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In this episode we cover: 

• Staying organized when promoting multiple series
• Deciding what to put in your business plan
• Investing in marketing
• What new authors should focus on in their business
• Automating parts of your author business

This week’s question is: what’s the best april fools you’ve ever done, witnessed or heard about?

Recommendation of the week is: Write to Riches: 7 Practical Steps to Manifesting Abundance from your Books by Renee Rose

Apple

Kobo

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

***this show uses affiliate links

Links I mentioned:

Unstoppable Authors Episode 178: Launching a New Pen Name with Sacha Black

Big Gay Fiction Podcast Episode 416: Enemies to Lovers Fantasy Romance with Ruby Roe

Find out more about Ines:

Page Turner Pacing

Rebel of the Week is: Holly 

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com

Welcome and thank you to new patron Bianca Wardle and returning patron Cindy. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 181 Business, Processes and Efficiency with Ines Johnson appeared first on Sacha Black.

We both know it, though neither of us will admit it. It might possibly, probably be the reason I have 22,000 words of a novel on ‘How to Be Productive’ and it’s also – ironically – the reason I’ve neither finished it, nor published it.

Sigh.

Most of you will know I left my job back in May. It’s been… Turbulent shall we say. Something akin to a giant steroid-injected rollercoaster of ‘da-fuck-am-i-doing-itis’ and blindingly hysterical euphoria.

In my more lucid moments, I’m come to realise how much I’ve got to re-learn. Like, time management.

You’d think, what with being a grown ass woman of thirty something years, that time management would come naturally by now. After all, I’m a driven and ambitious lady, I’m a kickass lion-roar-for-breakfast kinda gal. There’s no fucking about, I get shit done.

Except that, apparently, I don’t anymore.

I mean, I did. I had to in order to get where I am. I didn’t quit my job with zero clues where my income was coming from. I knew… sorry, KNOW, where my income is coming. And yet, for some reason, I work and work and work, and shit is not getting done.

It’s a lesson. It’s a revelation. It’s a fucking paradox.

If In Doubt, Read

I don’t take this stuff lying down. In an attempt to ‘sort my life out’ I’ve been reading self-help books by the dozen. Not only have they helped shift my mindset, I’ve had somewhat of what you’d call an epiphany on the time management front.

The specific book in question today is Girl, Stop Apologising by Rachel Hollis go get in on Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

Something major stuck out to me.

Get Rid of Your To Do List

The first is that I’m going to do away with my to do list. I know. Shocking. But fear not my productivity ninjas, I’m not, NOT having a list. Christ, I’d hyperventilate a lung out if I did that. What I am doing though, is reframing it.

I’m finding more and more that this working for yourself business is 90% mindset, 10% gritty persperation. The trick to mindset is all universe, maraccas and philosophical fooey for another day. The tangible trick Ms Hollis gave me produced a slack-jawed Sacha manically flipping the pages and drooling over the simple and blindingly obvious technique.

Henceforth, chuck your ‘to do’ lists in the fuck-it bucket. Why?

“The average woman’s to-do list is approximately 319 items long, which means you’re never going to get through it anyway.” Rachel Hollis, Girl, Stop Apologising p.189

Now, whether or not she’s being sarcastic on the ‘319’, I’ll never know. But honestly? It doesn’t matter. It struck a chord with me because my to do list actually is about 319 items long. Now, for the last lord knows how many years, I’ve prided myself on these ridiculous ‘to do’ lists. Claiming that having a longer list drives me on harder. And sure, there’s some truth in that…

There’s also a royal waft of Horse Shit. Can you smell it?

Let’s be real here, folks.

Where’s it left me? With a shitty broken mindset and a serious case of bitchin burnout.

The Results List i.e. How to Be More Productive

What y’all need, is a results list.

Don’t be narrowing your eyes at me, I see you all squinty and sceptical because how in the shitsticks can a ‘results list’ which sounds suspiciously like a ‘to do’ list make you more productive?

Stop that.

Listen up.

“…if you’re anything like me [and I am like her] back in the day, you’ll spend your entire work time doing the easiest items on your to-do list, simply so you can have some items crossed out.” Rachel Hollis, Girl, Stop Apologising p.189

Sweet Jesus of small mercies, I am so like her. That juicy dopamine-nectar fills my body hard when I cross off a task. Nnnnggh. It’s glorious, it’s addictive. It’s also totally fucking pointless.

Responding to 80 emails might make my anxiety feel better, but it does fuck-nothing for my bank balance. So here’s me calling myself out. No more working on other people’s agendas, no more ‘busy’ work.

What are you [Sacha] going to create today that will take you closer to achieving your goals?

Because that’s what this is about. That’s why I left my job, it’s why I moved house, changed my son’s school, risked everything to follow the dream.

What’s The Difference Between a Results List and a To Do List?

I’ll tell you.

A ‘to do’ might contain things like:

• Upload new versions of Keepers to Kobo
• Reduce inbox to below 100 unread emails
• Schedule tweets
• Do more AMS ads

And so on. All important work. All work I have to do. But none of it is taking me closer to my goal. I can’t sell more books unless I write more books. I can’t sell courses if they’re not written.

A results list should be highly specific:

• Create 3 slides and write the transcript for those three slides on your conflict course
• Record those three slides
• Write 1000 words of Anatomy of Prose

Those three tasks would actually get me closer to being able to publish and sell my writing course. Once those things are done I can do the ‘busy’ work. Results are specific and push you toward your goal. Maybe yours would be ‘write 2000 words before 2pm’. Maybe it’s ‘edit four chapters by lunch tomorrow’. Doesn’t matter. But they should be project specific and tangible. Don’t leave yourself any room for backing out or saying you’ve ‘half done it’

You can’t half do 2000 words. And hush now all the smart arses saying 1000 words is half of 2000. I KNOW THAT, GET BACK IN YOUR PEDANTIC BOX.

The point is, either you write 2k or you don’t. End of.

If you want to achieve a goal, it’s not just about working hard, it’s about working hard on the right things. Apparently, I only just learnt that.

How to Be a More Productive Writer, Entrepreneur & Business Owner #indieauthor #selfpublishing #IARTG #ASMRG #writingcommunity
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The Burnout Bitch: writers beware

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Beta feedback is a gift from the holy fountain of book perfection. 

For some, it makes them face plant into a vat of sludgey self-loathing and bookpression. But for others it turns their sleep deprived eyes into glinty, sparkling ones accompanied by feverish hand rubbing and villainish cackles.

Your book, if you listen to your beta readers, will be oh so much better. That word-turd you vomited out over months of sleepless nights, will finally become a polished glitter covered book.

But receiving beta feedback can be somewhat overwhelming, especially if like me, you don’t do detail.

I’ve finally managed to get on top of the beta feedback and have almost finished going through it.

This post is dedicated to my amazing beta readers, there are no words to quantify my gratitude.

Here are 6 ways to manage and organise your beta feedback.

There are two types of thinker in the world:

Introverted Thinkers – the ones who can read a ton of information and process it internally, chomping through the material using nothing but the might of the meat machine that is their brain. They can hold all their notes mentally, and quite frankly, make information processing look as easy as breathing. They are processing ballerina’s… Ducks that keep the surface smooth and calm, but on the inside, under the surface, their brain-legs are paddling frantically.

Extroverted Thinkers – Although I’m an introverted person, I am most definitely an extroverted thinker. I am not a duck and I am certainly not a graceful ballerina. Unless by ballerina you mean clumsy, flat-footed elephant.

Extroverted thinkers can’t process inside their brains. They have to ‘get it out’. Holding information inside their heads clogs them up with a TV like static. They’re the ones that like to ‘bounce’ ideas around, talk it out, get white board and diagram happy as they whip themselves into a post it frenzy.

Or they do what I did in the photo. Make a god awful mess of their livingroom.

There is always, a lot of feedback. Beta readers invest considerable time and energy into providing quality feedback because they’re invested in your story and in you. They want your story to be the best it can be. Which is why we writers owe it to them to make the most of their feedback. That doesn’t mean you HAVE to bow at their feet and humbly tweak every comma they picked up, after all, it’s your story and only you know how it bleeds commas, but it does mean you have to carefully process and consider each of their thoughtful comments.

Now, introverted thinkers might not find this so useful, in fact, extroverted thinkers might not either, but nonetheless here’s a chuff load ideas for different ways you can organise beta feedback.

How do you manage beta feedback? Let me know in the comments below.

WAY ONE – ALL ABOUT THE DIVAS

If most of your feedback is based on character developments, because little Johnny Tubster is fat with flatness, then you can create a page per character, jot the edits or changes down and reference the chapter the changes are needed in. Or use a short quote to identify the exact spot. This isn’t like plotting or creating a character template/interview. The reason this is handy is because you can see all the changes you intend to make to one character in one place – and if they’re in one place, you can see if the changes you’re going to make are consistent.

Why not note down your character’s arc at the same time, just to make sure they’re fat with depth and not word flab. It doesn’t have to be war and peace you can do it in three short sentences:

Where does he start? – Being bullied because he can’t bend over far enough to pull his wedgy out.

What’s his revelation that starts his process of change? – The only way to stop being bullied is to lose enough weight to pull the offending wedgy out.

Where does he end? – With a bit of weight lost and the ability to remove underwear from his buttcheeks he’s no longer bullied.

WAY TWO – SHIMMY DOWN THE SUB

Subplots are the threads that stitch your novel together, they take it from cloth patches, to patchwork quilt.

But fuck them up, and readers are left confused, or with millions of unanswered questions. More often than not, you think you’ve explained a line of your story, but you haven’t. If you’re anything like me, you know your story and your book world inside out, but sometimes what you think you’ve tattooed into the page, has actually stayed resident inside cell M in sector 9 of your brain.

Subplot Mechanism One – You could create a table with two three columns, a name for your subplot, a one sentence summary of it in the next column and in the last, the edits you need to make and the relevant chapters they’re in. Like this template.

Subplot Mechanism Two – Get a massive piece of paper and use cue cards or Post its to record your subplots and relevant changes

Subplot Mechanism Three – create a timeline on a big bit of paper, and mark up the key points at which your story progresses, like the hook, the twist etc, then in a different colour for each subplot mark on your timeline the edits you need to make.

WAY THREE – I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SCENE SIDE

Depending on whether you prefer to work scene by scene or chapter by chapter, you can note your edits in a table with each chapter broken down. Like this template.

WAY FOUR – SANTA’S NAUGHTY LIST

We all have bad habits, I end up with a crutch word list the length of Britain, but thankfully, I have a smart trick to get rid of them. What the trick fails to do, is capture any duplicated phrases I may have used vomited repeatedly like Groundhog Day. Having a handy list means I can pick them up as I go.

WAY FIVE – READY… SET…WORLD.

Writing fantasy means you like playing god, you create worlds. That means complex societal laws. Rules that can’t be broken, nuances, clothing, powers, ceremonies, jobs, you name it, you need to make sure you’re consistent with it. If you have time bending powers you better make sure your sister doesn’t end up as your mum, or your grandma as your daughter.

Having a sheet that collates any world building or setting faux pas will help you when it comes to ensuring continuity.

Same for plotting the time of day in each chapter.

WAY SIX THE CLUSTER FUCK APPROACH

Last but by no means least, here’s my approach, that I’ve fondly named, the cluster fuck. In which I sit in the middle of my livingroom, spread shit E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E, thereby irritating my spouse profusely. I then meander around like a wasted toddler sticking brightly coloured shit and things to bits of paper.

Okay, joking aside, I do a bit of all of the above. I start by reading through every single comment the betas made, TWICE. I put a tick by the ones I want to do something with, and then write up by hand (there’s that extroverted thinking again) what I’m going to do. Usually, I will put the edit I am going to make on either ‘a character specific sheet’, a subplot sheet or a general edits page. I also note the chapter, and then I take obscene amounts of pleasure from crossing each post it off once I’ve made the edits.

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I came across Flipboard completely by chance. I was browsing my stats page and seemed to be getting an increasing number of referrals from this ‘thing’ called Flipboard. However, when I clicked through to the links they just failed so I thought it was spam.

The following day, I had over 100 referrals just from that site, so I decided to actually Google Flipboard, and low and behold its pretty awesome.

Anyway, if you’re anything like me, you might spend hours reading other blogs or trawling the internet for story research, but where do you put it all? I never really know what to do with all the things I want to read again, it’s not like the old days when you shove crap from magazines a in a folder or scrap book – I miss getting my fingers smeared with pritt stick and having a physical project book that never quite looked right!

These days I clog my laptop up with dozens of open tabs in my browser, (which stay open for weeks) and then I get mighty irritated when my laptop does an automatic update and closes everything. LOST FOREVER PEOPLE.

Sure, I could bookmark pages but isn’t that so last decade?! Plus I must have at least a thousand bookmarks none of which are particularly well organised.

Sigh.

Flipboard is a kind of Pinterest but for word oriented people rather than visual people. It works on the basis of you creating ‘Magazines’ which are effectively a storage folder. You can ‘flip’ articles, blog posts or pictures into your magazines. You can title, rearrange and organise your magazines and articles however you like.

It’s basically the ideal solution to storing those interesting blogs, pictures, research or articles you want to keep. It’s minimal effort, sleek, neat and can be visual for those who want it.  But more than anything, its tidy and doesn’t require hundreds of bytes of data to store.

They also have a ‘flip it’ button you can install onto your browser so that you can flip things from anywhere. They have apps for your devices and all the mod cons of a normal social media site, like the ability to follow other peoples’ magazines or general ‘topics’, of which there are thousands.

I am only just getting to grips with this little discovery, but it appears to be a bit of an (undiscovered to me) gem.

Have you heard of Flipboard? Do you use it? Like it? Let me know in the comments.

If you liked this post, why not get even more awesome writing tips in the book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains. Click this link and just tap the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page. 

You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet and a villain’s short course by joining my mailing list just click here.

Read Keepers, the first book in my Young Adult fantasy series now. Or to hear more about the release of the sequels as well as get regular CogMail updates you can do so here.

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