Resources

Kim’s Must-Have Writing Book Resources

A few weeks ago, I posted an article about the pros and cons of taking writing classes (or any business classes) and included a picture of my “writing resources” bookshelf. Wow! I never imagined so many people would want to know what writing resource books I recommend!

And yes, I have some that I highly recommend. So I’ve compiled a list of my “can’t live without” books for writing. To make your life easier, I’ve linked to their page on Amazon.com so you can just buy them with a click.

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A dictionary (A GOOD dictionary)
Mine is a Webster’s and it was what I asked for from my grandmother when I graduated from high school. Now, before you point out that there’s an app for that (or a website or a widget or a thingymabob) there’s a REASON I still have an honest to goodness dictionary sitting on my shelf. When you look up a word for its correct spelling, definition or usage in a digital format you get exactly what you’re looking for and nothing else. When you look it up in a paper dictionary, you get to read all the other words that are on the page! And those other words always spark ideas.

A thesaurus
I have two: the matching Webster’s to my dictionary and a really cool one by Roget’s called the Super Thesaurus. Of course you can look up synonyms and antonyms online, and even click to be taken to definition of any word you don’t recognize, there’s still something to be said for the ideas sparked by the orderly row of words on the page.

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Do YOU Need a New Opt-In Gift?

For the past few weeks I’ve been hard at work on a new gift to give to people when they opt-in to my newsletter list. I’d say 90% of my subscribers join my list BECAUSE they wanted the gift; the *ahem* great content in the weekly newsletter is a bonus. The other 10% find my blog, read a great article and decide they want more articles delivered to their inbox every Tuesday. So an opt-in gift is CLEARLY a really important thing to create and create well!

When I first started with email marketing, back in 2003, it wasn’t really much of a requirement to offer a free gift to encourage people to sign up. Emailed newsletters were still a novelty. (And in some industries they still are!)

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When I sat down to create my new gift, here’s the thought process I went through:

1. Who do I want to attract to my list?

My original opt-in gift was targeted to ANYONE who was interested in self-publishing. But over the course of a year since that gift was new, my target subscriber has been refined to be a coach, speaker, or author.

So when I created a NEW gift, I targeted it directly to who I wanted on my list.

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How Long Should My Book Be?

When I’m first working with a new client, one of the questions that ALWAYS comes up is:

How long should my book be?

I get it, you want to write a book that has enough heft to it that people really think they are getting a lot of bang for their buck.

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Let me ask you a different question, though:

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Get an Expert to Write the Foreword for Your Next Book

Publishing a book and claiming the title “Published Author” instantly boosts your credibility as an expert in your field. It helps you get new clients and attract attention of people who’ve never looked at you before.

And when you publish that book, you should be sure to explain why you were already an expert BEFORE you wrote the book. This is where your “About the Author” page really needs to highlight your knowledge, training, and degrees.

But what do you do if you’re just getting started and don’t have a lot of history, credibility, expertise to put on your “About the Author” page?

Expert

Then call in a third-party expert!

I’m working on a pet project eBook; it’s something completely outside my field and is pretty much just something I wanted to write about.

And here’s the problem: I have ZERO credibility about this subject. Nothing. Nada. Zip. It’s a new subject matter and I have no history of writing or publishing in this genre.

Before I go any further, it’s not a genre that really NEEDS a boatload of credibility. Plenty of people write successful, helpful titles with no more knowledge than I have. (I’m not writing about finance or romance or legal stuff.) But it is in the health industry and other than being healthy, I really don’t have any creds to offer.

(FYI: This book is NOT about weight loss, exercise, vitamin, or diet plan.)

What I do have is a friend.
Who’s a PhD.
In the health industry.

Now HE has credibility, right? Even without telling you exactly what his degree is in (pharmacy) just by telling you he’s got his doctorate you already view him in higher respect for this health-related-topic than me.

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Naming the Baby

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One of my least favorite tasks in writing fiction is naming my characters. I know, I know, it SHOULD be fun and easy and well, fun.

For me, it isn’t.

I either AGONIZE over a name and drive myself crazy or I flip open the phone book and chose the first name my finger lands on. I figure I can always change it later, right?

Well naming a character really is something to think about. Often times, without even meaning to, a character’s name will influence her character traits, personality, and the theme of the story.

I still hate naming characters.

Honestly, one of my go-to methods for naming a character is to ask my mom. I give her a snippet about the character, how I see him acting, what he looks like, and some basic framework of the story (sci-fi or romance, action or historic) and let her do her thing. After teaching for THIRTY YEARS she’s got a great name database in her head.

If you’re not so lucky, here are five websites to help you with names!

Social Security Administration: Popular Baby Names by Year
You can set the year of birth and get anywhere from the top 20 to the top 1,000 names in that year

BehindTheName.com
Not only the top names by year, but also by region.

NameTrends.net
Remember the movie “Heathers”? Not just the trends of an individual name, but also about over-reaching trends.

Parents.com
Another resources for regional names.

Meaning-of-Names.com
Because sometimes knowing the name is time-frame appropriate just isn’t enough!

So when you’re picking your names here are my top five tips:

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Keeping Current: Five Tips To Write About What’s Happening In Your Industry

I know we’re all looking for ways to keep our blog content updated regularly. Regularly updated information keeps readers coming back, shows the world that you still exist, increases search engine visibility, and of course, can provide content for books later on. But the ongoing question is always HOW do I create all that content?

A great way to keep your blog fresh is to post content that is relevant to your industry RIGHT NOW. Here are five ways where you can be sure that you’re “in the loop” for what’s big in your industry right now.

 

1. Google Alerts

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Set up a Google alert for a keyword in your industry and have it deliver the content once per day. My trick here is to tell Google to give me EVERYTHING from every source it can; not just what Google deems “important”. This gives me insight into what is happening globally, in local markets, and far beyond the blockbuster news stories.

A word of caution here: your alert will ONLY be as good as your keyword! My keyword of “publishing” returns me TONS of results every day but only a small portion of the results are relevant. After a few weeks of scanning the articles, I was able to narrow and refine my alert’s keyword.

2. Troll Facebook

Now, before you tell me “But Kim, all my people hang out on LinkedIn” (or Twitter or Google+ or WHATEVER) just trust me on this one! Because I can pretty much guarantee that your competition or the biggest player in your industry has a presence on Facebook. So scan that fanpage regularly for what are they posting about what is happening in your industry. Then, you can follow the news back to its source to get the full scoop or do some digging about contradictory positions.

It’s okay to let somebody else do some of the research for you! Plus, they’ll also be sorting for what’s important and letting the fluff go by. Just be careful that you’re not just copying somebody else’s media strategy or opinion about what is breaking news!

3. Subscribe To Industry Magazines

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Online or offline, your industry will have a few key magazines. The real gold here isn’t always in the current editions but in the archives. As a subscriber, often you can access older issues for free or low cost. What you’ll see after a while is a pattern to when they’re timing their articles. So when you start to see that pattern of “They always have an article about THISandTHAT in March” then you know that this is a seasonal topic that you can research ahead of time and be ready to jump on board.

By the way, any regularly published industry “publication” will work. In addition to subscribing to two writing magazines, I also get three email newsletters about writing and publishing. Authors aren’t super big into podcasts since we like written words but if we were, I’d listen to the podcasts as well.

4. Get On Press Release Lists

Specifically the press releases for the key players in your industry. For my outdoor recreation business, I’m on the press release list for the local National Forest. For publishing, I read the press releases from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Instead of waiting for the story to break in a huge publication and then cover it later, I get the information at nearly the same time the biggest news outlets do.

Here’s the ninja move though:
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Instead of JUST posting the press release to your blog (which can be okay) you can insert your expert opinion about what the update MEANS. For example, my article Why Traditional Publishing Isn’t Fair is based off an article I found but I didn’t just republish the article. I gave my expert opinion about what it means to us as independent authors.

5. Create The News

I know a ton of business owners who regularly submit press releases to their local papers or to distribution services but who NEVER post the content directly on their website! Or if they do, it’s buried under a Media tab. If you’re the one doing something newsworthy in your industry, toot your own horn and tell people about it.

Remember that the style and format for a press release is far different than a blog article! You can either post the press release directly into a blog article or you can take the same news and repackage it to fit the style and tone of your blog.

A word of caution about tips 1 – 4: be sure that you are fully vetting any source materials you use. You don’t want to perpetuate bad information or run the risk of looking like you didn’t do your due diligence to make sure that the facts are accurate.

It can take a lot of time to sort through the news. Even if you don’t end up using the information on your blog, it’s never wasted time because it helps you have a “big picture” look at your industry.

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Indexing Your Business Journals

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A few weeks ago I got asked just HOW I organize the thoughts in my business journals so they were accessible and easy to find later.

Here’s the sneaky answer: I don’t. I hate to admit it but I can honestly say I’ve never really thought about it before. Usually, they’re one-step up from just musings. Or like the project I’m working on now; I’m jotting down full sections of writing that will later be typed into Word. I probably won’t need to go back to the journal once it’s typed up.

But there are times when I look back at a journal and realize that what I’m struggling with NOW was something I had solved, or even just started thinking about, weeks ago. So while I don’t organize my journals, I will now!

I got these steps from a business mentor of mine, Rodney Rich, in just a quick conversation we had last weekend. So huge shout out to Rodney: THANKS!

(Here’s his website and his Facebook page.)

(But the caveat on this system, I haven’t tried it yet. I’ll give it a whirl and get back to you!)

Steps:

  1. Leave at least 5 pages at the front of the journal blank. If you’ve already filled them in, this will work at the back as well.
  2. Number all your pages. (I recommend a lower corner. At least make sure it’s the same spot on every page!)
  3. Grab a package of stickies and a blank sheet of paper. On the paper, write down letters A – G on the left hand side. These are going to be your categories. Assign a category to each letter. Examples are Marketing, Client Mindset, Project A, Project B, etc.
  4. Go through the journal and put the corresponding lettered sticky every time the theme comes up in the journal.
  5. In the first few pages, you’ll transfer over your letter codes and the category name. Then, using the stickies you put on the pages, you’ll write down the page numbers of where you can find notes about that topic.

Some topics will be common across ALL journals (like marketing) and others may be more project-central and then only appear in one or two journals.

After years of keeping business journals, I know from experience that there will be repeating themes in ALL your journals. Marketing for sure, but also internal topics that you deal with all the time. I’m recommending that you ALWAYS assign these topics to the same letter.

On your computer, you can create a master index where you’ll generally index things like:

Notebook 1:
Marketing (A)
Client Mindset (B)
Blog Ideas (C)
Book Ideas (D)
Website Updates (E)
Notes from XYZ Event (F)
Video Marketing Project (G)
Telesummit Plan (H)

Notebook 2:
Marketing (A)
Client Mindset (B)
Blog Ideas (C)
Book Ideas (D)
Website Updates (E)
Book Launch (F)

Now, you can completely take this to the next level and create the index file on your computer so you might have notes like:

Marketing
Notebook 1: 5-7; 12, 15, 26, 31
Notebook 2: 56-71, 83, 100-103

Client Mindset
Notebook 1: 7-12, 33, 47-49
Notebook 2: 1-13; 57

Then, you can run a search in the file for every time you reference marketing. You can also break it down farther into more specific TYPES of marketing like video launches vs Facebook promotion ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, this will be a pretty big undertaking. I would recommend starting with your current journal and then working backwards. There will (probably) come a point when the notes and thoughts you’ve jotted down are just too old to be relevant to your business now.

And I fully recommend that you DON’T try to index the journal as you go along. If I was worried about making my notes and thoughts fit into my main categories, I know it would severely limit my creativity and thought process.

For this business, I really only have only filled two dedicated journals so I’ll be going back and working through the indexing process. I’m also planning on cross-referencing this to the course books I’ve received at some awesome conferences lately.

I take all my notes AT the conference in their provided course book but then I find that the ideas I’m implementing I write about a lot in my journal. So I’ll be adding the cross reference from course book to journal into my system as well.

Now remember, I JUST learned about this system this past weekend. I’ll be implementing it over the next few weeks and I’ll get back to you. In the meantime:

How do you index or categorize your business journals?

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