Can Visualizing Success Make It Happen?
The other day I was in a convenience store and noticed a rack with several books on sale by an author I didn’t know. My first thought was “that will never be my books”. Then, my inner voice smacked me in the face (metaphorically, of course) and replaced that thought with a vision of my books being on that rack someday.
A positive image superseding a negative one. For a moment, I could actually see my books for sale in the display, and I thought “why not?”
If there really is such a thing as positive thoughts creating a positive reality, then this was definitely a perfect example.
I believe that I’m a good writer. Not because I wrote three novels, but because I read all three novels. More than once. I have full confidence that my stories are exceptional, and that the time I spend agonizing over every little word that I write will somehow be recognized by millions of readers one day.
I started singing,badly I’ll admit, a song from Funny Girl “I’m the greatest star, I am by far, but no one knows it.
Once I replaced those negative thoughts with the positive ones, a strange thing happened. I checked my Smashwords account and discovered 31 Ebooks had sold in a week, another 6 one day later! I had actually broke the 900 mark!
Then, I received an email from a literally agent I had sent my book proposal to several months ago that she was very interested in representing me for Undercover Reunion and possibly the next two novel works in progress as well!!
Maybe this positive thinking idea really did work. Then again…
I remembered another best-selling book called the “Secret of Attraction”, wherein the theory is that if you send out positive energy to the universe, it would “attract” positive things in your life. The problem with this theory is that it goes against basic physics that states just the opposite. Or more precisely, opposites attract. A common magnet validates this theory. So, based on reality, if you throw out positive energy, what attracts is the opposite… negative results.
When we buy a lottery ticket, there is a certain amount of time to dream of the what if. That time between the purchase and the dropping of those balls, the world is wide open to imagine so many possibilities. Then, the inevitable happens and not one of our numbers comes up. But we spend yet another dollar, or two, or five just for few more days of hope and dreams.
We imagine all those lovely possibilities.
So, as I looked at that rack of books that were written by someone else and imagined those were mine, and all those lovely possibilities, I went home and booted up my laptop and started writing. Even if it is only this blog. Even if only 154 people read these words, taking action was so much more gratifying than sitting and hoping and quoting some old song.
Positive thoughts are great, but positive actions are so much better! Dreams come true with a great deal of hard work and a bit of luck. The only real positive energy is the action that we take based on those positive thoughts. Buy that lottery ticket. Send your resume to that perfect job you want. Go to conferences, network, email, write blogs, re-tweet, contacts and follow everyone to build your fan base. Don’t just sit around sending positive vibes into a black universe that has no interest in your dreams. Make those dreams reality!
So, keep dreaming, keep hoping and if it helps, keep praying. But most of all…
Keep writing.
How Do You Come Up with Ideas for a Novel?
When you introduce yourself as an author, the second question you’ll probably hear most often, after the inevitable “are you self-published?” is “how do you come up with ideas for your novel?”. Setting aside the first question for now, my response is how do I not come up with ideas for my next novel?
For those of us who are cursed with an overactive imagination, stories, characters, plots and themes exist in every second of every minute of each and every day. Take a walk on the beach on a beautiful sunny California day and stop, along with many others, to watch the surfers ride and get wiped out on the waves. While there have been hundreds of stories about the surfing world, what I noticed was the one guy, slightly balding, looked like was maybe 45 or 50 in a solid black wet suit, surf board by his side, doing stretches before joining the younger crowd.
I began to think of story of an aging baby boomer who, in his day, was king of the beach, and now could only gaze at his passing youth riding the waves he could only remember. Perhaps he was still king of the surf, I didn’t see him get into the water. Perhaps he was contemplating hitting the water and showing everyone how it was done. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Sitting outside a Paris café with my daughter watching a very odd elderly woman as she drank coffee and lit a cigarette talking to herself in French and English and some landguage neither of us understood. I told my daughter that the woman had been a spy for the French during World War II and was captured and tortured by the Nazi’s, so her mind was gone. Or, perhaps her mind was perfectly fine and she was only pretending to be a bit crazy because she was still working as a spy and it was the perfect disguise. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
There are only a small handful of plots; Romance, boy meets girls, boy loses girl, boy finds girls again and they live happily ever after. Of course nowadays it could be boy meets boy, or girl meets girl, but the idea remains the same. Murder mysteries; someone dies, one or several find out who done it, etc. And while the number of core ideas may be recycled over and over ad nauseam, what follows , it the writer has even a smidgeon of imagination, can introduce take readers to characters they want to know and care about and travel to worlds that are, literally, beyond their wildest imagination.
Every story begins with one question; what if? Where it goes from there, and how that story is told is what makes this work, if one would call it work, the best job there ever is. W
Which just gave me an idea for a story of a writer who….
Author Raven West 
Break Free From the Herd and be Heard
Raven West ♦ March 17, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment
We authors had it easy. We wrote to and were rejected by agent after agent, until one day the phone rang and a contract would follow. Then, we sat back and waited while that agent submitted to and was rejected by publisher after publisher, until one day when their phone would ring and a contract would follow.
During those anxious times spent waiting and hoping, we also had the time to work on the next novel. And depending on how long that waiting lasted, the next and the next and the next.
And then, after that publishing contract was signed, the publisher would do their job of marketing, distribution, arranging book signings and book fair appearances, leaving us to spend those times in between events, to write the next novel, and the next and the next and the next.
How times have changed.
Today, authors need to spend just as much if not more time on the marketing and promotion of our work then we do actually writing. Where once we were small number of cows out in the field easily noticed among the tall grass, we’re now just another one of the herd, trying to moo louder that all the other cows just to be noticed.
And the pasture is getting more and more crowded and it’s getting harder and harder to moo. So, we must find a way to break free and make sure that the rest of the herd won’t instantly follow. The dilemma is to discover where the exit.
There is no dearth of marketing opportunities out there. The key is knowing which one is legit and which might be a scam. If the service charges a fee, how much is too much and how do you know if you’ll see any results from however much you spend?
Here’s a list of guidelines that created that may or may not be helpful for your own marketing efforts. As far as paying for services:
1) If you find a service you think might be beneficial, set a limit as to how much you can afford to spend on any 1 marketing plan and stick to it.
2) Avoid web sites that describe themselves as “authors helping authors”
3) Offers to review your book in exchange for reviewing their book. These aren’t necessary for a fee, but do you really need to be spending your time reading someone else’s books instead of writing your own?
4) Internet radio interviews. The first one may be free, but there may be a charge for an archive of the show which is really necessary for people to find you.
5) Contests that charge an entrance fee. (my personal bias)
6) Unsolicited email offers that start with “Dear Author”
7) Unsolicited email offers from sites you’ve never seen that start with “Dear.. your name”
These are just my top 7, but you get the point. Marketing opportunities will present themselves , just plan how much of your valuable time and hard earned money you’re willing to spend.
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