GreyMatterIdeas

The Problem

Whenever you discover a new band, their first album is great. You like most every song on the disc, the radio stations like most every song, it’s a great experience. The band is saying what they have to say, and it’s exciting and fresh and original. Fast forward to a year later, and their second album comes out. You rush to the mall during lunch to get it and when you pop it in the CD player, it’s missing something….

All the songs sound the same. There’s a bunch of crap songs on there, and the only ones that you like are produced by someone else that’s not even in the band. What happened?

The problem is that the first album wasn’t created or conceived in a year. It was a culmination of years of experiences and ideas. The second one was thrown together to capitalize on the band’s popularity. The problem is that the band wasn’t working consistently on their material. That’s the curse of the artist. In their pursuit for perfection, they waste a lot of time waiting for inspiration to strike. Well, I have some news for you, sister…the muse has gone out for a drink with some friends. She’s not coming back until you get back to work.  She knows where to find you.

The Solution

Chris Brogan calls it “loving the grind“. It’s absolutely true. You have to do the work, even if it’s boring. Especially if it’s boring. You have to write crap songs, or crap novels, in order for the flash of brilliance to come through. Just because you create it, doesn’t mean that it has to be perfect. It means that maybe you don’t ever share that particular body of work with anyone…ever. It’s not a waste of time, either. You learned something from that project. If nothing else, you learned how to plant your butt in the chair and do the work. You just might have formed a habit.

Contests like NanoWrimo and RPMChallenge are particularly good about this. They instill an deadline, which instills an artificial sense of urgency in you. It helps you to put down the TV remote and spend an hour or so on your craft. I’ve participated in both. My RPMChallenge record isn’t so hot: 0 and 1 so far. My NanoWrimo record is 3 and 3.  I’ve finished three novel rough drafts and quit three times. No one put me in jail over quitting. Nor did they threaten my life if I quit. It just made sense to stop the contest. Out of the three rough drafts, two of them have been edited and published (although they do need another round of editing.) I could plan and dream and wish and want, all I want, but the words don’t write themselves. If you want to be a writer, someone’s gotta do the work.  Just that simple.

The same thing applies to being a musician, or a sculptor or a performance artist. You have to DO, not just plan.

Schedule

There are 52 weeks in a year. Let’s take two of them off for vacation, family events, etc. Lets take another two weeks off for being sick. That’s one month out of one year that you might not do any work on your art /craft. That still leaves 48 weeks of work. That’s a lot of time. In my studio, the plan is to work on songwriting one day a week (about an hour or so) and one day a week on technical learning for my studio equipment. That’s two days out of seven.  Maybe, if I’m feeling froggy, I’ll work on it during the weekend as well. I can write /record a rough draft of a song in that time frame. That’s 48 songs in a year. I only need the best 15 or so for the album. That means that I can afford to say “I don’t think that this is all that great of a song”.  48 goes down to 15.  This is true, whether or not it’s songs or short stories, or little sculpture pieces, or Etsy craft-type things.

So how do you avoid the sophomore syndrome? Simple. Each year, you are constantly working and getting better and publishing new ideas. Because the workflow is there, there’s not such a big variance between this years album and last years. Part of the problem is public perception of your work. If you’re consistent, and your changes are smaller in scope, then people are more accepting. In addition, the quality of your work will get better, simply because you are doing it more consistently. This is a bonus for you.

Working on a project one week at a time is easy to schedule (and therefore, comply with) because you can see the end in sight. If I told you that you would write 48 songs in one year, you’d throw up your hands and say “No way. Can’t do it.” BUT, if I said that you could write ONE song this week, you would be more inclined to say “Yeah, sure…I can do that. Easy peasy.” Just rinse and repeat.

But I have a life…

I’m not saying that you have to spend the entire week on the project either. My days are Tuesdays (I call them Tunesdays) and Thursdays. If life gets in the way (which it often does), then simply do it the next day. It’s your life; you’re in charge of it.

Now go make great art…

Hello, my name is Brian and I am a maker. (Hi, Brian….)

After laughing at this recent  Cracked article (Warning: NSFW), I got to thinking about the underlying message. The world values you for what you do, what you make. I heard the same thing in talking to our senior programmer. He said one time, in talking about people with Computer Science degrees and their relative value, that he would rather hire developers who make things vs. developers who only did the coursework for the CS degree. The makers are the ones who understand how to ship products.

Noah, one of the people from 37 signals,  was talking about the value of creativity that is stressed in his work environment. He said “Creation is the language that’s spoken most at 37signals” So what does Noah do there? Is he a designer? Is he a developer? Nope. He is a data analyst for them. Sounds like the most boring job, right? Right up there with a CPA…Still, that doesn’t stop him from being a maker.

So, what do I make?

I make systems of hardware and software for people to use. My job title has said “Technical Support Analyst” or “Systems Administrator” or “Technical trainer”. These titles don’t actually describe it properly. I actually look at how people do their jobs and the technical tools they use, then determine how to best optimize their work flow. Sometimes, I write a tool that helps them. Sometimes I make recommendations for off the shelf software. In the end, I make a system for them.

I make software tools (Me Money tool). This is a tool that I have used (in one form or fashion) since about 1999.  It has taken several forms over the years. I’m trying to expand this skill and make more of the tools that I use on a daily basis.

I make music and books and blog posts for people. This is the creative side of me coming out.

So what do YOU make? It can be anything from a blog, where you share your thoughts, or share your knowledge with the world. It can be photographs, where you see the world in a completely different way.

Let’s get started…

To all my creative/coding friends…stay away from Freelancer.com…I was mistakenly charged for a month subscription, when my vWorker account was converted after Freelancer bought them out. I sent them an email asking for a refund, and I had to jump through a couple of hoops finally get it (tip: respond to them IMMEDIATELY, as they will close your support ticket after 24 hours).  I waited patiently for the refund of $5.37 to be put back into my PalPay acct, but never saw it. Nor did I see it go back into my bank acct.

Finally, today, I signed into the freelancer.com website and they put a refund of $4.95 (the actual monthly subscription amount). Fine, I’ll eat the sales tax portion of it. To transfer money back into my PayPal acct (like I expected THEM to do), I’ll end up eating a $1.00 fee to PayPal. After a few minutes of &*%!… I accepted that, and then they tell me that it’s a minimum $30 amount to initiate a transfer of MY money.

Well done, Freelancer.com…well, done. Keeping the money, by making it almost impossible for me to get it back. I can’t remember where I saw it (either Chris Brogan, Seth Godin or 37signals), but I read something about websites/ companies that make it easy for customers to join, but not leave, as if holding them (and their data) hostage will keep them from leaving. This is NOT what will happen. All that will happen is that they REALLY get pissed off, like me.

I’m SO done with you, Freelancer. BUT, I’ll make sure that no one I know EVER uses your services.

UPDATE: as of Tues, 1/15/13 0828 hrs

The refund has been put back into my PayPal account, as it should have been. Amazing that it only took a nasty blog post (with a blast on Facebook and Twitter), and a message to THEIR Facebook page, in order to clear it up. What follows is what they sent to me:

Hi Brian we're happy to refund your funds back to your paypal or bank account. Did you ask for that? Also we can
refund less than $30. What is yuor username.

Then before I had a chance to respond to that, they sent this:

11:33pm
Freelancer
Brian I followed this up with the head of support to see how this got so far without things being satisfactorily
dealt with.
Hi Matt,
The user send an initial ticket through ID: DEK-857-92834.
There was a little confusion at first since he mentioned that his account was migrated through Elance. Also, the
user didn't send an email using the email address associated with his account so he was not able to pull up the
account immediately. The agent (Kristofer Y) asked for a confirmation using the email address associated with the
account first before proceeding with the refund.
Two days after (January 12), the user was able to send an email confirmation using the correct email address
through ticket IRO-786-19395. The user's membership charge was refunded shortly after that.
We have managed to create a refund request back to his Paypal account. The ticket was moved to the refunds folder.
I will also deal with the miss in the refund process. Once we have the process document in place, it should give us
better guidelines to manage this.
Thanks,
Allan

And then I sent them this in response:

I did receive the refund for the full amount back to my Paypal account. It was confirmed this morning.
My biggest issue with this was the amount of hoops that I had to jump through in order to receive a simple refund.
The initial confusion (that caused the delay) over the email address used and the original account was all on me. I
don't fault anyone there over that snafu.

However, once we correctly identified me in the system, it only seems logical that a refund would go back to the
original source of funds (Paypal). That's how it's  done everywhere else. I did give the benefit of the doubt and
assume that perhaps the customer support associate didn't have the clearance to deposit money into Paypal and
instead, did the next best thing.

But I lost it when your website stated that there would be a fee of $1.00 (plus the loss of the sales tax as well,
totaling close to HALF the original charged amount.). Then when I accepted that fact, and proceeded onto the next
step, being told that I needed a minimum of $30 in order to transfer, caused me to completely lose it.

The appearance was that Freelancer.com was going to make it as hard as possible to do a refund, so that they could
simply keep the money. Do it enough times and it adds up.  Whether that's true or not is irrelevant now. 

I got my refund, and I'm happier. Thanks for your assistance.
Brian

So there you go.

I’m still not going to use their services, but that’s largely due to the fact that the people putting up the jobs for bid are only wanting to pay peanuts (WordPress PHP problem: payment $30- REALLY, I will barely turn ON my computer for that, much less look at your problem…)

In the matter of the refund, their process is flawed, but they are looking into that. Hopefully, there will be some changes and their customer service folk will be given some additional training or latitude in dealing with issues like this.

I was sick the first Thursday of the new year, so this week will have to count.

Tech Thursdays is something I started to do after I decided to not participate in the BBCO anymore. One of my wife’s complaints was that she had enjoyed getting the house to herself on Thursday evenings, so I decided to replace it with doing some technical work out in my music studio. The logic comes from something that Behringer has in front of every equipment manual they produce; this piece of gear is as much a musical instrument as a guitar is. It requires some playing around with the knobs and buttons, so that you can artistically manipulate it when the time comes to get to work.

This philosophy makes perfect sense to me, especially since so many of the tools are now software based. With a plethora of tutorials, available on YouTube, it only makes sense to play around with the gear while stepping through a tutorial. In the process, something good just might come out of it.

Therefore, I am bringing Tech Thursdays back (although I will be inside the house, rather than outside). Still, I am already getting a list of questions that I need answers to, and tonight will be the start of the journey towards those answers. Music to follow…

UPDATE: Had a great session tonight, playing with my new Launchpad and discovered that Ableton Live can record panning movements. Here’s what I did tonight. The mix is a little rough, but I think the idea has some potential…

Chris Brogan does a project every year called “Three Words“, which are used as guidelines for how to filter the upcoming events of the year. They’re a bit different from goals or resolutions, in that they are more philosophical in nature. My three words for 2013 are:

Learn, Expand and Do

Learn: Learn new skills, improve existing ones. This year (like last year), I am learning code. Unlike last year, I am actually making progress. In spite of it being a holiday today, I was watching a 75 minute video on Computer Science this afternoon. We are on week 1 and already starting programming in C (which is actually making sense.)

Expand: Expand your network of people that can help you reach your goals. This entails making those connections to help me, before I need that help. It means that I get out of my comfort zone and talk with people with whom I have no reason to be connected to. It’s like the office Christmas party: everyone in IT talks to people in IT and everyone in the front office only talks to those who work in the front office. This is counter to what I need for the long term.

Do: Create things, Make things, Do something with those skills learned. This is the application of the other two components.

This will be my fourth year doing this project.

My intention was for 2012 to be the year of code and music. I was planning on taking the year off from writing, to focus more on the music. The code portion was more for work. What actually happened was far from it. I wound up doing more writing than ever before. The only code stuff I did was for a work related project, done in PHP and Microsoft SQL Server. I picked it up again towards the end of the year, this time with Python.

I had a very false start on the music front. I spent about three or four weeks working on music for two different albums. After that, nothing.

On the writing sales front, I sold a total of nine books (between the Kindle Store and the physical books) and had a total sales volume of $10.23. It was down from 2010 but up from 2011. Hopefully, next year will be better.

In addition, I wrote five articles for Lifehack.org and one for Showwatcher.com.

I’ve been learning to do some programming as part of my day job. The language in use is Python, so I wanted to buy a book called “Programming Python” by Mark Lutz. The list price on the back of the book was $54.99. Earlier in the day, I had looked it up online, since I had a coupon for 25% off. I wanted to see if I could buy it online and use the coupon there and pick it up in the store. According to their website, it was out of stock.

When I went to Barnes and Noble to see what else I could use the coupon on, I found the book. I remembered the price from earlier ($37.73) and flagged down the nearest employee. I showed him my phone, with the website displayed, and asked what the correct price would be at the checkout counter. He told me that it was going to be the list price of $54.99. I explained that I was trying to put it in the cart earlier in the day. He explained that it was probably a computer glitch.

I showed him the book and asked that, since it was in my hand, what the price would be. He very nonchalantly told me that it would be the list price. When I asked about the difference in price, he explained that the way they (meaning the company) did the pricing was a little weird, but that I could order the book online and it would be a week (to get it at the online price of $37.73). I politely thanked him and returned it to the shelf.

The reality

Here’s the thing. I can order the same exact book from Amazon, wait the same week and pay $37.36. People come into a bookstore so that they can buy a book and walk out of the store with it. If you don’t have it in stock, then I will simply order it from Amazon.I accept that there’s a difference in price  between Amazon and a brick and mortar book store. I also understand the difference between a physical book price and the Nook version. That’s not the problem.

The issue

What I take issue with is the blatant difference in price between the online price and the in-store price, for the same company. Insult to injury? At seeing my surprise at the difference in price, he did…nothing. He could’ve offered to sell me the book at the online price. He could’ve offered me some sort of additional discount. Nothing at all.

It’s no wonder that bookstores are suffering. Personally, I won’t be buying any more technical books at all from Barnes and Noble, since I will constantly be wondering how much more I would be paying for it. This means that all of my technical book purchases will be online orders, and since I have to wait anyway, I’ll just get it from Amazon, since it’s almost always cheaper.

Further Repercussions

As an author, I have tried to not exclude any potential buyers of my books. While sales have been very slow, I have gotten exactly ZERO sales from the Nook store or the BN website. The cost of ensuring that people would be able to read my book on both the Kindle and the Nook has been that I am excluded from a pot of shared money (from being exclusive to Kindle.) In addition, I haven’t been able to give the book away for a short time either, since it wasn’t exclusive to Kindle. This will be changing, effective immediately.

If you have a Nook, I apologize in advance. Barnes and Noble has chosen to ban certain authors (due to the publisher being Amazon itself.) Well, the coin has two sides. Henceforth, I will be exclusive to Kindle (for e-books) and continue to use the Print-on-Demand features of Createspace.com (also an Amazon company). It will still be available through independent bookstores.

We. That’s an important word. It means that you are not alone. Not alone in your thinking, in your beliefs, in your goals and objectives. “We” means that there are no rock stars in your organization.

I love Ice Hockey and have followed Tampa Bay Lightning since about 2005/2006. The team has some exception players on it and they’ve stuck around for years. The reason that they keep losing to other teams though, is lack of teamwork. Yes, they can snag the puck and drive it down the ice, but they aren’t thinking about the team, about the “we”. The sad part? Ice Hockey is a sport where you get a point for an assist. This means that while you didn’t score the actual goal, you helped in the effort. In fact, they have points doled out  for TWO assists (two other people that contributed to the scoring of the goal. ) “We” is built into the rules of the game.

I’ve seen amazing things that happen because people band together and become “we”. Bands achieve a much greater level of success than they would as individuals. Movies wouldn’t happen at all without the power of “we”. Nations have been forged because of this power. In theory, we have the ability to change our government and it’s officials if “we” band together and cast our vote. “We” have done feats that were unimaginable (moon landing, Mars Rover etc).

What do you want to accomplish? Now find someone else who shares in that goal. Now you have a “we”.

Go do great things.

Since about November of 2007, I had wanted to try my hand at another creative task. My mother was always a good writer, and I did very well in English classes (both high school and college) so I thought that I would give it a try. I had discovered online blogs around that time (maybe a few months prior) and had heard about a contest called NanoWrimo. The basic premise is that you write a rough draft of a 50,000 word novel in 30 days or less. I had to wait almost a year to participate and win it, due to a very demanding job that I had in 2007.

In 2008, on Nov 26th, I crossed the finish line with my very first completed novel. The next day, I read it and deemed it worth saving. Fast forward to July of 2010, and I was putting it in the Kindle store for sale. Sad to say, wealth and fame were NOT bestowed upon me immediately.

Four Years Later

Now, here it is winding down 2012 and, while I have a second book out (and published as a Print on Demand, Kindle and Nook versions) with a third one that needs editing, I feel like I am just getting started in my career as a writer.

I did gain some satisfaction this past May, when LifeHack.org took me on as a contributor. It was the first writing I had done that I had not published myself. Further validation came about three weeks ago when I sold to a book to someone over in Great Britain. This is not someone I went to school with, or family members, or a work friend. This is a complete stranger that bought it based upon the description and cover.

Recently, I went to Dragoncon and got quite a bit out of the writing panels. A couple of pieces of advice that I took away from that was: 1) get on GoodReads.com and Smashwords.com. and 2) get a literary agent.

Goodreads has giveaways that you (as an author) can do. This will get your name out there and get you reviews as well. I had 820 people request one of five copies. These are total strangers, as I didn’t announce anything at all about it on the social media channels. Out of the 820, 233 have it listed in their “To Read” Section. The conversion ratio is 28%. How many of those will actually buy the book? Not sure. I spent a total of about $65 for the contest. That comes out to 8 cents per person that is now aware of my name and my work. I would do that again in a minute.

Getting a literary agent is a much bigger step. I’m waiting on reviews to come in and hopefully, some more sales out of this contest. If I can approach them with actual numbers, then I will show that I am serious about my craft and that I understand that it’s a business.

Four years later and I’m just getting started. Isn’t this how an “overnight” success story starts out? I’m willing to give it a try…

Life is short and we’re not really sure how much time we have. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve got too many things to finish and accomplish to waste my time. Unfortunately, i haven’t found a way around the whole “have to go to work” thing, and I have managed to acquire a couple of bad habits, such as eating and buying things.

Every day tattoo

The problem

That being said, I strive to make the most of the spare time that I have. There are a few obstacles in the path though. Inertia, bad day, too tired, just want to sit on the couch and watch TV…all of these things keep you from doing what you really want to do. The problem in overcoming these obstacles is not intentions, or will power, or needing a plan. The biggest problem is habit. We have gotten in the habit of watching TV, of sleeping in and hitting snooze, of…well, you get the idea.

That’s the idea behind Every Day. If I do what I’m passionate about every day, then I will build the habits necessary to accomplish my goals. Every day I write something. Every day I get one step closer to finishing a project. Every day another checkmark on a todo list. Once the habit is built, the rest is easy. I will still plan and plot. I will still abandon some projects that are either unrealistic or not relevant anymore. But everyday, I will work towards the goal. Every day…