The Value of Brainstorming

In an earlier post, I talked about the value of critique groups. I failed to mention one important benefit: brainstorming. In a critique group, you can tell your fellow writers if you’re stuck on something or if you’re trying to decide between two storylines, scenes, or options. The whole group pitches in with suggestions, reactions, new ideas. Many of the ideas will be useless, but some will be helpful, others may not work but may lead to better ideas, and a few may be brilliant. As the writer, you listen to the ideas, use the ones that work, and build on the ideas that lead you in a different direction.

According to Wikipedia, “Brainstorming is a creativity technique of generating ideas to solve a problem.”

Typically in most business or creative environments, brainstorming is done in a group of six to twelve people who have some knowledge of the problem being brainstormed. In a critique group, the size of the group may be smaller, but group members are all writers who are familiar with each other’s work.

Brainstorming consists of three elements:

* Understanding the problem: what are you trying to accomplish? Businesses use brainstorming to develop new products, manage large projects, plan for the future, solve problems, and more. Writers use brainstorming to plot, to build characters, to get unstuck … Before you hold a brainstorming session, be clear on your goal: solve a problem in the storyline, flesh out characters, outline a plot, whatever.

* Generating ideas: the idea is to generate as many ideas as possible without regard to their value. Your first ideas may not be good ones, but you need to get those out of your head so you can move on to better ideas. And your bad idea may stimulate someone else to come up with a better ideas.

* Evaluating ideas and selecting the best: after the ideas are collected, evaluate the ideas and decide which to use and which to discard.

The process isn’t necessary a 1-2-3 sequence. If you’re plotting a novel, for example, you will evaluate some ideas and make a choice before you move forward. You may decide on the beginning, then generate and evaluate ideas for the middle, then for the ending. You won’t have a detailed scene-by-scene plot, but you will have a beginning, a middle, and a ending - a nice framework to build a story on.

You can brainstorm in a critque group or writers organization or just a few writers who get together for the purpose.

But what if you don’t have access to a group of other writers? A writer friend called me this week. She and her husband travel much of the year, and she isn’t in one place long enough to get involved in a writers group. She’s finding it difficult to sustain momentum in writing and misses the contact with other writers. So she asked if she could hire me to brainstorm with her.

I hope she found the session as helpful and enjoyable as I did! I loved hearing about her story and her plan to write a novel in November as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

NaNoWriMo is a program to encourage participants to write a complete 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It’s a jump-start for many writers who procrastinate about getting started or get stuck in the middle of a project and never finish it. By having such a short deadline, you have to get the pure green dreck down in a first draft (as I recommended in a previous post). The editing comes later.

So my friend Sue plans to write her novel during November … and for the first time actually complete a manuscript (after starting and abandoning three other novels). After our brainstorming session, she had a good grasp of her main characters; the conflict; the beginning, the middle, and the end; and ideas for several important scenes. She’s excited that she has a concept that will result in a novel in 30 days. I predict this will be her first complete manuscript and possibly her first published book!

My main contribution was to ask questions: What do the main characters look like? How did they get where they are today? Why do they do the things and make the choices they do? How is the heroine going to make an important decision? Why? How does this story fit into your chosen genre?

In truth, Sue could have accomplished everything on her own. It’s possible to brainstorm with yourself - but it’s more difficult. Having another person to bounce ideas off of and to get ideas from is usually more productive because “two heads are better than one.” It’s faster and easier to come up with ideas and to build on each other’s ideas.

And it’s a lot more fun! If you haven’t tried brainstorming, find yourself a brainstorming partner or group and see what great ideas come up.

Connecting - Part III: Trade Exchanges

As mentioned earlier, most of my clients come from referrals. A few come from search engines and expand my circle of connections greatly.

The third way clients connect with me is through barter exchanges. I belong to two such exchanges: Alamo Barter Corporation (ABC) and ITEX.

I originally joined ABC back when I owned my interior landscaping company. I had done some direct trades with clients - an electrician did some work in my office in exchange for plants - but most of the time, direct trades aren’t effective because the two parties don’t need each other’s products or services in the same amount.

Trade (or barter) exchanges serve as a middle man, almost like a bank. When I do work for a client referred by a trade exchange, I don’t get paid in cash. Instead, I get “trade dollars” credited to my account with the exchange. I then use those trade dollars to purchase items from other members.

For example, I’ve done several projects for Sky-View, a company that manufactures, sells, and leases advertising balloons and searchlights. Since I work from a home office and don’t need to attract customers to a physical location, I have no need for Sky-View’s products. But when I write a letter or edit marketing materials for Sky-View, I charge them the same amount in trade dollars as I would in cash. Then I use the trade dollars to pay for dental work, electrical repairs to my home, or other goods and services available from the exchange.

The difference between this method of connecting and referrals and search engines is that the trade exchanges charge fees for their services. However, I have always found that the costs are reasonable for the added business. And trade business can lead to cash business, either through sales to trade customers of items not offered on trade or through referrals.

Successful trading requires planning and management. Each member of the exchange can specify what products and services are available for trade and the maximum amount of trade that will be accepted in a time period.

When I was in the interior landscape business, I sold “used” plants on trade. When we removed plants from a lease account, the plants were often healthy. The plant might have lost lower leaves or be flat on one side from being against a wall, but most homeowners found the plants perfectly acceptable. Customers were thrilled to get a plant that looked fine to them for half the retail price, and my company was able to generate income from assets that had already been expensed when they were leased. The fees I paid to the barter exchange were a bargain compared to the extra income from sales that didn’t cost me anything.

Now in my freelance business, I offer writing and editing services to trade clients under the same terms as cash clients. I watch carefully to be sure I’m not spending too much time on trade business - after all, the utility and phone companies don’t accept trade dollars. And I quit taking trade business if my balance starts to build up or if I have more work than I can handle. But often jobs for trade clients are small projects that I can easily fit into my schedule: a letter, a short article, a simple brochure.

I’ve made some excellent and long-lasting connections through trade. My accountant, Jim Oliver & Associates, is one of the best there is, and I’ve paid him in trade dollars for many years. Of course, income in trade dollars is taxable just as cash, and business expenses paid in trade are deductible. I’m glad to have someone who understands trade doing my taxes.

Dr. J. D. Blackburn of Thousand Oaks Clinic, an outstanding physician, has been my doctor for probably 20 years or more. I pay my deductible and insurance co-payments in trade. And ”Dr. B” has also been a client, both in my interior landscaping business and in my freelance writing business.

If you haven’t ever done trade business, you might want to take a look. You can connect with great clients and vendors/service providers.

Connecting - Part II: Search Engines

In the last post, I talked about the main way clients and I connect: referrals.

Today, I’ll talk about a different way of connecting that happens much less often. Clients don’t often find me through search engines, but when they do, my circle of connections is greatly expanded.

In late 2004, I received a phone call from Ton-Nu Phuong-Thao (or more easily PT) with questions about my editing services. She said she and her husband Kenny were translating her parents-in-law’s memoirs from Vietnamese to English and looking for an editor. It was only when I suggested a meeting that she told me she lived in Dallas, several hours away from my home in San Antonio. When I asked her how she found me, she said she had done an Internet search for “editor in Texas.”

In our early conversations, I told PT that memoirs and family histories usually have limited audiences unless the subjects are already in the public eye.  But when I read the chapter she sent for a sample edit, I realized this was a story that needed to be told.

Editing the book was both a joy and a challenge - to preserve the individual voices of Truong-Nhu Dinh and Tran Thi Truong Nga and the beauty of the Vietnamese language style while making the book easy for Americans to read. Then I introduced the Truongs and their book to Grace Anne and Ken Schaefer at GASLight Publishing, who loved the story as much as I did. The Last Boat Out: Memoirs of a Triumphant Vietnamese-American Family was published by GASLight earlier this year and has received excellent reviews. (2/1/08: The book is now out of print.)

More recently, I got an e-mail from an Air Force reservist deployed in Afghanistan, Ted Janicki. Ted is writing some articles for the base newspaper and inquired about editing because he wants to produce an excellent product. He found me through a search for “editor.” I did a sample edit on an article he sent and found the article well-written, informative, and touching. He mentioned that he and a buddy were keeping journals while deployed, and I suggested he post to a blog. I know many people would be very interested in what he has to say, and the blog can be the basis for a future book.

He was hesitant at first - he has little free time and wasn’t sure he wanted to commit so much of his limited leisure time to writing. However, he is now motivated and has become the Air Force Spokesman for AnyAirman.com. You can read his updates at AnyAirman.com. I think you will like reading his posts and hearing what it’s really like for our troops. I look forward to editing future articles for Ted - and hopefully a book in the future!

You will also find a wonderful opportunity to support our troops. Any Soldier, Inc. was started in August 2003 by a family to support their son and his comrades. Sergeant Brian Horn, stationed in Iraq at the time, volunteered to distribute packages to soldiers in his unit that didn’t get mail. The effort has grown from a family supporting soldiers in a single unit to an organization supporting troops in all branches of service stationed in harm’s way. Learn how you can help at AnySoldier.com, which includes links to pages for all branches of the service.

Ted’s Internet search for an editor connected me with a writer who has great potential. And it introduced me to a great organization that I didn’t know about, which I have now introduced to you. I hope that connection will also help Ted share his experiences and inform and touch many readers.

Search engines don’t produce a lot of connections for me, but the connections I make can be powerful.

Connecting - Part I: Referrals

One of my clients is an executive coach, Barbara A. F. Greene, MCC. She always talks about connecting rather than networking. Networking often turns into an exercise of making contacts for the benefit of the person making the contact, but connecting brings people together in win-win situations.

Thinking about this, I considered how my clients find me - how we connect. People find me in one of three ways, and I’ll talk about each in a separate post.

Most of my clients come from referrals. Here are a few examples:

* I’m editing a book for a minister referred to me by my friend, Chaplain Jerry Sherbourne.

* A writer wanting a critique of her manuscript was referred to me by both my friend Jan (writing consultant and professor) and my client David Bowles.

* I recently edited a master’s thesis and later prepared a resume for someone referred by Barbara A. F. Greene, who had originally been referred to me by Jan.

* I’ve edited several dissertations for students in one department of a local university. The first student was referred to me by Jan. Later, the department head who liked what I did for the first student referred additional students to me.

* Soon I will start editing a novel for a man who was referred by someone in the same office building, a friend and business associate from my days in the interior landscaping business.

* My family doctor referred his adult daughter to me when she needed a resume.

* My brother Frank Nicholson is a Realtor®. Not only has he hired me to create and maintain a Web site (AZ Commercial Property), but he also has referred his clients to me for such projects as business plans.

* Several years ago, I edited The Joy of Six by Charlene Potterbaum. Charlene had been referred by a friend in network marketing.

Actually, my editing career came about from a series of connections. I’ve already talked about how much help my friend Grace Anne Schaefer was when I first started writing. Not only did she give me pointers on the manuscript of Stroke of Luck, but she also introduced me to the Romance Writers of America and the local chapter San Antonio Romance Writers (SARA).

Fellow SARA member Cindi Myers read about a publisher looking for novels with disabled central characters. I submitted to Awe-Struck E-Books, and the novel was accepted as part of the Ennoble line. (Currently the e-book of Stroke of Luck is published by GASLight Publishing owned by my friend Grace Anne and her husband Ken.)

After Awe-Struck saw how meticulous I was (editor Kathryn Struck told me I was the pickiest person she knew!), I edited a dozen books for the company. That experience has been invaluable in my current freelance business.

I can’t tell you how many people Jan and Barbara A. F. Greene have referred to me and how grateful I am to them and everyone who has recommended my services.

But all this has been about what others have done for me, and the truth is others have done far more for me than I could ever do for them. However, I try to reciprocate whenever and however I can. Of course, I refer potential clients (or book buyers or whatever) and promote their businesses and books (as in this post) every chance I get.

And I reciprocate in other ways - answering computer questions, giving encouragement and support, anything I can do.

But the most important thing I can do when someone makes a referral is to provide the best service and deliver the best product I can for the client and make the referrer a hero for recommending me! That is my goal.

Five Angels!

You probably know by now that I get as excited about a great review for a client’s book as the author.

Grace Anne Schaefer just received a 5-Angel review from Fallen Angels Reviews for The New Day Dawns.

Linda L writes in part:

“Ms. Schaefer pens a thoroughly delightful tale that transports the reader into a time of love, frustration and new self-discoveries of a great people. The customs, along with the history of the people, many other facets, and ongoing rituals, as well as the list of in-depth characters, blend in such harmony that makes this one incredible read. … This is one fantastic page-turner.

 

Do You Know Any Aspiring Teen Writers?

EPIC, an organization of writers, publishers, and other professionals in the e-book industry, is sponsoring the 2007 EPIC New Voices Writing Competition for middle school and high school students.

Students in public, private, or home schools may enter short story (fiction), essay (nonfiction), and poetry categories at either the middle school or high school level.

The prizes include cash, e-book reading devices, and gift certificates for e-books.

But every entry will receive something that may be even more valuable to young writers: score sheets/critiques from the judges, who are published authors, editors, and educators.

I didn’t start writing until late in life, but I will always remember the value of the first critique I received on my work (when I was about halfway through Stroke of Luck). My friend, author Grace Anne Schaefer, gave me advice that made my mother say, “I don’t know what it was, but the second half of the book was a lot better than the first half.”

If you are a parent, teacher, or friend of young persons interested in writing, tell them about the New Voices contest. They can write a new piece (or pieces - each student can submit one entry in each category) or they can enter something they have written for a school assignment. Even if they don’t win a prize, they will find the feedback valuable.

But they need to hurry - the deadline is November 1, 2006.