Create If Writing

Read the full show notes HERE. 

This is part 1 of my interview with Gabriela Pereira from DIY MFA. I have been a longtime fan of her site and podcast, which is a great resources for writers. We had so much to chat about that I broke the interview up into part 1: Why Writers Need Community and part 2: How to Find Your Writing Process. Want to support the show? Check out the rewards on Patreon!

People often think of writers doing their work in solitude, sitting in a room somewhere with a typewriter (don't ask me why I ALWAYS see typewriters in my mind) and one million locks on the door to keep the world out. And yeah, we can be an introverted bunch. Though our work is often done alone, in this interview I'm talking with Gabriela Pereira from DIY MFA about why writers need community.

The DIY MFA Podcast was one of the first writing podcasts that I listened to when I had my great podcast epiphany last year. Gabriela Pereira calls herself the instigator of DIY MFA and in the last six years has built an incredible community of writers hungry to learn to write more, write better, and write smarter.

An MFA is a Master of Fine Arts and is considered the terminal degree for creative writing. I got mine in Fiction from UNCG and Gabriela got hers from the New School in New York. Mandy Wallace has a great post on it here: The Beginner's Guide to the MFA. I feel like I didn't do my program at University of North Carolina at Greensboro justice because I LOVED it. I miss it. I learned so much and, as I said in the interview, I would do it again. 

No. They are not necessary to get published, but you will learn a ton. You will learn a lot alongside other people and from your great mentors and teachers. (I learned from Michael Parker, Craig Nova, and Lee Zecharias.) Writers especially of genre fiction might not fit as well in an MFA program, as they tend to focus more on literary fiction. Gabriela started DIY MFA to provide an alternative for people who wanted the tools to write better, but didn't have the money or ability to do an MFA or if the program was not a great fit. 

The blog itself is not overrun with comments because the life of the community happens in the Facebook group---which you can join only if you are a subscriber. The students in the flagship course go even deeper into community with one another. (Find more on the course HERE!) The community is a safe space for questions and being honest and growing in writing TOGETHER. Gabriela has a sense of protectiveness and takes the role of being a moderator to maintain a positive influence. She believes it is the community leader's prerogative. (I agree!) 

Because writing is so lonely, often writers long for people who GET you. Writing also comes with a lot of rejection. Your fellow writers can be your support system and help you face rejection, negative comments, and what often amounts to a LONG wait. The hallmark of a great community is a group of writers who want to see each other succeed. Writers can also help each other be a resource for information. There are so many rules and guidelines that you have to follow (especially in traditional publishing) and other writers can be fantastic for crowdsourcing.

Even in this busy social media age, person-to-person connections really help you to accomplish your goals and build a real platform. You aren't building numbers but a community of readers. Personal recommendations have so much more impact than a banner ad. 

Community starts at home, whether that's your blog, your email, your Facebook group, or your whatever your fundamental network is with other people, and it extends from there. People often forget to ask friends first and think they need to find fans. Start with the people you know. 

I will part two of this interview with Gabriela Pereira in a few weeks for you when we dive into writing PROCESS! Want to support the show? Head over to Patreon where you can pledge for as little as $4/month and get some sweet rewards! 

Interested in making an income online WITHOUT using sponsored posts and ads? Join me and writer Angela England for a fantastic training on how you can do just that. We will be offering special bonuses to live viewers (you have two dates to choose from!) and will also host the Blog Elevated Twitter Chat on Monday, January 18 where we will also have some great deals. Look for  #BlogElevated on Twitter at 9pm CST. 

These are the show notes for Episode 27 of the Create If Writing Podcast! I'm going a little backwards here in terms of the content in the show. I'll start with the two blog mistakes you might be making right now and then reveal the biggest mistakes I made in 2015. Want to support the show? Find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $4/month. This post contains affiliate links!

I hate making mistakes. But I sure make a lot of them! Especially considering the fact that this blog and the podcast were not even on my radar at this time last year, I think it's gone pretty well. And I always learn when I make mistakes. Maybe more than I would otherwise, because learning the hard way sticks with you!

Buying a $50 Planner When I Don't Use Planners. I thought the money would make me use it. But the thing is that I don't consistently use paper planners. I don't. Never have. Never will. I had a few weeks that I did populate with stickers and words and things, but overall...nada. 

Spending $250 on a Business "Idea." I went in with a few people I trust on an idea that someone they trust(ed) gave. He bought a large list that had opted in to receive general parenting posts. The plan was for us all to create freebies and an email would go out to that list offering free books when the signed up for our lists. TOTAL BUST. No emails. And the biggest mistakes is that I didn't trust my gut. I had a feeling right before that this was a terrible idea. I should have trusted my gut. 

Buying a $1000 Course That Wasn't All That. I guess the mistake was really not asking for my money back. Or at least emailing the creator. I was kind of embarrassed to say I didn't think it was worth the money. But out of all the courses I bought this year, it was the prettiest and the least in-depth and helpful. I honestly felt like I knew everything in it and the course was more of a great organizational tool...but I didn't learn anything NEW. 

Trying to Do What Other People Do. (A priceless mistake.) I don't have a specific example of this, but as I launched this podcast and site, I learned by watching what other people did. Without realizing it, I often made decisions based on what other people were doing. That's not a BAD thing, but it can be when you don't consider what you want to do, what you THINK you should do or what your audience wants, it is NOT the best option. Once I realized I was doing this, it helped me see clearly that I needed to step back and make my own choices. Learning from others is great! But that all needs to be filtered through yourself. 

I've learned a lot this year! I'm looking forward to all I'll learn this next year. Hopefully I won't make the same mistakes again---I'll make new ones! 

Let's get practical for YOU. Here are two mistakes you might be making that you can correct TODAY. 

This is not technically a BLOG mistake, but because I feel like email is the backbone of your blog, I'm counting it. When you use an email service provider like ConvertKit (read why I like them HERE), Mailchimp, Mad Mimi, or Aweber, you will have a series of forms, pages, and emails that people will see as they sign up. Many people, even people with large followings, miss opportunities by not customizing these forms. 

If you aren't sure what these are, try signing up for your email list. See what this process looks like and jot down notes of things that look weird or off. Then head over to your email service provider and update. Need some tips? 

Tips for Optimizing Your Email Forms

This is totally related to the email forms, because there is almost always an option to redirect people to a page on your website rather than using that email service provider's form or page. If you simply use what Mailchimp or ConvertKit offers, you are missing out on an opportunity to bring people back to your blog. And if you do this right, you can actually turn this page into a social sharing machine. 

I use social sharing thank-you pages wherever possible. For email signups. For content upgrades (freebies within a post). For webinar signups. FOR ANY AND ALL SIGNUPS OF EVERY KIND HAVE A THANK YOU PAGE. 

The ones I use now are from LeadPages, but you can create one in Wordpress by using the Click2Tweet plugin or embedding a tweet that people can share. When you ask people to share, they often do. Especially if you are giving them something great. So give them something great! Then ask (and make it easy for them) to share. 

Support the Create If Writing show on Patreon! I've got super cheap options and super fun bonuses. 

Get your free 50+ page blog planner to help you start off your year!

Sign up for the free image workshop on Thursday where I will walk you through creating branded & sized images with Picmonkey. 

And if you haven't signed up for the Quick Fix, by golly, get on my email list already. You'll like it!

What is your end goal? Are you chasing pageviews? Dollar signs? Do you want more Facebook likes or engagement? Let's talk about what the BEST goal really is for you. But first! I have a free download for you: a 15 Step Intensive List Growth Worksheet. Click below to snag your download for this actionable worksheet that will give you specific steps to grow your list this month. We are doing this in our Facebook group as well in December, so join us if you want to do this together!

GET YOUR FREE DOWNLOAD NOW!

This past year I had a giant switch in my mind. I wouldn't have said that I was chasing pageviews, but that's really where I spent my time. I promoted things like crazy, hoping to see those numbers rise. (I should point out now that I am NOT saying that having better pageviews as a goal is a bad thing!) In June I finally hit 100k pageviews, which had been a long-term goal that seemed TOTALLY out of reach. I celebrated...until the next month Pinterest changed up the algorithm for the smart feed again and my pageviews were literally cut in half. It's terrible seeing that. I hate it. But you know what I hate more? That all those pageviews and all that traffic did NOT translate into something more lasting. I got comments. I got some new followers. I got a few email subscribers. But check out those blog stats compared to my mailing list stats for the same blog.  Do you see a jump? Me neither. The same steady growth. (If you're wondering about the jump before April, I grew my list through a book I gave away on NoiseTrade and gained a bunch of followers through that. My point is not that pageviews are bad or a bad goal. My point is that my mindset was NOT focused on building a lasting audience through my email list. If I had, I would have seen the same kind of jump in the stats for that list. I actually got more subscribers in May when I had half the pageviews that I had in June.

That's a sign of a mindset that is not focused enough on list-building. I want to make an argument that your goal should not be pageviews ALONE, but your goal should be to build an email list that is made up of a lasting audience. That audience should be the backbone of everything else. Period.

This is quite a shift. I know this because I went through this shift this year. Taking time off from promoting my blog heavily or even writing on my blog scared me. It was hard. And strange. Yet I did not really see a change in my income. My residual Pinterest pageviews stayed pretty consistent after the big drop. (Followed by two more months of dropping.) Not much actually changed. Except that on the back end of things, I grew a new email list for this blog by almost 700 people. Which means that on a blog with pageviews that are maybe a tenth of my larger blog, I built an email audience that is close to half the audience I have for the bigger blog. I don't do math, but that's pretty nutty.

10% of the pageviews but 50% of the email subscribers

THAT, my friends, is the difference between focusing on the bottom line of pageviews or a bottom line of building a lasting audience through your email list. I have some really exciting things coming up this month with regards to email lists, so make sure you are subscribed to get all the good stuff!

GET YOUR QUICK FIX!

We are living in an age of options. You can traditionally publish (if you get through the gatekeepers, that is). You can independently publish through Kindle. Or with a PDF. Or print on demand. You can sell through booksellers or through you own website. For clarification, in this episode Angela and I throw around self publishing and independent publishing interchangeably, though some people are more specific and use independent to mean publishing on a format like Kindle and self-publishing to create something like a PDF or having copies of your book printed. 

(I talked with Ed Cyzewski about this as well in Episode 10 and he had some great thoughts on this as well!) 

Angela England runs two fantastic sites: Untrained Housewife (all about things related to homemaking) and AngEngland (dedicated to writing and publishing). She is a scrappy entrepreneur (which you will hear when she talks about promoting her book AND making money doing it) and has had great success publishing. We are doing an INSANELY actionable training this Friday, November 27 about how you can break free from depending on ads and sponsored posts for your income and make money with your own writing! You are NOT going to want to miss it OR miss the fantastic bundle we have put together just through Cyber Monday. Find out more about Creative Profitability!

"Anytime you can begin to be really creative with the way you're marketing and think outside the box, you are going to be in a position to create long-term buzz and revenue."

Time-Frame - How quickly do you need your book? Traditional publishing takes MUCH longer. If you have a time-sensitive topic or reason to hustle, self-publishing is the way to go. Angela talks about how she independently published two books while waiting for her book to be traditionally published.

Technical - What kind of book do you want to produce? CAN you do it yourself or hire someone you trust? Would a traditional publisher be the best choice to have the right quality? 

Problogger Podcast- How I Lost 80% of My Traffic
My advent devotional I talked about - Make Him Room 
Sign up for the Webinar - Creative Profitability

Brand and platform have almost lost their meaning because they have become so overused in the last few years. I generally hate coined, common phrases. Mostly because I'm contrary. But I love both these words despite overuse. 

Often I think artists have the hardest time with these words. They seem, to use one of my favorite terms, SMARMY.

But brand and platform are more about your core identity, your WHY. They deal more with connecting with your ideal audience rather than shining a spotlight on yourself. 

Do you think these are dirty words? Tweet and let me know: @kikimojo 

This summer I had the privilege to talk with Valerie Koehler from The Blue Willow Bookshop here in Houston. I have been to a number of author readings at the Blue Willow, which hosts big names like Weird Al Yankovic (see his book Weird Al), independent authors like Jennifer Daiker (see her compilation New Life Within), and literary authors like Amanda Eyre Ward (her book How to Be Lost is one of my all-time favorites).

Blue Willow also hosts Teen Book Con, Tweens Read, and the Bookworm Bookfest. (I talk about wanting to crash Teen Book Con in this interview!) If you are in Houston, you MUST give the Blue Willow Book Shop a visit! Tell them I sent you!

If you want to connect online, you can find Blue Willow on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Sign up for the Blue Willow email list, even if you AREN'T local. It has fabulous reading recommendations!

My Big Takeaway: I loved hearing how Valerie is passionate about connecting readers with writers, especially through the three festivals.

Another week, another bunch of obstacles. I recorded the last episode dealing with obstacles because I had a bunch: sick kids, busyness, and MORE. This week? More of the same. I've got a super short episode for you where I get personal and talk about what I do to handle those obstacles. 

[podcast]

Here is my biggest conflict right now:

I have a backlog of projects that keeps backing up behind me plus new things I want to work on. Plus I'm trying to get through #NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month) which means an extra 2000 words a day. Here are some of the fun things that I'm working on that you can look forward to:

-A live training November 12 with Matt from ConvertKit all about that email service provider
-A free email course 
-Some other great courses through ConvertKit 
-A mini course on branding your writing voice
-This novel I'm working on for NaNo

I'm tired just looking at the list. Plus I have two back-logged podcast episodes for Business 2 Blogger, an email audit for a friend, a brand audit for another blogger, and then things like, you know: DISHES. Cleaning my house. Taking a shower. Feeding children. 

Here is my tip if you find yourself stuck in the pit of Too Many Things, Too Little Time:

How do you get through your conflicts? What are your big tips to get through an overwhelming list? Let me know in the comments or join the discussion in the Facebook group! 

Lately we have had a lot of obstacles in my household. Namely: stomach flu and then pneumonia and vacation (which was fantastic and is only an obstacle in terms of work productivity). These got me thinking about the four literary conflicts we all learned in school and how those might translate into the modern world and our modern work. Before I dive into the seven conflicts that keep us from our work, a few quick things. 

1. Sign up for my email list if you haven't already! I have a sweet giveaway coming up that you don't want to miss. 

2. Subscribe to my live training because I have an AWESOME one coming up. Two words: special guest & bundle. 

3. If you haven't listened to the last five episodes, I have had STELLAR guests. Here are some quick links to those. 

Now, let's talk obstacles and conflict! 

The long and short of my story is that I went to graduate school and got my MFA in Fiction, left with a mostly completed novel. Got an agent who loved the manuscript and sent it to publishers who loved the manuscript...and then they didn't buy it. This is basically the death toll for a manuscript in terms of traditional publishing, but the publishers did want to see more from me. 

My first agent got pregnant and passed me off to a second agent who also got pregnant and retired and convinced her husband (also an agent) to read my work. Which...I still haven't sent him. He is still out there, waiting, and I touch base with him every so often. But because of two obstacles, I haven't worked on my newest manuscript, which is 80% done. Those obstacles? Kids and the mental space they take away from my ability to really write fiction and FEAR. I've already gotten so far in publishing and had all these things line up only to fall apart. It makes me a little gun-shy. 

This got me thinking about conflicts and obstacles. It brought back memories of the literary conflicts---you know the ones! Man vs nature, man vs society, man vs man, and man vs self. Some of the conflicts I thought of fit into those categories, but I decided to make my own that are a little more specific to our modern life. 

1. Man vs Relationships. For me, this is my kids. I DO have enough time to work, but it's more that I really dive down deep when I write fiction and it's hard for me to surface and be a decent person and mom. This could be friends, a spouse, or some other relationship that cuts down on your work productivity.

2. Man vs Distractions. For me, this is Facebook. I open my computer and if I even glance at Facebook, I snap back to attention two hours later, unsure of who I am, where I've been, and what's happening in my life. I also get sucked into trying to watch TV and work at night. Not REAL writing, but scheduling things and photo editing. I can do those things while watching the Vampire Diaries, but I am not nearly as effective or fast. 

3. Man vs Technology. Though both distractions I mentioned were technically technological, I mean here things like your computer crashing, your phone screen breaking, or programs failing to work correctly. I feel sometimes like all my tech conspires against me. 

4. Man vs Ability. Often I run into something I want to do online, but CAN'T. Then I'm faced with the choice to either hire someone or learn it myself. An example of this is launching the podcast. I literally launched from conception to first three episodes in two weeks. (Read how HERE.) But every time I edited and produced, I ran into issues that I couldn't fix. So I went from YouTube videos to hiring an editor to taking a session with Meron Bareket that solved all my problems. But it took TIME. Sometimes we dream and just don't have the ability to achieve our dreams. Just ask all those tone-deaf American Idol hopefuls.

5. Man vs Busyness. Do I need to explain this one? We are busy people. The end. 

6. Man vs the Bank. Sometimes we have the flexibility to work undeterred by the need to pay bills. I am in a great position in that I don't HAVE to do the work I do. I would LIKE to make a full-time income, but for the moment, I can work in the off hours while my hubby brings the bacon. And the eggs. And the coffee. No, we don't have a huge budget, but we have enough. This can be a big issue for people who are side-hustling while working a full-time job. We have to eat. And live places. So the bank matters and can be a legit conflict. 

7. Man vs Self. This is the big one. Some of the others we cannot change. We can't control if our computer crashes. We cannot choose when or how our kids get pneumonia. We will always need to pay bills. But we DON'T always have to be subject to our own fears or our self-doubt. Even though we do have control here, I think this is sometimes the BIGGEST conflict or obstacle to our creative work. 

YOUR TURN! What are the conflicts that keep you from your creative work? Which of these seven is your main conflict with getting your creative work done?

Claudia Emerson's Late Wife
Michael Parker's If You Want Me to Stay
Craig Nova's The Good Son
The NaNoWriMo Site
Danny Nguyen Photography

Everywhere I turn, I find people touting programs designed to multiply your email list. But is the key to a healthy email list found in numbers? In this interview with Paul Jarvis he talks about his email, the Sunday Dispatch, and why engagement trumps numbers alone.

If you don't know Paul, he calls himself a freelancer evangelist. He is the type of person who split-tests his profile picture and who also talks about unicorn farts. With a 20-year career as a freelance web designer he is also a prolific writer on sites like Forbes, Fast Company, NewsWeek, and BuzzFeed. You can find Paul on his site or on Twitter, and but where you should really connect is through his email list, The Sunday Dispatch. Oh, and he is co-host of Invisible Office Hours with Jason Zook and he has his own podcast, the Freelancer. Here are some of my favorite Paul pieces:

Audience Growth
What Do You Do When the Trolls Come Marching In?
Whose Playground Are You Playing In? 

NOTE: The podcast episode will be up momentarily! Having some issues this morning with...well...all kinds of things. If you are here from my weekly email, know that this will be up by the end of the day.

"People don't realize they can cultivate an audience of people they want to have in their audience."

And if you want to know more about the Creative Class (which I can tell you firsthand is an awesome investment!), you can read more about that HERE.

Find the full show notes at www.createifwriting.com/019! 
Follow Kirsten on Twitter!

In episode 18 I got to talk with Darren Rowse of Problogger and this week I'm talking with Demain Farnworth of Copyblogger. I loved this conversation where we talk about being introverts, what unique things we can bring to the table when there ISN'T anything really new, and what drives us crazy about the world we're in right now. You can find Demian at the Rough Draft podcast, The Lede podcast, writing on Copyblogger, writing on his blog The Copybot, and on Twitter.

Here are some of my favorite posts/episodes from Demian:

Shakespeare's 5 Rules for Making Up Words to Get Attention
The Perfect Anatomy of a Modern Web Writer
A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

"I think the internet is particularly built for introverts." <- AGREE!!

Quiet by Susan Cain
How to Move Your Audience from Infatuation to Love - The Lede Podcast
Why Introverts Make Good Writers

Are you an introvert or extrovert? How does that impact (or does it?) your creativity and your work?