The Win Report

Take this simple test.

Go to the closest Starbuck’s, bring your laptop or writing tablet, get a coffee or tea, start writing, and don’t stop until an hour transpires.

Can you do it?

If so, I believe you have what it takes to be a writer!

Granted, this seems like a weird test, and yes, I’ve passed it many times, but I believe there’s an interesting standard in this exercise.

Writing when distracted means several things:

(1) You can focus, and this is a powerful requirement for any writer, a novelist, journalist, or screen scribe.

(2) You can get into the zone at will, that marvelous place that athletes and aesthetes go to find their calmness, where things become frictionless, and easy peasy.

(3) You can write on a deadline, and this is an incredible ability when you’re working against the clock to get your manuscript to an editor who needs it yesterday.

(4) You can produce without being inspired. This is not only essential, it overcomes one of the alibis writers use to rationalize not writing.

(5) You’ll prove the counterintuitive truth that quality emerges by itself from quantity, which I discuss at length in my audio program: “The Law of Large Numbers.”

If you wait until conditions are perfect in which to write, you may be waiting for a long, long time. So, try the Starbuck’s test, and see how you do!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

If you are an author or avid reader of fantasy and/or science fiction - or if you enjoy role-playing within either of those genres - then you already understand the powerful allure of entering into a Secondary World. You’ve experienced the joys of immersing yourself in your imagination, of exploring the freedoms and consequences of existence in an alternate place where the root assumptions differ from what we hold to be true in our world.

Fantasy can open the mind to possibilities seldom gleaned amidst our daily grind in “reality”. It provides feelings of excitement and release that are difficult to explain to the uninitiated.

I will assume, since you’ve read this far, that you’re already besotted with the creative impulse. But maybe you despair of ever giving the right form to your ideas - or believe that you’ll never even conceive of any ideas that are uniquely your own. So how do you move from your initial desire to its realization as a fully-developed creation? Well, your first clues as to the road to take lie with what you most love. What themes in the stories you read, what eras of history, what cultural or personal issues really attract you? If you harbor strong feelings about any aspects of the human drama then it’s likely that you have something to say about them.

Isolate those ideas. They will be your starting point, the seed ice-crystals around which you can form your own unique snowflake of a world.

When first I longed to write a fantasy novel, I had but two ideas. I wanted to follow a young lad’s mystic initiation, a journey that would take him out of his homeland and thrust him into unknown terrain - both physical and spiritual. So the adventure would challenge not only his resources of body and character, but also his very beliefs about the nature of reality. This was theme number one. My second theme: the setting my character moved through should be strongly evocative of the American West circa early 1800’s - frontier times. Since the “Wild West” is the romantic era of American history - and this is my country, for better or ill - I wanted to pay homage to the great American Myth. Also, I knew I could steer clear of many fantasy clichés by avoiding a medieval, pre-industrial milieu. There would be no dragons, unicorns, enchanted swords, or flying broomsticks; and an unusual conception of magic would be required.

Perhaps you can see now how quickly additional ideas will tend to group around your core themes. Good. Now it’s time to provide some structure, boundaries around this budding world to fence out the incongruous and allow the suitable elements to grow and flourish. I would suggest at this stage that you draw a physical map of your imagined environment. The scope of this map will depend upon your ambition. If you’re running a role-playing game for beginner-level characters, then a plot of land the size of Rhode Island might do fine. But if you intend to write an epic fantasy novel then you might require something the size of Europe or even larger. Carefully consider your goals and then set your parameters accordingly. I opted to sketch a peninsula about the size of New England, connected to a larger continent by a mostly-frozen Land Bridge.

Once you’ve sketched your outline then fill in the topography: mountains, rivers, forests, deserts, jungles…whatever is appropriate for your central concepts. Natural details only, for now; and if you want your physical topography to follow a different order than it does in our world then provide a reason for that. Fantasy worlds are free to dispense with the rules of “reality”, but they must be self-consistent. After all, boundaries are what define a thing. Chess would bore us all if every piece could be moved in whatever fashion we fancied. Challenges - and, therefore, excitement- arises out of limitation. And fiction thrives on conflict.

Once you have your map completed make a dozen or more photocopies of it. On these copies you can plot your setting’s chronology: how peoples and places evolved to your story’s present day. Again, the extent of your history depends upon your ambition. Do you wish to outline three long ages of mortal and Faerie existence like Tolkien did with Middle-Earth? Or would the significant events of three human generations suffice?

I conceived my own setting to be a “New World” and decided that, at the onset of the novel, it would have been settled for about five hundred years. So with ten maps, each encompassing fifty years, I outlined all the events that influenced the general character of the land and its cultures. This was easier to visualize on paper. You can see your nomads migrating down through the northern mountain passes and discovering prairie lands that will become their hunting grounds. Then they skirmish with forest dwellers over rights to the river. Forts are built on both territories. These evolve into towns and eventually into cities. One city is invaded and its inhabitants are slain down to the last woman and child. So in your story’s present day your characters may stumble upon some ruins that are dripping with history.

As you trace developments with these chronological maps your guidelines will be those central themes with which you began. Since I started with two ideas I therefore had two primary concerns as I constructed my timeline. First, since my protagonist would be undergoing spiritual initiation he would need to have guides and mentors. The mystical discipline that he would follow had to evolve. So I was absorbed not only with events like migrations, settlements, wars and alliances but also with speculating about how peoples’ beliefs develop over time. Secondly, I had to arrive at an era reminiscent of frontier times - i.e., with the development of such cultural staples as early firearms, steamboats, locomotives, and civilized townsfolk existing alongside nomadic hunters and tribesmen.

These two considerations were my grounding focuses as I filled map after map. Along the way, many subsidiary ideas attached themselves to the primary ones. I would weed out those that didn’t fit into my setting and promote those that did.

Once you’ve reached your world’s present day, you know who the major players are and where they came from. Your history will have built-in consistency because you constructed it from the ground up. Now it’s time to flesh out this environment!

First, though, you must understand that an invented world is never completed; the best we can do is to stop at an interesting place. So how far do you want to go in lavishing this imagined place with detail? This will depend upon your intended use for the material you’ll end up with. If you’re pursuing this creation as a hobby then there’s no need to ever finish. Add to your heart’s content; elaborate upon your people’s languages, traditions, political and economic factors, social orders and religions. But if you intend to write about this world, or have the people in your role-playing campaign travel through it, then you need to intuit when you’ve developed your milieu fully enough to give it the breath of realism. I personally find that finishing touches are much easier than preliminary sketches, though. By now you have certain advantages that will lend a sense of ease to approaching the remainder of the work. You understand the distinctive character of your own land, and all else will follow.

During this final stage, many of us want to research our subjects to insure that our work has credibility. If you are an author, however, I would offer some advice that runs counter to what you’re bound to read or hear elsewhere: postpone that research until you’ve written a first draft of your story. Draw upon what you know, or what you can imagine. There’s a simple reason why I suggest doing this. Having completed your first draft, you’ll know exactly what you need to study for your particular story and won’t feel overwhelmed, believing that you need a historian’s all-encompassing knowledge of the time period you’re working in. I am not a scholar of early American history. I merely scavenged what particular details I knew I would need in order to make my story real. Spare yourself countless hours of library and internet searches. Write your story first; you may be amazed to discover how much you already know about your subjects.

There is a rare satisfaction that comes with the realization of an imagined Secondary World. We have provided a place for our escapist fantasies - and deepest philosophical speculations - to live and breathe. At times it may seem like a mad pursuit; certainly there may be friends and significant others who don’t understand it. Let me assure you that we’re in impressive company though. J.R.R Tolkien devoted his entire adult life to the creation of Middle-Earth. Stephen R. Donaldson had “Covenant” dominating his mind for the better part of ten years - and recently returned to the saga after a twenty-five year hiatus. Similar things can be said of Frank Herbert and his “Dune” saga. The extent to which these authors were enamored with the creative process is evinced by the depth and breadth - and believability - of their invented worlds.

I wish you a happy birthing!

Seth Mullins is the author of “Song of an Untamed Land”, a novel of speculative fantasy in lawless frontier territory. Visit Seth at http://www.authorsden.com/sethtmullins.

In “Web Site Design Tips for Writers” you learned some
guidelines about the basics of starting and finding a home for
your web site. No matter how brilliantly your site is designed,
getting visitors to it requires some tactics that are
specialized to the online world. To drive traffic to your site,
knowing the business of naming and optimizing it for the search
engines so that your web site is easy to locate is what will
allow your site to reach large numbers of online readers.

Keywords What will make people race to your site faster than the
speediest Internet connection? Keywords! These words and phrases
indicate what your site is about and contain more authority than
a novice can imagine. Suitable keywords will feature terms and
words used in the text on your home page. Each subsequent page
you create should have its own set of keywords. Overture.com has
a feature where it will show you just how popular the keywords
that you’ve chosen really are. This is updated on a monthly
basis, but you can also find the week’s most popular keywords.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion Also,
investigate http://www.nichebot.com

What is your site all about? What words best describe your
writing, preferred genre, hobbies, etc.? What words would a
person use to find your web site? For example, if you are
building a web site to show you have screenplays for sale, the
term “screenplay” using the overture site listed above, you’ll
see that this term was searched 12,000+ times, followed by
“screenplay writing” 3,100+ times. On a highly ranked site these
terms will be used along with others containing variations such
as: screenwriter, scriptwriter, scripts, TV/Film screenwriter,
etc. Thinking like a potential viewer Hollywood insider,
producer, potential writing partner, etc., is the key to
keywords.

Meta Tags Description When you accurately describe what is on
each of your web pages in the meta tags description area on each
page of your site, this one or two sentence description will
help anyone who discovers it in a search engine. You are doing
your viewer a favor and they will return it by stopping by for a
visit. For that screenplay site, here is what you might add for
the home page: “screenplays in action, drama, romance and horror
genres for sale.” Using descriptive keywords is what works. This
comes to only 10 words, or 64 characters including spaces. Some
search engines accept up to 250 characters, others will allow
far less. Keeping it within 100 characters or about 15-20 words
is recommended.

Web Page Titles As a writer, you’re used to titles. But they
aren’t just for books, articles, movies and royalty. When
designing your site you’ll be able to name each page so that
online visitors will locate your home page or other pages you’ve
created. What you call your web site is as important as what you
name your literary masterpiece[s]. Be as descriptive as
possible. You probably want your writing site to have the term
“writing” or “writer” or “author” in the title. But you also
want to be more specific - such as “screen writer,” “technical
writer,” “novel writer,” “novelist,” and so on.

The marked lack of understanding page titles has repeatedly
shown up as I’ve seen web sites with “New Page” or “Page 2″
appear along the top of my browser. The web designer didn’t
fathom the benefits he or she had in naming pages. Naming your
pages will get you more online traffic.

Alt Tags These little tidbits of information that are hidden
from view are other ways to boost your search engine rankings.
In the book ‘Search Engine Optimization for Dummies’ by Peter
Kent, he writes: “You use the tag to insert images into
Web pages. This tag can include the ALT= attribute, which means
alternative text.” You can see them on many sites when you hold
your cursor over an image. Mr. Kent explains that originally
these tags were used back in the good old days of dialup-only
access and connections being so poky that by adding text to the
image it adequately described what the viewer was unable to see.
Also, these tags are spoken to the visually impaired, so
inserting them is a mark of kindness. But, to be frank, the best
reason to add those alt tags is to have the search engines read
them and decide your site should be ranked even higher than if
no alt tags were included in the image[s]. Don’t add too many of
them, just enough to be able to describe that photo of you as:
“award winning novelist [your name] has new book on bestseller
list” or something of that nature.

Links It’s not about having a virtual link farm on your web
site; it’s about attracting relevant links. If you want to keep
your site within the mainstream and family-friendly sites, be
careful of where you are linking. Many search engines and
directories won’t accept sites with adult themes, gambling
sites, or anything advocating illegal activities, etc. So, try
to keep it clean.

Oftentimes you’ll read about a site having a Google PR
[PageRank] of a number from 0-10, with 10 being considered the
best. When one has reached a page rank status of 3 or 4, the
links manager or site owner, might not welcome newcomers. This
would mean your site, as that’s what someone with a brand new
web site is - a 0 page rank. But all sites begin that way and
here you’re learning what Google looks for when it ranks pages
so your PR can start moving up. PR is determined by many factors
including links coming from ‘other’ sites to yours, longevity of
site, quality of information and keywords found within the site,
and the number of pages your site contains. In other words,
Google’s search engine [or any major or minor search engine or
directory] will spot a 100-page site sooner than it will a
single web page.

Many web masters create a links page and add anything that comes
along. That’s not the best idea and Google doesn’t list more
than 100 links per page anyway. Others will separate their links
page into subjects so that a gardening web site is grouped in an
appropriate category, as would a financial site being with
others within the same category.

A better way to add links is to have them on appropriate pages
that can be reached from your main page. For example, if you’re
designing a writing site that caters to children’s books and
have a page devoted to children’s artwork, add links to that
page for such related items as: classic children’s stories, art
education, art for kids, children’s clothing, baby products, and
other topics that are both closely and somewhat-closely related.
This would be helpful for both you and the other company’s site
you are linking with. It will also ensure that your children’s
artwork page will get more visitors than if there were no links
listed there.

While it’s advantageous to have others linking to you, this is
more difficult to do when you’re an unestablished online
presence. But that is why the following three sections should be
of assistance.

Announce Your Web Site Analyze your site at
http://www.sitereportcard.com Keep statistics on a weekly or
monthly basis to monitor your site’s progress.

1. Press Release - Writing a press release is a great way to
increase your web site traffic and generate more awareness of
your site. Make sure your press release conveys what your site
is about and look at the writing tips section at each press
release site as to glean information on how to write effective
press releases. Your press release will be seen by more people,
get your site put into the search engines faster, and you can
follow the statistics and upload photos if you pay for the
service.

http://express-press-release.com

http://www.free-press-release.com

http://www.i-newswire.com

http://www.openpr.com

http://www.press-world.com

http://www.prfree.com

http://www.prleap.com

http://www.prnuke.com

http://www.prweb.com

2. Write Articles - Getting your web site noticed by writing
articles is another effective method for announcing your web
site’s arrival. Not only do your articles establish online
credibility, you should be able to get your words out there more
easily than those with no understanding of what constitutes
effective online words. Another huge advantage to writing
articles is that links are pointed back to your site from
larger, more highly ranked sites.

http://www.articlealley.com

http://www.articleblast.com

http://www.articlecity.com

http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com

http://www.authorarticles.com

http://www.businesshighlight.org

http://www.e-syndicate.net

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.homebiz-direct.com/articleWriting.html

http://www.homehighlight.org

http://www.isnare.com

http://morganarticlearchive.com

http://www.searchwarp.com

http://www.submityournewarticle.com

http://www.womensarticles.com

3. Submit to Search Engines & Directories - This is a way to
allow more than your immediate family and friends see your site.
When providing information about your site to these directories,
you will oftentimes have to include a reciprocal link on your
site. There are paid search engines and directories that will
get your web site indexed within a matter of days, but many of
them will also do the same service, only taking weeks or month,
for no charge. Here is a comprehensive one that will get you
started: http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories

Web Rings Signing up with web rings can bring you more traffic.
There are more than 2000 writers web sites alone on webring.com,
so this is an excellent place to begin. Adding your site to a
web ring requires basic knowledge and an administrator will
first approve your site, a process that can take a few hours or
longer, depending upon the size of the community.
http://dir.webring.com/rw

Once you have designed and optimized your site for your online
audience, revel in the fact that you have accomplished this task
and always be prepared to update and expand your web site. After
all, you never know who might show up…