Category: Creativity

The Value of Great Editors

As many of you know, I’ve been working on my next book. The working title is The Secrets of Creative Business.  My goal with the book is to integrate creativity, business, law, and spirit into one motivational and practical guide for people who have great ideas and want to make a living pursuing those ideas.

I finished the first draft of the manuscript a couple weeks ago. It’s about 100 pages single-spaced. In other words, it’s way too long.  🙂  I sent it off to a close friend who is also a great editor. She edited my previous two books and turned them both from OK to pretty dang good. I couldn’t have done it without her. She holds my feet to the fire and refuses to let me be lazy.

Well, she’s doing it again.  She called one section of my manuscript “crap” – and she’s right – I WAS being lazy that day. And, the subject of that day’s work is her area of professional expertise, so you can call that a perfect storm.

She also pointed out that my goal was to integrate creativity, spirit, law, and business – but that I had basically discussed each in separate sections. While I had integrated the four elements “between the covers” of the draft, I had not TRULY integrated the concepts. WOW!  That’s worth the price of admission folks, but it also comes with a cost. The cost is that to truly integrate the concepts, I’m going to have to reorganize the entire book. I’m going to have to rewrite the entire book.

Ugh!

I’ve been working on this book since February or March. I’ve been getting up at around 5am for most of that time in order to find the “space” to write. So, when Kari (editor) sent me her comments last night it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear “this is GREAT! I’ll just make a few edits/corrections/tweeks and this will fly.” I wanted to have the book available by the end of September or Mid October. Well, that’s not going to happen now. My goal is now to have the book on Amazon and B&N by the end of November so that people can get the book as a holiday gift or as inspiration for 2010 goals. It has been one of MY 2009 goals to complete this book, and having this book available is a major milestone on the path to my 2010 goals and beyond.

What now?

I just printed the 100 pages of manuscript to a hard copy (used the back-side of previously printed paper of course).  I’ll let it sit for a while while I get some other writing done. I have some shorter articles and essays due for some publications around the country so I’ll focus on those and give my book a little “space between” to breathe. Then I’ll find some mental space and reorganize how I approach the content. Then I’ll start the re-write with a completely blank file. I’ll let what I’ve already written inform new essays, but I vow to not copy and paste anything, nor to just retype. The next version of the book will be a complete re-WRITE. It’ll be a second draft and a first draft combined into one document.

Hopefully it’ll go pretty quickly when I find the groove.

And, I can always use the “non-crappy” sections of the current draft as individual articles or blog posts.

Ultimately, the duty of the author is not to his/her ego, but to his/her message.  Kari firmly declared that I have not lived up to that duty with the current manuscript. She also let me know the message is worth the effort.

Great editors do that.

A Laugh is Worth a Buck.

As most of you know, my client InfoMedia created the most talked-about iPhone App ever – iFart. Earlier this year my client received a letter demanding $50,000 or they would sue InfoMedia over InfoMedia using the common phrase “Pull My Finger” in some of the marketing and public relations materials InfoMedia used to promote iFart. We decided that instead of paying the $50K for the bogus demand, we would file an action in Federal Court here in Colorado and ask a judge to rule that InfoMedia’s use was NOT a trademark infringement as suggested by the Pull My Finger folks. It caused a _ _ _ _ storm of public relations activity including mentions on NPR, CNN, and many other major media outlets.

Last night it was featured on The Daily Show.

What does all this prove? It proves that a laugh is worth at least a buck. iFart Mobile sells for $0.99 on the App Store. I don’t know the exact sales numbers, but I’m betting over 500,000 people have purchased the app by now.

A LAUGH IS WORTH A BUCK.

It also shows that when you become wildly successful with a creative endeavor, there is going to be something that comes along to complicate the success. In this case it was a competitor. It seems like there is always some price for success.

Here’s the segment: (evidently I’m not a “Real” lawyer… )  🙂

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
iFeud
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Joke of the Day

2 of My Favorite Quotes

I’m doing some work on my next book and I keep coming back to a few of my favorite quotes. Here are a couple from the archives.

From “Inspire! What Great Leaders Do” by Lance Secretan:

We overuse the word “driven.” We want to be values-driven, customer-driven, mission-driven, market-driven, technology0driven, solutions-0driven, and self-driven. Perhaps this is why so many people are driven to drink, driven insane, or driven to distraction? Are Zen masters “driven”? Were Christ, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, or Mother Teresa “driven”? Is being driven part of the problem rather than part of the solution? What would it look ilie if we were customer-inspired? Or market-inspired? Or values-inspired? Or family-inspired? Wouldn’t anyone rather be inspired than driven? There is a greater sacredness and inner beauty associated with inspiration, the breath of God, compared to the manic style of the old story leader that causes us to be driven – and thus drained.

 

 

From one of my all-time favorite business books: “The Trusted Adviser” by Maister, Green, and Galford:

More value is added through problem definition than through problem answer.

TM & Copyright for Creative People – Free Webinar

I’ve been asked a few times over the last few days to repost the links to the copyright and trademark webinars I did for Morgan James Publishing back in January.  These programs are tailored to the needs of authors, but the concpets and laws are the same for anyone in creative business.

Here are the links:

Trademark & Branding

Copyright

Feel free to forward these links to any of your friends who might need the information.

If you would like me to do a similar session tailored to your group – give me a call at 970-493-1070 or drop me an email and we’ll work something out.

Practical (c) Fair Use Tips

I haven’t been blogging a lot lately because I’ve been focusing my writing time on my next book, working title: The Secrets of Creative Business. Yesterday I posted a tweet that I was working on the section of the book covering copyright “Fair Use” and was asked by a Facebook friend to share some practical tips.

Here are a few practical hints:

1. Always ask for permission if you’re using someone’s content.
2. If you don’t get permission, use a minimum of content from anyone else.
3. Give credit for what you use.
4. This is the big one: ADD value to the content you’re using from other people by examining it (criticism – see below) and applying their ideas and/or expression to your audience’s situation filtered through your expertise.

If you do this, you won’t have to lose a lot of sleep over what you’ve used because you will be making a great argument that you’re actually building the marketability of the other person’s work through your use of their content (see factor 4 below).

If you’re ripping someone’s content for its obvious stupidity, then be a bit more careful and talk with your lawyer.  🙂

Just in case you want to read the actual copyright fair use statute:

TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > § 107
§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.