Today, I worked on the 2nd recording for The Post-College Guide to Happiness and it's been a really exciting process so far. I realize that most professional audio book folks probably take months to perfect every word possible, I'm trying to do it in three sessions since I'm funding it all myself. I really hope that people love the book, love my voice and think highly about the effort I've put in :).
In the writing world, I worked on a blog tour post about happiness and the wisdom of sticking to your skills. I've also got a character writing post to put up and I continued my work on the writing prompts book. Off to watch the Voice!
Showing posts with label the post-college guide to happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the post-college guide to happiness. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Day 114: Before Sunset
As I sit here on my Southwest Airlines flight, I can look out to my left to see a beautiful setting sun washing across the North Carolina sky. I've had a wonderful holiday trip and I can't express my gratitude enough. Last night, I was even able to see several friends from college and this morning I was able to go on a rainy day run with one of them. Running is one of my favorite activities to do with a partner because over the course of four or more miles, you can run through a lot of different conversation topics. You learn a lot and you get to share a great deal of yourself as well. Having the added dialogue never hurts when it comes to thinking up writing ideas, and I always appreciate the extra support.
For Christmas/Hanukkah, I gave out about 15 copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness to my relatives and friends and I'm really excited to see what they think. My friend's sister flipped through a copy and told me she enjoyed my writing style. It's great to hear a specific compliment here and there so that I know I'm doing a halfway decent job.
I'm trying to formulate my goals for 2011. Obviously, I'm already in the midst of a few challenges with this writing challenge and the Tundra challenge (which I'm more than halfway to the goal of 100 miles at this point). I've been challenged by Amy's family to a weight loss challenge, which might be some good motivation for the new year. I sold between 6,000 and 7,000 books in 2011 and I'd love to try to double or triple that in 2012. In addition, I'd like to get in some more weight lifting to go with my running. Just a few thoughts that I'm brainstorming out here!
In writing news, I worked on the "exercise" section of living in the future and I wrote a blog post called how to finish a book. Happy last night of Hanukkah, y'all!
For Christmas/Hanukkah, I gave out about 15 copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness to my relatives and friends and I'm really excited to see what they think. My friend's sister flipped through a copy and told me she enjoyed my writing style. It's great to hear a specific compliment here and there so that I know I'm doing a halfway decent job.
I'm trying to formulate my goals for 2011. Obviously, I'm already in the midst of a few challenges with this writing challenge and the Tundra challenge (which I'm more than halfway to the goal of 100 miles at this point). I've been challenged by Amy's family to a weight loss challenge, which might be some good motivation for the new year. I sold between 6,000 and 7,000 books in 2011 and I'd love to try to double or triple that in 2012. In addition, I'd like to get in some more weight lifting to go with my running. Just a few thoughts that I'm brainstorming out here!
In writing news, I worked on the "exercise" section of living in the future and I wrote a blog post called how to finish a book. Happy last night of Hanukkah, y'all!
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Day 104: Service with a Smile
One of the reasons that writers write is to serve the public. I'm a big fan of the company, Groupon, for multiple reasons (yes, my girlfriend works for it, but just go with me here). One of the main reasons is the fact that they have amazing customer service. The people who work for the CS department at the company are actually encouraged to give customers a 100% refund if Groupon or the merchant messed up. 100% refunds all the time? Who does that?
Writers are providing a service because they are fulfilling a need that someone out in the reading universe has. If you write a book about repairing roofs, your main intention with the book can't be to make money or putting roof servicers out of business. It should be to help people who are trying to understand their own roofs. If you are creating ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif vampire novel, you should be trying to entertain the people who are craving that vampire goodness. I wrote a book on happiness, particularly (but not exclusively) for the post-college crowd, called The Post-College Guide to Happiness. I wrote this book because I saw a need out there and I desperately wanted to provide a service for people. I learned long ago that your value is equal to your service. I wanted to create a book that so many people could find use from that the value I'm worth in all areas of my life would go up astronomically. Here's to hoping :).
In writing news, I began playing around with a new self-help book called Living in the Future and I worked on a post about my happiness book called the book on happiness. Happy Saturday, y'all!
Writers are providing a service because they are fulfilling a need that someone out in the reading universe has. If you write a book about repairing roofs, your main intention with the book can't be to make money or putting roof servicers out of business. It should be to help people who are trying to understand their own roofs. If you are creating ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif vampire novel, you should be trying to entertain the people who are craving that vampire goodness. I wrote a book on happiness, particularly (but not exclusively) for the post-college crowd, called The Post-College Guide to Happiness. I wrote this book because I saw a need out there and I desperately wanted to provide a service for people. I learned long ago that your value is equal to your service. I wanted to create a book that so many people could find use from that the value I'm worth in all areas of my life would go up astronomically. Here's to hoping :).
In writing news, I began playing around with a new self-help book called Living in the Future and I worked on a post about my happiness book called the book on happiness. Happy Saturday, y'all!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Day 70: 10 Weeks
It's official, I've been doing this challenge for 10 consecutive weeks. It's by far my longest writing streak of all time and here are some of the things I've accomplished in that time.
- Over 100 blog posts on Build Creative Writing Ideas
- Traffic increase from 422 visitors per day in Aug. 2011 to 706 per day in Oct. 2011
- Completed two books: The Post-College Guide to Happiness and 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 1
- 70 blog posts on this blog, my first successful attempt to write a more personal blog
- Nearly doubling my AdSense income from August to October
- Writing 175,000+ words in total!
I'm very excited to see what else I can do in the next 42 weeks. I have several extremely awesome projects coming up including my novel, the second part of my 1,000 character prompts book and a journalistic look at a long-lost love story in North Carolina. All this and more coming your way :).
After working on Ted for a bit today, I wrote a blog post on quotes on happiness on the blog. Go Eagles!
- Over 100 blog posts on Build Creative Writing Ideas
- Traffic increase from 422 visitors per day in Aug. 2011 to 706 per day in Oct. 2011
- Completed two books: The Post-College Guide to Happiness and 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 1
- 70 blog posts on this blog, my first successful attempt to write a more personal blog
- Nearly doubling my AdSense income from August to October
- Writing 175,000+ words in total!
I'm very excited to see what else I can do in the next 42 weeks. I have several extremely awesome projects coming up including my novel, the second part of my 1,000 character prompts book and a journalistic look at a long-lost love story in North Carolina. All this and more coming your way :).
After working on Ted for a bit today, I wrote a blog post on quotes on happiness on the blog. Go Eagles!
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Day 66: Happiness
How has this writing challenge contributed to my overall level of happiness?
This is an important question to ask for several reasons. First of all, as someone who has written a book about happiness, I should make sure that what I'm doing at any given time is contributing positively to my levels of joy. Secondly, since the first book I wrote on the challenge was that happiness book, how well it represents the subject is worth looking at to see if I'm keeping my quality up as well as my quantity. Thirdly, I think that other people on writing challenges such as NaNoWriMo should know if they can maintain their general happiness while working on something as difficult as a novel.
I'm proud to say that this challenge has contributed very well to my happiness during the last two months. While it has caused some issues socially and there have been days in which I've felt like collapsing on the couch for a few days, overall, I am feeling happier compared to a few months ago. I knew at that time that I needed something to keep me focused and to keep me excited about writing. Even though I know that writing is a major part of my life purpose, I still needed to set a goal for myself that would be challenging and this idea of writing 2,500 words a day for 365 days straight has fit the bill.
Today, I continued to work on the young-adultish fantasy novel, and I'm very glad to be giving it a second go in a full-length version. I'm able to flesh out some characters more and I've had a great time seeing how they get from point A to point B in a much more complex tale. I also wrote a blog post today focusing on quotes about happiness, which provides some context to several amazing quotes on the subject of joy.
This is an important question to ask for several reasons. First of all, as someone who has written a book about happiness, I should make sure that what I'm doing at any given time is contributing positively to my levels of joy. Secondly, since the first book I wrote on the challenge was that happiness book, how well it represents the subject is worth looking at to see if I'm keeping my quality up as well as my quantity. Thirdly, I think that other people on writing challenges such as NaNoWriMo should know if they can maintain their general happiness while working on something as difficult as a novel.
I'm proud to say that this challenge has contributed very well to my happiness during the last two months. While it has caused some issues socially and there have been days in which I've felt like collapsing on the couch for a few days, overall, I am feeling happier compared to a few months ago. I knew at that time that I needed something to keep me focused and to keep me excited about writing. Even though I know that writing is a major part of my life purpose, I still needed to set a goal for myself that would be challenging and this idea of writing 2,500 words a day for 365 days straight has fit the bill.
Today, I continued to work on the young-adultish fantasy novel, and I'm very glad to be giving it a second go in a full-length version. I'm able to flesh out some characters more and I've had a great time seeing how they get from point A to point B in a much more complex tale. I also wrote a blog post today focusing on quotes about happiness, which provides some context to several amazing quotes on the subject of joy.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Day 60: Writing Challenge
After approximately two months, I think it's time I took some extra time to reflect on my writing challenge. I am just four writing prompts away from finishing my second book of the self-generated competition, which will have been my longest book of all time at around 70,000 words. I'm extremely proud of myself and I think that I've grown since I began 60 days ago.
Starting a writing challenge like has caused me to think outside the box about what was directly affecting my writing productivity. I knew that I needed some extra oomph, which caused me to purchased the Fit Desk X bike. Since I bought it, I've used it over an hour each morning to get the oxygen necessary to my brain to complete my daily task. In addition, I know now for a fact that having an office for my very own with a door I can close has been extremely helpful. The days in which I finish my writing before noon have tripled in our new apartment because of the office and the added space.
I was a little worried about splitting my writing between the three sources: my books, my writing blog and this blog, but I've learned it was a great decision. Not only is my web traffic up, but my book sales and advertising clickthroughs have gone up as well. This helps me a great deal in the challenge because I can immediately see my results having an effect. If I was writing the books alone, it would be a bit tougher, since you can't make money off a book until it's edited, designed and published. Even though the books are likely to bring more "pudding" in the long-term, having that short term reminder that, "Hey, your writing pays!" is a welcome reminder.
Now that I've finished The Post-College Guide to Happiness and have come quite close to completing 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 1, I have proven to myself that the longer I go with this writing challenge, the more books I will write. If I can keep up the same pace, I'll end up 12 books completed by the end of the challenge with another book on the way. In addition, I'll have over 450 blog posts completed (since I'm posting parts of the books along the way), which should help me to reach my website traffic goals.
In other words, life is good, and I'm glad I've embarked on such a journey! Continue to follow along to see if I can make it to the end :).
In today's writing, I wrote a blog post of short story topics and post a page of character writing prompts on landlords.
Starting a writing challenge like has caused me to think outside the box about what was directly affecting my writing productivity. I knew that I needed some extra oomph, which caused me to purchased the Fit Desk X bike. Since I bought it, I've used it over an hour each morning to get the oxygen necessary to my brain to complete my daily task. In addition, I know now for a fact that having an office for my very own with a door I can close has been extremely helpful. The days in which I finish my writing before noon have tripled in our new apartment because of the office and the added space.
I was a little worried about splitting my writing between the three sources: my books, my writing blog and this blog, but I've learned it was a great decision. Not only is my web traffic up, but my book sales and advertising clickthroughs have gone up as well. This helps me a great deal in the challenge because I can immediately see my results having an effect. If I was writing the books alone, it would be a bit tougher, since you can't make money off a book until it's edited, designed and published. Even though the books are likely to bring more "pudding" in the long-term, having that short term reminder that, "Hey, your writing pays!" is a welcome reminder.
Now that I've finished The Post-College Guide to Happiness and have come quite close to completing 1,000 Character Writing Prompts, Part 1, I have proven to myself that the longer I go with this writing challenge, the more books I will write. If I can keep up the same pace, I'll end up 12 books completed by the end of the challenge with another book on the way. In addition, I'll have over 450 blog posts completed (since I'm posting parts of the books along the way), which should help me to reach my website traffic goals.
In other words, life is good, and I'm glad I've embarked on such a journey! Continue to follow along to see if I can make it to the end :).
In today's writing, I wrote a blog post of short story topics and post a page of character writing prompts on landlords.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Day 50: Dragon My Feet
Today was definitely a bit of a "dragon my feet" day (dragging my feet, see what I did there?) but I'm happy to report I have nearly completed the workload. On a day like today, I'm not able to do as much auxiliary work such as formatting and editing, but regardless, it's always a great feeling to complete what I've set out to do.
I'm still plotting some marketing ideas for the guide to happiness, so feel free to drop any ideas on me here or on my other blog. I chugged through some more writing prompts on optimists and athletic coaches today and I have at least 10 pages to post at some point. In addition, I wrote a blog post of prompts for one of the most popular keywords on the web, high school writing prompt. Yes, it's singular, but I figure, you have to play the Internet's game some time :).
I'm still plotting some marketing ideas for the guide to happiness, so feel free to drop any ideas on me here or on my other blog. I chugged through some more writing prompts on optimists and athletic coaches today and I have at least 10 pages to post at some point. In addition, I wrote a blog post of prompts for one of the most popular keywords on the web, high school writing prompt. Yes, it's singular, but I figure, you have to play the Internet's game some time :).
Friday, October 21, 2011
Day 47: Christmas in October
Today, I wrote a page of Christmas writing prompts for a few different reasons. No, me being in the holiday spirit isn't one of them.
Every Fall, the traffic on my website goes up astronomically due to the huge traffic on my "fall writing prompts," "Halloween writing prompts" and "Thanksgiving writing prompts" pages and I figured, why not have my Christmas page indexed and ready for December. Now, that's some Christmas planning ahead :).
I also worked on the character writing prompts book and started a Post-College Guide to Happiness giveaway!
Every Fall, the traffic on my website goes up astronomically due to the huge traffic on my "fall writing prompts," "Halloween writing prompts" and "Thanksgiving writing prompts" pages and I figured, why not have my Christmas page indexed and ready for December. Now, that's some Christmas planning ahead :).
I also worked on the character writing prompts book and started a Post-College Guide to Happiness giveaway!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Day 40: Go to Extremes
You know that old Billy Joel song that goes, "Baby I don't know why I go to extremes?" I'm kind of like the narrator of that song. I mean, look at this challenge. I just passed 100,000 words in total, it's crazy.
When I told my girlfriend about the idea for the 365 challenge, she was concerned that I'd work myself to exhaustion. With 325 days remaining, it's certainly possible. But I've never been content to do a little here and a little there. I'm an all or nothing kind of guy and I tend to get bored with anything less. I'm happy to go to extremes because I get a heck of a lot accomplished.
Today I came with 15 topics of figuring out my 100 categories, though I still have to write over 700 prompts to fill out the rest of the book. I wrote a blog post with a few novel writing tips and I planned out a little evening birthday celebration with some friends. Yippie!
Also, The Post-College Guide to Happiness is now available for the Kindle. Woo wee! :)
When I told my girlfriend about the idea for the 365 challenge, she was concerned that I'd work myself to exhaustion. With 325 days remaining, it's certainly possible. But I've never been content to do a little here and a little there. I'm an all or nothing kind of guy and I tend to get bored with anything less. I'm happy to go to extremes because I get a heck of a lot accomplished.
Today I came with 15 topics of figuring out my 100 categories, though I still have to write over 700 prompts to fill out the rest of the book. I wrote a blog post with a few novel writing tips and I planned out a little evening birthday celebration with some friends. Yippie!
Also, The Post-College Guide to Happiness is now available for the Kindle. Woo wee! :)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Day 36: Almost There
I just passed 30,000 words in the prompts book (my current estimate is that it will be 70,000 words in total before I move on to book #3), and I've received my second edit of The Post-College Guide to Happiness and it's just about ready to go.
I loved getting up before everyone else in Amy's parents house this morning. It was just me and the cats prowling around as I found a good corner in which to write. I also wrote a post about happiness and love and how important it is to love yourself.
I still have about 2,000 words a day worth of freelance work (aside from the 2,500 of the challenge) that I'd love to be able to chop out by some point next year. I hope these new books can start selling like hot cakes by the end of the year to make my dreams of full-time authorship a reality.
I loved getting up before everyone else in Amy's parents house this morning. It was just me and the cats prowling around as I found a good corner in which to write. I also wrote a post about happiness and love and how important it is to love yourself.
I still have about 2,000 words a day worth of freelance work (aside from the 2,500 of the challenge) that I'd love to be able to chop out by some point next year. I hope these new books can start selling like hot cakes by the end of the year to make my dreams of full-time authorship a reality.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Day 30: Coming Together
Today I secured a cover designer for The Post-College Guide to Happiness and my favorite editor in the world is currently shredding it down to build it back up again. I would love to be able to start selling this book by my 29th birthday, October 13th and I'm doing everything I can to make it happen!
As I stated last night, I took better care of myself this morning with an early bedtime and eight full hours of sleep. Unsurprisingly, I have been much more efficient and I'm looking forward to finishing my book writing much earlier today. I continue to work on the prompts and yesterday I posted a page of prompts based on superheroes and today I posted about an awesome lady, Eleanor Roosevelt and her ability to hang tough.
Another challenge coming up this week will be a trip to North Carolina on Saturday, but I plan to get up super early and do some plane writing to make up for it. Can't wait for some slightly warmer weather!
As I stated last night, I took better care of myself this morning with an early bedtime and eight full hours of sleep. Unsurprisingly, I have been much more efficient and I'm looking forward to finishing my book writing much earlier today. I continue to work on the prompts and yesterday I posted a page of prompts based on superheroes and today I posted about an awesome lady, Eleanor Roosevelt and her ability to hang tough.
Another challenge coming up this week will be a trip to North Carolina on Saturday, but I plan to get up super early and do some plane writing to make up for it. Can't wait for some slightly warmer weather!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Day 23: Prosperity
One of the main chapter in my happiness book focused on prosperity. The idea of an abundant world in which there is enough money, food and health for everybody is really awesome and promoting that mindset is definitely a goal of this and future books.
I am going to write it down here because I truly believe it can happen. I want to sell 100,000 copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness by the end of the year. This will require a lot of hard work on my part, but I think that by thinking prosperously and keeping myself open to marketing and sales ideas that may come to me, I can make it a reality.
Today, I plodded along in the character writing prompts book and answered a question about seamless transitions in writing on the writing website. There is a long way to go in this challenge, but after 23 days, I'm starting to feel like it's really becoming a way of life. Woo hoo!
I am going to write it down here because I truly believe it can happen. I want to sell 100,000 copies of The Post-College Guide to Happiness by the end of the year. This will require a lot of hard work on my part, but I think that by thinking prosperously and keeping myself open to marketing and sales ideas that may come to me, I can make it a reality.
Today, I plodded along in the character writing prompts book and answered a question about seamless transitions in writing on the writing website. There is a long way to go in this challenge, but after 23 days, I'm starting to feel like it's really becoming a way of life. Woo hoo!
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