But what struck me this time was an exercise in which the executive said his goal was to come up with a better web site. He revealed that he’d paid a lot of money to a company that promised to get his company to the top of the Google search engine results. They did it—but very few of the many people visiting the site actually contacted the company to find out more or to buy their service. The moral of the story is:

Be very clear on what it is you really want.

In this case, they didn’t really want lots of random visitors to their site—they wanted visitors who would buy. (And we quickly generated several ways for them to attract those kinds of visitors without being number one on Google.)

Sometimes it’s useful to ask that question about our writing, too. What do you want? It could be:

• the creative satisfaction of expressing yourself through your writing;
• the money that comes with having a best-seller;
• to leave a legacy (of wisdom or experience) for your children and grand-children;
• to have a book that will serve as a calling card for other things you do, like consulting or teaching.

Each of these would lead in a different direction, but I see lots of writers who are not matching their writing practice to their real goal. For example, if you want to leave your story behind for your children and grand-children, self-publishing is a terrific solution; if you want to have a best-seller, it’s (usually) not.

What do you want to get from your writing? Are you following the best path toward that destination?

“For the past four or five novels I've focused on an emotional theme... I've always worked on outlining my character arcs --- so each character has someplace to start, emotionally, and someplace he/she is headed. Adopting a theme for the novel has been good for me; it keeps me rooted and reminds me that the overarching emotions of these characters are focused on a particular quality, a human quality that is sometimes desired, sometimes not, sometimes achievable, sometimes not.”

Sometimes I have a theme in mind when I start a script or other project, sometimes I only realize afterward what it was.

I think knowing it can be useful, especially in the middle of a longer work when there is the danger of getting lost.

The danger is that the work will become heavy-handed or preachy but if you let the characters give you direction usually that won’t happen.

(For tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

“As children we embrace imagination and play, but as we get older, imaginative and creative pursuits tend to be quashed or stymied by the pressures and sometimes sheer monotony of adult work life. Creativity can seem like an indulgence. It's never lost on me that the child who builds a fantastical city out of Legos and makes music out of pots and sticks is applauded for demonstrating ingenuity and imagination, while the dad who jams with his "band" or reads graphic novels on vacation is chastised as the child who refuses to grow up.”

Hmm, I can relate to that—I’m refusing to grow up and proud of it. Maybe you are, too?

(If you need to recapture some of that great creativity you had as a child, subscribe to my free Brainstorm monthly e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

If you scroll down at that sight, you'll find other worthwhile interviews there, the best of which, in my opinion is the one with Aaron Sorkin. It rambles a bit, but the two things I found interesting are his statement that he’s less interested in the difference between good and bad than in the difference between good and great, and that “I try not to show the audience who the character is, I try to show what the character wants.” (If you’re pressed for time, jump to around minute six of this ten-minute interview.)

(for tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

“About 10 years ago, I wrote a novel set in Africa. An agent to whom I sent the first pages turned it down and told me, “There are two places on earth that no one has the slightest interest in reading about: Afghanistan and Africa.”

What a difference a decade makes: Khaled Hosseini’s smash hits The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns take place in Afghanistan, and Alexander McCall Smith’s wildly popular and bestselling No.1 Detective Ladies’ Agency series, set in Botswana, blazed a trail for new mystery writers with African protagonists. Michael Stanley’s Detective Kubu solves crimes in Botswana, and Malla Nunn’s Emmanuel Cooper is a detective in 1950’s South Africa. Following close behind is Detective Inspector Darko Dawson of Ghana on the West African coast, introduced to the world in my debut novel, Wife of the Gods.”

What made the difference? Better books? Events in those areas getting more attention from the media? I’m with Goldman—I don’t know. But it goes to show that timing is everything. And if you’ve got a book that isn’t in synch with the market today—wait until tomorrow!

(for tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up for my free Brainstorm monthly e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to bstormUK@aol.com)

Her appearance also scared her two young sons. She explains, "I tried to come up with stories that were scarier than my own situation, just to get out of that fear mode. And I tried to make it more comfortable for Skip and Neal. They think Mom's pretty cool now. I have more metal in my bones than (comic book and movie hero) Wolverine."

She is now free of the wheelchair and crutches but plans to continue writing as a sideline to her full-time job.

The article mentions where you can find her work: "Stalker of the Blood Red Sands" in Rage of the Behemoth, published Rouge Blades Entertainment June 1; "New Fish" in Cthulu Unbound 2, published by Permuted Press June 30; and "Duma of Valley Kifaru" in the October edition of Kaleidotrope magazine.

(for tips on how to overcome the seven main fears that can stop you from writing, see my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers--the fears and their solutions are covered in the first chapter.)

• Make an appointment to write
• Use a kitchen timer to make sure that you put in the time
• How to make writing progress with only one hour a day
• How to write even if you’re not sure what your story is

His method of committing to a certain period of time was not as effective for me as committing to a certain number of pages, but there’s no right or wrong, only what works for you.

(for tips and techniques for being more creative and productive, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

“People tend to discover opportunities related to what they know. When they don’t know about something, new information on the topic is lost on them and they don’t see opportunities… If what you know a lot about is a declining industry, you are faced with a problem: you won’t see most valuable opportunities and the ones you see aren’t as valuable.  If you’re in that position, you are better off not being the “idea guy” for a new business but are better off joining up with someone who sees better opportunities than you do.”

Are we writers in a declining industry? Certainly magazines, newspapers, and traditional publishing are all declining in their current form. However, what they deliver will always be valuable, so probably what we need to most aware of is new and potential delivery systems. How will we deliver and profit from the content we create in the future?

That includes letting go of our natural resistance to giving up (or at least adding to) the delivery systems we are used to and like. For writers above the age of, say, 30, that’s probably our biggest challenge.

(for tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

(for tips and techniques for how to be more creative and productive, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

The response of the moderator, the estimable Andy Conway, was, “That falls clearly into Trying to Start a Grammar Flame War territory, Jurgen. You know the rules about that. Yellow card for you.”

I didn’t know that mentioning incorrect punctuation on a writers’ site was controversial, and I have no desire to start a Flame War (which means angry postings back and forth).

Of course it’s a losing battle. All around us, apostrophes are being flung around or dropped with abandon and people who think two things that work well together are complimentary instead of complementary.

My formative years were spent escaping into reading, learning to value the choice of one word over another, and even being forced to diagram sentences by the sadistic, ancient (she must have been all of 45) Mrs. McKinley. They have left their mark and I can’t stop caring about getting it right. However, I’ll try to shut up about it in mixed company.

(for tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up now for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

“One thing YA writers apparently can't do is get their publishers to put young males on the covers of their books, even though, according to Ziegler, "There's such pressure on boys not to be seen holding a book with a girl on the cover."

Johnson's next book, "Saving Maddy," has a male protagonist, "but it still has a girl on the cover," he lamented.”

Hmm, I wonder whether there’s a marketing opportunity there for self-publishing YA authors—they would have an instant USP (unique selling proposition) if they had a boy on their cover.

Or maybe we should start a business selling fake macho book covers for boys who are reading books with girls on the original covers…

(for tips and techniques on being more creative, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

My first round of inquiries met with no success and I did what I tell my students NOT to do—give up. Well, not really, but I did pause. Eventually, though, I rewrote the query letter, polished the summary of the story, and sent out a batch of inquiries.

One of the agents requested that I send him the first 100 pages and, later, the whole manuscript, and I've just signed with him. I’ve looked over the contract, which is gratifyingly free of legalese. It’s for this book only, and there’s a get-out clause that either party can use after six months if they’re not happy.

I think it makes sense to start with that kind of contract because these things only work when both sides feel satisfied with the working relationship. Some agents offer multi-year contracts that cover everything you do, including your laundry list, and although that may seem flattering it’s a nightmare if, six months or a year down the line, you’re not getting the service you were promised.

Anyway, this agent is having two colleagues read the manuscript, too, and then collating his notes and theirs—he says he has some ideas, which I’m eager to hear, for tweaks that will help the book’s chances with publishers. Then he will take it out in September, when the summer lull is over.

It’s only a first step, of course, but an important one and I’m very pleased. In terms of passing along any lessons from this experience, the main one is persistence, persistence, persistence.

"There is no phone, no e-mail, no view, no sound. Along the walls there are shelves filled with brown box files that Talese has covered in collage."

The boxes contain his notes, photos, and other reference material for each of his projects incuding his best-known book, "They Neighor's Wife." They are all color-coded and carefully labeled.

Another interesting note about how he works: "He spends years reducing his research until at long last it all fits on a single piece of shirt board. And then he draws it. And then he starts writing."

(There's a chapter in my book, Your Writing Coach, about setting up a writing space that works best for you. You can get the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online and offline retailers.)

Figure out his or her hot buttons:

What do they fear the most?
What and who do they love the most?
What is their darkest secret?
What is their deepest desire?
Who have they betrayed, and how?
Who has betrayed them, and how?
What would they do to save their lives?
What wouldn’t they do to save their lives?
What don’t they like about themselves?
What are they proudest of?

When you know this and the basic spine of your story (or even just the start and end, or even just the start), coming up with compelling conflicts and plot twists is a lot easier!

Yipee, this is post number 1000! Help us celebrate by letting your writer friends know about this blog. Thanks!

The Man Cave has blood-red wallpaper. Its hallways are filled with monster statuettes, mock-baroque paintings, and Gothic objets d'art. The bookshelves are stacked with leather-bound notebooks, on which he sketched out plot-lines and characters for his best-known films: Blade II, Hellboy, and the critically acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth. It is, in other words, his creative hub.

"I bought it because my crap used to take up three-quarters of the house, and my wife couldn't stand it," he explains. "One day we were fighting because I wanted wall-space near the kitchen for a statue of a rutting woman zombie. And she said, 'you should live in a cave'. So I did what I was told. Now the family home is pristine, and all my crap is in this crazy place where I write."

Is that cool, or what! (OK, I know mostly only my male readers will agree…)

He has a huge number of projects underway. How does he do it?:

"I compartmentalise my life very easily," he says. "When I'm doing one thing, I'm really doing one thing. I have a sign on my office at the studio. It says 'fuck off, I'm writing'. When that sign is on the door, nobody knocks. I just put music on and I occupy myself very hard. And that is how I get things done. And I never stop. I hate free time. I hate down time. This is what I do."

(If you’re interested in cultivating focus, have a look at my book, “Focus: the power of targeted thinking,” published by Pearson and available on Amazon and other online and offline retailers in the UK—the US edition has been postponed to March 2010.)

“I can easily do around 10-15 cartoons a day. However, I work at home, and my kids are in my office all day, so I don't get as much done as I used to. I'm selling around 200 cartoons per month.”

Yikes! What’s more, the ones I’ve seen are funny. He says he never worries about running out of ideas.

I think a lot of creativity is about your state of mind. If you think you can have only one creative idea per day or per week, your mind will make sure that's the truth. If you think you can have 10 per day, your mind will make sure that is true.

I think I've told this story before, but I used to think I could write only a few hundred words a day. One long weekend I set out to break that limitation. I decided to write an entire screenplay in four days. I did it,too--it was a terrible screenplay but that wasn't the point; it was a success because I realized that I wouldn't die or even faint if I had to write dozens of pages per day. It removed that internal limitation. If you find yourself limiting yourself, maybe a similar exercise will help.

(for more tips on how to be more creative and productive, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

Some astute observation from Linus Karlsson and Paul Malmstrom, co-founders/Chief Creative Officers, Mother ad agency, New York, at creative-online.com:

“Our observation is that many successful creative people grew up as nerds—but somehow got out of it and turned into semi-generalist, helicopter people. Also, many are able to strike a perfect balance between true humbleness and frightening egomania. Lastly, exceptional creatives are not sure if they hate or love what they're doing, and every day is a battle to justify existence and worth."

Especially when I work in Hollywood, I meet some people who have not been able to strike a perfect balance between humbleness and frightening egomania. Often, it’s the decision-makers who tend toward the latter and the writers who tend toward the former.

Karlsson and Malmstrom go on:

"Our secret has always been that there's no secret. The brain wants to have fun. If you keep thinking about that every day, you're always going to be interesting and relevant. The brain hates boring and expected. Creativity stems from going about things the wrong way. Irritation is also interesting as a source for inspiration. Why do certain things irritate you? Don't know, but go there. It's more interesting.”

(for tips and techniques on how to be more creative, sign up now for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

“All information products will be digital by the year 2025. In a few years, customers will expect to be able to buy any digital product — newspaper, magazine, or video — and download it immediately to both their desktop computer or their portable digital reader.”

Here’s the good news:

“Digital products make micro-publishing viable. A book that previously could only be published for as few as 100 – 2,000 special-interest readers could be economically viable. Digital products mean the previous expenses of typography, printing, binding, warehousing, picking, packing and shipping are eliminated. An author who can sell as few as 1,000 copies at $20 each might be satisfactorily compensated for his special-niche written material.”

The more sobering fact, of course, is that you still have to find those 1000 people, but if the product is special-niche, that may not be so difficult.

(And if you need some help writing that book, get a copy of my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available on Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

“To be a great creative person today, you have to be open to anything. You have to come to every project with zero preconceptions of how you're going to solve the problem. Advertising is in total, absolute flux right now. The mediums we use, the way we make money, the way agencies are organized. Nothing is stet.

What we do today is some kind of hybrid of advertising, communication, ideation and conversation creation. Ultimately, it has the same goal of persuading consumers to behave differently. I'm not about the past. Advertising, or whatever you call what we do today, is way more interesting now. What has always been most interesting to me about this business is that, at its core, it's about changing someone's mind. The biggest challenge agencies have today is juggling the need to be financially prudent and the imperative to move forward.”

The only difference is that as writers our goal is to get the readers/viewers to FEEL something, rather than to change their behaviour (although with self-help or political or ecology books we may be doing that as well). And, as is true of ad people, we ignore at our peril the changes in the business and marketing aspects of what we do.

(For tips on how to be more creative, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin. Just send an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

Recently a young writer wrote to me, freaking out because he had just started the second draft of his novel and was, for the first time, experiencing being stuck--in fact, terrified of continuing, for reasons he didn't understand. In case it might be useful to someone else as well, I thought I'd post my advice to him here:

First, don't panic. Every writer encounters some blocks and some points at which things aren't flowing as well as you would like. The trick is to realize that these are temporary states that you can overcome.

There are a few things you can do. Which one works best for you is something you'll have to find out by experimenting.

First, it would be good if you could take a day or two away from the project without guilt. Just give yourself permission to have a day or two off, doing something you enjoy and that will keep your mind occupied. I don't know what you like to do, but examples could be a weekend of hiking, or indulging in a movie marathon, or watching a box set of some tv series, or visiting out of town friends, etc.

Sometimes that alone is enough. When you go back to the project, you're refreshed and able to resume.

Second, I suspect you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself because while a first draft usually means a rough draft, some writers think they have to get everything right in the second draft.

You don't.

Most writers do a third, fourth, and even fifth draft. So try to relax: the second draft only has to be a bit better than the first one. And the third draft only has to be a bit better than the second one. You keep going until at some point you realize that you've done it as well as you can and it's time to send the thing out into the world--but only when you feel ready.

I hope that makes sense, let me know how you get on.

(For more tips and techniques on how to be more creative, overcome blocks, and be more productive, you can subscribe to my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin by sending an email request to BstormUK@aol.com)

How about Enoughonomics, Already!

Another one that has just about run its course is the "....that changed the world." My favourite is "Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World," although a close second is "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World." Fate? Bananas?

The article quotes Eamon Dolan of Penguin Press: "You can't have a sense of revelation with something that's been repeated four or five times."

However, there's something to be said for catchy names--I'm sure Freakonomics, which also has the the provocative subtitle, "A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything," wouldn't have been a best-seller if it had been called The Economics of Everyday Life.

PS: If you enjoy this blog, please email your friends about it. Maybe you should say it's a rogue writer explaining the hidden seamy side of writing...freakowriteonomics.

(If you need some guidance in writing, take a look at my book, Your Freaky Writing Coach...no, that's not right, it's just Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas "The Enforcer" Brealey...no, wait...)