social marketing

Digital Detox: My Christmas Gift to ME

Published on by Kristi Holl

This fall, I read many books on habit formation (in the hopes of building better writing and health/healing habits). Several have been terrific, helpful, and practical (see below). I have already blogged about a couple of them here and here.

While each book had a different focus, at least one chunk of each book was devoted to limiting (some would say severely limiting) screen time, including use of smartphones, and specifically social media and email.

It’s well accepted and scientifically proven now that screen time changes even babies’ brains, induces ADHD in children, and creates and deepens depression in teens. However, it does just as much damage to adults. It does more than waste time. It also causes or deepens depression, creates brain fog and forgetfulness, increases internal pressure to hurry, helps us procrastinate, and robs us of much needed time for other things.

If this describes you, and you want to know how to kick the screen habit, try these books:

I decided, for Christmas this year, to give myself a gift: detoxing from screen time, including social media. My “default” needs to be re-set. It is a gift that should outlast the holiday season.

Filling All That Free Time

What will I replace all that screen time with during the holidays? For the most part, reading. I have noticed that when I am sick or simply exhausted, nothing revives me like reading for pleasure. Even just fifteen minutes immersed in a good book can rejuvenate me.

Turns out, I’m not alone at all. There are books on reading for healing! Here are two of them that I like.

I’ll see you back on the blog early in January, 2019. I will be keeping notes in my journal about changes I experience during this time. I am eager to see how absence from screens and social media will change my experience of Christmas.

Until January, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Writing Life: the Reality

Published on by Kristi Holl

“Life is difficult,” wrote M. Scott Peck in his famous book The Road Less Traveled. “This … is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it… Once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

I’d like to amend Peck’s quote to say that “the writing life is difficult.” And once that truth is accepted, “the fact that it is difficult no longer matters.”

The Fantasy

I imagine we all start out on the writing journey with a fantasy of what the writing life will be like. I know I did thirty-five years ago–and it was a fantasy that I clung to tenaciously for far too many years.

My own fantasy involved uninterrupted hours every day to write (after first journaling and then doing some creative writing exercises to ensure the writing would simply “flow”.) My fantasy included the books selling themselves without my help. I expected to reach a time when I’d never have to write anything without having a (lucrative) contract in hand. I also dreamed of writing by longhand in the fragrant garden of a thatched-roof English cottage. Sad to say, the cottage part was the only thing I recognized as pure fantasy. I figured everything else was just a matter of time.

Fast forward thirty-five years and forty-seven published books later…

I love my office in Texas, but it’s a far cry from a thatched-roof cottage. And unless you write from Walden’s Pond, I don’t see how anyone manages to have uninterrupted hours every day to write. Juggling my roles as wife, mother, Nana, daughter, sister, friend, writer and ministry leader means fighting for writing time daily. Each role, at one time or another, has meant dealing with loss, conflict, disappointment, and/or illness–all big time and energy eaters. And because of the changes within the publishing industry–in large part due to the economy and online social marketing demands–there’s no such thing anymore as an author who doesn’t help market his work.

It No Longer Matters

So where’s the silver lining around this black cloud? Simply this. Clinging to my fantasy life of a writer meant that every time reality intruded, I was disappointed or shocked or disillusioned. Lots of angst and wasted energy. As long as I was convinced that the writing life could be simple and more fun than work, I was irritated with reality. I made silent demands that this imperfect writing life go away!

  • Truth #1: The writing life will always be difficult.
  • Truth #2: It doesn’t really matter.
  • Truth #3: All things worth having (family, good health, writing life) are difficult sometimes.
  • Truth #4: We can do difficult things!

Accept Reality

Don’t miss the key point of the blog today. This is not a “downer” message. It’s a truth message–which will set you free. For me, it’s like having kids. Raising a family was the most difficult, time-consuming, challenging thing I’ve done in the last thirty-five years. It has also been the most rewarding, most fun, most gratifying thing I’ve ever done. It’s the same with the writing life. It’s been difficult, but I can’t imagine a career more rewarding than this. After many years, it does get easier--but I would never say it’s easy.

It’s okay to give up the fantasy that someday your writing life will be easy and smooth and not require you to grow or struggle anymore. You really don’t need the fantasy to keep you moving forward. “The fact that it is difficult no longer matters.”

That being the case, what fantasy about the writing life do you suspect you need to let go of?

Set Your OWN Course

Published on by Kristi Holl

Imagine for a moment that you are flying to an exotic island.  An hour or so into the flight the pilot announces over the intercom, “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is our radio is out and our navigational equipment is damaged. The good news is we have a tail wind, so wherever we’re going, we’ll get there at a rate of six hundred miles an hour.”

(from Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow)

Momentum is great, but…

In your writing career, are you like the passengers on the good news/bad news plane ride? Are you barreling ahead at a lightning pace, but your radio is out and your navigation system is damaged? Are you traveling at 600 mph in your writing, but leaving the direction to chance and gut feelings?

These days, with the emphasis on the “platform” expected of writers, this is an easy mistake to fall into. We are told by marketing experts that we need to have a website and a blog (with up-to-the-minute search engine optimization), podcasts, teleseminars, and newsletters. We also need to be “seen” on social networks (like Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn) and quickly gain thousands of “friends” and “followers.” We need to read dozens of other writers’ blogs and leave links back to our websites. Doing even half of this takes hours every day, leaving you with the feeling that you’re zipping along through cyberspace at lightning speeds.

But what about your writing time? Are you flinging yourself out there to build a platform without a functioning navigation system? Do you know where you’re headed–and why?

Chart Your Own Course

If you try to jump on every bandwagon that comes along, you’ll continually rush, rush and wonder at the end of the day if you accomplished anything. You will miss valuable hours to study your craft, read books in your area of interest, and WRITE.

Be sure, if you’re building a platform, that each leg of it supports what you want to do as a writer. For example, with this blog and my newsletter, my overall goal is to help other writers. I announce blog posts (mine and others I’ve found helpful) on Twitter and Facebook. I don’t do all the other stuff. There’s no time–not if I also write.

I spend 4-5 hours most weeks on platform building. It’s more the first of the month due to writing the newsletter. I know many writers who are so caught up in social marketing that they have almost ZERO time to read and write. Whenever I ask them if the merry-go-round is worth it, I have NEVER had someone say “yes.” They always say, “I sure hope it will pay off someday.”

It’s Up to You!

Listen to all the marketing advice out there, but don’t jump on every bandwagon. Evaluate each idea, determine if it’s something that would fit the purpose of your writing, and still leave you enough time to write.

You don’t want to get to the end of your writing days and realize you’re clear off course. Chart your own course and determinedly stick to it.

Marketing Help is Here!

Published on by Kristi Holl

The Frugal Book Promoter: Second Edition: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher.

I very rarely read an e-book and then buy the hard copy–but I did in this case. I have to mark it up, add my colored flags and post-its, and turn down page corners.

Why? Because it is so very full of practical, usable, frugal marketing advice. (And I mean frugal in terms of both money and your time.) I already owned the 2004 first edition, but publishing times have changed so much–and this 2011 updated version reflects that.

Why a New Edition?

We all know that book promotion (and life!) has changed since The Frugal Book Promoter was first published in 2004–particularly in ways that have to do with the Web, but in other ways, too. As an example, the publishing world in general is more open to independent publishing now than it was then. So, this update includes lots of information on ways to promote that were not around or were in their infancy a few short years ago.

So here is what is new:

  • A simplified method for making social networks actually work–without spending too much time away from my writing
  • How to avoid falling into some of the scam-traps for authors
  • The best “old-fashioned” ways to promote–the ones I shouldn’t give up on entirely
  • How to write (and publish) an award-worthy book
  • How to promote your book to mobile users and others
  • The pitfalls of using the Web and how to avoid them
  • Unusual methods of getting reviews–even long after your book has been published

Up-to-Date

Today’s technology, social networking and marketing techniques are covered. Updated web resources abound. Advice in sync with today’s Internet are incorporated:

* Blogging tips and pitfalls
* Obtaining reviews and avoiding scams
* Finding places to pitch your book
* Using the eBook explosion to promote sales
* Using Google alerts to full advantage
* Staying on top of current trends in the publishing industry
* Writing quality query, media release letters and scripts for telephone pitches
* Putting together power point and author talk presentations 

This is just a tip of the iceberg too. I highly recommend Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s updated Frugal Book Promoter. (NOTE: Be sure you get the new 2011 edition with the cover above.)

For Your Holiday Weekend

Published on by Kristi Holl

When you take a break on this hot Fourth of July weekend, try some of these articles. They’ll keep you in a writing frame of mind!

What If You Think You Might Be a Mediocre Fiction Writer? Every novelist hits the point, sooner or later, where they think they just might not actually have any talent. What do you do in that case? Should you just throw in the towel? Or muddle forward? How do you know if you’re any good?

Book Marketing Methods That Don’t Work (from Writer Beware! blog) For any author, whether self-, small press-, or big house-published, getting noticed is one of the primary challenges. Larger publishers provide marketing support for their authors (yes, they really do, despite popular wisdom to the contrary), but with smaller publishers, and if you’ve self-published, you may be mostly or entirely on your own.

The Internet and Procrastination If you have trouble wasting time on the Internet when you want to be writing instead, read this article. Some good tips–as well as information about a program called “Freedom”–just might get you past this modern-day obstruction–and back to writing!

Do Publishers Market Books? Do publishers still market books? Or don’t they? Should you go ahead and self-publish since you’ll just have to do the marketing yourself anyway? Before you go that route, read this article. It’s true! And are you willing and able to do all those things for your book? Pays thinking about. 

Tension on the Page, or Micro-Tension Tension! Tension! Tension! Great books have tension that keep us involved in the story. Micro-tension involves a diverse set of techniques.