Essay Online

I had no idea that my work on a motion picture would cause a high-profile death penalty case to end up with the California Supreme Court. Jesse James Hollywood had been gone for nearly three years by the time I became involved. He had totally disappeared. Vanished into thin air. And he seemed so completely removed from the writing project I was about to begin.

The FBI and other federal and local law enforcement authorities trails had all but dried up. That’s why the prosecutor assigned to the case, Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen, who had also prosecuted Hollywood’s four co-defendants &ndash and a guy named Michael Jackson &ndash agreed to work with us. Mr. Zonen had wanted to create a sort of global wanted poster to see if someone somewhere in the world might be able to ID Hollywood, pick up the phone, and help global law enforcement authorities nab him. Zonen had already worked with the producers from the television show America’s Most Wanted, who featured the fugitive on nine of its shows between 2000 and 2003, and he wanted his man, badly.

Hollywood’s name had become daily fodder for national headlines after word of the murder originally hit in early August of 2000. All the news pundits had named him as the ringleader of a band of middleclass, pot-selling social misfits, and the one responsible for orchestrating the fifteen-year-old’s kidnapping and murder. But no one apparently had a clue as to where he had disappeared to when I took the call from an old buddy who wanted to make a motion picture about the youngest man ever on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

In April of 2003, writer/director Nick Cassavetes and I trekked up north to meet with Mr. Zonen at the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office. Ronald J. Zonen had been Chief Trial Deputy for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office since 1991. He was an affable man with a smooth demeanor and when we were finished, he gave us several volumes of trial transcripts from Hollywood’s co-defendants, and we left. At the time, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey McGuire were set to produce Alpha Dog, and I had no idea that I’d end up writing a highly controversial novel based on the tragic story, or that I’d end up being a crusader in the battle to save Mr. Hollywood’s life. I was also not prescient enough to envision DiCaprio or McGuire falling off the project, nor Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Anton Yelchin, Emile Hirsch, or Ben Foster climbing on.

After reading through the transcripts that Mr. Zonen had provided, plus others from Hollywood’s co-defendants’ trials and appeals, I realized we did not have enough information to write a truthful story about what had actually taken place. I talked this over with Cassavetes, and we agreed that I should go back to Santa Barbara to get more information from Mr. Zonen. We needed more detail and deeper insight into character and motivation for story purposes. We needed police reports, photographs, witness interviews and much more. And amazingly, we got them. I got Mr. Zonen’s entire file from prosecuting Hollywood’s four co-defendants, including copies of all the videos and audiotapes, the defendants’ confessions, the prosecutor’s trial notebook, the defendants’ psychological records and probation reports, and more. I also arranged to have Mr. Zonen &ndash along with the lead detective working the case &ndash take us up to Lizard’s Mouth, a trailhead located atop the mountains separating Santa Barbara and the Santa Ynez Valley, to discuss the murder with us at the very spot where the victim’s body had been discovered in a shallow grave some three years earlier.

This combined with all the information accrued from the interviews Cassavetes and I had conducted enabled me to prepare a 239-page story chronology that I used to help Nick write his screenplay. He went on to direct Alpha Dog and I set out to write my book. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, in March of 2005, after one of the greatest international manhunts in history, Jesse James Hollywood was captured in a Brazilian jungle, and I was about to be thrust into the legal hot seat.

James Blatt is one of America’s most astute criminal defense attorneys. He dresses like a zillion bucks and wears the disarming smile of a ruthless professional. After Jesse Hollywood’s capture, his father, Jack, who was a consultant on Alpha Dog, told Mr. Blatt about all the information I had gathered for the film and book projects; how I had become the world’s leading authority on the case. He thought I might be able to aid Mr. Blatt in trying to save his son’s life. When we met, Blatt questioned me about all the information I had gathered. By the time the meeting ended, the defense attorney appeared quite impressed with what he had heard. Later that summer, he asked me to testify in his client’s death penalty case. He wanted to build a record of all informational exchanges between Mr. Zonen and myself. He wanted to recuse the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office for prosecutorial misconduct for having turned over their file to me.

The only problem with this strategy was that my testimony was needed to do it. Since I was the only one to repeatedly meet with Mr. Zonen, I was the only one who could testify as to what he had given me. I found myself caught in a “Sophie’s Choice” type situation. If I testified, I could help save Jesse James Hollywood from death row. But at the same time, my testimony could be used as the cornerstone for criminal prosecution against Mr. Zonen and his office for what Mr. Blatt termed “illegal misconduct.” Since I’m totally against bringing death to any living being, I wanted to help Mr. Blatt save his client’s life. But on the other hand, Mr. Zonen had been very good to me. He had been totally cooperative in providing us with material for the movie and book. As conflicted as I felt, as much as I wanted to help save Jack Hollywood’s son’s life, I could not be responsible for bringing criminal charges against a man I considered a good friend. So I refused to testify. Ultimately, the California Attorney General agreed not to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Zonen or the DA’s office, and I reversed my position and agreed to testify.

In September 2005, Hollywood’s attorney filed a motion to recuse the entire District Attorney’s office. In support of the motion, Mr. Blatt declared that he had attended “the first and only public screening to date” of Alpha Dog, and that the film portrayed his client “in an extremely inflammatory manner, as extremely manipulative, vicious, selfish, and without any redeeming character traits whatsoever.” He further stated that several of the public movie viewers had described his client as being nothing short of a “monster,” and that at the conclusion of the film, special thanks were given to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department and to Ron Zonen.

The trial court denied Hollywood’s motion, but ended up ordering me to turn over the notes and tapes from all the interviews I conducted. The defense then appealed the case. In its wisdom, the California Court of Appeal agreed with the defense and, after an evidentiary hearing by the trial court, recused Zonen (but not his entire office) from the case. In his concurring opinion, Justice Gilbert succinctly noted: “However appalling the crime for which defendant was charged, he, like anyone charged with a criminal offense, is entitled to a fair trial with all its attendant constitutional and statutory safeguards.” In this case, the prosecution had fallen short of this requirement.

Every high-profile case carries with it the risk of the prosecutor falling into the trap of cozying up too much with the media. Prosecutors, as well as other law enforcement agencies, often find themselves playing up to the media as if there are two trials to win &ndash the one in the courtroom as well as the one with the court of public opinion. When handling high-profile cases, prosecutors must take to heart the conflict of interest they create when buddying up to the media. They can easily become lost in the quest for personal glory or profit. This appeared to be what happened with the case involving the Duke lacrosse team, where the DA’s pretrial contacts with the media raised questions about his ability to handle the matter fairly, resulting in his recusal. There were similar complaints regarding the prosecution of the Jenna 6 case out of Louisiana.

Prosecutors do not represent clients. Rather, all decisions made in their cases are supposed to center around the best interests of the public. And part of these considerations must be to act responsibly when interacting with the media. There are certain guidelines they must follow to make sure their statements (and actions) do not materially prejudice a legal proceeding. According to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, prosecutors must make sure their comments do not have a “substantial likelihood of heightened public condemnation of the accused.” They must also be sure to prevent “investigators, law enforcement personnel” and other employees or persons assisting from making such statements to the media.

Prosecutors do, in the alternative, have certain First Amendment rights. However, again, those rights do not go unlimited when dealing with the media in a high-profile case. The prosecutor must still be responsible for pursuing a just result. He or she must act in a manner that puts the public’s interest above that of the individual prosecutor. Thus, their goal must be to make sure that justice is done in all instances, not that they win the case.

In the Hollywood matter, I was afraid that the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office had lost sight of their responsibilities. They had continuously misrepresented the true facts and the motivations involved in the case to the media, and they seemed totally bent upon demonizing Hollywood and his co-defendants. For all intents and purposes, Hollywood, during his nearly five years of being at large, had been convicted in absentia. I believed there to be no way for him to receive a fair trial. Public sentiment wanted him dead for what they believed he had done. And this was due to the way the prosecutor and associated law enforcement agencies had dealt with the media. They acted as though their only goals were to assure that Jesse James Hollywood was not only captured, but that the public was set up to convict him and sentence him to death. True justice did not seem to be a part of their plan. I felt it my moral responsibility as a fellow human being to do what I could to make sure this did not happen.

Most people in the writing world talk about the three levels of rejection–form, personal, rewrite–but I’ve discovered seven types (after over 200 rejections before being published and about hundred after, I should know). Learning how to analyze rejection is a helpful skill for any writer because you’ll learn what to ignore, what to consider, and what will put you on the right track or, as the case may be, off of it.

Here are the seven types of rejections that may find their way in your email or mailbox:

1) No response. The agent or editor doesn’t send you anything. I find these ones most annoying. You wait in anticipation, hoping, praying for something either in the mail or online. Nothing. Six months past. Still nothing.

2) Form rejection. These are the ones that start Dear…fill in the name. They tell you that your work isn’t right for them and wish you better luck elsewhere. There’s no feedback. You should toss these rejections immediately. But be warned, form rejections are easy to get if you don’t follow directions: submitting to the wrong magazine or publisher, a wrong topic, wrong manuscript format, or writing in crayon or invisible ink. To avoid form rejections, study the magazine or publisher’s criteria for submissions to make sure you’re giving them something they’ll want (i.e. a clean manuscript that addresses the needs of their readers) and not a missive of “Why I Should be Published by You.”

3) Multiple choice. These agents or editors have gotten creative and made a list of reasons they’re rejecting your work because a) they have something similar, b) the quality of your work doesn’t meet their standards and/or, c) they think you’re completely without talent and hope you’ll never query them again. Sometimes they’ll check one, sometimes they’ll check all three. This is still a form rejection because it’s too general to give you any real advice; however, you at least get an idea of what they’re looking for. But then again, if number three is selected it is best ignored because it’s just an opinion.

4) Personal note. These are nice, except when they’re mean. A nice personal note can provide support like, “Good job, but needs work.” A mean note on the other hand can be devastating like, “This is awful” written in blood red ink on the corner of your query. When an agent or editor takes the time to put “Not bad” on the corner of your query take it as the sign of encouragement that it is. Ignore the nasty ones. But even if they don’t tell you why your work is being rejected, you’re heading in the right direction. Getting a good or bad personal note indicates your style. It is my experience that it’s better to get some kind of response rather than just a form rejection. Why? Because that’s how readers will be. Some will hate your work. Some will love it. Receiving a response, especially a personal note, lets you know that you’re hitting buttons and that’s a good thing.

5) The critique. Most aspiring authors expect this type of rejection, but editors and agents don’t owe you this. They get hundreds of queries and manuscripts a week and they can’t critique all of them. If you do receive one consider yourself fortunate that someone has taken the time to tell you why they’re rejecting your work. They may be wrong, but at least you know why. Remember, they are taking a risk by sending you bad news. The form rejection is popular because many editors and agents have suffered the wrath of rejected authors who will bombard their offices with letters arguing why they think they critique was wrong. Don’t be one of those authors. Take what you can from the critique then move on.

6) Try again. This type of rejection is close to a personal note, but it’s never mean. They are saying that what you submitted isn’t right for them, but they’re curious to see more. Make sure you follow up.

7) Rewrite request. This type of response can make most writers jump for joy. The editor is interested and is offering hints on how to gain their favor. This is good news, of course, only if you agree with the suggested changes. Unfortunately, this is still a rejection and there is no guarantee that making the changes will result in a sale. However, the most important lesson to learn from this type of rejection is that you have caught the interest of an editor and it’s a relationship you should nurture.

No matter what type of response you get, ‘close’ is still ‘no.’ There is no gray area in publishing. You are either offered a contract or not. However, as I’ve outlined above, look at the type of rejection before you burn it. When you get varying rejections like: ‘I hate the character, but love the plot’ and ‘I love the character, but hate the plot’ you’re on your way. Why? Because whoever is reading your work is stating personal preference instead of offering a common complaint. That will be what makes your style unique.

Most writers loathe rejections and for some their careers never survive the pain of getting them. You don’t want this to happen to you. You now have the skills to sift through your rejections and never fear them again.

How to get published? That’s the big money question for writers. Writing is fulfilling in and of itself, but every writer ultimately wants to learn how to get published.

A lot of writers think getting published is a matter of luck. Or it’s a matter of knowing the right person. Or it’s a matter of simply being born a brilliant writer.

Although all of the above will help you get published, you don’t have to have any of these things. You can LEARN how to get published.

When you follow The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers, you’ll no longer wonder how to get published. You’ll BE published.

Here’s The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers:

1. Create a successful writer’s mindset.

To have a successful writer’s mindset, you must know where you want to go with your writing. A goal of getting published isn’t enough. You must have a laser-focused intention. Use visualization to keep that intention at the forefront of your mind.

You must also take an inventory of your beliefs about writing. Any negative beliefs about writing will get in the way of your publishing success. Turn any negative beliefs to their opposite and make them positive beliefs that will serve you.

Once you have your intention, which you nurture with visualization, and your positive beliefs, you’ve established a success mindset that will help you get published.

2. Develop the habit of journaling regularly.

Journal writing isn’t just for memoir writers. Every serious writer MUST keep a journal. It is a tool that will improve your ability to notice the events in your world. Good writers are good observers.

It is also a tool that helps you mine your emotions and thoughts. Writing is revealing. If you don’t understand yourself, your writing will seem flat and uninteresting. Get to know yourself, and you create a goldmine of emotion and thought that will make your writing rich.

Creating rich prose is a key to how to get published.

3. Practice writing daily.

The other way to improve your writing daily is by doing a daily practice. Writing is like playing a musical instrument. You must practice in order to improve.

The easiest writing practice to do is timed writings. Choose a length of time (at least 5 minutes; more is better). Set a timer and just write.

The only rule to timed writings is don’t stop for any reason. If you can’t think of anything to say, write, “I can’t think of anything to say.” But KEEP WRITING! The flow of words limbers up your creative pathways.

4. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and write to your strengths.

Every writer has specific strengths and weaknesses. For example, my style is spare and direct. I wouldn’t do well as a literary fiction author. I am better suited for genre fiction and direct nonfiction.

Discover what you do well as a writer and be okay with what you don’t do well. When you know yourself as a writer, you can choose the projects with which you can have the greatest success.

5. Write with feeling.

Writing is all about emotion. If your writing lacks emotion, it will be flat and uninteresting. You must know your own feelings about what you’re writing, and you must also know what feeling you want to evoke in your reader. Keep these emotions in mind as you write.

6. Fill your writing with just the right details.

Detail is essential to great writing, but too much detail can bury good writing under a layer of distraction that turns the writing dull. When you learn to create the perfect balance of details&ndashjust enough, but not too much, you become a writer who can easily get published.

You can choose the perfect details by knowing what it is you want your reader to focus on. For example, in a scene with a man and a woman in a bar, you could focus on the details of the brawl going on behind them or you could focus on the details of their fingertips touching. If it’s an action story, you’d choose the brawl. A romance story would be better focused on the fingertips.

Some writers try and describe everything in a scene in great detail. This just bogs down the writing. Choose details carefully and then describe them well.

7. Make your writing hypnotic.

“Hypnotic writing” is a term created by author, Joe Vitale. It’s a wonderful term that explains how a writer must be able to write in a way that grabs and holds a reader. You must have the ability to mesmerize your reader.

You create hypnotic writing with the use of short phrases, the use of rhythm, and pacing. You also create it with perfect word choice and a constant awareness that your writing must be for the reader.

Understand that the reader always has in mind as he or she reads, “What’s in this for me?” When you write with that awareness, you can make word choices that will make your writing hypnotic.

8. Always have a writing plan.

An absolutely essential element of writing success is motivation. You must be able to stay motivated to start and finish your writing projects.

Many writers fail for lack of motivation. Procrastination and writer’s block are two common writing career killers.

You can avoid both procrastination and writer’s block by always having your projects planned out. Create a short term and a long term plan. List the projects you want to do this week, this month, and this year. Once you’ve created the list, get out your calendar and make a schedule for how you can complete your projects.

Creative people have a tendency to resist structure, but the irony is that structure can actually enhance creativity. So be willing to structure your writing time.

That’s it–The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers.

These steps are not a quick-fix publishing solution. They won’t turn you into J.K. Rowling overnight. But The Eight Steps Success Plan For Writers will, if you work the steps diligently, turn you into a quality writer. It is also the foundation of how to get published.

The idea is the most valuable intellectual property. And the interesting idea requires quality protection from the plagiarism. Before we start discussing why it is not worth plagiarizing, let’s clear up what we mean by plagiarism. The word Plagiarism originated from the Latin word Plagio which means steal. The encyclopedias define plagiarism as “misappropriation of someone else’s works: publishing someone else’s works without indicating the source or a usage of the work without the author’s permission”. If the source is not indicated that is plagiarism.

The objects of plagiarism can be literature works, movies, translations as well as term papers essay writings, etc. The law suggests severe penalties for plagiarists. But despite it the unpleasant phenomenon is still flourishing in our society. The present article warns you how not to become the victim of plagiarism. The problem of the net plagiarism is very urgent nowadays. Any student searching an essay or term paper on-line can fall into this trap. Of course you can find a ready made research paper you need. But here you encounter RISK 1. No one can guarantee you that this paper is used for the first time. Moreover, it could be downloaded by the student from your college and submitted to the same tutor. RISK 2: Now all the tutors are aware of the existence of such free on &ndashline collections. Your tutor could have seen this work on the net. In this case he would have the right to demand your rewriting the paper. Risk 3: Now many universities have acquired the special anti &ndash plagiarism software for detecting the plagiarised works.

Such systems compare the text of your term paper research with the Internet resources base, with other students’ works and also printed issues and italicize the places with the repetition of the texts from other sources. Then it counts up the percentage of such duplications in the text. Risk 4. Downloading a paper from one of the on-line writing services is also a guaranteed way to get a plagiarized writing. Such services offer the students’ works that had already been submitted. So, if you finally have made up your mind to download a ready work, at least paraphrase it, add some chapters and change their order. If you have no time to reconstruct the completed version, the best way out for you is to order a unique writing from a professional custom writing service. This way you will get 100% original paper.

People never change. Nor do their basic desires. They’ve existed for thousands of years and will continue to exist for thousands more.

Names of people will change. Technology will change. People’s desires won’t &ndash their desires are hard-wired into our DNA.

That’s good for you &ndash as an author. By knowing what people want, you can profit from their desires. And since their desires are predictable, your ability to make money from your book ideas just got a lot more profitable, as well.

So, you must be wondering what do people want to read.

The top three general desires revolve around: Food, Love, and Money.

There will ALWAYS be a market for new cookbooks, new books on love, and new books on ways to make money. Guaranteed!

This will never change. Ever.

So if you have an idea that fits in one of those categories - you are well on your way to celebrity status. It doesn’t have to be an original thought on the subject. It can just be a new spin on an existing topic.

NOTE: People do not buy books because they are bargains. They buy them because they have some hope that they will find something &ndash not matter how small &ndash that will positively add value to their lives.

What else are people interested in reading about…

* Security

* Sex

* Power

* Immortality

* Happiness

* Safety

* Health

* Recognition

Some more generalized topics would be things like:

To attract the opposite sex.

To keep their possessions.

To have more fun.

To satisfy curiosity.

To protect their family.

To be in style.

To have beautiful possessions.

To quench their appetite.

To emulate others.

To avoid trouble.

To avoid criticism.

To be an individual.

To protect their reputation.

To grab opportunities.

To make work easier.

When you brainstorm ideas for your book, keep these customer desires in mind.

NOTE: Although it is good to focus your topic, you should try to keep it in a general category that will be wanted by a larger section of the population.

For example: You don’t want to write a book just about “Love” because it’s far TOO general of a topic. But you also don’t want to focus your topic so much it becomes something like “Love between 20 &ndash 24 year olds in Northwest California.”

Yes, I know that was an exaggerated example and you’d never go that targeted but you get my meaning.

Maybe you could write something like “How to be a 20-something in Love.” More targeted than just LOVE but still part of a large group of people who would be interested.

NOTE: Go with a subject you’re already passionate about.

Don’t make this process harder than it has to be. If you’re already passionate about gardening, cooking, investing, pet health, etc. then look in that area for the subject of your book.

#1) You will WANT to become a recognized expert in the field. Nothing worse than finding a topic that will make you money but you’re embarrassed to be associate with.

I did some research and found a hot topic that could have made me thousands literally overnight… but then I realized I didn’t really want my name associated with that topic. Money is important but if you write your book about a topic you’re excited about and you become a recognized expert &ndash achieving celebrity status &ndash you will have SO much more than just money in the bank.

#2) Working on your project will seem like anything but work. When I chose a subject specifically because I think it will make money &ndash I’m less than happy to do the writing. When it’s about something I enjoy then I can’t wait to write and don’t want to stop. I’ve worked until the early hours of the morning because I just lost track of time.

Find something that really gets you excited!

Did you know that if you’re marketing your book to sell books, you may be marketing for all the wrong reasons? Why? Well frankly, marketing a book to make sales will rarely ring the cash register; in fact, most of the time it amounts to what I call the “anti-sale,” the sale that always seems to elude you.

If you’re looking at your last 12 months of marketing and wondering what went wrong, ask yourself one question: “What was the driving force behind my book marketing choices?”

In a recent coaching session an author told me: “I spent $30,000 on advertising and I don’t know why I haven’t sold a single book.” Why did the author advertise? Because she thought it would sell books. Now you might think that $30k is extreme, and perhaps it is, but she isn’t the only one. Most of the topics of conversation during coaching calls, consultations or classes I teach are: “I’ve spent all this money and done all this work, what am I doing wrong?” What you’re doing wrong is selling the book and not the message or the benefits. In other words, you’re marketing your books for all the wrong reasons.

It’s not that dissimilar from scheduling a slew of book signings because you think you “have to” or because you’re hoping to sell scads of books. If you hate doing them, and they’re not working, why bother?

Let’s take a look at the example of our $30k author more closely. She had a book about child rearing, she was a noted speaker, a child psychologist and was quoted extensively in the media. The odd thing was, when you walked into her office her book was no where to be found. “I don’t want to be boastful about my book.” She said, “I think selling my book to my patients is unethical.” Well, perhaps she’s right, but still, she was missing the point. The point was that she had her buyers in front of her all the time and yet she overlooked them in search of the almighty book sale.

In fact, I found out later that she wasn’t even selling her book at her speaking sessions. Why? Because she thought the ad space she bought would be enough to carry the momentum of the book. When we finally broke down her marketing campaign and her options, she realized that she could sell thousands of copies of her book and it wouldn’t cost her a dime. She had at her disposal hungry buyers she wasn’t even tapping into.

So are you missing your buyers? What piece of your campaign have you overlooked in an attempt to “sell” your book? To distill this even further, let’s go through an exercise together to help unearth some marketing opportunities you might be overlooking. When you do this exercise I want you to remove the notion of book sales from your vernacular, what I mean is I want you to start looking at your efforts through a different lens:

On a separate sheet of paper, list all the marketing that you’ve done for your book. This may take a while, but seeing it all on paper will be helpful. List everything, even the minutiae.

Now that you have your list, let’s take a hard look at it. First off, I want you to cross off the marketing you’ve done that has just been a total waste of your time.

Next, go through and star everything that worked really well. Remember, by “really well,” I don’t mean book sales, although that could have been a result of your efforts; I mean star the items you really enjoyed doing that seemed to get you great feedback.

What you have left will be a list of mediocre things, marketing ideas you tried that did reasonably well (at least enough so you didn’t feel you needed to cross them off with the first batch). Take a hard look at the starred items, what do you see? Quite possibly you see a list of things that a) you loved doing, and b) that sold you some books despite the fact that you didn’t think it would.

Now let’s expand on that starred list. For example, if you have “book events” on this list, how can you expand this?

Next, I want you to make a list of the items you’re missing. If you are brainstorming an expansion of your star list these missing pieces might be self-evident or they may require some additional brainstorming.

The idea behind this exercise is to become very clear on what’s working and what isn’t and to focus on the stuff you love doing. Generally the stuff you love is dialed directly into your audience. And if you love it, you’ll probably do more of it, and hopefully this will lead you to book sales.

In author coaching I’ve found that we often set aside the stuff we love because we think book marketing should be hard. Let me tell you, it doesn’t have to be. And if you’re doing stuff that’s hard, you’re probably marketing for all the wrong reasons, anyway.

In a recent interview, media darling Rachael Ray cited that for years she did only local media. She would do cooking show after cooking show, often losing money on each one (when you factored in her time, gas, supplies, etc.). So why did she keep doing it? Because she loved it and because it’s what she wanted to do. Now, of course, she’s on everything from your local cross-town bus to any and all kitchen supplies. I’m not saying that her way of marketing is a recipe for success. Certainly, it worked for her, but the bigger message is that when you do what you love, you’ll keep at it, and that’s the key. Whatever you do, you must love it, and you must do a lot of it.

This coming year can be a revelation for your campaign if you take the time to figure out what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d love to do more of. Do it because you love it, and the sales will follow. You can bank on it!

You want to write better, more engaging articles and content right? You want to get your message across and you want your call to action….actioned right? I am no writing expert, but I can tell you one thing, the secret to writing better starts with one tiny word….. YOU!

Your readers (And maybe your potential clients/customers) read what you have written for a reason. They read because they want to gain something from it. THEY want to gain something. They are not interested in how YOU are this, that and the other. They want to find out how what you are writing can benefit THEM. People are greedy. Even when they are not trying to be. They are greedy at a subconscious “Brain Sponge” level.

How many times have you read an article or blog and stopped reading half way through? How many times have you thought “God…this person likes to talk about himself”? And don’t you just hate conversation when someone else always talks about themselves? READ ON!

ALWAYS FOCUS ON YOUR READER

When you are writing, and especially when you are writing to sell something, focus on your reader. They (Usually) don’t care about how great your product is, they only care about how great it will be to them. Use the Words “You” and “Your”. Make your reader feel how much it is going to benefit THEM.

A great testimonial to this fact is a test I ran on a single eBook I used to sell. It was a single page website that sold an eBook on setting up a website. I played around with the copy a lot and the product was great, but it was not selling. I invested in a split testing software and created two different versions of the sales page. One was the normal sales copy and the other was the sales copy focusing on the user. So rather than “With our eBook” I had “With your eBook” etc. The results were surprising. By minimizing the use of “I” “We” and “Our” and increased the use of “You” and “Your”, the sales of the book increased by 60%. That’s a lot!

ASK QUESTIONS

Asking your readers questions is also a great way to engage them. Make them think. Make them ask the questions YOU WANT THEM TO ASK! Questions that YOU have an answer for. Have a specific call to action and lead them down the path.

I have used this technique on many sites in my network from the beginning and have seen great results. I am sure you will too.

***It should be worth noting that I (tried) to keep you engaged in this article by using the word you/your 30 times (Including this sentence) and asked 5 questions. Seems like a lot now but it worked, didn’t it?

I submit articles to a lot of article directories and through .isnare.com. A lot of the articles are my own, but most of them are ghostwritten for clients. Isnare and other article directories do an ok job of tracking how many views your article has had at their directory, but that’s where it stops.

Plus, once you submit to any article directory, how do you know where else that article was reprinted? Clients ask me about this all the time.

Sure, you can search for your article title in Google and get a lot of results and sift through them to find which search engine listings are your article and which are just web pages that are related to the same phrase used in your article title, but is that the best method for tracking how well your articles are doing out there?

Submit and forget is the normal approach taken to article marketing. You just keep producing new articles and have “faith” in the system and that your articles are getting widespread distribution. For years, this was the approach I took to article marketing as well.

Since then, we have developed ways to do more with the content that we wrote or paid to have written for us.

For starters, those old articles you own and have already submitted are still good, useful content. You can continue to distribute them to other article directories they have not already been submitted to. You can offer them to be printed on other websites for a link back in your bio. You can break them into parts and reuse them on your blog as part 1, part 2, part 3, and so on.

The content you wrote or paid for still has value beyond the one time they were submitted to directories. How many articles do you have on your hard drive right now that you could be using?

Another method you can use is to place a tracking or serial number into each article. Use something unique as an identifier. Something with numbers and letters. Before you develop your serial numbers, search them in google and if you get a no results page, your serial number is perfect.

You can place the serial number into the actual body of the article or into your author bio. Anyone reading the article will ignore it, but you will be able to search Google for that serial number later and you will start getting results that are your own.

With this method you can track which article topics get the widest distribution, track which websites and blogs reprinted the article after finding it in article directories, and which distribution method got you the most bang for your buck.

Stop guessing and start tracking and you will improve your article marketing results tremendously!

As you probably have already guessed, I have a problem. I am seriously battling with procrastination and I think I’m doing very well so far. You see, the good news is that I am not ashamed or too afraid to admit it, and neither should you be. I bet you’re saying to yourself right now, “I don’t have a problem.” Well I am here to tell you that there is hope for you. We will overcome this, together, but the first step towards recovery is being able to admit the problem. To make it a little bit easier for you, I will go first&ndash‘Hi, my name is Siobhan and I am a procrastinator.’ You see, that wasn’t so bad. So, are you ready to admit that you should be doing something else right now besides reading this? Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us; literally.

Wouldn’t that be something if there really was a Procrastinators Anonymous Association (PAA)? The thought sounds good, but I’m not too sure about how good of an idea it would be to actually start one. I can already foresee a few hurdles with having a PAA; for one, members may keep postponing the meetings for no apparent reason. Another thing is there would probably not be enough room to hold almost every single person in the world. Let’s face it, we all procrastinate. As a matter of fact, we are all experts at it and lucky for us it isn’t as bad as is made out to be.

As a writer, procrastination gives me a chance to think about my book while I’m doing something else in place of writing it. What better way is there to make use of all that time other than using it to contemplate new ideas, fine tune details, and get everything just right before I actually sit down to write? I once read somewhere that the biggest procrastinators tend to be very creative and intelligent. I am in no way making excuses for my procrastination; instead, learned to just appreciate and accept it.

It may sound crazy but I believe that the rest of the world also loves it when I procrastinate. Suddenly, everyone seems to get my undivided attention. My dog gets walked for a few extra minutes, phone calls get answered, and even missed calls get returned. It also seems to be the times when my stomach talks to me more than usual and the best songs come on the radio that I just can’t resist singing along to. The even crazier thing about it is I only procrastinate like this when it comes to writing. I don’t know why I do it, but it always seems to happen. I became curious and asked some other writers, artists and creative people if they experience anything similar. To my surprise, I was not alone. That is when I decided to write off my procrastinating tendencies as a trait that all writers and artistic people are just born with.

As a person who thirsts for knowledge, I did some research and found out that writers are known to procrastinate. Many well known writers are considered to be some of the biggest procrastinators. Inspiring isn’t it? If you really think about it, procrastinating can indeed be useful and necessary at times because it allows the writer to let go. Sometimes when you hold on to an idea too tight or try to force creativity, it seems to pack up and take a vacation somewhere, leaving you frustrated. But when you just let it go, it comes to you as naturally as feeling the warm sun against your skin. It’s no different than trying to remember that name that on the tip of your tongue. As long as you spend wrecking your brain trying to remember it, it never comes; but the second you stop trying and just let it go, doesn’t the name blurt out of your mouth as if you weren’t even trying to remember it in the first place? Some things are just unexplainably strange.

So now that I have admit my problem, which in essence has turned out to be not much of a problem at all, can you admit to being a procrastinator and accept the rewards and benefits that come with resourcefully killing time? I know one thing; it may have taken me 20 hours to write something that could have possibly been done in less than an hour, but who is to say that I would have came to these conclusions that fast? I want to give a special thanks to those four chocolate chip cookies that I ate, the glass of milk that helped wash it down, my supposedly housebroken dog for making “mess” on the floor, and my computer for acting up and erasing those much needed files. I am a procrastinator par excellence.

What do you do now that you have finished that great manuscript? Many believe you can simply start sending it out to agents or publishers sometimes even both. However this is simply not true, just because you have created this riveting tale, you cannot send it out and expect it to be published right then. No, there are many aspects to being published and even more frauds out there, where the only goal is to con you out of your money. Filling their pockets and leaving yours empty and your dream of being published unfulfilled.

So what to do, where to turn, who do you trust, who do you ask? Well the first thing is take that perfect manuscript and reread each and every word and prepare to rewrite, if you are like many authors out there who have a hard time seeing their own mistakes then join a critique group. These groups are designed to help writers, and many have guidelines to follow so that your critique is accurate and fair. Once you have joined the group, redone your mistakes, repeatedly, finally believing you have the best Manuscript possible, here comes the hard part. Getting someone else to believe it as well.

You have to come up with a query letter that holds the readers attention using a strong hook. A hook if you don’t know is that one scene, that one line, that grabs the readers attention making them want more, need more of what you have to say. Once you have that Query here comes the synopsis, a synopsis is summary of your story highlighting plot twist and turns along with giving, a detail setting your story takes place in, generally about two to three pages in length. A word of advice when you write your synopsis, know the ending even if not exact, at least how it will end. Publishers and Agents do not want to be still guessing at the end.

Ok you have your Query, your Synopsis, your sample Chapters leading into the story, now what? Did you make sure everything is formatted properly; this makes a huge difference on acceptance to being read or thrown away before they look at the first line? So everything is properly formatted, you have researched the agents and publishers, you know who you are going to send out to, but there is one major problem who first?

Well that depends on your list, first off if you want an agent then they are the first ones to contact. A good agent will walk you through the process from, professional editing to submitting to the publisher. Agents will have Publishers they want to send to first, but you can suggest your own as well. A good agent will not charge you; they make money off getting that contract with the publisher. A good agent will keep you informed at all changes, but most importantly, a good agent will be looking out for you.

Now that we know what an Agent does maybe, you are like hundreds of other authors and do not want an agent. Well that is ok too; many go straight to the publisher. Whether you self publish or have a publisher, you need to follow the company’s guidelines and rules. Also, remember that unless you are self-publishing then the Publisher pays you not the other way around. A publisher should also have a list of events and ideas they want to use to promote the book.

No matter what way you choose to move that manuscript into a novel be sure to check out each publisher, editor, and agent on your list. Make sure they are legit, that they do not have any hidden fees, and any questions you have are answered completely before you sign that dotted line. Remember you are in charge, it is your work, and you have a responsibility to yourself, your readers, and your publisher or agent, just because the hard parts are done, do not stop. Send it out for reviews, ask local books stores to carry it, promote, promote, promote.