Brain In Tune

35:33

I had heard about brain.fm on a few podcasts. This is music that is designed to help you focus. For me (being a musician) I liked it. It was more or less musical noise that was just above really boring. The pricing starts at $6.95 a month

I didn't feel like another subscription so I checked out Spotify and they have a number of preset "focus" stations that more or less played the same thing.

Make It Easy On Yourself

In Adobe Audition you can make a template but I've always used the poor man's template. I would bring in my intro and outro music and save it with something like namofshow_blank. I then open that file and before I press record I rename the show to something like nameofshow_697. This has all my files in it and I don't have to look for them.

Listen faster when editing if possible. In Hindenburg Journalist, there is an option to listen faster as well as in Audacity. I spoke about this on Episode 327

One other thing to remember is more planning leads to less editing.

Podcast Rewind

42:15

I was on the Podcast Reporter (Live from the NAB show)

I was on the Launch Speed Podcast talking podcast Niches

Work With Me

Join the School of Podcasting or let me be your podcast mentor

Check out this episode!

[jibunjishin]

hellO

i haven’t found the spare time in forever to just make a post and catch up with myself and how i’ve BEEN

i don’t think some people understand that idk how im honestly doing until i do something like this because i just go around doing the motions of life and whatever, not really having any time to feel, so i could be doing really bad for all i know but not be able to put a pinpoint on where it’s all coming from until i sit down for a sec. and while i can’t afford the time even now to do this, it’s super important so here i am!!!!

wow im super tired!!! in a physical way, where im fighting jet lag and general insufficient sleep hours. i actually fell asleep for like 2 hours today and then thought i’d take a ‘break’ until i felt ready and i actually haven’t felt ready. the last weeks of march i went into overdrive and SOMEHOW got everything done. one of my five classes is going really poorly, i’m scoring consistently below average and it’s ruining my self confidence, self esteem, just overall belief in myself and my abilities to finish my degree??? lmao. im very fragile ANYWAYS but on the other hand, I got a 91% on a paper for my public health class and a 98.5% on my midterm for another class! (which I’m p/nping! so it DOESN’T MATTER!! HAHAHH yay. *upside down smiley emoji*)

the point is things have been mixed bad and good results, but I’m really letting the bad overtake my whole mood. and i recognize that. acknowledge it. im not sure how to change my attitude about it though. i try to say it in my head that it’s ok and maybe eventually i’ll believe it but it’s ineffective and sometimes makes me feel worse. (also my friend in the class is KICKING BUTT he’s so good the professor gives him over 100% sometimes and im like ??? I can’t even get in the IQR... ya im jealous but happy for him OBVIOUSLY but I kinda feel like my professor has decided I’m a B-/C+ student bc I keep getting kinda the same grade, even though my latest assignment was not bad?? i went to a GSI’s OH and started it early and revised and whatever but got a 1% improvement. IDK THIS IS A LONG RANT/TANGENT I’m also not trying to be salty and be like “this professor sucks he’s not giving me As” because if I don’t deserve it I’m fine with that but ok anyways moving along) the point is, things are an OK average, so why can’t i be fine with that?

it’s partially because of these bad grades, but i’m also losing motivation to do my thesis at all. and like it’s necessary to finish an ES degree. it’s literally my last requirement and I’ve done all the other classes. but I just don’t know if I want to commit a whole year to doing something I don’t want to do. I don’t think it’s that like I’m lazy or trying to get out of it just because? if that makes sense? I don’t think it’s a bad reason. I can’t find anything I want to research. we’re actually doing literal research like not a research paper. we have to write a literal mini-dissertation and shit. i’ve been a content-absorber my whole life and I just think I’m too *simple* to make a discovery. like i’m not sure if i’m GETTING ACROSS THIS CONCEPT. WE HAVE TO SPEND THE SUMMER/FALL/some of spring bc that’s when it’s due DOING LITERAL RESEARCH and this thought gives me anxiety and i’ve cried a bit over it. it’s so daunting. and I’ve tried to talk to my gsi/professor about my fears and they’re like oh it’s fun! it’ll be okay! and i’m like NO you don’t understand?? and they’re like here let’s talk about what u can do and I feel like they’re actually not getting how afraid I am of this. I don’t want to quit my major over this... I took 9 classes for this already, and it’s just one year, two semesters, six units left. but I’m just realizing how I c a n n o t do this thesis. i’m not sure what i’d do? and you can’t bullshit this like a paper. i can’t do it overnight. i have a proposal draft for this due monday and I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA HOW TO EXECUTE THIS IDEA I HAVE BECAUSE IT’S A SHITTY IDEA and wow I honestly don’t know how people do it. I’m going to my prof’s OH again this Friday and I’m really hoping he can HELP or maybe help me find an advisor because if I am doing this, there’s no way in hell I can do it alone. I don’t want it to be a pity-thing where they’re like ‘ok let me do this for u but u can put ur name on it so u can get the hell out of school’ like I actually DO want to do it but i CAN’T and I know that’s toxic, i should be like oh yeah i can do it! think of all the other ES undergrads who’ve done it, who are doing it, who will do it!! one of them is YOU!! but i’m actually so past that stage, i’m facing the reality of this deadline coming up and it’s looking really bad. really bad. i know this post has been a huge ole complaining mess but YOU KNOW WHAT i’m being honest with how i feel, even if i’m not proud of it.

i thought i got over my anxiety!! LMAO!! im sweating and the whole shebang just from writing this and thinking about my thesis. aasasoifnva. honestly i think the worst that can happen is I get a TERRIBLE grade in this class. I don’t think I can fail??? but I was okay with getting bad grades in the chem/physics classes but this one?? it’s a major req. like literally a class for JUST ES majors in spring semester of their junior year. i’m pretty sure i’m one of the lowest grades in the class based on the number of times my groups have been getting the low L O L and it’s very sad to see that i’m the one of the worst in my cohort. but anyways it’s just super disheartening like I said earlier.

so right now i’m in between feeling like it’s a waste to stop pursuing ES and it’s just another year, 6 units(, A WHOLE THESIS) to complete the degree. on the other hand, i don’t need this degree if I want to teach ES in high school, since I’m one class and a seminar away from finishing my other major. and I will get my credential at the end of my 5 years. so I don’t NEED it because teaching ES just requires a single subject credential and a bio CSET?? I don’t need it, so why put myself through the struggle and anxiety and dread and frustration and all those other wonderful feelings of self-loathing and depression? so i’m not sure what to do. I really am not.

thanks if you even read this far to my literal 3 followers. lmao. these really help me and thanks to myself for taking the time to write it, but I should get back to reality. i’m not sure what my plans are for the rest of tonight. i can try to keep pushing through with the thesis, move on to my research paper for my geography class, or cut my losses and go to bed or read or go back on youtube. i am sure that i am tired as fuck and ready to be done. actually done.

edit: I guess the real question is: what do I do now actually? I have major advising meetings with both my advisors this friday, plus office hours with my professor. do i melt down and be like PLEASE HELP ME because I see no other way other than quitting? at this point I think that’s what it is. get help or quit. I think it’s okay to be okay with knowing I can’t do it on my own two feet. but i know if i ask for help i’ll CRY and it’ll be sad and pathetic kinda but idk IDK I JUST DON’T KNOW

[eurolinguiste]

When I started studying language on my own, there was one thing I avoided more than anything else.

Speaking.

As an introvert, it was the last thing I wanted to do.

And part of that, for me, was studying language with a tutor where I’d be forced to speak the language. I had too many bad memories from learning languages in the classroom setting.

You know what I’m talking about.

Being called on from amongst your classmates to answer a question you didn’t know the answer to. Being asked to stand in front of your peers to act out a skit or read something you’ve written. Or even being asked to read a passage aloud.

Each of those experiences terrified me as a kid and the last thing I wanted to do was put myself right back into a situation that would cause me the same discomfort.

The good news, however, is that language lessons are completely different than anything you’ll experience in class at school.

For one, the lessons (unless you take group lessons) are entirely focused on you, the learner. They are tailored to your specific level, your specific goals, and your specific struggles. Teachers in a classroom environment, unfortunately, are just not able to give their students that kind of attention.

Because language lessons, again, are usually 1-on-1 means that you don’t have the pressure of performing in front of a group of your peers. You’re just communicating with one person and that takes quite a bit of pressure off.

And finally, unless you have a special arrangement with your teacher, you’re not being graded on participation. You are the one spending the money on your lessons, so it’s up to you to decide how much you want to get out of the money you’re spending. Hint: the harder you work, the better your investment.

Keep in mind, however, that as comparatively stress-free lessons are (for those who are hesitant about speaking) when compared to the classroom setting, they aren’t a way to cheat your way through learning a new language.

There are no short-cuts when it comes to language learning.

There are no short-cuts when it comes to language learning – @eurolinguistesk http://bit.ly/2iqnaAM Click To Tweet

You still have to do the work. You can be more efficient about it, yes, but there isn’t a one-size fits all system that will magically help you learn a language without any effort on your part.

And while a language teacher or tutor is one fantastic way to improve your efficiency as a language learner, it’s important to remember that they can only give you the tools you need to improve; it’s up to you to open up your toolbox and use them.

<h2>Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Language Lessons</h2>

1. Prepare // Preparing for your tutoring sessions in advance will make them infinitely more productive. If you’re getting ready for your first lesson, bring along a short introduction script to start. This not only gives your teacher an idea of the level you’re at, but it also provides them with the opportunity to get to know you and your interests so they can better tailor your future lessons. If you’ve already started studying with a teacher, make sure you work on the things they give you so that you return to your next lesson prepared.

2. Do your homework // Like I mentioned above, it’s important to complete the tasks your teacher assigns you to the best of your ability. This may mean that you get through everything successfully they ask you to do on your own (to the best of your ability) or that you take the time to do a bit of research on the things you didn’t understand in your previous lesson. As long as you make your best effort, you’re doing a good job. This also helps your teacher understand how much work to give you between lessons – they may realize that they’re giving you too much or that they aren’t challenging you enough.

3. When you’re at your lesson, dedicate all of your attention attention to your teacher // Turn off your phone. Stop thinking about the other things you have to do. For the thirty minutes or the hour that you’re with your teacher – be there with your teacher! If you need to take notes, write them AFTER your lesson while they’re fresh in your head. Don’t waste precious lesson time with meticulous notes. If you’re worried you won’t remember, jot down something that will help you later on, but do it quickly. Or you can record the lesson.

4. Make note of any questions you have while you’re studying on your own // If you have any questions that come up while you’re studying between lessons, make a note of them so that you can ask your teacher about it during your next lesson. For me personally, I take note of anything I am unable to do on my own – whether it’s a certain grammatical structure, words I can’t find translations for, or a word I struggle to pronounce – I make note to ask my teacher about it during my next lesson. As an example, I am currently playing a game in Chinese and I send my teacher screenshots of any characters I can’t decipher (they’re old graphics and so unfamiliar characters are impossible for me to read).

5. Record your lessons // This will eliminate your need to take notes during the lesson (see above) and will also give you something to reference while you’re studying on your own. Make sure you review the recording. We often have the best intentions when we record our lessons, but never go over the recordings later (I’m guilty of this one).

6. Practice your new material in context // Did you work through a new script or learn new vocabulary related to a particular topic? Practice it in context. This can be as part of a scripted chat with your tutor, out in the real world, or with an exchange partner. Make sure you’re taking the information you’re learning and giving it context so that it’s something that you can really use when you need it.

7. Share what you’ve learned // One of the greatest ways to truly make something you’ve learned your own is by teaching it to someone else. Being able to explain something you’re doing helps you further engrain that information.

Where can you find a language teacher?

You can find a language teacher through quite a few fantastic websites like iTalki or Verbling. There are also language schools in almost every major city and you can often even find local tutors in your area if you do a quick search.

If you are unable to afford a teacher, however, there are still options for you!

Professional Teachers Aren’t the Only Option

After studying music for several years – bear with me while I go off tangent here – I have had the pleasure of being tutored by several talented musicians. In my experience, I learnt it is important to study and learn from a variety of people [musicians and non-musicians alike]. By diversifying your education, you gain access to a multitude of information to learn, recreate, and make your own.

I think the same can be said for language.

Studying with those who don’t teach languages (read: language exchange partners or study buddies) can benefit you as a language speaker in a variety of ways. From fellow learners you may be introduced to new study materials, approaches, learn more about your own language (which makes you a better language learner in general), teach you less ‘formal’ language, and so on.

A Note On Different Teaching Styles

More often than not, each tutor has their own individual approach to teaching; I have had teachers who feel “their way” is the “only way” (many of my Russian teachers felt this way about the order in which I should learn the language) and I have had teachers who try to help their students find their own way in terms of language learning (my Chinese teacher was fantastic in this regard). I have also had teachers who are still trying to find themselves and they try different things out on you to see if those methods work for them, too.

The most important thing is to consider whatever information a teacher passes onto you, reflect on it and then decide for yourself what is best for you. Then stick with what works and throw out all the rest.

And don’t forget that no matter whom you study with, or how effective their teaching is, there is an opportunity to take something away from the experience. At the very least, you may just learn what teaching style or personality doesn’t work for you.

Remember that you can learn from ANYONE and from almost any situation or resource.

Teachers can only give you the tools to do what you need to do. It is up to you to come away from your studies with whatever knowledge you can.

What about you?

What are some of the things that you do to maximize your language lessons?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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The post Getting the Most Out of Your Language Lessons appeared first on Eurolinguiste.

[claudeleonca]

How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2019

Want to learn how to write an ebook like a pro? It’s not just what you do, but what you DON’T do that can make or break your work.

  Admit it.

You’ve thought about writing an ebook.

In fact, you’ve already imagined the front cover.

You can see the main title and, underneath, your name.

And when you picture it, you feel a ripple of pride.

An ebook would be a big step up for you as a writer.

Because while blog posts are a great way to express your ideas, you can’t help feeling they’re a little, well, fleeting. Lightweight even.

But an ebook? That’s more substantial. It’s taken more seriously. It has more gravitas.

And having an ebook with your name on the front transforms you from a mere blogger into that more impressive beast — an author.

But how do you become an ebook author without falling victim to the same mistakes that sabotage the attempts of so many other bloggers?

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

Why Most Ebooks Are Embarrassingly Bad

On the surface, writing an ebook seems relatively easy.

Lots of bloggers seem to be doing it, so how hard can it be?

But in reality, most ebooks that see the light of day are horrible. Embarrassingly bad.

That’s because your average ebook author doesn’t have a clue how to write an ebook. They can’t afford to hire a ghostwriter, and they don’t have the support system a traditional author would be given by their publisher when writing a book.

They do their best, but they don’t know what they don’t know.

The good news? We can learn from their mistakes. In this post, we’re going to show you the common mishaps first-time authors make when writing an ebook.

In other words:

Want to write an ebook like a pro? Avoid these 21 common mistakes:

How to Write an Ebook Like a Pro (Hint: Don’t Do These Amatuerish Things)

Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

Starting at the Beginning

Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Designing Your Own Front Cover

Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

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1. Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

If you want to create a premium ebook, you can be tempted to pick a “hot topic” thinking that’s where the money is.

Likewise, when creating a sign-up bribe, you might think you need to entice readers with the latest information about an emerging topic.

And if you’re using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), it’s easy to think you need to target one of the most popular categories.

But picking a topic like this is a BIG mistake.

If you know little or nothing about your chosen topic, creating an ebook will be a huge amount of work. You’ll have to do a ton of research, interview experts, and perhaps even pay a real guru to get you up to speed.

What to do Instead

Write about something you actually know about — which almost certainly means tying your ebook to your blog’s core topic. You’ll not only save a ton of time on research, but you’ll also have a ready-made audience for your writing.

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2. Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

I’ve fallen into this trap myself (twice) and I’ve seen a heck of a lot of other bloggers do the same.

It happens when you realize there’s a topic you know your readers need, and you know you can write the perfect book that will genuinely help them.

Sounds great, but people don’t always know what they need. And your sense of what it is might not be spot-on either.

What to do Instead

Don’t give your readers what you think they need. Give them what they know they want.

How? Run a survey, and ask your readers to choose between three or four ebook topics.

(This is also a good opportunity to find out how much they’d pay, whether they’re beginners or more experienced, and what specific questions they need your help to answer.)

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3. Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Planning isn’t just about deciding what you’re going to write and what order you’re going to write it in.

Because when you decide to create an ebook, you’re not just a writer; you’re also a publisher (and marketer). You have to write and publish.

If you don’t start thinking now about how you’ll sell your book — whether that means selling it for money or just selling the concept to your readers — you’ll run into problems later on.

What to do Instead

Draft your sales page while you’re planning your ebook. Make it sound as attractive and useful as possible (try Jon’s list of power words, and make the reader the hero of the story) … and use that pitch to drive the writing process. This will make your ebook much stronger and will make your life much easier when you launch it.

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4. Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Once your survey results are in, you might be tempted to start writing straight away.

Whoa there.

Jumping into the writing at this point will cause you serious problems. You’ll find yourself repeating things, or wasting time exploring ultimately unhelpful tangents.

What to do Instead

Plan your ebook before you start writing.

This means having a clear outline that has, at the very least, a title for each chapter. Yes, that might seem a bit boring, but it will make the writing stage far easier (and more fun).

This doesn’t have to mean opening a blank document and writing a linear outline. Try freeform brainstorming, mind maps, or index cards as creative alternatives to help get your ebook ideas flowing.

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5. Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

With your first ebook, it’s easy to think you need to deliver the definitive ebook — the only one your audience will ever need.

If that sounds like a good idea, ask yourself this: “What will I give them next?”

Chances are, you won’t write just one ebook. You might write several in the same series, or you might create a short starter ebook for free, and then write a more advanced one to sell.

Even if your ebook is destined to be your subscriber incentive, if you give your readers everything they’ll ever need, why would they come back to your blog?

What to do Instead

Go back to your survey and determine what aspects your audience cares about the most. Focus on those. If you have lots of extra ideas, great! Keep them in a separate place and use them for your next ebook. Or explore them in a detailed blog post.

If you inadvertently miss something crucial, you’ll find out when you get feedback, and you can add a new section or chapter to address that point.

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6. Starting at the Beginning

Although it might be the first chapter in your book, your introduction almost certainly isn’t the place to start writing.

It’s hard to know what to include until you’ve drafted the majority of your book, and you don’t want to get bogged down at this early stage.

If you start with the introduction, you’ll often end up writing far more than you need to. And let’s be honest. No reader relishes the sight of a long introduction — they want to dive into the real content.

What to do Instead

Don’t begin with the introduction; start with your first “proper” chapter. Once you’ve drafted the rest of your book, you’ll know what needs to go in the introduction.

Also, a lot of “introductory” material can go at the back of the book – I strongly recommend having an About the Author page at the back, because it’s a great opportunity to point readers to your website, mailing list, and so on.

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7. Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Although your ebook is probably a high-priority project for you, it can be genuinely tough to carve out the time for working on it regularly.

But if you don’t write consistently, you’ll never build up any momentum. You may write for a few hours to begin with, but then end up taking weeks off … and never getting back to your ebook.

What to do Instead

You don’t have to write thousands of words at a time. One of my clients wrote a short chapter every week, without fail, and finished her ebook within a few months.

Find a consistent time each day, or several times a week, to work on your ebook. You might like to try the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes writing, 5-minute break) to use your time effectively during short writing sessions. Anyone can write for just 25 minutes.

If you know you have a problem with time management, address that now; it’ll pay off for years to come.

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8. Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

If you’re writing regularly and staying focused but making slow progress, then you’re probably trying to edit while you write.

Perhaps you find yourself typing a couple of paragraphs, then changing your mind and deleting them. You might even be stopping every sentence or two to make minor tweaks.

This is a serious drain on your productivity as a writer.

What to do Instead

If you change your mind about a whole paragraph or section, leave it in as is, but jot a note to yourself about it. You may find, on re-reading, that it works perfectly well.

You might find it’s helpful to use a full-screen “no distractions” text editor. I like Dark Room for this — as it doesn’t have those distracting red and green wiggles that your typical word processor adds when it doesn’t like a word or phrase.

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9. Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

After you’ve been working on your ebook for weeks, perhaps months, you may find that you’ve not made the progress you’d hoped for.

Whatever the exact cause (illness, workload, etc.), you’ve hit a wall. You aren’t even halfway through the draft, and there’s a long way to go.

When you go through a patch like this, it’s quite tempting to just give up — to cut your losses and leave that ebook draft abandoned on your computer.

But that would be a huge mistake. Because this is often a sign that things are about to get easier.

What to do Instead

Push yourself to reach the halfway point. Once you’re halfway, natural momentum kicks in, and you’ll speed up as you approach the end.

Be sure to remind yourself of your motivation for starting the ebook in the first place: what’s it going to do for you and your blog? How will it help your readers — the people who you’ve come to know and care about?

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10. Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

While it’s important to not let your ebook stall after the first draft, you don’t need to rush into editing. Some writers dive straight into the editing phase — but then they struggle to get perspective, and may quickly feel burned out.

What to do Instead

Let your ebook “sit” for at least a couple of days (and preferably a full week) before you begin reviewing and editing. That way, you’ll come to it with fresh eyes and a new perspective — you’ll be able to see what’s already good, and what needs a bit more work.

With a little distance, you’ll be able to see your work from the perspective of a reader, not a writer.

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11. Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Many ebook authors start their edit using the same file they used for the draft — for example, MyEbook.doc.

While that’s not always a problem, it’s seriously frustrating if you cut something you later want to put back in.

Worse, if you manage to delete, lose, or somehow corrupt that master file, all your hard work could be gone for good.

What to do Instead

For each new draft, create a new version of your file — MyEbookV2.doc, MyEbookV3.doc and so on. And create regular backups. A simple way is to email yourself a copy of the latest version from time to time.

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12. Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

If you start your editing by looking for minor typos, you’ll miss much more significant issues.

By focusing on the micro detail, you may fail to address major problems with your book — like “Chapter 15 is way too short” or “Chapter 7 should come after Chapter 10.” These often require a bit of perspective (see Mistake #10).

What to do Instead

Read through your whole ebook, preferably in .pdf form, on paper, or on your tablet, before you begin editing.

In other words, read it in a format where you can’t easily make small changes as you go along to force yourself to concentrate on the bigger picture.

Make a note of any issues you need to fix, like chapters in the wrong order, repetitive information, tangents that need deleting, and new sections you want to add.

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13. Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

When you’ve been working away on your own for (probably) several months, seeing mistakes can be tough — from the big picture issues to the small details like missing words or misplaced apostrophes.

But many first-time ebook authors are either too inexperienced to know the value of an editor or figure it’s a luxury they can’t afford.

Even if you’re not in a position to pay for a full edit, that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.

What to do Instead

Consider paying for an editor to review just the first few chapters of your ebook. Many problems the editor identifies will probably occur throughout the ebook and you can fix them yourself once you know what to look for.

Recruit volunteers to help edit: ask your readers, or members of any blogging community you belong to. Be prepared to repay the favor!

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14. Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Once you’ve made any major changes and addressed the suggestions of your editors, your book is almost complete.

But before it’s ready to publish, you’ll need to do at least one complete read-through to catch any remaining typos or errors.

However, you’re probably the worst person to catch those errors.

You’ve likely become so familiar with the content and its layout that you’ll miss typos that will be obvious to someone else.

What to do Instead

If you can afford a professional proofreader, or if you have a talented friend who can help out, brilliant.

If you have to do most or all of your proofreading alone, here’s the secret: don’t proofread your ebook in the same environment you wrote it. Try changing the font style and size and printing it out, or reading it on a tablet. You’ll be surprised at how errors stand out.

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15. Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Quality matters, but if you’re onto your fifth proofread and you’re spending ten minutes debating whether or not a particular sentence needs a comma, you’re wasting time.

Even books from major publishing houses have mistakes from time to time. You may never have noticed this, because (like every reader) you don’t pause and scrutinize every word.

What to do Instead

Give yourself a deadline for finishing the editing phase, and accept that catching 99 percent of your mistakes is good enough.

Don’t agonize over the possibility that a typo may still be present. Readers aren’t likely to notice, and if someone does point out a particularly glaring mistake after publication, it’s simple to update your ebook.

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16. Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Even if you started out with a specific end goal in mind, be sure to review your options once you’ve finished your ebook.

An ebook that started life as a subscriber incentive might in fact make a great premium product, or serve as an authority-building book in the Kindle Store.

But if you don’t at least consider other options, you might miss out on a huge opportunity.

What to do Instead

Depending on the final destination of your ebook, a range of different ebook formats are available to consider:

If you’re giving your ebook away as an incentive for joining your email list, then .pdf-only is simple and straightforward.

If you’re positioning your ebook as a premium product (e.g., at least $10), you can just create a .pdf … but you might also want to offer .epub and .mobi formats. You could also include multimedia bonus material on a password-protected webpage (e.g. audio interviews, short video tutorials).

If you’re publishing your ebook on major retailers’ sites, you’ll need a lower price (usually $9.99 or less) and to publish your file in the appropriate format for the store.

And don’t assume that a particular option is right for your ebook just because it’s what you’ve seen other bloggers doing.

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17. Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Just like a blog post title, an ebook title must grab attention. It’s going to be the first (and quite possibly the only) thing your potential ebook reader sees.

When I wrote my first full-length ebook, I planned to title it Writing Blog Content. That’s what it was about, after all! But it’s not exactly sexy.

A wise friend (Charlie Gilkey) jumped onto Skype with me and spent a while hashing out better titles. We eventually went with The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing … a much stronger, more compelling title.

What to do Instead

If you’ve had a working title in mind since the planning stage, now’s the time to figure out whether it’s truly good enough. You might want to ask your blog readers to vote on different titles.

The same goes for the headline on your sales page — you’ll probably want to put something a bit more intriguing than just the title of your ebook.

Jon’s Headline Hacks report is packed with lots of inspiration and advice.

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18. Designing Your Own Front Cover

Like it or not, everyone judges books by their covers.

Unless you’re a professional designer, creating your own cover is a hugely damaging mistake.

Your ebook will look amateurish, and readers may well be put off from buying it.

This is especially true if you’ll be selling your ebook on Amazon (or other e-retail sites) where most potential readers won’t have any prior knowledge of you.

For plenty of examples of both good and bad covers, take a look at Joel Friedlander’s Monthly e-Book Cover Design Awards.

What to do Instead

If you can afford it, hire a designer. This is a crucial investment, and you’ll likely sell enough extra copies to more than pay for the designer’s work.

But if you really have to create your cover yourself, keep it simple and straightforward, and look at lots of examples of good and bad designs.

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19. Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Your ebook might be a reader’s first contact with you. And even those who downloaded your ebook from your blog might forget where they got it.

So failing to link your ebook back to your blog is a big mistake. You’re missing an opportunity to drive new subscribers to your main email list or to a separate list that tells your current ebook readers about your next book.

What to do Instead

Include a page at the back of your ebook — after “About the Author” — that lets readers know where to find you online.

Be sure to link to your subscriber landing page, to your next book’s sales page, or anywhere else online you want to send them — e.g., your social media profiles.

Also important is giving your readers an easy way to send you feedback for your ebook, such as a dedicated email address or a link to a contact page.

And don’t be afraid to link to relevant blog content within the body of the ebook itself.

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20. Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Even if a reader already knows you, they won’t necessarily trust that your ebook is any good until it has at least one review or testimonial.

Whether your ebook is available for purchase or simply a reward for new subscribers, people probably won’t trust its value unless they can see that other people have read it and found it useful.

And if you’re in a niche that’s known for having a few sleazy operators, or one where ebooks are rare, then failing to provide social proof is an even bigger mistake.

What to do Instead

Be proactive — send out review copies to bloggers in your niche, and to any of your blog’s readers who’ve commented regularly or emailed you recently. Add positive reviews to your sales page and, if possible, use photos of the reviewers to boost credibility.

And if you can, send out your review copies before you launch your ebook – preferably at least a couple weeks before. This gives people a chance to read your book and get a review ready on or soon after your launch day.

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21. Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

Many bloggers are uncomfortable marketing their ebooks so their “launch” simply involves a new link on their blog and a couple of low-key posts on social media.

But even the best ebook will wither and die without some determined promotion.

And the truth is that if you’re not willing to market your ebook when the hard work of writing it is complete, you’ve basically wasted all that time and effort.

What to do Instead

You’re proud of your new ebook, right? So start acting like it. (If you don’t feel a swell of pride about your work then go back to the writing and editing phases until you do!)

Despite any preconceptions, you can effectively market your blog without coming across like a used car salesman.

Here’s how…

Mix up your promotional messages with lots of useful and interesting content.

If you’re giving people useful information at the same time as promoting your ebook, you’ll feel less like a pushy salesperson.

If your ebook is on Amazon, you can create some buzz by giving it away free for short periods.

If this is your first premium product, make sure you tell your existing list about it and consider offering a discount for existing subscribers.

Write guest posts for popular blogs in your niche and direct readers to a dedicated landing page for sign-ups or for the sales page for your ebook.

You might even look into ways to do something more interesting and innovative, maybe creating videos, offering special extras, or getting readers involved.

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

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Writing an Ebook Doesn’t Have to Be a Dream

Lots of mistakes are lurking out there to trip you up on the path to publishing your first ebook, but the potential rewards are great.

You can get more subscribers for your blog, more authority in your niche, and even earn more money from your writing.

And now that you know the most common mistakes, you can avoid them with ease.

But of all the mistakes you can make, one trumps them all:

Not even trying.

Or telling yourself that you’ll write your ebook someday.

But you’re not going to make that mistake, right?

You now know how to write an ebook. Grab your calendar, take a look at the next week, and choose a day to begin.

Because in just a month or two, you could easily have a finished ebook … one that could supercharge your email list, position you as an expert, or start bringing in a steady income.

When will your ebook journey begin?

About the Author: Ali Luke is the author of Publishing E-Books For Dummies, and writes for Learn SEO Fast. If you’d like more help with the “plan-write-edit” process (not just for ebooks!) then check out her free video training, The Writing Process for Bloggers — no opt-in required.

The post How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2019 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/ebook-mistakes/

[claudeleonca]

How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2019

Want to learn how to write an ebook like a pro? It’s not just what you do, but what you DON’T do that can make or break your work.

  Admit it.

You’ve thought about writing an ebook.

In fact, you’ve already imagined the front cover.

You can see the main title and, underneath, your name.

And when you picture it, you feel a ripple of pride.

An ebook would be a big step up for you as a writer.

Because while blog posts are a great way to express your ideas, you can’t help feeling they’re a little, well, fleeting. Lightweight even.

But an ebook? That’s more substantial. It’s taken more seriously. It has more gravitas.

And having an ebook with your name on the front transforms you from a mere blogger into that more impressive beast — an author.

But how do you become an ebook author without falling victim to the same mistakes that sabotage the attempts of so many other bloggers?

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

Why Most Ebooks Are Embarrassingly Bad

On the surface, writing an ebook seems relatively easy.

Lots of bloggers seem to be doing it, so how hard can it be?

But in reality, most ebooks that see the light of day are horrible. Embarrassingly bad.

That’s because your average ebook author doesn’t have a clue how to write an ebook. They can’t afford to hire a ghostwriter, and they don’t have the support system a traditional author would be given by their publisher when writing a book.

They do their best, but they don’t know what they don’t know.

The good news? We can learn from their mistakes. In this post, we’re going to show you the common mishaps first-time authors make when writing an ebook.

In other words:

Want to write an ebook like a pro? Avoid these 21 common mistakes:

How to Write an Ebook Like a Pro (Hint: Don’t Do These Amatuerish Things)

Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

Starting at the Beginning

Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Designing Your Own Front Cover

Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

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1. Choosing a Topic You Know Little About

If you want to create a premium ebook, you can be tempted to pick a “hot topic” thinking that’s where the money is.

Likewise, when creating a sign-up bribe, you might think you need to entice readers with the latest information about an emerging topic.

And if you’re using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), it’s easy to think you need to target one of the most popular categories.

But picking a topic like this is a BIG mistake.

If you know little or nothing about your chosen topic, creating an ebook will be a huge amount of work. You’ll have to do a ton of research, interview experts, and perhaps even pay a real guru to get you up to speed.

What to do Instead

Write about something you actually know about — which almost certainly means tying your ebook to your blog’s core topic. You’ll not only save a ton of time on research, but you’ll also have a ready-made audience for your writing.

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2. Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”

I’ve fallen into this trap myself (twice) and I’ve seen a heck of a lot of other bloggers do the same.

It happens when you realize there’s a topic you know your readers need, and you know you can write the perfect book that will genuinely help them.

Sounds great, but people don’t always know what they need. And your sense of what it is might not be spot-on either.

What to do Instead

Don’t give your readers what you think they need. Give them what they know they want.

How? Run a survey, and ask your readers to choose between three or four ebook topics.

(This is also a good opportunity to find out how much they’d pay, whether they’re beginners or more experienced, and what specific questions they need your help to answer.)

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3. Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher

Planning isn’t just about deciding what you’re going to write and what order you’re going to write it in.

Because when you decide to create an ebook, you’re not just a writer; you’re also a publisher (and marketer). You have to write and publish.

If you don’t start thinking now about how you’ll sell your book — whether that means selling it for money or just selling the concept to your readers — you’ll run into problems later on.

What to do Instead

Draft your sales page while you’re planning your ebook. Make it sound as attractive and useful as possible (try Jon’s list of power words, and make the reader the hero of the story) … and use that pitch to drive the writing process. This will make your ebook much stronger and will make your life much easier when you launch it.

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4. Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write

Once your survey results are in, you might be tempted to start writing straight away.

Whoa there.

Jumping into the writing at this point will cause you serious problems. You’ll find yourself repeating things, or wasting time exploring ultimately unhelpful tangents.

What to do Instead

Plan your ebook before you start writing.

This means having a clear outline that has, at the very least, a title for each chapter. Yes, that might seem a bit boring, but it will make the writing stage far easier (and more fun).

This doesn’t have to mean opening a blank document and writing a linear outline. Try freeform brainstorming, mind maps, or index cards as creative alternatives to help get your ebook ideas flowing.

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5. Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable

With your first ebook, it’s easy to think you need to deliver the definitive ebook — the only one your audience will ever need.

If that sounds like a good idea, ask yourself this: “What will I give them next?”

Chances are, you won’t write just one ebook. You might write several in the same series, or you might create a short starter ebook for free, and then write a more advanced one to sell.

Even if your ebook is destined to be your subscriber incentive, if you give your readers everything they’ll ever need, why would they come back to your blog?

What to do Instead

Go back to your survey and determine what aspects your audience cares about the most. Focus on those. If you have lots of extra ideas, great! Keep them in a separate place and use them for your next ebook. Or explore them in a detailed blog post.

If you inadvertently miss something crucial, you’ll find out when you get feedback, and you can add a new section or chapter to address that point.

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6. Starting at the Beginning

Although it might be the first chapter in your book, your introduction almost certainly isn’t the place to start writing.

It’s hard to know what to include until you’ve drafted the majority of your book, and you don’t want to get bogged down at this early stage.

If you start with the introduction, you’ll often end up writing far more than you need to. And let’s be honest. No reader relishes the sight of a long introduction — they want to dive into the real content.

What to do Instead

Don’t begin with the introduction; start with your first “proper” chapter. Once you’ve drafted the rest of your book, you’ll know what needs to go in the introduction.

Also, a lot of “introductory” material can go at the back of the book – I strongly recommend having an About the Author page at the back, because it’s a great opportunity to point readers to your website, mailing list, and so on.

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7. Only Writing When You Feel Like It

Although your ebook is probably a high-priority project for you, it can be genuinely tough to carve out the time for working on it regularly.

But if you don’t write consistently, you’ll never build up any momentum. You may write for a few hours to begin with, but then end up taking weeks off … and never getting back to your ebook.

What to do Instead

You don’t have to write thousands of words at a time. One of my clients wrote a short chapter every week, without fail, and finished her ebook within a few months.

Find a consistent time each day, or several times a week, to work on your ebook. You might like to try the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes writing, 5-minute break) to use your time effectively during short writing sessions. Anyone can write for just 25 minutes.

If you know you have a problem with time management, address that now; it’ll pay off for years to come.

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8. Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead

If you’re writing regularly and staying focused but making slow progress, then you’re probably trying to edit while you write.

Perhaps you find yourself typing a couple of paragraphs, then changing your mind and deleting them. You might even be stopping every sentence or two to make minor tweaks.

This is a serious drain on your productivity as a writer.

What to do Instead

If you change your mind about a whole paragraph or section, leave it in as is, but jot a note to yourself about it. You may find, on re-reading, that it works perfectly well.

You might find it’s helpful to use a full-screen “no distractions” text editor. I like Dark Room for this — as it doesn’t have those distracting red and green wiggles that your typical word processor adds when it doesn’t like a word or phrase.

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9. Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy

After you’ve been working on your ebook for weeks, perhaps months, you may find that you’ve not made the progress you’d hoped for.

Whatever the exact cause (illness, workload, etc.), you’ve hit a wall. You aren’t even halfway through the draft, and there’s a long way to go.

When you go through a patch like this, it’s quite tempting to just give up — to cut your losses and leave that ebook draft abandoned on your computer.

But that would be a huge mistake. Because this is often a sign that things are about to get easier.

What to do Instead

Push yourself to reach the halfway point. Once you’re halfway, natural momentum kicks in, and you’ll speed up as you approach the end.

Be sure to remind yourself of your motivation for starting the ebook in the first place: what’s it going to do for you and your blog? How will it help your readers — the people who you’ve come to know and care about?

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10. Trying to Keep Up The Momentum

While it’s important to not let your ebook stall after the first draft, you don’t need to rush into editing. Some writers dive straight into the editing phase — but then they struggle to get perspective, and may quickly feel burned out.

What to do Instead

Let your ebook “sit” for at least a couple of days (and preferably a full week) before you begin reviewing and editing. That way, you’ll come to it with fresh eyes and a new perspective — you’ll be able to see what’s already good, and what needs a bit more work.

With a little distance, you’ll be able to see your work from the perspective of a reader, not a writer.

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11. Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire

Many ebook authors start their edit using the same file they used for the draft — for example, MyEbook.doc.

While that’s not always a problem, it’s seriously frustrating if you cut something you later want to put back in.

Worse, if you manage to delete, lose, or somehow corrupt that master file, all your hard work could be gone for good.

What to do Instead

For each new draft, create a new version of your file — MyEbookV2.doc, MyEbookV3.doc and so on. And create regular backups. A simple way is to email yourself a copy of the latest version from time to time.

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12. Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope

If you start your editing by looking for minor typos, you’ll miss much more significant issues.

By focusing on the micro detail, you may fail to address major problems with your book — like “Chapter 15 is way too short” or “Chapter 7 should come after Chapter 10.” These often require a bit of perspective (see Mistake #10).

What to do Instead

Read through your whole ebook, preferably in .pdf form, on paper, or on your tablet, before you begin editing.

In other words, read it in a format where you can’t easily make small changes as you go along to force yourself to concentrate on the bigger picture.

Make a note of any issues you need to fix, like chapters in the wrong order, repetitive information, tangents that need deleting, and new sections you want to add.

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13. Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor

When you’ve been working away on your own for (probably) several months, seeing mistakes can be tough — from the big picture issues to the small details like missing words or misplaced apostrophes.

But many first-time ebook authors are either too inexperienced to know the value of an editor or figure it’s a luxury they can’t afford.

Even if you’re not in a position to pay for a full edit, that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.

What to do Instead

Consider paying for an editor to review just the first few chapters of your ebook. Many problems the editor identifies will probably occur throughout the ebook and you can fix them yourself once you know what to look for.

Recruit volunteers to help edit: ask your readers, or members of any blogging community you belong to. Be prepared to repay the favor!

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14. Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader

Once you’ve made any major changes and addressed the suggestions of your editors, your book is almost complete.

But before it’s ready to publish, you’ll need to do at least one complete read-through to catch any remaining typos or errors.

However, you’re probably the worst person to catch those errors.

You’ve likely become so familiar with the content and its layout that you’ll miss typos that will be obvious to someone else.

What to do Instead

If you can afford a professional proofreader, or if you have a talented friend who can help out, brilliant.

If you have to do most or all of your proofreading alone, here’s the secret: don’t proofread your ebook in the same environment you wrote it. Try changing the font style and size and printing it out, or reading it on a tablet. You’ll be surprised at how errors stand out.

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15. Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator

Quality matters, but if you’re onto your fifth proofread and you’re spending ten minutes debating whether or not a particular sentence needs a comma, you’re wasting time.

Even books from major publishing houses have mistakes from time to time. You may never have noticed this, because (like every reader) you don’t pause and scrutinize every word.

What to do Instead

Give yourself a deadline for finishing the editing phase, and accept that catching 99 percent of your mistakes is good enough.

Don’t agonize over the possibility that a typo may still be present. Readers aren’t likely to notice, and if someone does point out a particularly glaring mistake after publication, it’s simple to update your ebook.

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16. Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already

Even if you started out with a specific end goal in mind, be sure to review your options once you’ve finished your ebook.

An ebook that started life as a subscriber incentive might in fact make a great premium product, or serve as an authority-building book in the Kindle Store.

But if you don’t at least consider other options, you might miss out on a huge opportunity.

What to do Instead

Depending on the final destination of your ebook, a range of different ebook formats are available to consider:

If you’re giving your ebook away as an incentive for joining your email list, then .pdf-only is simple and straightforward.

If you’re positioning your ebook as a premium product (e.g., at least $10), you can just create a .pdf … but you might also want to offer .epub and .mobi formats. You could also include multimedia bonus material on a password-protected webpage (e.g. audio interviews, short video tutorials).

If you’re publishing your ebook on major retailers’ sites, you’ll need a lower price (usually $9.99 or less) and to publish your file in the appropriate format for the store.

And don’t assume that a particular option is right for your ebook just because it’s what you’ve seen other bloggers doing.

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17. Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind

Just like a blog post title, an ebook title must grab attention. It’s going to be the first (and quite possibly the only) thing your potential ebook reader sees.

When I wrote my first full-length ebook, I planned to title it Writing Blog Content. That’s what it was about, after all! But it’s not exactly sexy.

A wise friend (Charlie Gilkey) jumped onto Skype with me and spent a while hashing out better titles. We eventually went with The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing … a much stronger, more compelling title.

What to do Instead

If you’ve had a working title in mind since the planning stage, now’s the time to figure out whether it’s truly good enough. You might want to ask your blog readers to vote on different titles.

The same goes for the headline on your sales page — you’ll probably want to put something a bit more intriguing than just the title of your ebook.

Jon’s Headline Hacks report is packed with lots of inspiration and advice.

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18. Designing Your Own Front Cover

Like it or not, everyone judges books by their covers.

Unless you’re a professional designer, creating your own cover is a hugely damaging mistake.

Your ebook will look amateurish, and readers may well be put off from buying it.

This is especially true if you’ll be selling your ebook on Amazon (or other e-retail sites) where most potential readers won’t have any prior knowledge of you.

For plenty of examples of both good and bad covers, take a look at Joel Friedlander’s Monthly e-Book Cover Design Awards.

What to do Instead

If you can afford it, hire a designer. This is a crucial investment, and you’ll likely sell enough extra copies to more than pay for the designer’s work.

But if you really have to create your cover yourself, keep it simple and straightforward, and look at lots of examples of good and bad designs.

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19. Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog

Your ebook might be a reader’s first contact with you. And even those who downloaded your ebook from your blog might forget where they got it.

So failing to link your ebook back to your blog is a big mistake. You’re missing an opportunity to drive new subscribers to your main email list or to a separate list that tells your current ebook readers about your next book.

What to do Instead

Include a page at the back of your ebook — after “About the Author” — that lets readers know where to find you online.

Be sure to link to your subscriber landing page, to your next book’s sales page, or anywhere else online you want to send them — e.g., your social media profiles.

Also important is giving your readers an easy way to send you feedback for your ebook, such as a dedicated email address or a link to a contact page.

And don’t be afraid to link to relevant blog content within the body of the ebook itself.

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20. Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof

Even if a reader already knows you, they won’t necessarily trust that your ebook is any good until it has at least one review or testimonial.

Whether your ebook is available for purchase or simply a reward for new subscribers, people probably won’t trust its value unless they can see that other people have read it and found it useful.

And if you’re in a niche that’s known for having a few sleazy operators, or one where ebooks are rare, then failing to provide social proof is an even bigger mistake.

What to do Instead

Be proactive — send out review copies to bloggers in your niche, and to any of your blog’s readers who’ve commented regularly or emailed you recently. Add positive reviews to your sales page and, if possible, use photos of the reviewers to boost credibility.

And if you can, send out your review copies before you launch your ebook – preferably at least a couple weeks before. This gives people a chance to read your book and get a review ready on or soon after your launch day.

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21. Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal

Many bloggers are uncomfortable marketing their ebooks so their “launch” simply involves a new link on their blog and a couple of low-key posts on social media.

But even the best ebook will wither and die without some determined promotion.

And the truth is that if you’re not willing to market your ebook when the hard work of writing it is complete, you’ve basically wasted all that time and effort.

What to do Instead

You’re proud of your new ebook, right? So start acting like it. (If you don’t feel a swell of pride about your work then go back to the writing and editing phases until you do!)

Despite any preconceptions, you can effectively market your blog without coming across like a used car salesman.

Here’s how…

Mix up your promotional messages with lots of useful and interesting content.

If you’re giving people useful information at the same time as promoting your ebook, you’ll feel less like a pushy salesperson.

If your ebook is on Amazon, you can create some buzz by giving it away free for short periods.

If this is your first premium product, make sure you tell your existing list about it and consider offering a discount for existing subscribers.

Write guest posts for popular blogs in your niche and direct readers to a dedicated landing page for sign-ups or for the sales page for your ebook.

You might even look into ways to do something more interesting and innovative, maybe creating videos, offering special extras, or getting readers involved.

Download our Ebook Cheatsheet(a free, 1-page PDF packed with info)

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Writing an Ebook Doesn’t Have to Be a Dream

Lots of mistakes are lurking out there to trip you up on the path to publishing your first ebook, but the potential rewards are great.

You can get more subscribers for your blog, more authority in your niche, and even earn more money from your writing.

And now that you know the most common mistakes, you can avoid them with ease.

But of all the mistakes you can make, one trumps them all:

Not even trying.

Or telling yourself that you’ll write your ebook someday.

But you’re not going to make that mistake, right?

You now know how to write an ebook. Grab your calendar, take a look at the next week, and choose a day to begin.

Because in just a month or two, you could easily have a finished ebook … one that could supercharge your email list, position you as an expert, or start bringing in a steady income.

When will your ebook journey begin?

About the Author: Ali Luke is the author of Publishing E-Books For Dummies, and writes for Learn SEO Fast. If you’d like more help with the “plan-write-edit” process (not just for ebooks!) then check out her free video training, The Writing Process for Bloggers — no opt-in required.

The post How to Write an Ebook: 21 Dumb Mistakes to Avoid in 2019 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/ebook-mistakes/