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2017 - What Will You Do Different?


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On 12/9/2016 at 4:02 PM, HeySal said:

Actually, I do most of my best writing at night.  Mornings are an obnoxious time of day to me for anything but getting on the road early if I have a rock hunting excursion.   I think success has nothing to do with whether you are a night person or a morning person -- it has more to do with making a schedule that is most natural for your own innate time systems. 

 

That's fine if you do most of your best writing at night.

I have never met someone who has built a really great organization and been a real success by sleeping in late and working at night. There are exceptions like what BigMike mentioned where out of necessity people have had to change their hours for a period of time. 

The big successes out there almost always have one thing in common. They get up early and get to work. 

Generally when someone says they work best at night it is just an excuse to justify their behavior. I've done it.

 

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40 minutes ago, JohnHemmer said:

 

That's fine if you do most of your best writing at night.

I have never met someone who has built a really great organization and been a real success by sleeping in late and working at night. There are exceptions like what BigMike mentioned where out of necessity people have had to change their hours for a period of time. 

The big successes out there almost always have one thing in common. They get up early and get to work. 

Generally when someone says they work best at night it is just an excuse to justify their behavior. I've done it.

 

Depends on how much social interaction is required to do your business. Since day time is when the majority of people actually do business, sometimes you have to deal with day hours even if you are extremely nocturnal. I don't have a set schedule when I do business because my hours that I need to keep will fluctuate with what it is I have to accomplish at the moment. I've never been 100% any hours - always have changed them around. I just write better at night.  If it's meetings - afternoons are what I like and if it's meet-ups for the rock and gem trade, those start sometimes before the sun is up since a lot of driving is often involved.

If you want to get real technical  - there's a lot of 100% day trippers that never get much done, either.  Success isn't really a habit of the masses.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just an update here. I am proud to announce that I am doing well with my goals for 2017. It's mid January and I have done some writing for the partnership and spent this past weekend designing a logo for one of our business projects. My son is a gem!

I came up with an idea for the logo and had to convey what was in my mind to my son and sit beside him as he designed it with me making corrections and giving directions the whole way. I had no idea how much work was involved in creating a logo in photoshop. Lots of layers and what I thought was cool was he could make some layers disappear while he made changes to lower ones. Then with a couple of clicks, bring them right back. Ha! You all probably already know that but remember, I am the town techytard, lol!

Anyway, I love the logo and another one with just some alterations for a different market complete with a banner he made for us. And most importantly, my partner loves them too!

How's everyone else doing with their changes?

 

Terra

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I was thinking some of you are probably saying, Good grief! We're only in the third week of the new year, talk to me in May or June...

But the thing is, if you don't come out of the gate running, setting the pace in the beginning, then putting off the changes becomes easier and easier. It's like making something a habit. Your habit will be changing or procrastinating, at least for me anyway. Then in May or June, I'd be thinking we're only halfway through the year, I've got time, lol!

 

Terra

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  • 4 weeks later...

I just realized that after starting this thread, I got involved in what everyone else was contribution, but never went back to share my own. I had this all typed out, but never posted it. So copying and pasting and adding a few updates where appropriate.

1) One thing I started this year, (actually started in December but am carrying it into this year) is that every night my computer gets shutdown. You might be thinking, what's the big deal about that? It does require a little more explanation.

I realized a few months ago, that I often had browsers open with tabs upon tabs upon tabs. Stuff that I would open and mean to come back to, but rarely would.

Often times I would never get back to it. They would stay open until one of three things happened. I accidentally closed them (or the entire browser), we had a power outage, or I had to run some update that required rebooting the computer and I needed to shutdown the browser. I would waste a lot of time some mornings going back through some of the tabs. I would start reading something that would take me off course or I would read a little bit and once again put it to the side.

Not anymore. Now at the end of the day, I complete everything. If there are still open tabs I take a look at them again. If they are something I really think might be useful or worth looking at, I bookmark them and put them in my calendar for a later date. Most of the time, I realize they are more of a time waster than anything productive, and I just close them down. Then I turn the computer off. Knowing that the computer is getting turned off makes me address the open tabs and decide what to do with them instead of letting them sit until the next day... and the next... and the next....

It's made a difference in my productivity starting each morning without all those open tabs (mostly of junk).

 

Second thing is something that I have been putting off for months. Actually, pretty much a year. I want to combine my old blog TheSEOPub.com with my main business site TheSEOPub.net. TheSEOPub.com got hacked a long time ago. I took it offline, and never bothered putting it back up. The business site is in desperate need of a new more modern look. (This was accomplished in January. :thumb-up:)

 

Third thing I am going to do is get back into creating more products. It is overdue. Going to get into @ShayB's 30-day challenge to help keep me accountable to that.

First product was done. It is a guide about some of the myths best practices in creating citations for local SEO. Second product is just being edited a bit with some pics and graphs being added. It is a simple little report about increasing the performance of your AdWords campaigns.

Also have two joint projects in the pipeline for later this year, and more ideas of my own to flesh out yet.

 

Fourth thing I am focusing on for 2017 is getting back into email marketing and making use of social media a little more. I used to have a pretty decent and responsive email list. It was not huge, but those people replied when I sent out emails and many of them were buyers, multiple times over. I've neglected the list. I need to scrub it, kill off the dead weight, and work on bringing new people onto the list (which ties into the product creation nicely). I've also decided I'm going to figure out both personally and professionally what all this shit happening on Twitter is all about. ;)

 

2) I'm largely giving up forums. Not this one of course. Back almost 10 years ago I started getting involved in online marketing forums because I got tired of seeing all the BS thrown about by "gurus" or their junk getting parroted by clueless marketers. I wanted to help those who were trying to get started and, where I could, make sure they were not being led astray.

Times have changed on some of those forums, some much more than others, and the number of marketers serious about building and growing a business seems to be dwindling. The serious conversations are few and far between, and finding them between all the signature spammers, link droppers, and silly BS is just not worth the effort anymore.

I'll still be around on some of them, but not nearly as much. I will still gladly offer help where I can to anyone that asks for it, but I'm just not going to be spending much time reading and posting going forward.

 

On the personal side, we are giving up red meat and pork in our house. For me, it is mostly for health reasons. For Crystal, it is for health reasons and in protest of the way intelligent animals are treated. Many cows live some pretty shitty lives. Chickens get treated pretty badly too, but they are so stupid she doesn't feel so bad about it. In her words, "If it comes out of a vagina alive, I'm not eating it."

We've been doing it since January 1st, and honestly, have not really missed it at all. We always ate a lot of chicken and fish anyhow.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

On 12/31/2016 at 1:54 PM, mki said:

1) What will you start doing in 2017 that you are not doing in 2016? 

Chase one Rabbit.

2) What will you stop doing in 2017 that you are currently doing in 2016? 

Chasing 40 Rabbits.

"Person who chases two rabbits catches neither." – Confucius

Yes, my dog got one rabbit after chasing them all her life, but the munching and cracking of bones, got a bit too much!

On 1/18/2017 at 3:07 AM, Terra said:

Just an update here. I am proud to announce that I am doing well with my goals for 2017. It's mid January and I have done some writing for the partnership and spent this past weekend designing a logo for one of our business projects. My son is a gem!

I came up with an idea for the logo and had to convey what was in my mind to my son and sit beside him as he designed it with me making corrections and giving directions the whole way. I had no idea how much work was involved in creating a logo in photoshop. Lots of layers and what I thought was cool was he could make some layers disappear while he made changes to lower ones. Then with a couple of clicks, bring them right back. Ha! You all probably already know that but remember, I am the town techytard, lol!

Anyway, I love the logo and another one with just some alterations for a different market complete with a banner he made for us. And most importantly, my partner loves them too!

How's everyone else doing with their changes?

 

Terra

Lol, Photoshop, it is magic Terra, but takes a year or more to get good at it.

 

Two changes ok....

1) Probably take a business course, and develop my flyer idea.

2) Outsource flyer idea, to reach and go beyond the 900 flyer mark.

3)Well, l will keep doing fonts, since it is fun and profitable, but takes time do get going.

 

Three is more do it for a year, sort of deal, and based on others success, l should go quite well from it, but the first ones, are the primary goals for 2017.

B)

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I was just re-reading my goals for this year and couldn't believe that I left out writing my book series based upon my childhood. I have been really working on these especially since I found my manual for publishing children's book that I used when I published before, 30 years ago. My books are chapter books with each chapter another story of adventure or lesson learned or both. I am having the time of my life doing this.

Anyway, my goal is to by the end of the year, to have my first book written, formatted properly, and mailed to the publishing companies for submission.

 

Terra

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An update:

I'm finding that getting life straightened out after a divorce takes some time, even if you were REALLY looking forward to the divorce date. :D 

As far as my progress:

1. I will be looking at a P&L report each month. I need to keep better track of my business numbers.

I've done this, but not nearly enough profits to my liking. Still, it's keeping me accountable. Numbers don't lie.

2. I have been putting off switching my biz model to one I can be more passionate about. I will make this a reality in 2017. I'm putting the pieces in place over the next few weeks and will unveil it in January. It's time for me to do what I am meant to do.

This is taking longer than I thought. My problem is twofold: Life is complicated at the moment, and I'm having trouble focusing. My mentor that I have had for years (and has been wonderful) simply isn't going to be able to help me with this one. I hate to say it, but I think he's taken me as far as he can. :unsure:

3. I will have at least one new experience once a month: visiting a new place, trying a new activity, etc. I have been in a rut for so long that I can't do it anymore.

This has been easy and fun. I live in a new place with TONS of things to choose from. It's been very refreshing and has lifted my spirits immensely. 

4. I will be focusing on building new friendships in my new city, and going to new in-person meetings for fun and friendship. 

This has also been a lot of fun. Meeting new people, going to in-person networking meetings, and meeting with people at church and stuff has been awesome. :) 

5. I am going to be more involved with activism.

This has also been good for my soul. I am also fortunate enough to live in a city where plenty of opportunities for activism abound. :) 

I think the main thing I need right now is a new mentor. I need someone to bounce ideas off of and help me get/stay on track.

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4 hours ago, ShayB said:

My mentor that I have had for years (and has been wonderful) simply isn't going to be able to help me with this one. I hate to say it, but I think he's taken me as far as he can. :unsure:

That happens. 

Worst thing you can do is not move on. And you will be happy to know that it is much easier than a divorce. ;)

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4 hours ago, ShayB said:

This is taking longer than I thought. My problem is twofold: Life is complicated at the moment, and I'm having trouble focusing. My mentor that I have had for years (and has been wonderful) simply isn't going to be able to help me with this one. I hate to say it, but I think he's taken me as far as he can. :unsure:

I picked this quote mainly because I didn't want to quote that whole post.  But..................mentors can only take someone so far.  If you don't outgrow them, you aren't growing.  It sounds to me like you have everything coagulating and may be able to just downgrade from a mentor to a brainstorming pal or two. 

I've been where you are (minus the rugrats). It can be a bit scary for some people - but it's extremely invigorating.  Adventure gets addictive, and that's a good thing.  Our brains need it. It's wonderfully healing for a torn soul, too.  My best ideas have come to me walking out in the gemfields, where my mind is free to just wander. After your adventures - take a walk where you can just absently take in the scenery and let your mind drift. Those adventures will lead to some very interesting perspectives.

As far as my plans for the year - they're so on--target right now that it's scaring me. LOL.  Not really.  Things are a little more exciting than I expected but everything is on target.  I just knew that 2017 was going to be a good year for us all. 

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On 1/2/2017 at 7:45 PM, JohnHemmer said:

 

That's fine if you do most of your best writing at night.

I have never met someone who has built a really great organization and been a real success by sleeping in late and working at night. There are exceptions like what BigMike mentioned where out of necessity people have had to change their hours for a period of time. 

The big successes out there almost always have one thing in common. They get up early and get to work. 

Generally when someone says they work best at night it is just an excuse to justify their behavior. I've done it.

 

What behavior? Same thing someone else is doing but at a different time of day?  

This isn't the first time I've seen prejudice against night workers.  I actually worked nights when I was in "9 to 5" type work, too.  Know what - nobody seems to understand or respect your hours.  When you drag in from a 10 hour day at 6 AM, you have people calling you at 10 and then ragging on you for still being in bed. 

I think people who work days associate nights with partying and that's not a realistic view of true night workers, whether they are on their own or working on the economy. 

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17 hours ago, ShayB said:

My mentor that I have had for years (and has been wonderful) simply isn't going to be able to help me with this one. I hate to say it, but I think he's taken me as far as he can. :unsure:

Like Sal, I agree that mentors can only take you so far - there's no shame in that. The real question to ask yourself, is whether or not you actually need a mentor at this point? 

I had an awesome mentor for many years back in my professional days, but eventually, I did outgrow him. And at that point, I decided that I no longer needed a mentor - and haven't looked back. :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

UPDATE:

I have just finished my mock up of my first book in the series. The next thing to do is to format it into a manuscript according to industry standards so they don't toss my manuscript aside thinking "ametuer".

But before I do that and send it off, I've got to do two things. I need to have the second book in the series done as they say if you're writing a series, you should have at least two finished before you send off the first. The second thing I've got to do is get myself prepared for rejection. I've got to get a thick skin, LOL. Part of what I'm doing to get ready for that is studying the different styles of rejection letters there are so I'm prepared for them and can plan my next step/steps accordingly.

The worst type of rejection letter is just a form rejection letter. Just typeset copy, no personal notes at all or signature. Just typed out editor or editing department. That's bad, lol!

A little bit better is a personal rejection. This where they add some personal things in the rejection like the title of your work for example and perhaps they give you the reason why they are rejecting it. They'll have their personal signature.

The next would be a revision request where they like your work but let you know what they find weak or would like to see changed. They want you to revise and re-submit.

I'm getting geared up for this because I don't have an option for failure, LOL! I will be like a bulldog with a bone with my work. I'll rework it as often as needed and won't give up.

I'm thinking for my first submission, I'm only going to send out to three or four publishing agents til I get my feet wet and see where I stand. After that, I will send out to as many as it takes.

Okay, back to working on getting the second book written and in proper chronological order.

 

Terra :)

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On 3/27/2017 at 1:58 PM, Terra said:

UPDATE:

I have just finished my mock up of my first book in the series. The next thing to do is to format it into a manuscript according to industry standards so they don't toss my manuscript aside thinking "ametuer".

 

Go get'em Terra.

And it's obvious you are not an amateur, as a true amateur would never ironically misspell "amateur" in just the perfect way to make the broader point about amateurism.

Kudos. :)

(I know you know this comes from a place of love)

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1 hour ago, Jack Gordon said:

Go get'em Terra.

And it's obvious you are not an amateur, as a true amateur would never ironically misspell "amateur" in just the perfect way to make the broader point about amateurism.

Kudos. :)

(I know you know this comes from a place of love)

I'm glad you got that Jack. ;)

 

Terra

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On 2/28/2017 at 3:40 AM, ShayB said:

To be honest, I think I may not need a mentor at this point, as BIG Mike and Sal have said. I could use someone to bounce ideas off of, though. 

Hopefully this one is solved ;)

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On 2/27/2017 at 5:40 PM, ShayB said:

To be honest, I think I may not need a mentor at this point, as BIG Mike and Sal have said. I could use someone to bounce ideas off of, though. 

I don't think there ever comes a time that's not a good idea. 

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On 12/9/2016 at 0:35 AM, perryny said:

I think the most helpful thing I could start doing for myself going forward is create a schedule and stick to it.

I work for myself and set my own hours. And I suck at it.

I stay up too late. I wake up way too late. I get to work late. And I tend to waste a lot of the time between the times I'm working. 

I would like to set a schedule where I wake up at a respectable hour, work on my day job a set block of hours, work on my online business a set block of hours, and enjoy the time in-between. I know there's plenty of time in the day to do this and to still get enough sleep. I believe the reason I don't currently do this is because I'm lazy, I have no structure and lack discipline.

Creating a schedule and sticking to it I believe will give me structure, help me get better disciplined, and I'll do better work.

Another thing I think I'd like to start is to practice meditation. I've tried it before and quit. But I've been listening to a lot of Tim Ferriss podcasts lately, where he interviews top performers in all walks of life and tries to pick out what makes them excel. He's interviewed over 200 people and apparently about 80% of them practice some form of meditation.

I'm sure if I stick with meditating for a good period of time, I'll find it helpful. And I think if I make meditation part of my schedule, it could make sticking with both easier.

What I'd like to stop is smoking way too much weed. But that's not happening just yet. I've only recently discovered the dark net and THC concentrates, and a whole new world of cannabis has opened to me, which hadn't existed the last 25 years I've been smoking. It truly is a glorious time to be a pothead.

Plus, I think I can work getting high into my schedule, where it'll help me cut down.

Thanks for starting this thread, Mike. I'm glad to have thought this through and written it down. Now let's hope I do it!

Hey guys. It's 3+ months in, and I wanted to post an update.

Around the start of this in mid-December, I set out to create a schedule I could stick to.

I've set a schedule, but as far as sticking to it, I've got to give myself a fail.

Maybe a "C", as I've not abandoned it completely, as I might a diet or exercise program. I'm still very aware every day of what I'm supposed to be doing, exactly when I should be doing it. I just don't do it.

The schedule I created for myself is based loosely off Benjamin Franklin's schedule, which I came across while trying to figure out what might work best for me.

t7zj93.jpg

This is the kind of schedule I think would work great for me, and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to stick with it.

I set alarms on my phone for the following times, every day:

7:30 - Get up

9:30 - Be out of the house

11:30 - Be at my desk, or at a client, working. I can work on my day-job computer consulting business, or I can work on my app. Just work, until...

6:30 - Quitting time. Then I can do whatever I want until...

8:30 - 30 min. meeting with my son (more about this in a moment)

12:45 - Bed time. Try to be asleep by 1.

I stuck to this schedule for ONE day.

Then, every day since, the alarms will go off, and I just acknowledge that I'm way behind schedule, or totally off schedule for no other reason than I lack discipline.

I still try often to stick to the schedule, which I credit the alarms for. As long as I don't shut them off, I will be reminded 6 times a day that now is a good opportunity to get back on track and do great things.

Most days I'll be close or on-time for at least some of my scheduled activities, but never all, except for that very first day. Pretty stupid that I can't do this. Anyway...

I also wanted to get into meditation. And actually, it's going pretty good. I've gotten into it with my youngest son, which is what that 8:30 meeting is about.

Just about the time I hopped into this thread, I got my 12 yr. old son's 2nd quarter report card, and it was really bad. Failing math, other grades dropped from C's to D's. Clearly going in the wrong direction - as I am well aware can happen, having great personal experience with this path myself.

I know how this goes if he doesn't get some guidance. My brother-in-law got zero guidance. No one wants to be like "Uncle T." Often enough, someone, myself included, will say to my boy, "You want to be like Uncle T.?" We can all see, my kid's got the potential. 

My other two, older kids never really needed much guidance. I got crazy lucky. My wife does a great job and stays on top of the schoolwork and homework, but mostly she's there to help if they need or ask for it. She doesn't need to make sure they're doing their work. Generally, my two oldest are just really good kids who want to do well, And they do, all on their own. My oldest got himself into Harvard.

My youngest has other plans.

(Oops. 12:45 alarm going off.)

So to try and help steer him right, I told him that every school night, we'll get together in my office at 8:30. We'll meditate for 10 minutes. Then, we'll look at his planner and make sure all of his homework is done. I give it a quick look, tell him how I think he did (neatness, is his name and date on top, did he leave anything out?) We check if he's got any tests, quizzes or projects coming up. And then we check the online Parent Portal (thank God they didn't have this when I was a kid) to see if he missed any homework and how he did on his last tests. 

It's working out very well. He still manages to slip an assignment past me once in a while (sneaky bastard. Chip off the ol' block.), and he does still fail some tests, but he passes way more than he fails and I believe every one of his grades will improve this marking period. We even got a call from his math teacher telling us he's seeing a marked improvement in my boy's performance.

I don't think the meditation has much, if anything to do with this at all, other than it gets us to sit down together and relax for 10 min. or so. Neither one of us really looks forward to doing it, and neither of us particularly likes it. But we don't necessarily not like it either. And we know if we stick with it it should be helpful. So we manage to do it on average 2 days a week (which is how often my sad, undisciplined ass manages to make sure we have our daily meeting.)

I first started by having us try to sit for 20 min. and focus on a mantra (which I believe is the basis of TM, which is supposed to be pretty good.)

This sucked and there was no way we'd stick with it. Luckily, about the same time I heard Headspace.com advertised on a podcast. We went through the free, 10-session trial (over the course of about 3 weeks at our pace, each about 10 min long.) Then we tried a free 7-day trial at calm.com. We liked calm better, so after the trial I signed up for the year, and we're currently in the middle of our initial "21 days of calm".

I'm confident will stick with this, and hopefully do it more frequently for the rest of the school year. I'm hopeful we'll continue through the summer, but that might be a tough one to pull off. We'll see.

Didn't quit weed. I took a break for a couple weeks. It was really easy to stop. I just said, "If you have discipline, you'll succeed. If you don't have discipline, you won't succeed until you get discipline." I gave myself two simple instructions to follow to build discipline.

1. Stick to your schedule. (fail)

2. Don't smoke weed. (Success until two days ago, when I was working in the backyard. It was such a beautiful day. And I couldn't shake the thought,"You know what would be super-awesome right now as I work in the garden on this beautiful, first spring-like day of the year?")

But not smoking definitely makes me better overall than smoking. And I really want better discipline. So I'm done with weed again.

Haven't worked on my app since my last post about it in the thread I started about it. It's clear to me I still have a lot to do before I sink money into getting it made. I stepped away from it a bit, and I think I figured out what I need to do. Also, my brother is coming into town on Friday, and he's going to be staying with me for a few days. When we spoke yesterday, he said, "Hey, why don't we sit down and take a look at that app you've been working on." So, I'm going to sit down starting tomorrow, fix everything I think I need to fix (which is basically cut out about 90% of it) and then hopefully when my brother shows up, we'll have something we can work with.

Hey, look at that. 1:45 AM on the nose. Perfect time to wrap this up and hit the sack. Only an hour behind schedule...

 

 

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Progress report:

I did get my first book formatted for submission. Whoo! Hoo!

It had been so long since I worked in Word with headers and footers and linking and unlinking headers and using next sections, and putting the page numbers in the header as opposed to the footer and getting them to advance automatically. I was ready to pull my hair out before I finally got it all figured out. Once I did though, I was on a roll! And it is done!!

Next I went back and did some more tweaking and editing. When that was done I got out my book, "Keys for Writers", read all of the pertinent parts and went back and did some more editing. Tomorrow, I'm having a retired editor I know come over and go through the whole thing.

I'm still writing more of the second book in the series and already have some done for the third as well. I'm quite confident I will have either 4 or 5 complete books when I finish. I do have to have at least one other book in the series completed before I send out my first manuscript, but I'm thinking I'll have three.

Of course, this is all of the easier parts for me. Searching for an agent/editor or deciding to self submit all scare the heck out of me. Then once that has been decided upon, there's the query letter. The query letter has to be powerful. Writing a strong query letter requires a great hook and clear premise. The first sentence should immediately catch the reader's (agent/editor) attention, while the ending should leave them wanting to eagerly dive right into the pages of the manuscript all the while keeping the letter completely business professional.

And here I am still struggling to find the perfect title for the second book, lol! I got the key words but it's putting them together in a compelling title that I haven't quite nailed. Yet. ;)

I am also tossing around the idea of taking a college course on writing children's book taught by an agent too. I haven't decided yet though. It certainly couldn't hurt is what I'm also thinking.

Okay, enough from me, I've got to get back to writing...

 

Terra

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18 hours ago, perryny said:

I've set a schedule, but as far as sticking to it, I've got to give myself a fail.

Jeez o petes - you allow  yourself only around 6 hours to sleep?  You schedule yourself to an 11 hour work day?  Did you think your problem in holding to that schedule is that you have "over scheduled" yourself?  Why do you drive yourself this hard?  You need time for rest, for outdoor activity, etc. I am guessing from some things you've said that you are at least 50? You should have some sort of rest scheduled for after lunch.  

Scheduling isn't meant to push you round the clock every day.  That's a disastrous way to try to live. 

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Thanks, Sal. 

I agree, 6 hours sleep probably isn't enough. Though I keep trying to make myself adjust to it. 

I've got to be up at 7:30 am to take my kids to school. But getting to bed before midnight is a real challenge for me. I've tried, many times. I hate it. I've always been a night person, and I don't see that changing.

What I've been doing for years is I get up at 7:30, take the kids to school, and then come home and sleep for another 2-3 hours. But as long as I keep my day job (my own business) as a computer consultant serving business clients, it's definitely not a good way to work. 

As far as the rest of the schedule goes, it really should be very easy. I didn't schedule an 11 hour work day. It's 7 hours. 11:30 - 6:30. Pretty light by any working American's standards I think (and of course I'll give myself time for lunch and a break in there. I just didn't feel it necessary to pencil that into the schedule).

I've got about an hour commute to get into the city and be at a client site, or to get to a Starbucks and work on my laptop. But I've given myself a leisurely 2 hours to get into work once I leave the house at 9:30 am. (And I've given myself a leisurely 2 hours to get my ass out of the house after waking up at 7:30.)

And after 6:30 pm, the rest of the day/night is for anything I want to do - except for a half hour I spend meditating with my son.

Overall, I think this should be a very easy, doable, healthy schedule to keep. Except for the getting up in the morning. That's a real problem for me.

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I'm a night person, too, and had to work 8 to 5 for several years. Never adjusted to it and it actually made me physically ill to try to stick to early hours.  Never had kids and am glad of that because the up in the AM and rush around bit would have put me under.  I literally can do mornings only sporadically or I lose my health. Until I was in my mid 40's all nighters didn't bother me if I kept it down to two a week, but 8 to 5 - which means up at 6 five days in a row every week, is killer for my system.  To see you're up that early and don't get done with work til that late spooked me hard, even though I've worked more than my share of over 12 hour days in my life, and even 24s frequently.  

And as far as progress reports - got most of what I need to on my site for now done, and am in the process of sorting and packing to move. Talk about a job. I'll be glad when the move is over and I can settle down to starting on the rest of my plans.  Still kinda stymied on slogans, etc to put on Zazzle products to sell on my site, though. I've got one, but need a few more. 

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