Sometimes I feel like I’m not doing enough of the things I should be doing — even though I’m already, by some standards, doing too much.

Okay, that was a lie. I feel this way all the time.

Or, at least, I did. Until I learned an important lesson about priorities.

There’s something about creativity that just makes a lot of us want to do all the things, all the time, because it feels good. Start a blog? Sweet! Make music? Yes! Sell stuff on Etsy because everybody’s doing it and it’s fun and also $$$$? SIGN. ME. UP.

I don’t know about you. But I just love making things.

Which is awesome and also terrible. Because a lot of us feel this urgent need to always be doing something. Always writing, always drawing, always sketching out new ideas in our heads to save for the imaginary moment when we…

I’ve enjoyed using my Fire HD 8 tablet as my “main” Android tablet these last few months, but I finally got fed up with some of the annoyances of the built-in Fire launcher. There weren’t any huge annoyances, which is why it took so long to get fed up, but finally I got tired of the lack of an app drawer where I could access an app right away if I couldn’t remember what folder I’d put it in. I also missed having access to launcher widgets, and the ease of swiping left to get to the Google Assistant.

The problem is, Amazon doesn’t provide any easy way to change launchers. Some launchers will let you run them manually—but my favorite launcher, the Google Now launcher, won’t. It helpfully told me I needed to change the launcher setting in my settings menu, but that’s a setting that the Fire’s settings…

I’ve never been a believer in keeping all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. I use more than one bank. I store my important files in more than one place. And I have always had my books available in more than one place.

In recent months, I’ve become more and more thankful that Amazon is not my sole venue for book distribution.

Like the kindle app, the Kobo, Nook and iBooks apps are completely free.
And from an author’s point of view, there are significant differences:

I recently started the revision process on my manuscript. One of many, but more importantly, the first after a year of leaving it on the shelf.

I think the one mistake I was making that surprised me the most, was echo words.  I couldn’t believe it. I know better. I’ve been at this for six years. How in the world could something like that happen?

You would be surprised what you miss. I also missed commas, had commas that didn’t belong, and started some sentences in one tense and ended them in another. Unbelievable.

I don’t know, maybe I’m a bad writer, but I don’t think so. I use to see mistakes on other people’s blogs and think, I can’t believe they missed that. I’m sure I missed stuff too, because I’ve gone back to old blogs and corrected mistakes. I can’t believe I posted them 🙂

You have…

This is a guest post by Ilan Nass.

The Essential Facebook Metrics for Authors

Photo by http://offers.hubspot.com/science-of-facebook-marketing

Facebook Ads are useful to marketers because they offer the chance to track a wide range of metrics. However, determining how effective a campaign actually is requires understanding which metrics are worth tracking, and which you can ignore.

Authors who are just beginning to use Facebook Ads often don’t realize that the statistics and data Facebook highlights often don’t fully illustrate a campaign’s return on investment |(ROI). That’s why, when you’re just starting out, it can be helpful to partner with an experienced Facebook marketing agency. Doing so will help you develop a thorough understanding of how to succeed with Facebook ads.

But, if you’d like to get an idea of the process behind selecting and tracking important campaign metrics, keep reading.

Metrics to exclude

First of all, it’s a good idea…

These days, it seems like there’s more arguing over what counts as a “fact” and what counts as an “opinion” than should ever be necessary. Well, we have bad news. The trouble doesn’t start with “fake news” — it starts in your brain.

We already know that your interpretation of facts can vary wildly depending on your beliefs. Confirmation bias and the backfire effect are always going to shape the way you interact with your world. But according to a new report on a phenomenon known as involuntary opinion confirmation, you might have a hard time sorting out the facts in the first place. That’s because when your brain is exposed to an opinion it agrees with, it automatically slips it into the “facts” folder of your mental filing cabinet.

It all comes down to the Stroop effect. If the name of a color is printed in a different color…

If you’ve read any of my prior posts, you won’t be surprised to know my relationship with writing has been a challenge, not unlike a turbulent romance, an on-again off-again affair, an excruciating part-time obsession.  That being said, as I brainstormed this week’s topic, my mind focused on the painful truths and absurdities aspiring writers contend with on a daily basis.  There is a commonality with one’s descent into misery, especially amongst like-minded individuals who share a familiar goal. In an ever shrinking global village, our similarities, our passions and dreams often mimic one another.  Like a legion of misfit doppelgangers, identical in spirit, we are connected by a common thread of hope, dreams and aspirations.

In the pretext of empathy, and in the context of shared misery, I came up with the compilation below.  I realize there’s a high probability a similar post exists on the Web (doppelgangers – remember)…

What if I tell you that India has the world’s largest youth population? What if I also tell you that less than half of our students in class 8^th can solve a class four division problem and barely 47% of children in grade 5 can read a grade 2 level text? Our students have been caught in the clutches of our government’s ignorance. Someone once rightly said that most ignorance is “vincible ignorance”. We don’t know because we don’t want to know and people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. To secure India’s future, providing a better education to India’s youth is imperative.

I believe only education fundamentally can change our current scenario. It can help make people independent because all the wealth in the world cannot help our people unless they are not taught to help themselves. All they need is moral and…

If you are an author what is your greatest wish? It must be the same as mine.

There is a ring at the doorbell, you open it and there stands Steven Spielberg holding a copy of your book. He begs you to allow him to make it into a major motion picture and thrusts the contract into your hand together with a cheque for an obscene amount.

If you are a reader, what could be better than telling all your friends that the writer of the latest blockbuster that’s breaking all box office records is your friend on Facebook and you knew them when they were just a poor little indie screaming ‘buy my free book.’

We can all dream.

I’ve mentioned before that when the dinosaurs roamed the earth I wrote for radio and television. This gave me the weird idea that I could write. Once I started with…

by Lauren Sapala

I’ve worked with a lot of writers over the past eight years and I can honestly say that there really is one thing that separates the writers who are going to make it from the writers who are not. I know, I know—there are many different variables at play. Believing in yourself, joining a supportive community, finding your audience. I’m not disputing that those factors influence a writer’s success. But the thing I’m talking about is way more basic than anything else.