From Bob Mayer's mouth to my ears

First Coast Romance Writers recently hosted Bob Mayer with his "Write it forward" workshop. A NYT bestselling author, Mayer has more than 50 published books and speaks on team-building, life-change, and leadership. 

One of the first things I noticed is that Mayer's perspective on organization and effectiveness stems from his experience as a West Point graduate and a Special Forces A-Team leader. He breaks down any problem or task into doable steps, something which has served him well throughout his distinguished writing career. With my background working for the Army, his linear, spreadsheet approach to planning really hit the right note with me!

Here are a few of the things that I picked up and my take on them:

Mayer: Distribution is no longer the choke-hold in the publishing world. Now it's discoverability.
      MT: He put into words what I've been grappling with this last year. It's not enough to put a book    out. You have to let people know you've published something, and you need a marketing hook to draw them in. the trick is knowing where to spend your precious time - and figuring out where the readers are.

Mayer: Are you striving to survive or striving to succeed?
     MT: This question also provoked a gotcha moment for me. Juggling a day job, a family, writing  and promotion doesn't leave much time to look at the big picture. Most days it feels like I'm trying to survive. Success is the goal, but it often feels like I'm too far in the trenches to glimpse success. I make long term plans and set goals at the start of a project, but I only plan from project to project. If I want more out of a writing career, I have to plan for more.

Mayer: Why do you write? What do you want to achieve by writing? What do you want to do with each book? Take your eyes off the prize and put them on the goal. Write your goal in 25 words.
     MT: These are a few of the questions he posed to get us thinking about our goals. He also said perseverance is more important than talent, and that writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Ability plus zeal plus hard work trumps talent.

Mayer: With books, you're selling emotion and logic. Can you communicate the shiver?
     MT: This explains to me why a book that is poorly written is still compelling. If the shiver comes   through, that emotional connection propels the story, a lot can be forgiven. A book that reads well and communicates well will sell well, but emotion trumps logic every time.

Mayer: Anger and guilt are flashpoints that can break a character. They spring from an underlying fear. Writers should figure out what they fear (writing-wise); they should do the same for their characters - and then push them to face their fears.
     MT: Gosh. What am I afraid of? My biggest fear is that my brain won't hold out. I feel compelled  to write fast and deeper with every book I write. Scenes that used to scare the beejesus out of me are easier to write now. Big take-home moment for me: I need to make a character "fear" list as I'm creating their bios. (does anyone else include fear as part of their character-creating process?)

Mayer: Three steps to change: 1. Moment of enlightenment. 2. Making a decision. 3. Sustained Action.
     MT: This was an Aha! moment for me. Realizing something isn't working IS NOT the moment of  change. Neither is making the decision to try a different plan. The moment of change comes when you move into that broken place and start doing it a different way. Ever notice how some folks complain about this or that but they never get out of their rut? They never finish the process.

Mayer: Emotional stages of change: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
     MT: Mayer went on to say that it's hard to change behavior as habits are trained into us. But he    also said we can learn from any source, and that if something makes you angry, focus on it.

Mayer: You can't separate your writing from you. Lean into fears gradually. The goal of communication is to provoke a response.
   MT: I agree with his "can't separate writing from you" - I think that's why so many of us get emotional about those 1-star reviews and negative comments about our work. It's definitely personal, no matter how nicely you section it off. Trust yourself to provide open and honest communication and you'll have less anxiety and fear. The better you know yourself and your characters, the better you can tell those stories. We definitely filter the world through our own point of view.

Mayer: Know the rules, have a good reason for breaking them, and accept the consequences of breaking the rules.
    MT: I broke the rules with my nudist colony murder mystery, for good reason. I wanted to be  different. But different is also scary to some houses, if it's too different. I shopped around until I found the right house for Murder in the Buff. It didn't attract a NY publisher, but it accomplished my goal of writing something different - and believing in my ability to pull it off. Some chances pay off big, some you learn from. It's all to the good. Lesson: cozies are a very traditional market.

This barely scratches the surface of our Bob Mayer day, but it gives you an idea of some of the topics he covered. I have some cool new Bob Mayer reference books, and I hope to skim through them all this week. I may not be the Queen of Promo, but that's my new goal!

Maggie Toussaint
www.maggietoussaint.com

Maggie is on the Amazing Authors Tour

My moment in the sun as part of the #amazingeventauthors mini-blog tour!

When the water is muddy, you can't tell what's coming downstream, what's under your boat, or where the channel is. Muddy Waters are trouble with a capital T.

In my romantic suspense, Muddy Waters, both Roxie and Sloan are awash with troubles and can't see the future. Both know what they want, but attaining those goals seems insurmountable.

Here's the book blurb:

Roxie Whitaker is struggling to make her grandmother’s real estate business a success. When her coastal home is burglarized, her rosy worldview dims. Atlanta security expert Sloan Harding distracts her from her troubles, but is Mossy Bog’s former bad boy serious about her?

Never one to shy away from trouble, Sloan is determined to find his alleged missing inheritance. Sparks fly as he enters into a business arrangement with Roxie to oversee the restoration of his childhood home. With her help, Sloan resurrects old secrets while a dangerous predator stalks them.

With passion and danger muddying the waters, will love see the light of day?

Available in digital or print format:

Kindle   Wild Rose Press and Amazon     Barnes_and_Noble

Here's an excerpt from the book:

“The lost Harding fortune did have a point of origin," Sloan said. “There was no money banked when my grandfather died. My father insisted granddad hid it from him, and from there the story grew.

“No one else believed my father’s drunken ramblings. Granddad wasn’t a rich man, and he could have had unknown expenses that burnt through his savings. But two things keep me from dismissing this outright.

“First, my father was so sure he’d been scammed. He didn’t hold fast to many things, but he never wavered on this. Second, if there’s any chance at all that my grandfather hid any money, it’s mine to find.”

“That’s why you didn’t sell the house before?” Roxie’s blue green eyes regarded Sloan expectantly. “Because you needed to come home to find the truth? To uphold your granddad’s good name?”

There she went again, putting words in his mouth. He wasn’t a saint. He was a Harding. “I don’t need the money. My company is doing fine. I have questions about the past, that’s all.”

“Questions? What kind of questions?”

Why wouldn’t she let the subject drop? Did she expect him to admit his father had been crazy? Or that he harbored serious doubts about his granddad’s sanity? What sane man hid his estate from his heir?

And if said heir searched for the missing money, was he crazy too?

No way was he admitting all that. 

*     *     *     *

Be sure and visit Patsy's blog tomorrow. Here's her link:
http://plparker.blogspot.com/2012/01/patsys-amazing-author-blog-tour.html  

There will be a giveaway on the last day of the blog mini-tour, and the ebook of Muddy Waters is up for grabs. The question from this blog is: What is Sloan determined to find?
      *  *  *  *

Maggie Toussaint

romance and mystery author

www.maggietoussaint.com

Coming in March:
Death, Island Style .. a little fun, a little sun, and a dead body in the surf
Murder in the Buff ... secrets at the nudist colony lead to murder

From Gobbles to Gifts - Advent is here

We have many unbreakables on our tree.
This practice is a holdover from having toddlers
 and pets climbing our tree.

Every year, the first time I hear Christmas music in stores catches me by surprise. "Already?" I think to myself. But Christmas is big business, so of course they play it up.

We've barely got Thanksgiving boxed up, and we're inundated with sales fliers. Deals abound everywhere. Need sweaters, boots, or a party outfit? How about stuff for hunting or boating?One of the three dozen or so sales inserts from the Saturday paper will direct you to a bargain.

Anything you can't find locally is just a click away on the internet. Easy, right? Only if you're made of money. Most of us are pinching pennies, trying to stretch what we have to make it last.

Usually I start hyperventilating about now. There are Christmas cards to find and address. Letters to write. Cookies to bake. Trees to decorate. Christmas sweaters tucked away in my closet-where'd I put those things? Invitations to consider. Visits to schedule. And of course, gifts to buy.

Angels are a special favorite of mine.

I don't know what this says about me, but my gift-giving list shrinks each year. I buy for my family, of course, for my choir, and my best friends. One of my favorite events of the season is our First Coast Romance Writers holiday party where we have a blind ornament exchange.

The name for the swap is politically incorrect, but basically, when its your turn you select a wrapped package or "steal" from someone else. Once an item is stolen three times, its frozen and that person gets to take it home. Some years the hot item is a sparkly Cinderella stilleto, other years it's an angel or a purse. The catch is that the gift can't cost more than five dollars. I'm just bursting with the need to tell someone what my gift is, but I don't want to spoil the surprise. All I'll say is that he started life as a key chain fob. Now he's being repurposed as the stuff of our dreams.

This tree is from Christmas past.
 I haven't dragged everything down from the attic yet
 this year. Maybe in a week or so.

Let's talk decorating for a minute. Two of my neighbors are ready to go. One home has soft blue lights on a fence and multi-colored lights on the house. Another neighbor has bright red lights wrap candy cane style up the trunk of her palm trees. Lots of bows and swags on the house lights over there. I wonder if they'll adopt me or at least my yard.

Each year we discuss the pros and cons of decorating more than our tree. This year we'll put white lights on the fence because we have a daughter and her family visiting. We don't want to appear to be deadbeats.

Question: who do you decorate for? Yourself? Your family? Your community? Or do you enjoy looking at everyone else's decorations? I love riding around and seeing what others have done to their homes and yards - do you?



Happy Advent, everyone!

Maggie Toussaint
coming in 2012: Death, Island Style and Murder in the Buff