Georgia Writers Association and Crowdvine

In preparation for the Georgia Writers Association's Spring conference, Spring Fest, we've set up a social networking site with Crowdvine. This extraordinary, free tool, facilitates connections, introductions and networking before the conference ever starts, allowing conversations to continue long afterwards. It doesn't take a techie to set it up or use it. What a boon to writers! I'm already connecting with the editors, publicists and fellow-writers whom I need to know. Another good company offering the same service is Ning. Consider using these powerful tools to connect with fellow-writers.

SoCon08 - Social Networking Conference

As writers, we've just got to take advantage of all the free buzz we can generate through such avenues as blogs, linkedin, facebook, etc. SoCon 08 gathered social networking gurus to share ideas and make connections. What a huge success! I left with several ideas I can implement immediately and many I can implement over the next year. You can see from the photo that people were constantly sponging information and networking. Nobody sat and passively listened.

One organization (black arts festival in Atlanta) has about 3000 people connected to their myspace page, allowing volunteers to get the word out quickly and effectively to friends and friends of friends. A commercial rocket developer from California told how people from every level of his organization (welders, etc.) can help him leverage their contacts and relationships to find skilled help, etc. A quilting enthusiast shared how she took her site from losing to making money.

I (finally!) "get" the way blogs are being used to get out ideas, drive traffic, establish credibility, etc. Here's a helpful web page showing how far and wide your blog travels, minutes after it's published.

Sherry Heyl, one of the conference organizers and CEO of a social networking agency, wrote a recent blog on how she advised her brother to use Web-based social networking tools to help him in his construction business. For me, this article gave a much needed summary of "What are the basic tools and how can I use them?" Here's her blog. The title of this entry is James A Lee Builders - A Case Study.

As a follow-up, I'm reading The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott (2007). Highly recommended for beginning and intermediate learners in this field. Lots of great examples of how businesses, not-for-profits, and other organizations are using social media to great advantage.

Suggestion: I heard this at the conference and had it reinforced by the book - get started by participating in the blogs and forums of others. By answering people's questions in your area of expertise, you learn how it works, what's appropriate and inappropriate, etc.

New Character Forum for Legacy

Last year, I attended Socon07, a conference on social networking (forums, blogs, linked-in, etc.). Some call it Web 2.0 - the transformation of the Web from a place to read people's stuff to a place where people meet, chat and share ideas. My Space, Facebook and endless other sites have revolutionized how we use the Web. Utilizing these tools could revolutionize the way provide resources to youth workers and character education leaders. I plan to attend Socon08 in a few weeks.

Speaking of Web 2.0, we're starting a character education forum this month at http://www.characterforum.info . Our purpose is to start making our character initiative more two-way, giving everyone the opportunity to chime in about what's working and what's not. If we get enough response, we can gain a lot of wisdom through posting questions, getting responses from across the globe, and sharing resources. Since we have from 450 to 600 people visiting our character site
( www.character-education.info ) daily, there's a vast amount of wisdom we'd like to draw from. One conversation has already begun. Hopefully, we'll start hearing from others soon.

Capturing Ideas

Capturing Ideas

I don't just research for my present project; I read for a lifetime of writing. So whether I'm reading a biography of Da Vinci, a weighty tome on investing, or a technical journal on ethnomusicology, I index it for ideas, quotes and stories.

First, I underline or put a mark beside the paragraph. Then, in the back of the book, I jot down a reference:

• "quote, p. 76, contentment"
• "joke, 103, saving money"

(Note for those who can't stomach writing in their books: A recent visitor to John Adams' personal library [over 3500 volumes] noted how Adams wrote throughout his volumes, asking questions and adding his own thoughts. See http://www.johnadamslibrary.org . I also seem to recall that Adler's classic, How to Read a Book, advocates writing in your books.)

It may be months or even years before I put these in my illustration databases, both at www.character-education.info and www.youth-ministry.info , where I keep over 3600 illustrations. As I harvest the illustrations from a book, I put a check mark beside each reference so that I know it's in a database.

Additionally, I copy and paste ideas from e-mails and online reading to files in my computer.

I love collecting illustrations as much as anything I do. I've become a useful resource to educators, pastors, missionaries and fellow-writers. While some may begrudge the time spent typing in illustrations or summing up people stories, I see it as a way to get much more out of my reading. We remember so little of what we read. By taking time to harvest the good stuff, I remember multiples more than if I'd merely read it and set it aside. And what I don't remember, I can always find in my databases.

So I begin writing an article or book. As I write, I draw from my databases, computer files, and the back of unharvested books for my illustrative material.

On Finding and Crafting People Stories

Readers will remember my stories long after they've forgotten my witty sentences or ten point outlines. I spoke on the importance and use of people stories at a character conference in St. Louis and wrote an article based on that seminar here.

On Publishers and Publishing: Tyndale House, Operation Mobilization and BookSurge

I love my publishers!

Tyndale House believed in me and my first book, The Contemporary Christian Music Debate, back in 1993. They were professional, responsive, respectful, and landed me lots of radio interviews for publicity. But after a couple of printings, they questioned whether it would keep selling strongly for the long-haul. Every time a traditional publisher prints 5,000 copies, they risk having to store those babies and sell them cheap if they don't sell. I completely understand their concerns.

But I felt it could keep selling. So Operation Mobilization did a reprint and distributed it more globally. Other publishers picked it up in Spanish, German, Romanian, Dutch and Russian.
After OM ran out of copies, Cherie (my wife) urged me to explore self-publishing options. I resisted, assuming that I'd have to charge an exorbitant price per copy, since they weren't printing in large quantities. But four things made me look deeper:

1) Even Amazon ran out of used copies. Somebody was trying to sell a used one for over $500!

2) I realized that churches still struggled to determine their optimum style of music in worship, and that my book offered a sound, researched approach that could help.

3) I read a book that gave me a vision. In Damn! Why Didn't I Write That?, Marc McCutcheon showed me how he makes a living off writing books that stay on the publisher's backlist. They're not flashy bestsellers, just profitable workhorses that keep making their impact and leaving a check in his mailbox at the end of each year. And he profits enough to make a darn good living as a writer. "Intriguing...", I thought.

4) My wife got tired of waiting on me and called BookSurge, a subsidiary of Amazon, telling them to call me and explain their services.

I went with BookSurge and so far couldn't be more pleased. Here's what I got:

• Extremely fast results. From that first phone call to the time it was available for purchase on Amazon was seven weeks. Basically, I sent them the book, they scanned it, printed it, sent me a proof, got my approval and it was done.
• Professional-looking print.
  
• Good pricing. Sells for $15.99 on Amazon. I receive 25% for every copy sold.
  
• Reasonable up-front cost. I paid a total of $378 for them to set everything up.
  
• It's available online. People can order from www.booksurge.com, www.amazon.com, www.abebooks.com and www.alibris.com. It also appears in www.booksinprint.com and www.globalbooksinprint.com.
  
• They help me to learn marketing skills. I'm attending my next webinar tonight. Extremely helpful.
  

So if BookSurge is so great, why do I keep sending new manuscripts to traditional publishers?

• Respect. Many institutions and individuals know that a book with a reputable publisher has endured a huge selection process, making it more likely to be quality.
  
• Distribution to bookstores. Traditional publishers market well to bookstores. You're much more likely to get into bookstores with a traditional publisher.
• Publicity. Tyndale House set me up with nice brochures and got me around 30 radio interviews.
  
• Up-front money. Traditional publishers pay authors an advance to publish the book. They take the risk that your book might not sell and they might lose money.
  

I'll keep you posted on my publishing experiences over time.

How I Write: My Chatty Muse

Authors differ widely in how they write. My method would drive some crazy. Take what you can use; flush the rest. I'll write this piece slowly, a bit at a time. So come back occasionally if you want more.

Where I Get My Ideas

I have a chatty muse.

Sometimes she bugs me relentlessly, feeding me ideas rapid fire while I'm driving, cooking, lifting weights or mowing. While I'm writing one manuscript, she taunts me by offering juicy morsels for other articles or books or Websites.

I never stifle her. (You don't want to offend your muse!) Instead, I'm never without paper and pen, a recorder, or a computer file to capture her musings. Ideas accumulate much faster than I could ever shape them into articles or books. I'm sure I'll die with hundreds of ideas that never see the printed page.

I'm not complaining. I can't recall any instance of writer's block in a lifetime of writing. Not one. My most difficult decisions involve what ideas to cut. (Remember, I write almost exclusively nonfiction. Writer's block may be more of a fiction-specific disease.)

Perhaps my muse is chatty because I feed her so well. I'm more reader than writer, more learner than teacher. In every conversation with both the "small" and the "great" (I find everyone to be my intellectual superior in some way), I'm driven by insatiable curiosity.

I read a wide variety of well-researched, well-written biographies and other factual books on a wide range of subjects. A healthy diet makes for a healthy muse. A healthy muse is a chatty muse.

Spiritually-minded readers may take offence to my giving the glory to my muse rather than to God. Actually, I consider it more offensive to attribute all my ideas to God, as some do. Since some of my "great" ideas are proven idiotic by later reflection or sound criticism, I hesitate to ever say dogmatically, "God gave me this idea."

Don't get me wrong. I believe that God is the source of all wisdom. But I also believe that we often err in distinguishing God's ideas from our own. The prophet Jeremiah blasted people for declaring "Thus saith the LORD" when He'd not spoken. Thus, I shy from routinely saying, "God told me," when the idea may later prove to be more ignorant than inspired.

Rather, I pray constantly for God's wisdom, humbly thanking Him for the great ideas, but attributing initial ideas to my muse with a little "m", which encompasses the ideas gleaned from others, my own reasoning, and the promptings of God's Spirit.