Day 2 (Motivation) Your Technique Won't Save You If You're Not Coachable

Beautiful lines won't matter if you can't take correction. adapt quickly and listen. adapt quickly, and listen. Directors want dancers they can trust - not ones who need to be convinced. ~ Acay Anil

We talked about this yesterday when we talked about learning. This is also about mindset but also about being open. 

There is nothing wrong with having opinions. We love having opinions. We love having thoughts. But there are times when it is important to just be quiet and listen. 

This line from HAMLITON is so right on the money. If an editor or an agent has to spend time trying to convince you that a chance in your story is necessary, what is that telling them about you? Are you someone that they will want to work with in the future?

I have overheard authors at conferences talk about agents and editors who they have left, but when they continue talking, you realize, the issue was not with the agent or the editor, it was with the fact that the writer was the individual being difficult. The author was not the person being "part" of the team and "part" of the conversation. 

Being in business or society means interacting with other people. It requires considering where other people are coming from and sometimes listening. Remember, you as an author went to that agent because that person was the expert who, a you said "knew the system and knew how to guide you in your career." So listen. Remember, it is the editor, who has gotten other people to that coveted list that you are trying so hard to get to telling you what to do to get there. So why are you telling them now you know better? 

Day 1 (Motivation) Talent Is Overrated

It might get you noticed, but it won't get you hired - or keep you hired. What matters more: how consistently you show up, how you take feedback, and you carry yourself in the room. Your energy often speaks louder than your steps. Talent gets applause. Work ethic builds a career. ~ Ayca Anil

But Scott, wait a minute, isn't it the talent that gets us the contract? Isn't it what the editors and agents first when they are looking at those submissions?

Well, sort of... But that is not what we are talking about here.

If you really focus on what Anil is talking about here, it is about consistency and presence. It is about work ethic. Sure, we will read about those authors who come out of no where, make it big and then what happens? They disappear. They become a nobody. Why does that happen? They seem to think that now that they have made it, they feel that they have the talent and they are so good, they don't need to do any more than to live on that talent. Oh how wrong they are!

Just because your first book sells does not mean there is not room to learn. Someone can always give us a new insight into what we are doing, but we have to be open to just listen and consider what that person has to say? We also have to be open to take that feedback. We cannot slam the door on someone who gives us feedback because we don't like them, or because it hurts our feelings. In fact, Ayca's post on social media actually starts off with the comment, "Dance Career Advice I'd Give you If I Wasn't Afraid of Hurting Your Feelings." Sorry, but "Suck it up, Buttercup." It is time to learn and listen to what other people have to say."

It is also about how you show up in public. Again, too often I have seen authors, who have once they have gotten that "first big contract" suddenly become a DIVA, and refuse to talk to "those below them." They seem to have forgotten that just days below, they were one of those underlings. Regardless of your talent, regardless of whether you are on the NY Times Best Sellers List or you are just selling a lot of books with a smaller line, you still have the same number of legs and the same number of arms as those who still are trying to trying to get there. Be humble. Be nice. Come in with an energy that says, I am here to learn with you and I am also here to help you get to where you want to want to be.

Sure, some people will get those standing ovations, but you can sit there and, in your heart know, you are doing great work and being a great person. 

Commit: Go Big Or Go Home

I was working through some edits with one of my clients this weekend and this concept came up. It was about an element she was using in her series she was working on. I don't want to go into too much detail on the concept here but, we were doing something kind of unique. In any case, in her first book of the series, she used a bit of this concept, enough that made it important enough to the storyline. Now, here is the kicker. When we hit the second book, that concept was barely noticeable which was reading amazing without it. Ugh.

This is when I got thinking. What do we do? We have two options now: 1) eliminate the concept in the first book; or 2) add the concept in the second? Technically, either way works... maybe????? Or does an option ruin one of the books?????

When it comes to doing something unique in your stories, you have to fully commit to it. You have to decide to, as the title of the blog says, Go Big Or Go Home. You cannot half-way do things. Let me give you a couple of examples where I see this happening a lot.

Authors who try multicultural romances. I think these are great stories. This is a chance to truly dig into the cultural experience. The problem, however, is that they don't Go Big Or Go Home. Just having the two characters with different skin colors is not a multicultural romance. Sorry, it isn't. First of all, do not get me started on the concept of culture here. My wife, who is a communication instruction who specializes in this will get on my be all over this blog, but culture is more than skin color. It goes MUCH deeper. These stories have to really have culture literally being a character in the story. 

Think of it this way. While I loved the TV version of Bridgerton, changing the ethnicity of the characters did nothing to change the storyline of the story. 

It did not suddenly make this a multicultural story. It is still the same Julia Quinn novel.

Does that make sense?

Authors who want to write "hot steamy stories". I get this all of the time from authors who send queries and tell me that they know that hot steamy stories are the new "in thing" so they have written one. But do they? No. They often take two approaches. They either spend the entire novel writing nothing but erotica and what they think is hot writing (which ends up as nothing more as graphic sex scenes with no plot), OR, they write everyday stories and then, in the middle of the story, write one scene that is very out of place with a hot scene, which is often writing the same thing that previous author did, but just one time. 

Not what we are talking about.

Those hot steamy stories are the ones where the characters are hot and steamy through the whole thing but guess what? It is not about the graphic sex. It is not about how many times we can use graphic words and descriptions. If you want to write these stories, GO BIG OR GO HOME. Really tell the romance and make it true. 

Authors who want to write time travel. Ugh...I am going to leave it with this one. Again, GO BIG OR GO HOME. These stories have to be just like those multicultural stories. Remember how culture had to be a character? Well guess what? The time travel has to be as well? Just transplanting your heroine in the Regency period and calling it quits is not time travel. It is now a historical. If you think about Outlander, Claire and Jaime are constantly having to deal with the issue of knowing too much about the future, about what Claire knows about how to get back, about what if she goes back and leaves Jaime, about the fact that her kids can go back and leave her family.... the list is endless. Time matters. It IS a character. This is not just a historical. 

Get the idea?

Upcoming Motivational Series

Beginning on July 9th, I will be running a 12 day series here on the blog to get you thinking about writing from a different angle. I believe that too often, authors spend too much time wordsmithing to death their stories, worrying about their GMC's of their characters or thinking about how to market their book before they have even written it. As you have read here on the blog, how many times have I talked about going to conferences listening to authors complaining about book sales, or whining about the business of publishing and not thinking about the stories or even why they are writing. 

That is the point of this series.

I have the benefit of having three fantastic kids in some pretty diverse careers (all of which were amazingly expensive to support as parents). My oldest, Rowan, is a NCAA swim coach and who still competes competitively. My middlest, Cate, is an Equestrian coach in Wellington, Florida working with dressage and hunter/jumpers. My youngest, Bronwyn, who just graduated is a dancer and choreographer. All provide me unique insights not just from a coaching insight, but from a mental and learner's mindset into how to prepare and think about how to approach an activity. For this series, we are going to go to the dance field.

I stumbled across this from a social media post that came across my feed by a ballerina and movement educator by a ballerina and movement educator by the name of Ayca Anil. Her insights were amazing. We'll take what she says about ballet and dance and look at it from a writing perspective. 

Let's get ready to change our thinking! 

Jealousy Is Your Worst Enemy

 We have all seen it before. We have all been there before. 

It's time to cut the birthday cake for someone in the family and the two kids start complaining about how one person got a bigger piece than the other person, or someone got more frosting than the other person. Maybe it is the complaining in the toy store about how someone got a toy that is bigger than someone else's toy. 

Ahh, jealousy. We love it don't we? Especially when it is happening to some other parent and we can sit back and say it NEVER happens to our kids and it NEVER happened in our lives.... (yea, right....).  But I bring this up today when it comes to you and your writing career. Jealousy of other writers is one of the worst things that can happen to you and it will destroy your own career. No, I am not saying you will lose your job. This is all about mindset.

Let's first think about where this jealousy thing is coming from. Again, return to the kids with the cake. Kid 1 is upset because Kid 2 has a bigger slice of cake. Maybe Kid 2 does, but here comes the next question. Do we know the rest of the circumstances? Is Kid 2 older? Did Kid 1 do something earlier to deserve less? Is Kid 1 diabetic and shouldn't have that much of high levels of sugar? The list goes on and on. Well, the same goes for writing. We don't know the circumstances. 

Some writers get things that you WISH you had simply because of circumstances that are out of your control and maybe beyond your reach. Consider the following list:

• They were in a publishing line that was closed and due to a contract they were signed to they were moved to a different house that you had always wanted to be in.
• They were in the right place at the right time and an editor sat down with them at a table at a luncheon and said they wanted to know about their book (you weren't at that conference).
• They had a story that was what the editor was looking for at that time.
• You were tied up with other writing projects and couldn't afford to drop those and start something new on a gamble that the project would be right.
• That person simply had a voice the editor wanted and your voice wasn't what they wanted.
• Get the idea?

We simply don't know what the circumstances are. It is not a matter of the world working against you. Sometimes, things just work out that way.

But we also have to remember that, even though you might want to be at that one big publishing house with that big fancy hard cover book, (here comes the cold hard truth so be braced for it), it might not be where you are destined to be. We have to admit, like all professions, activities, sports, hobbies, etc, some people just have inherent skills that others have. Some people just have the genes that others do not have. Look, I don't care how hard you train and swim, there is something about the genes that a Katie Ledecky or Michael Phelps, or Lebron James have that others do not have. But we can be successful in our own area.

The other thing I want us all to remember, especially as writers, is, if we want this business to continue and to compete against the mind melting streaming services and gaming platforms and get people back to reading again, we have to celebrate the successes of writers.  They got there! Applaud what they did!

And one final note. I stumbled across this as I was writing this post. Consider this as well....