Discovering I was pregnant again led initially to a panic over how much I had to do before the end of the year, especially since I’d just pre-launched my Storyteller project. Then came the shedding of all work that was not owed to people who’d already paid me or was otherwise essential for some reason. And finally the realisation that what I wanted most of all was permission to shelve the “trilogy-into-standalone” headache and achieve something completely new before the baby is born.

Sixty-five days ago I worked out how many days I had available to me and calculated how many words I would have to write per day in order to complete a first draft of around forty thousand words. It came out at a seemingly do-able 270 words per day – but only if I wrote every single day until the end of November. Weekends usually prove tricky, as do various days during the week due to activities or other reasons. I realised I would have to make a small amount of writing a priority early on in the day, rather than count on my toddler’s nap time after lunch, when I usually felt keen for a nap myself.

I started with 100 words, with the “rule” of no Internet or email until I’d hit that target. On a few occasions that meant only turning on Firefox at 10PM. Soon I was reaching my bigger target of 270+ words at least a few days in a row. Right now my stats are: 65 days in a row of writing at least 100 words on my WIP; 290 words average across all 65 days; 20 days in a row of hitting my bigger target. I’m two-thirds of the way to the apparent habit-forming 90-day mark. It already feels like a habit. The nicest part of it was when I gave myself permission to make this work important enough that it trumped almost everything else. It makes morning thinking very easy: not “should I do X higher-paying work first or Y work that I am really behind on”, but straight to the same novel every single day, with a slight frisson of guilt over the reckless luxuriousness of it. It feels a bit illicit, like I shouldn’t be enjoying it this much.

The other side-effect is that Internet fora, blog commenting, Facebook, email newsletters, and Internet marketing videos have all gradually lessened their appeal and addictiveness. Previously I would risk morning sickness because I simply had to check email/ Facebook/ Forum responses, etc, before anything else, including breakfast. I developed that habit because it was easier to sit and read or watch something while breastfeeding than to write (although pecking out a blog comment or forum response with one hand became second nature). Now I enjoy breakfast with my toddler first, while watching the birds in the garden, and then I sit down to write – and my child’s now old enough to (sometimes grudgingly) accept that I’m doing something that’s important to me and he will get milk after I’ve written my minimum hundred words. It’s not a big ask of him, but it makes me feel like I’m more than “just a mum”. I feel in control again.

I’m convinced my so-called muse got fed up with me a few years ago and packed up and astro-travelled to Hollywood where she’s happily providing the scriptwriters of the StarGate shows with all my ideas. I’ve scrapped a good half-dozen ideas after seeing them realised on that franchise.

Now I know I needn’t have hit delete after all. As disconcerting as it is to discover that other writers have a similar thought process to you, it’s important to realise that almost all of our ideas are derivative. There are only thirty-three thirty-seven dramatic plot strand definitions around which a plot-based story can be constructed.

The solution to the dilemma of writing something that turns out to be similar to another story that you may not even have read or know about is characterisation. It is your characters who make your story unique. Give your characters strong, convincing motivations and allow your plot to move fluidly based on the actions of the characters. It is your unique perspective that shapes your characters (even if they’re nothing like you) and therefore your story will be unique if you put character first and plot second.

Luckily I saved some of my favourite characters from the stories I scrapped and found a new story for them to drive. But going forward I’ll be less inclined to panic and delete when I discover someone else has already used my idea.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a silly reality TV show I was watching called Britain’s Missing Top Model. The show was silly, but the lovely women competing for the title were anything but. I was convinced wheelchair-bound Sophie Morgan would win the show, sitting as she was head and shoulders above the other contestants in terms of perspective and political ambition. She didn’t win, unfortunately, but she didn’t let that stop her.

What the show didn’t reveal about Sophie is that she is an artist, with, I think, an enormous amount of talent. She’s used her stint on this reality show to launch her career in fine art and design.

But it was the pictures of Sophie trekking the Himalayas that really floored me. Here’s a woman who’s prepared to try and accomplish anything she sets her mind to, and somehow she’ll find a way around the obstacles. And have a fabulous time doing it.

At the end of this post I’ve embedded a video of Sophie speaking at a TED event in Canada.

Another remarkable person I’ve come across recently is Sean Stephenson, author of Get Off Your But. At that first link you can watch a video of one of Sean’s motivational talks and it’s well worth it. Sean was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, is three feet tall, and in a wheelchair.

So. My “But” at the moment is having to wait until after lunch, when my son has his nap, before I can really get stuck in to any writing. You know that time of day – slump time. The last thing I feel like doing is concentrating; that nap is looking good. A few years ago I made an accidental discovery that a really excellent time of day for me to write is first thing in the morning, before I do anything else, before I’ve even properly woken up. I’m finding it hard to let go of that now. I’m woken up by a bouncy toddler every morning and that’s my attention taken up until lunch, and as much as I would love to sit down and write it’s just not going to happen in the morning.

So here I am sitting bleary-eyed at nearly 11PM, going back to my previous “best” time to write: late at night. But I’m also hoping I can embrace the midday writing hour more fully and find some way to be really productive during that time that my child magically gives me to myself each day. After all, I’d really like to be sleeping right now. Good night.

Elle: Some stories, and propaganda in particular, have been used to shape the opinions and cultural identity of one group at the expense of another, or, vice versa, to teach one group to accept their (inferior) “place” in the societal hierarchy. Do you think it is possible to write new stories to readdress these ideas, and eventually replace the old subtext, or would society as a whole first have to reach awareness and rejection of old stories?

David: The short answer is yes, absolutely, new stories can and do engender new behaviours, values and social dynamics (not simply reflect them) and no, society doesn’t have to reject the old stories first. It’s a natural and ongoing evolution, and it’s pulled forwards into the future by writers.

Most people think stories reflect our society, but they do a much, much greater job in driving our society. If you envisage the story teller as the teacher, who has been through a learning experience and wishes to communicate it, and the reader as the pupil, learning a life lesson from the protagonist’s experience, the opportunity is there for the author to have a profound effect on the readers’ understanding of life and his or her subsequent behaviours. And the most common and significant of the moral messages and metaphors that are important to society are repeated many times and in many stories and in many guises, so they become reinforced throughout our lives. That is why stories are always about human values – safety, family, friendship, economic security, a sense of belonging, status, sex and relationships, societal success and so on.

Stories are the most powerful tool of teaching and learning, because we learn both emotionally and analytically at the same time when we absorb a story. Our brains work in story structures and story processes, so a well told story can deliver experiential messages we think we thought for ourselves. This is extremely powerful – that is why all religions are delivered in story form (and thereby align communities in values and behaviours), and why the pen is mightier than the sword!

Elle: To me, this really hits home the importance for an author to take great responsibility for her or his writing. So many messages could be passed on inadvertently simply due to the author having certain opinions and beliefs. As I mentioned, my current project involves offering alternative fairytales to a group of parents who are appalled at the subtext of the Brothers Grimm and Disney versions. But I have to be certain that my “agenda” here is something I’ve looked at critically and objectively and taken responsibility for. It’s not a decision to be made lightly.

Thanks to Grimm and Disney, the concept of a character successfully completing certain expected behaviours and being “rewarded with a princess” (in fairytales and adventure stories), or “the man of her dreams” in romance novels and chick-lit, seems to be very entrenched in our society. Do you think this makes it difficult to sell stories that don’t follow this “rule”, or even actively try to break this rule?

David: This is a great question. The stories that resonate most powerfully with a reader/viewer are the ones that address the conflicts in the mind of the individual at that time. That is why a children’s story can leave a child breathless and yet bore the adult reading it, and a vampire romance that has the teens swooning leaves the parents rolling their eyes. That is also why stories that are ‘of a time’ often fail to grip when the society generally no longer has any dilemma with the core conflicts being addressed.

Cowboy movies are about the basic safety and security of a town and community. We no longer fear on a daily basis that our towns and villages will be taken over by bandits, so these stories tend not to engage and have all but disappeared. In the 1940s and 50s it was all war movies, of course, as these stories resonated with the generation who were trying to contend with these issues. In the 60s and 70s it was all about love stories, coupling up and a sense of belonging in groups and couples; often resolving with the happy couple off down the aisle to live happily ever after. Marriage is no longer the pinnacle of relationship achievement for the modern generation (indeed, it is generally seen as the beginning of a conflict rather than the end these days!) so Love Story doesn’t chime like it did. Today’s generation are obsessed with personal status, recognition, prestige and 15 minutes of fame. Star Wars was the first story to resolve on this new dynamic: Luke Skywalker didn’t get the princess (shock horror) – he paraded gloriously before his cheering and admiring peers and received status, recognition and prestige as a Jedi Knight. This dynamic heralds a new world. In recent stories, such as Harry Potter, he doesn’t get the girl either – he ends his stories parading gloriously through Hogwarts Banqueting Hall receiving the recognition and adulation of his peers.

You can see that today’s writers aren’t satisfied by having a hero win a Barbie princess, or a heroine define herself by finding the man of her dreams. Plotlines are often about the battle of the sexes, but they tend increasingly to resolve through active demonstration of mutual earned respect. This said, we have a long way to go before women are represented appropriately.

There will ALWAYS be a place for the romantic plot or sub-plot as we (humanity) are always driven, to a greater or lesser extent, by our genes, sex and procreation, so it will be interesting to watch the changes in the way these plotlines resolve in order to drive a society that represents and respects both sexes appropriately. When you think that for 99% of human evolution we have been foraging hunter/gatherers, with deeply entrenched innate drives towards hunting ‘provider’ men and child-rearing ‘dependent’ women, it’s remarkable how quickly things are balancing up, but there is some way to go before both men and women stop re-enforcing the stereotypes and advance gender equality.

And yes, writers have a simply enormous role to play this transition, through expertly positioning stories that take people from where they are (in mindset terms) to where they could be once they understand their own potential and opportunities.

As an aside, where do you think story resolutions will go next as we tire of the MeFamous generation? Well, once people have fame and fortune, they tend to realize how fickle and unsatisfying it is and commonly define themselves in their post-selfish phase by charitable work and selfless giving. Where the 80s and 90s have been defined by individual’s visibly gaining personal wealth, status and prestige, I predict that the next generation of stories will see success defined through giving of oneself to those less well off. Perhaps the success of The King’s Speech – a surprise to many – is due in part to the resonance of the actions of the therapist in going above and beyond the call of his own duty to help another? I think this is a sign of things to come…

Elle: I’m definitely looking forward to the end of the two-second-celebrity. I hope your prediction does come true.

Moving on to writing skills and subtext as a vital writing technique, I’ve seen with some of my critique clients that writers can sometimes struggle with releasing control of their story. They try to specify exactly how the reader should interpret and experience the story. To my mind this type of tight control over a story leaves very little room for subtext to form. How would you encourage such a writer to allow knowledge gaps into the story? Is it sufficient to have knowledge gaps between two characters, but few or none between author and reader?

David: The way to keep tight control and yet still tell the story with a depth of subtext is through ensuring that the key knowledge gaps will be interpreted by the vast majority of readers/audience in precisely the same way. So, for example, if you hear the expression, ‘The cheque is in the post’, we all get the same understanding delivered in the subtext. A debtor is fobbing off a creditor with an excuse as to why his money hasn’t arrived and yet keeping him sweet by pretending that his money is imminent. We can paint much more complex subtextual stories, and still be confident that the entire audience will ‘get it’ in the same way.

More esoteric subtext, that could be interpreted in multiple ways, leaves different people gaining different things from the same story. That is why Shakespeare is endlessly studied and interpreted in high places as people argue over the subtextual meanings in his amazing use of English. That is why great poetry is subject to endless academic analysis for the truth of the underlying meaning – because it carries the most subtext, but also the least clarity of commonly received understanding.

The best authors give us the greatest depth, persistence and quantity of subtext through the knowledge gaps they embed in their work. This give us the most subtext to interpret – it’s what we love to do. THAT is great writing in a nutshell. If you want to be definite in the uniform understanding the readership receives, you must still deliver your story in subtext, but choose your words carefully in order that everyone interprets your prose the same way.

Elle: I enjoy playing with ambiguity, so this gives me a lot of food for thought. But for writers who worry that they will be misinterpreted, word choice is vital.

In the Introduction to The Story Book you have an analogy of authors as gold miners, where the author who most attracts the publisher’s attention is the one holding up a finely crafted and polished necklace (amongst a group holding buckets of gold nuggets). Self-publishing authors have mostly received a lukewarm reception from traditional publishers thus far. Do you think this situation is changing? Does a self-published book have to come complete with sales and proven readership to constitute a “polished necklace”, as opposed to a manuscript that stands out as the “polished necklace” on its own?

David: Traditional publishers generally shy away from a self-published book that has already sold some modest but significant numbers. For most new authors, a publisher is looking to sell around 1000 books to be sure that they are going to make a profit and if you’ve sold 800 by yourself, they will see that as punching a huge hole in their possibility of making their money back. 1000 books doesn’t sound so much, but I promise you now, 99% of self-published authors have 900 unsold books under the bed and all their friends know what they are getting for Christmas…

More importantly, there are two different issues in play here: a) the creative brilliance of the story and b) the sales and marketing brilliance of the people behind it. A self published work that is brilliantly marketed has as much chance as any published work that is brilliantly marketed. The difference is that the traditional publishers tend to own the relationships and the channels that take a book to market and they put expert resources and money into the marketing effort.

This said, the brave new world brought to us by the internet has changed everything. The judgment of a book’s quality appears to be much more firmly in the hands of The People now, via blogs and review sites, online word-of-mouth, social media, and so on. In theory, this means that the avenues to market are available to everyone (i.e., we can all publish our work on Kindle without having to negotiate the filter of agents and publishers) and the quality of a work is decided by the thoughts and ratings of ordinary human reviewers. This means that the numbers of new authors and published works has suddenly become ludicrous as there is no professional filter, but on the other hand, this puts the judgment of a book’s quality where it should be – with readers – and the cream will rise to the top on the basis of review.

However, I can’t believe that the situation will remain as it is. Amanda Hocking may or may not be a great writer – I honestly don’t know – but she was certainly a self-confessed Twitter and Social Media addict in precisely the right place at precisely the right time to show us all where the new opportunities lie. Sad to say, books have always mostly been a bi-product of celebrity (which is why David Beckham and Katie Price are best-selling authors) and if the people power that comes with the internet shifts the focus on to the quality of the stories, I would welcome it whole-heartedly. Sadly, I don’t think that will be the case in the long term. The internet and new routes to potential buyers do a lot more to change the nature of (and opportunities for) celebrity than it does for the quality of writing (which will naturally go downhill through the massively increased number of publications). The main positive change I can see happening already is that there will be a huge increase in the numbers of shorter works. There has never been much option for a work of 10,000 to, say, 40,000 words. Ebooks mean there now is, and I believe there is a lot to be made of this new form.

The publishers have deliberately clung on to the old world – having watched the music and film industries lose a huge chunk of their revenue, they now see embracing the e-world as turkeys voting for Christmas – but soon enough they will be forced into the game, and I think we have a lot more changes still to come. My advice to aspiring writers? Unless you can use your celebrity to leverage book sales, all you can control is the quality of your story, so work hard to make it the best it can possibly be.

Lastly, I would like to thank Elsa for the opportunity to be involved in these fascinating conversations. I hope we can do it again sometime soon! I do hope you have enjoyed our conversations and do please get in touch if you would like me to send you a chapter from The Story Book addressing any specific story area that is puzzling you.

Elle: Thank you, David, for putting so much time into responding to all my questions. I have really enjoyed discussing these topics and I’m ploughing through the rest of The Story Book. I’ll update my review when I finish it, but I can already highly recommend it.

Visit David’s website if you would like to contact him about anything specific and receive a chapter of The Story Book. David will be visiting Blood-Red Pencil on 7 April, so mark your diaries for that one. You can also follow David’s virtual book tour here.

I know this has been a long read, but please stay a bit longer and leave a comment or question for David. Thank you.

The Story Book is definitely one I’m pleased to add to my writer’s bookshelf and a book I’m sure I will refer to many times while I’m editing my books.

David begins with an explanation of what Story means to society and how humans may have come to use narrative to pass on information and instructions to each other and to the next generations.

In a story, the characters, through various conflicts, successes, and failures play out a situation and the means to accomplish a certain goal. When the reader identifies with the situations and outcomes experienced by the characters, the story resonates with the reader and s/he learns from it. Stories have historically provided “signposts” or instructions for navigating society’s hierarchy. When story after story over generations reaffirms the same messages, the stories “shape our minds”.
(Paraphrased from page 24 of The Story Book)

This exposition resonated with me because the project I’ll soon be launching involves reworking fairytales to offer an alternative to parents concerned about the patriarchal subtext of the traditional Grimm and Disney versions and how these stories have “shaped the minds” of children in the past.

Most writers think they must write subtext in order to deliver an underlying story. This is wrong… If the story is created using knowledge gaps, then the real story is received in subtext.”
David Baboulene, The Story Book, page 30.

Subtext, and how to generate it effectively within a story, forms the heart of The Story Book. Author David Baboulene is currently writing a Ph.D thesis, which includes the theory that the more subtext a story contains the more satisfying the reader/audience finds it. If you haven’t previously considered subtext as an important element of your storytelling, this book is a must-read.

David explains the nuts and bolts of various structural techniques very clearly. The movie Back to the Future is the main story example in this section and since this is a movie series I have seen numerous times I found it very easy to follow David’s reasoning so far.

The Story Book is a good companion to take on your writing journey. Beginner writers might benefit from waiting until they have completed at least a first draft before delving into this book as the level of detailed analysis and academic presentation could be overwhelming. More advanced writers may find The Story Book useful for the planning phase of a manuscript as well as for editing and revision.

David Baboulene’s website
The Story Book is published by DreamEngine Media Ltd., 2010, and is available from Amazon UK, and on Kindle from Amazon.com

My review copy was sent to me by the author.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

With all my discussion of my lack of focus, lack of time, and lack of self-discipline, I thought I should pause for a moment to qualify that I’m not really complaining about my lot in life. I am well aware of how outrageously priviledged I am to live the life I do and have the advantages that I have. My growing self-awareness has highlighted just how much I could potentially achieve if I could find some drive and focus. Or just access some drive and focus, because I don’t think I don’t have those qualities, or that I’ve somehow lost them.

And this is what I’m complaining about: that I have neglected myself. I have had many opportunities and many advantages and time and again I’ve failed to grab them and use what I have. These meandering posts of self-examination are my way of trying to drum this into my head and gain some momentum and energy so that I can grab these advantages and use them.

In addition to the reading I’ve been doing over the past year, and some amazing forums and blogs that deal with priviledge, I’ve watched three reality TV shows over the past few months that have really helped me to gain some perspective on just how lucky and priviledged I am. The shows are Blood, Sweat, and Take-Aways (a group of young Britons live and work in Indonesia’s fast food production industry for a few weeks), Blood, Sweat, and T-Shirts (another group living and working in India’s sweatshops), and Britain’s Missing Top Model (a group of variously disabled women competing for a chance to become an elite model). Although there are many moments in these shows that are cringeworthily offensive in the sheer presumption and superiority of the first two and exploitation of the subjects of the third, it is really this embarrassment factor that pushes the perspective shift and the acknowledgement of priviledge.

Something else these shows deal with is self-pity. Usually it is the most priviledged person who displays the most self-pity in the face of hardship, until circumstances and awareness of the worse plight of another person brings perspective. I think this route to self-awareness is a very powerful one. We learn this lesson best when it is brought to us through a little bit of embarrassment and guilt and a desire to try and make things a little better somehow.

I quite like the D.H. Lawrence quote at the start of this post, and I’ve tried to make it a motto in the past without real success. I now know why it doesn’t quite sit right with me. It’s only half the story. It’s what makes animals so strong, but what sets humans apart from them. Here’s my response to Lawrence:

A little bit of self pity provides context for empathy and compassion for others.

A reminder that David Baboulene, author of The Story Book, will be joining me on Tuesday, 29 March on a stop of his blog book tour. Don’t miss it.

If I had been writing blog posts more frequently, I would’ve reached the one about how I got caught up in writing about fiction instead of writing my fiction and why I have decided to stop writing for writers and start writing for readers. I might also have reached the post about synchronicity and how it has constantly tricked me into deviating from the path I really should be on. So, in a few weeks’ time you can say to me: “Huh? I thought you weren’t doing this anymore?” Well, I’ve made an exception for this book. (Though: is it really an exception if I haven’t yet begun cutting these distractions out of my time…?)

I think this book just might be something special. (It arrived yesterdary, so I’ve only just cracked it open.) But what convinced me to read this book and accept the invitation to host David on his book tour was learning that he is in the process of writing a Ph.D. thesis on subtext in story and how subtext resonates with the reader’s mind. Subtext is a writing element that is very important to me, and the new fiction project I’ve started thanks to my perspective shift actually revolves around a particular societal subtext (more about that when I’m ready to launch it). What was that about synchronicity? Oh dear.

Anyway, I’m going to read this book. I’ll let you know what I think of it. And mark the 29th (the evening of the 29th or early morning of the 30th if you’re in Australia, etc) in your diary and join us for a discussion of subtext. Come armed with lots of questions!

David Baboulene’s website
The Story Book is available from Amazon UK, and on Kindle from Amazon.com

My review copy was sent to me by the author.

So, what does this have to do with writing? Well, think back to the concept of your imagination and your writing skill as the asset with which you are to create your wealth. Now think of some of the things you do in terms of “opportunity cost”. Surfing the Internet? Watching something on TV you’re not even interested in just because it’s on? Playing FarmVille / Farm Town / FrontierVille / Social City / Restaurant City… on FaceBook (those are the first few of 47 new game requests that have popped up since I deleted the last requests a fortnight ago). How about spending several hours on social networking tasks to promote your affiliate marketing sites? Or making new sites, selecting products, writing code, making everything look nice? An extra hour in bed when instead you could be producing a quarter of a short story or a tenth of a chapter? What about reviewing books for the whopping 4% commission on Amazon? I’m thinking out loud now: this is my list. Spending several days carefully crafting each Word 4 Writers module at – wait for it – 80c per module per student. Thousands of hours spent on Squidoo at less than a dollar an hour. That’s just the ice-cube in my night-cap; I’m nowhere near the iceberg yet.

“Don’t sell your time for less than it’s worth.” – Eben Pagan

That’s not to say that we should henceforth cut off all non-productive pursuits and become writing robots. But it is worth asking, “Is this particular activity worth not only my time now, but also my time lost?” For unpublished writers it is hard to put a dollar value on one’s time. That opportunity cost formula that comes so easily to Warren Buffett, who knows exactly what he wants to do with every dollar, is nearly impossible for someone like me to calculate.

But the term “opportunity cost” has another connotation for writers. Occasionally an opportunity may arise to transmute an asset, such as a manuscript, into wealth, such as a traditionally published book complete with advance and royalties. As writers our investment is having these assets ready and available for such an opportunity. Doing anything else but writing cuts into this investment. Wasting time costs you interest. A few years ago I came across the website of a publishing company requesting children’s fantasy manuscripts: mine wasn’t ready. Still isn’t. You know that feeling you get when you freefall, and your stomach seems to end up in a different place to the rest of you? That’s how I felt when what Eben was saying clicked for me.

A couple of weeks ago I read two blog posts about two self-publishing authors that really made me think:
L.J. Sellers and Alisa Valdes.

L.J. Sellers told interviewer Helen Ginger: “…one of the main factors that led me to leave my publisher was the waiting time. I had books completed and scheduled to be released in the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013. I started thinking about how much money I could make on my own in the meantime if I published the e-books immediately. I decided not to wait.”

Alisa Valdes had a similar lightbulb moment. But she also had the experience of her original publisher not understanding that what Alisa’s readers wanted to buy was not what the publisher wanted to sell them. Alisa did understand, and so she gave her readers what they wanted; publisher be damned.

I told you this was a series of small thoughts adding to a major perspective shift. Reading L.J.’s words above seemed to echo something I’d been pondering for a year or longer. Except in my case it was the realisation that I had a market expressing interest in what I had to offer with a definite sense that I wouldn’t be able to get a publisher interested in time to capture this market. So, if this has been on my mind for a year, why am I only now starting to get it off the ground? Well, there’s that focus thing again. Along came an opportunity to relaunch Word 4 Writers at the same time and I saw it as a sign. I do a lot of that, too, and just for kicks I’ll give you some examples in another post.

And another reason is fear. Word 4 Writers was just sharing information; sharing my stories means sharing a part of my soul. And that’s a deep pool to plunge into.

* If this brief introduction has piqued your own interest in doing some maths of your own, here is a handy online compound interest calculator put out by the Australian government.

Those videos were made by an internet marketer called Eben Pagan to launch his course called Self-Made Wealth. That (two grand!) course is now closed, but as of this writing the pre-launch videos are still up and well worth watching.

The first thing that stuck in my mind from one of Eben’s videos was the concept of Fiat Money. I’d heard this concept before, but Eben put it really simply: basically, cash money is worthless; it only has value because we (or governments really) say it does. Extremely wealthy people do not hold their wealth in cash; they invest in assets that appreciate in value. Simple.

Then he added to that thought with some examples about investing and included an anecdote about someone with a thriving business, and the perspective that this person would be best off investing any profits back into his business and not into other shares or investments. (Now, I don’t completely agree with this because I’m of the eggs-and-baskets mind-set. Nevertheless…)

The idea that really hit me upside the head, though, was almost a throw-away line or two (because this course is about getting out of a debt mindset, not how to launch a business, so it wasn’t the core idea of the videos). Eben said that the way to create wealth is to create something of value that people want to buy. Create something out of nothing, in other words.

Create something of value that people want to buy.

Again, not a new idea. But it was the way all these ideas (and more that I’ll share later) came together in my mind.

It was the word “create” that got me. Eben was talking about creating info-products. The internet marketer’s golden goose. But “create” means something totally different to me, and, if you’re an artist or writer or in another creative field, you’ll understand this mental leap immediately.

My next thought went to people like JK Rowling and Stephen King. Create something out of nothing: well they certainly did that, and, yes, they re-invested and diversified what they created and it generated wealth for them. Ha! Understatement.

Eben Pagan also mentioned the famous Star Trek James Kirk/Kobayashi Maru anecdote, making the point that sometimes you don’t have to put up with the program that someone else has written for your life. If you think outside the box, you can write your own program. Writers, in particular, are often trapped in the no-win mindset that attempting to go the route of self-publishing could sabotage your chance for traditional publication, while waiting for your traditional publication lottery numbers to come up might mean a long wait that costs you readers and income.

Finally, I got a real emotional lift. Due to societal training that teaches us to buy into this fiat money illusion, I’ve long thought of myself as inferior because I don’t earn an income. It’s like being part of a business but not being a shareholder: your vote doesn’t count. I’m a stay-at-home mum dabbling in website content and affiliate marketing while trying to find some time and energy to write down the fiction threatening to leak out of my brain. I thought that’s what I should do; it’s a rare writer who doesn’t supplement her fiction income using other writing avenues, if not an actual day job. But what is wealth, really? Well, it’s not money. It’s not income, or “working for The Man”. Wealth is reflected in assets and in the creation of something that others want to buy or trade for.

What greater asset than one’s mind when that mind can create works of fiction that people want to read?

What greater wealth than imagination?

I found that idea in a blog post by Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication and CopyBlogger. That post was called Beatrix Kiddo’s Guide to Making It Happen. Now, I loathed both volumes of Kill Bill and anything remotely to do with QT, but I somehow I managed to have seen these movies and Sonia’s analogy made a lot of sense to me. Sonia talks about focus and how Beatrix Kiddo (The Bride) was the epitome of focus, particularly when she slowly and methodically punched her way out of a buried coffin. Millions and millions of little punches, again, and again, and again. Sound a bit like writing a novel?

If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s focused. I am the queen of multi-tasking. I’m usually reading three or four books at once (fiction and non), and reviewing them, writing two different fiction books and compiling material for some e-book or course or the like, plus “maintaining” or contributing to several blogs, websites (this one and two BellaOnline sites in the past), over 100 lenses and hubs, affiliate marketing ventures… not to mention parenting my toddler who has made it his goal to pull his mummy away from the computer* whenever she “just needs to check something”. Hell, scrap “queen”: I’m the joker, juggling a few dozen balls and hardly noticing all those I’ve dropped along the way.

I read Sonia’s post when I was pregnant and realised I would need to find some of that focus once my child was born because my time would be much more limited. So I cut back on a layer of stuff that I no longer absolutely loved doing (goodbye BellaOnline). What I didn’t realise, though, was the definition of “much more limited time” due to a baby is more accurately “zero time”. A baby is a vortex. It was actually a good chance to shed even more of that stuff that sucked up my now very precious time at the computer; anything else that I hadn’t missed when I was “offline” could go as well.

When my child finally began sleeping during the day, I found myself with real, genuine, super-concentrated, cold-pressed, 100% pure, Time. I used it well to begin with. Anything that could be done when my son was awake could wait until he was awake. (Thus I now have a toddler who helps me unpack the dishwasher, fold the laundry, and push the vaccuum cleaner around.) Nap times were reserved for writing, painting, or sleeping. I became quite strict with myself, knowing that I only had an hour or two at the most. I made myself a schedule split into “Priority” tasks involving my family, my health, housework, and my fiction writing, and “Venture” tasks, which included chasing opportunities to make some pocket money online. Priority tasks got assigned first, venture tasks happened if and when there was extra time left over.

I thought it was a pretty good system. I certainly felt more focused for a while. But I still had a lot of balls in the air. So many interests, so few hours in the day.

But like all things, as soon as I came to rely on having “that free hour when my child has a nap” I began to find ways to waste it. I have a weakness for online conversation. I hadn’t realised how opinionated I was until I started tracking how much advice I was dispensing on various forums. I knew I had to stop when I caught myself digging through my browser history and hopping from one site to the next and back again to check if anyone had responded to my comments. The next thing I knew my baby was waking up and I’d spent an hour going in circles.

As Miss Snark once put it: “Discipline, grasshopper. Discipline.”

*And who can blame him: I hate being ignored in favour of a screen too.