The Five Day Writer's Retreat - Just a Few Days Away!

It's now just a few days until the release of my first book: The Five Day Writer's Retreat!!

Sunday, 10th of March, my 30th Birthday, is the big day. 

So, to get you all as excited about the book as I am, I wanted to share an extract from it on Goal Setting. I thought this was particularly apt, as this is also my ROW 80 goal check in!

This is from Day Four of the Retreat, and hopefully it will inspire you to look again at some of the goals you have for the year.

By the way, it helps if you have seen the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. So in case you haven't:

Day 4: Preparing Your Life

Food For Thought Part 1: Goal Setting. 

There is a lot of information out there about how to set good goals, and for unknown reasons a lot of that information sets my teeth completely on edge. Yes, I know they should be ‘Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Realistic – Timely’ (aka SMART), but who wants to be smart when setting goals? 

I think goal setting, at least the big, end goals, should be more like an Indiana Jones movie than a business plan. 

How does my little analogy work? Follow me! 

You should first see the goal in front of you like an idol. Can you see it? Gleaming on its little pedestal asking to be reached? Good.

Now, look at the bag of sand you have been carrying and work out if you have enough sand for the weight of your goal. The sand is every day material that you will need to give up: time, resources, money, etc. How heavy is your idol? How much will you have to hand over in order to achieve it? Do you have enough?

You are tense for a little bit as you slowly place the sand for the goal and rejoice when you pull it free – you have just agreed to a goal you think you can achieve.  

But wait! That is not the end. You still need to get out of the cave with your goal to realize it. It doesn't count until you are safely back home with the idol. And everyone knows it's once you have decided on a goal that everything in your life tries to stop you from achieving it. 

You start running. Then comes your first pit with stakes or snakes (not snacks as I originally wrote, unless tempting snacks are likely to distract you from your goal…hmmm, snacks…). 

Some kindly person yells to you that you should throw them your goal and they will give you the mundane life item to get you across this barrier. Maybe they say to give up the goal for a sensible job, just for a bit so you can pay the bills. 

Do you throw them the idol? Well, if you do, you still have to get out of the cave alive, and you no longer achieve anything at the end!
 

Maybe you are brave and you keep hold of it, working out some way through yourself. But then life might throw a giant, rolling boulder at you. Just remember, as long as you are running towards the entrance, it is all good, just don’t forget your hat.
 

Of course, when you break out with your goal, there will be a thousand people pointing arrows and spears of criticism that want to cut you down to size, so it is always best to have an escape plan such as your own plane that you can fly off and enjoy your achievement.
 

That is the way I think goals should be handled. So much more exciting and adventurous than being SMART. 

Also, if you create a goal that isn’t worth the sand you are swapping for it, or risking your life to cross the pit for, or even facing all the tribesmen wanting to kill you, then you haven’t really got a good enough goal. Stick with your sand and your day job.

Hope that gave you some inspiration for setting a new goal!

My goals for this week is simply to do as much as I can to improve the book before release, and then sit back and enjoy my 30th Birthday :D

If you would like a gift copy of The Five Day Writer's Retreat, you can still sign up to the newsletter at www.thefivedaywriter.com until 17th of March to receive it free. Or you are more than welcome to buy it. I am still offering a personal appraisal of your writing with every purchased copy, just to encourage you to take your writing seriously.

Sales will (hopefully, fingers crossed) go live on Sunday, 7pm Melbourne Australia time. You will be able to purchase it through The Five Day Writer website or on Amazon initially. I'm also planning on getting it on Smashwords, but that will mean reformatting, so might take a while.

Enjoyed the exert? Then go across to The Five Day Writer and tweet/facebook/share the love!

Sometime You Just Need To Have Faith and ROW 80

Believe In Yourself, Before It Seems Possible

Whenever you send off a new lot of agent queries, there are a series of stages you go through, a bit like grief.

1. Usually within a day you get a bunch of immediate 'no's. Hopefully this will be because they are no longer taking submissions, or haven't even bothered to open your file (sad, but better than they read it and thought you were .... not so good.) It can be traumatic, but at least you got a response, which is slightly cheering. 

2. A few days later you start getting the 'no's which have taken a bit more time about it. At first this was exciting to me, because I thought the messages were personalised. I then realised that no, it just sounded that way, and they were all stock standard.

3. If you are lucky, you then get a few messages a few weeks later saying they are 'reviewing'. 

4. If you are very, very lucky, you will get a email asking for a proposal or partial manuscript. 

5. Then you start getting a new round of rejections from these.

6. Finally, after about three months, so a quarter of a year later, you realise that the other half of the agents you queries are just never going to get back to you. 

So you start all over again. 

And with every new beginning, you get the same excitement, that this might be the time, and the same slow, drawn out, drip-fed rejection. 

Having just sent off a new bunch of agent queries last Saturday (Sunday?) I have already got two rejections, and 5 I haven't heard from (which, in a week isn't too bad. Hopefully it means the 5 might actually be reading the query). 

I still have that outstanding 'We are reviewing' which I haven't heard back from, so there is a bit of hope there.

But on Wednesday was feeling a bit down about it all. 

So, I decided it was time to have faith in myself. Time to show the world that I believe in my book, no matter what!

As a result, I have bought a bottle of Rose Sparkling Wine (Zibbibo by Brown Brothers, a favourite with a long story behind it for my sister and I, which might have involved running around London on Christmas Eve trying to find a bottle shop that sold Australian wines...) and it's in my fridge, waiting to be popped. Because it will happen! I will get an agent and then a publisher for Sally Hunt, my Young Adult Christian series!

Also, I found this website through a post on Nathan Bransford blog, and I highly recommend it to anyone that wants a bit of procrastination:

http://thrilling-tales.webomator.com/derange-o-lab/pulp-o-mizer/pulp-o-mizer.html

The results of 5 minutes of playing around on it:

 

How awesome is that? So many things you could do with it! 

Totally made my day. (Along with the thought of sparkling Rose.)

So ROW80 Goals:

This week hasn't gone as planned, but it never does. I didn't check in on Wednesday, for the first time this round (which is my first round ever). I was just exhausted, and that sort of continued. 

I did get an article written and submitted to Unique Article Wizard (aff). 

I got only 1 good post per blog, and only spent 1 strong session working on the theology book, so a bit behind there. But at least I'm further ahead than I was this time last week. Forward is always a good direction to be going in.

I also finished editing The Five Day Writer's Retreat, worked quite a bit on editing the webpage, and preparing for the launch in a week's time. 

I just want to say, it will feel so fantastic to have something out there. My book, for sale, on Amazon (and my website, and Smashwords, and through affiliates, etc.). 

So This week's Goals:

It's all about the launch. 

I want to create Buzz. 

I want to get people excited.

I want to get the word out there!

Practically, how am I going to do that?

- mock up a full version for advance release for people to review and promote (anyone interested?)

- beg other kind bloggers to let me do a guest blog, to review it, or even run giveaways with the book (happy to provide free books, if you are prepared to run the giveaway.) 

- write more articles linking back to The Five Day Writer website. 

- Keep promoting my promotion: buy the book and receive a personal proposal or sample chapter appraisal.

Also, in there I'll be organising my 30th birthday which will be a combined book launch/birthday party. 

Exciting times, no?

And after the launch, when it is all running smoothly and the book is out there, then I'll be focusing on my two blogs and breathing life back into them. Just you watch.

So, anyone interested in reviewing The Five Day Writer's Retreat, acting as an affiliate selling it (am offering 50% commission), or happy to run a giveaway on their blog about it? 

Just let me know!

Let Me Help You!

Dear All,

First of all, a big thank you to everyone for your support of my upcoming book launch. The Five Day Writer's Retreat is still set to come out on the 10th of March (even if I'm slightly greyer by then). I've been a bit distracted this week trying to arrange different things.

Particularly, I've been thinking about ways I can offer THE MOST value to the readers of my ebook.

I've been umming and ahhing over the pricing of the book. Very originally I wasn't going to sell it, it was just going to be for those who signed up for my newsletter.

However, as I wrote the book, I realised how much great content was in it. I'm stilling offering it for the first week to anyone who signs up to my newsletter, but decided to sell it as well.

But I want people to be dedicated to the program. I want to reach people who are at the stage of actually wanting to invest in their personal development as a writer, and are prepared to actually follow through with the book. I want people that CHOOSE writing.

So I've priced it the same as a movie and a cheap dinner for one. If you aren't prepared to give up one night's entertainment, you aren't yet at the stage of committing to your career as a writer that will get the most of out of the book.

The RRP is going to be $34.95.

However, I still want to offer as much value to my readers as possible. So therefore, I'm offering a pretty amazing bonus (if I do say so myself).

As a tertiary writing tutor, I get paid a rather large amount (much larger than $35, or even double, triple that) for teaching groups of four or more students.

However, as an Oxford trained tutor, though, I'm very conscious that one on one consultations are much, much more effective than group classes. That is why the Oxbridge system is famous, each student has a one on one tutorial every week where they present their writing and their tutor rips it apart, then they come back next week with another essay, and the tutor keeps pushing them to become a better scholar and a better writer.

So, to encourage everyone that is ready to take the next step with their writing, everyone who buys the book (either from Amazon, Smashwords or directly from The Five Day Writer) I'm offering a bonus of a half hour personal critique of their writing proposal or sample chapter. 

I'm sorry, I'm not offering this to those who get the book through the newsletter, but you at least get the book! And if you want, you can buy a copy for someone else, and use the special offer for yourself :D

So, for the price of a cheap night out, you get a week of retreat and teaching to improve your writing, and then personalised help.

I might eventually have to put an end date on this offer, and people might need to be patient in waiting for their review, but I want to offer it for as long as I can.

Sound like a good deal? 

Finally, to help me spread the word, I'm offering 10 free advanced copies for 100 First Drafters who would be prepared to review it in Amazon/Smashwords and/or on their blog (writing platform of choice). You don't have to say only nice things, I want truthful appraisals (though maybe you could give me the negative feedback before the launch so I could try and fix it up!)

It might not be the fully formatted version, and you might only get it a few days before the launch, so preferably you would have time to read it this weekend, as I would love some feedback and perhaps some testimonials to go on the sales page. 

Interested? Email me at buffy@thefivedaywriter.com and let me know why you would like a copy of The Five Day Writer's Retreat.

Also, anyone have any great ideas for launching your own book? All advice kindly sought!