I live in a townhouse and I share a wall with my neighbors.  Recently, heavy smokers moved in.  One of them stays home.  Two people are smoking, indoors, around the clock.  They smoke in the bathroom and we share a plumb wall.  You get the idea.  I’ve had to move all my clothing out of my closet.  My allergies are out of control, even with medication. My furniture smells like their smoke.  But it’s one of the few rentals in this neighborhood.  Sometimes I think I can put my head down and endure.

Move.  Don’t move. A decision must be made.

I own a rental property.  The management company is driving me nuts.  I contacted a realtor about selling the place.  I asked for his advice on whether to sell it as a family home or as an investment property.  We talked taxes.  We talked marketing.  He spoke to my tenant and believes we could sell it this summer.  He also thinks I could find a better, less contentious management company.

Sell the house.  Don’t sell the house.

I bought an antique iron bed at a shop in my hometown many years ago.  I’ve always thought it would make a nice guest bed.  But I don’t have a guest bedroom now.  I put it on Craigslist over a month ago and then felt a little relief when no one asked about it.  While driving around looking for rental signs, someone emailed me about the bed.

Sell the bed.  Don’t sell the bed.

I’ve gone back and forth with each decision.  I take an action forward and then I stop.  I gather more information.  Look into my rights as a tenant.  Call my accountant about capital gains taxes.  Take a good hard look at the bed again.  Yes. No. Maybe.

image by grongar

That, my friends, is called a waffle.  I waffle.  As soon as I think I’ll stay in the townhouse, I take a shower with a lit cigarette.  I make the decision to sell my rental property and someone mentions the returns.  Some days I feel like losing the bed and other times I think of it as a symbol of the home I want to have.

And I don’t want to make any of these decisions from a place of frustration or desperation.  Even though frustration and desperation is what put these decisions in my path to begin with.

Ever drown a waffle in syrup?  All the extra information I’m gathering is just that: syrup.  It breaks down the waffle.  There’s nothing strong about that thing.

What is the strong thing?  It’s not endurance.  Endurance is not a virtue.  I’m uncomfortable.  I’m being made a victim.

It’s not information gathering.  All the information in the world isn’t going to inform me of how I feel about keeping or selling the house.  It will occupy my mind for a while.  It’ll keep the decision at bay.

THE POWER IS IN THE DECISION.

The word “decide” literally means “to kill off other choices.”  I keep dragging choices out of the grave and jumpstarting their hearts with a cattle prod.  It’s ridiculous!

And this is when someone very wise said to me, in a conversation about second hand smoke, “Start taking back pieces of your power.”

I’m moving.  I don’t need to endure.  I don’t need to make my landlord comfortable.  I’m selling the rental property.  Learning about tenant rights and thinking it’s an asset is way off focus from my writing and my biz.  I’m keeping my bed.  I’m keeping it because it’s mine and I want to.  Period.

I take it back.  Not the decision.  The power.  I’m taking it back because it’s mine and I want to.

What decision do you need to make this week in order to take back a piece of your power?

In business, we talk a lot about our ideal clients. In teaching writing, we talk a lot about “considering your audience.” Today, I want to spend some time on the line where ideal client meets considered audience.

I know the power of the writing to a specific audience. I wrote my MFA thesis as a way to avoid writing the same email to a very few select friends. My audience then was VERY specific. If you look at the demographic of the people I was addressing with my thesis, you’d see a white middle-class male with a master’s degree who made between 30 and 50k a year. (We’re talking early millennium here, folks.) Anyway, to look at the psychographic, if I understand it correctly, you’d see liberal instigators who watch a lot of Adult Swim.

There’s more to it than that, of course. But the Adult Swim thing is important. It implies a certain attitude, taste, sense of humor, life philosophy. We make assumptions about a person from what music they listen to or what television shows they watch. What are the books they read?

We often care about this when we’re dating and we need to care about it more when we’re writing. When I started my novel, I was writing for me. Period. Sometimes, I wrote for me as a fourteen year old girl, stuck in a small town without any clue as to how to have an adventurous life. And that’s the only time anything got interesting. Because I was speaking to someone specific. It applies in business and it applies in writing: WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?

One of the first things I have clients do is write a letter. That letter is addressed to the people they want reading their work. If they get stuck, I give them the prompt: I wrote this for you because… That letter forces them to hone in on their “ideal audience,” if you will. It’s directed. It’s focused. And it can end up as part of the introduction OR part of the website copy they’ll need while building their platform.

I’m talking to mostly the same people in my business as I am in my novel. My people thrive on the unconventional and have a real appreciation for the absurd. Someone recently told me about the Houston Art Car Parade and I cannot believe I’ve lived this long without knowing more about it. Here’s a quick pic of Our Lady of Transportation.

photo by eschipul

This is what I’m talking about when I say “psychographic.” My audience thinks the woman who spent so much time fashioning this vehicle is fascinating. I’ve always described it as “thriving on the circus spirit.” But that’s my audience.

Who’s your audience?

Leave a comment or email me at amanda@bold-types.com and let me know an interesting psychographic fact about your audience.

8 in 10

When I first decided that I wanted to work with writers, I was worried about where I’d find clients. Someone very wise told me that the New York Times had once published this statistic: 8 in 10 Americans want to write the “Great American Novel.” That’s a lot of people. Then, I saw on Chris Guillebeau’s site that only 1 of those 8 will actually write it. That’s 7 people who want to and won’t. That’s kinda mind-blowing.

One thing I have to ask, though, is if those 7 people ARE actually writing their books, novels and other types, but they’re self-publishing. Do those get counted in this statistic?

What is a book, exactly?

At a conference recently, I had an interesting conversation with a prominent business coach. She was selling her self-published book, which she told me was a compilation of her tweets over the last year. It was designed so readers could open to any page and read a line or two and “get what they need.” When I told her I help people write books, which I believe I called “beloved, top shelf, can’t-live-without” books, she said, “My clients would never write a front to end book with chapters. They’d never read a front to end book with chapters.” I thought that was an interesting interpretation of a “beloved, top shelf, can’t live-without” book…

Business Card Books

…I was a little stunned by the comment, but then I realized that there’s a whole industry of “Business Card Books.” They’re a little better than vanity press titles, but not necessarily designed to be read. At least, that’s my take.  Publishing has gone through a revolution and self-publishing is more popular than ever. The old stigma has been removed…some.

Years ago, at a corporate event, we were given copies of the book written by the keynote speaker. He wouldn’t have been the speaker had he not had a book published. It was published by a traditional press. But it suffered from weak idea development. The title was a cliche, and a true one. The title was as far as the content really extended. I suppose that’s an example of how people buy titles, not content. I just remember being angry that the title didn’t deliver. I didn’t need to read a book to get it. But he had to have a book to get that speaking gig.

Why a book?

When we think about the reasons we want to write books, what comes to mind? Status? Opportunity? Follow-through? Money?

What are our reasons for reading them?

I tell potential clients that a book will attract ideal clients and help them connect more deeply with their existing audience. Clients like to work with experts and writing a book makes you an expert.

Even if you write it in a weekend, apparently. And I’m hard on this “book in a weekend” thing because they promote it as a way to write a book “someone will actually read.”

The One Page Rule

At a networking event recently, the speaker mentioned that she belongs to a book club. They meet monthly. They’re all busy career women. The book club has one rule: READ ONE PAGE.

I believe you can write a one page book in a weekend. And, that might as well be a business card.

And I need to think about content. Some books are business card books, some are business biographies, some are case studies, etc. I’m just concerned with the care we take with how we write them. And why.

I just can’t help but believe that we need to balance out this writer/reader imbalance. I mean, I taught freshman composition, I know how many people “hate to read.” I want to say that more people will read when there’s more stuff out there worth reading…but how do we tell what is and what isn’t?

The Giving Read

In business mindset training, we talk a lot about GIVING. Reading is a type of giving. It’s like listening. And those of us who want to write books want to be heard. For all of us who want to write books, published by ourselves or traditionally, let’s do a little giving. Let’s read more than one page.

Unless it’s complete crap.

Then what?