Raining, rainy rains - Gardening and Writing In between...
Another new calf. That time of year. Some call this recurring rain - using the same jet stream pattern - odd, even unique. I've seen this before - somewhat. Better than drought, though...
Hi,
Rainy, raining rain. Every few days, some rains are worse than others. But writing when it’s raining is useful. Getting a garden in when it’s not is also useful. Still, my books haunt me to to finish them. Some new ideas about that…
Farming News - Rain continues in a pattern. But - another new calf!
Writing News - The tail end of the copywriting book has me on a new, short research adventure. And may wind up with a podcast…
Expectancy - Funny enough, I discovered that what people define “expectancy” as reflects on their view of the world - a self-limiting one.
Farming News
6 days later - a new calf! Another heifer.
And - your suggestions on a name? (There’s a little black by that left eye of hers, BTW.)
Got the last calf tagged already - a new pattern for us. Used to wait, but now I’m planning to get them as they hit the ground. As you can see above, I’m behind on my tagging by some hours again. Have to carry supplies with me - and didn’t when I took this. (Phones are ever-present now, so photos are easy.)
(The winning name for our first calf was Marcella = after the mime who was famous when I was a kid. Ed Sullivan show and all that. Thanks,
The herd was kept out of our lawn as we had the fence down for bringing in gardening supplies. They should be mowing our lawns by the time you get this.
These rains we’re experiencing are supposedly odd. Too many days of rain in the same pattern, not even a week apart. You can’t blame this on cloud-seeding or global warming. But then, we’ve been dry for so long that all this is welcome. I don’t row-crop, so all this is just good grass-growing weather.
Tiny Home News
Gardening continues this week.
Half barrels and potting bags are filling our raised beds from last year. Containers by the fence are potatoes. Five- and three-gallon buckets will be for more shallow-rooted plants (radishes and lettuce).
Oh - that bushy thing to the right is our elderberry. Healthy for you and makes delicious jelly.
Haven’t gotten all our flowers for the cottage porch yet.
Yes, we’re both feeling the twinges from all this labor.
Oh, that grass in between will either be trimmed with a battery-powered weed eater, or a push mower.
We’ve visited Amish country (near Clark, MO.) to get some plants, plus all the hardware/big-box stores for their stock.
Writing News
Copywriting took me to viral marketing, took me to Carmine Gallo’s “Talk Like TED”. That in turn took me to Amanda Palmer, who set the high bar for raking in $1.2M from a single Kickstarter project. Then she became really famous, married Neil Gaiman, wrote a book - which I’m now reading.
Mainly because her approach to marketing is so different.
And I’m finding that the most successful in both music and writing really concentrate on the quality of their entertaining. But Palmer’s book takes the scene of building audience way further than any I’ve read. Hers is a memoir, so it’s all very linear. Between the frontmatter and backmatter, it has a single chapter - “Begin Reading”.
I’ve got my Talk Like TED book all set up for excerpting and boiling down:
Tabs instead of dog-ears or underlining. His book isn’t designed for simple reading. And while he mentions the “Made to Stick” book, he doesn’t really follow it - so it’s taken a few days to get to this point. Should be downhill once I get done with the Palmer study above.
One thing that did come up: surveys are different from studies. Many surveys just map out popular conventional wisdom. That means they are 90% worthless. Studies, on the other hand, are working with a particular set of data that is already pre-selected somehow. If they are working with outlier successes (like Abraham Maslow and his peak achievers) then you’ll see some derived conclusions that can prescribe advances.
Gallo’s book is more an advertisement to hire him as your next speaking coach. Where he gives you tips and tricks to give a better talk, these are buried in and among the stories he’s collected. His emphasis is on how to give an engaging talk - not on engaging people to think and take action. A useful book. But not a how-to by any means.
However, my 18-mionute videos will be built on what I extract from Gallo. Three of these will be all I need for a mini-course for these books I’m writing now. (As well as any I already have.) With a bit of work and practice, those videos will have every reason to go viral on their own.
Proofing Update
Still waiting while I continue my other research. Nearly there. Gardening has both of us busy during the day and tuckered out at night.
What’s Upcoming?
Still researching the extreme tail end of the Copywriting material. You may recall that the copywriting real world application led to “The Tipping Point” and so to “Made to Stick” and “Contagious” books about viral word of mouth. Then, as above, I rolled over to TED talks and “Talk Like TED” as many many of these went viral. While I’m having to distill that book into it’s vital and useful points, I also got into Amanda Palmer, her TED talk, and her lengthy memoir, “The Art of Asking”.
And that led me right back to my book marketing. Because the 1,000 True Fans concept comes to haunt again. This is exactly how Palmer got her 1.2 million Kickstarter funding for a single album. She once had a record deal, where they sold 25,000 records and kept almost all of the money. She then got them to let her out of that contract and got 25,000 fans to finance her directly - for that million-plus result - and another album.
Right now, I was reminded of Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” and am doing a study of this, as well as a boil-down.
Still wrapping that book up.
Meanwhile, gardening nearly complete, I’ll get the proof back for my Writerpreneur book, and then lay out the marketing I need to do for that book, based on what I uncovered on the Copywriting research. (Funny, the timing on that.)
I’m preparing to create a series of 18-minute webinars on that book (yes, TED-talk length and modeled) to get that book promoted, and am planning to revive my podcast for that book, probably reading the book out and so wind up with an audiobook.
I’m taking my cues from the above and also Johnny B. Truant and J. Kevin Tumlinson - as we are all in a similar boat in this book-selling industry, solving similar problems.
Other than the 400+ page Palmer memoir, the Talk Like TED book boildown, and now the 1000 true fans essay to distill - I think this research line is mostly complete. Then I update my Copywriting book, and come back to the Writerpreneur to proof it and get those webinar-videos written and performed and posted. Somewhere in this, I’ll research the crowd-funding resources to pick something that will work.
(I’m favoring Truant’s Kickstarter-first idea, with Print on Demand hardbacks and paperbacks coming out well before I release the ebook versions. Interestingly following the traditional publishing sequence, with a Palmer audience approach. Quite different from the model I’ve been using up to this point.)
Writerpreneur will be updated with the texts from that webinar series and adding a final chapter which tells of this book marketing adventure (just above). Then go back to do a similar book marketing round with the Copywriting book. After that, I’ll finally be able to get onto revamping W. S. Campbell into about three books. Might wrap all this up in a year from now, at this pace.
And then, who knows? Maybe fiction again - it all depends on what you, my readers, want me to do. As long as it’s fascinating, I’ll try it out.
Just wanted to let you know.
The Recurring Special Offer:
ONCE AGAIN, the beta-readers version of Writerpreneur OS is still available. It’s still being proofed (nearly complete) so there will be revisions coming that makes your reading easier.
The updated beta-version is there now.
Here’s the link: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/WOS01-beta-readers
Find the oopsies. Leave comments, reviews. Ask questions. Be one of the first anywhere.
Between 250 and 300 pages, depending on format. Available are epub and PDF. No charge. (Free download, in other words.)
Nearly 20 years of writing-publishing-entrepreneuring - all rolled into a single book. And updated. Condensed.
AN ASK: if you’ve downloaded it, please give some feedback. Leave it in the comments, send me an email. Something, anything. Like it, could be better.
Expectancy Defined
The old phrase, “it wasn’t what I expected” comes about because people survey what is and then set their expectations according the the mean average of what happens.
But that is so self-limiting.
Instead, expect whatever you really want. And then the physical universe will start bending itself into that shape ahead of you, so you can simply walk right into it.
Just the way it is. If you expect that you’ll get the same as everyone around you, then that is what’s going to happen. If you expect you’re lucky, you will be. If you expect your successful, then that will come your way. Of course you have to do the work. (No one is out there buying and handing out lottery tickets…)
It takes a lot of gratitude and a lot of practice.
Thanks for being there, opening this.
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I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
PS. Again, you can always email me about anything.
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