Expand Your Limits

One of the things we played with as kids was trying to figure out where our limits are. Once we figured out where those limits are, we tried to push them. By doing so we were able to expand what we could do, physically and mentally. By continuously pushing our limits we got better, we got stronger, and we got better skilled. Heck, we even got later bedtimes by continuously pushing the issue.

We need to constantly be doing this even as an adult. We can't do that if we constantly play within our limits. You need to figure out where your limits are and then push past them. If you can only do so much detail occasionally try a little bit more. If you can only create in one kind of medium, try a different one. If you can only do painting it may be interesting to see how you can do in ink.

You as an artist should always be trying to figure out how to do new and interesting things. You should be trying to push yourself. You should not be a static individual; you should always be a little bit more on the dynamic side. You should always be trying to figure out new skills. The only way you're going to learn is if you push yourself and you try something new. I don't care if it's doing something as simple as doing, say, two paintings day instead of just one; trying that extra challenge, doubling your output just to see if you can do it with the same quality, can help establish a limit or help show you that you gotten better can be fun to do every so often. 

You need to challenge yourself just to see what you can do, and then push through it. Once you determine what your limits you can then move past them. Don't let difficult challenges throw you; harder challenges just mean that you need to push yourself harder.

You're going to find out what you can pull ioff or you're going to find out that there are just things that you can't do. Either way, you're going to find out something new about yourself. Don't be embarrassed if you find a limit you can't cross; it just means you should try harder in other directions. You're only human; you will find that you have limits. Nonetheless, don't let them stop you; you should always be pushing yourself to find those limits and then push past them. 

That's the only way you will get better and find out just what you can do. So don't see limits as absolute; see them as challenges instead and see what happens.

Don't Be Afraid To Mess Up

Too many artists are scared to make a mistake; this a fear that they need to get over. Most people are nervous about making a mistake in public; there's a reason "public speaking" is one of our biggest fears. It's simply because we as humans are competitive and making a mistake shows a flaw; no competitor worth his salt likes to show a flaw because it can be a way for our competition to take advantage of and thus win. 

It doesn't matter if we are in combat, in sports, or in our studios, we don't want our competition to have an edge over us. 

However, making mistake can also give us a chance to make amazing discoveries. Consider the CUBE computer: Computer scientists use chess to tell how smart their machines are; the better it does against a human competitor the smarter it is. Well, someone decided to turn off the move check system; the reasoning was that the computer wouldn't make a mistake and the human was too good to make a mistake, and so all it was doing was wasting memory. So of course the computer started cheating. 

Yeah, you read that right: CUBE started cheating because one of the human players made a mistake and moved a piece wrong. And won. 

CUBE saw it and went, "Whoa. Wait a sec. I can do THAT?" 

After that CUBE would occasionally move its pieces wrong on purpose. And the human players noticed. They told the programmers, and so the programmers checked the game history. And they were amused. They also re-instituted the move checker almost immediately. 

But the key here is that a mistake was made (the move-check was turned off) and we made an amazing discovery (computers can cheat). Scientists do this all the time; it's well-known that we owe the vulcanization of rubber due to an engineer falling asleep, and that's a major innovation. We see the same in ever endeavor which humans are involved, from science to art to cooking. 

So don't be afraid to make mistakes. Sure, you will make some major mistakes that are going to be embarrassing; but that's just part of the process. You need to make mistakes in order to learn; only be figuring out where the mistake happened can you learn to not make the same mistake again. But...you can also make some amazing discoveries along the way. So don't be afraid to mess up; you need to mess up to get better.

Facebook Groups Are A Great First Step For Marketing

When you start trying to promote your book, you're going to want to find people that would be interested in the kind of book is you're trying to market. It would be really cool if you could find people that happen to be into that kind of thing, right? 

Well, you're going to want to find people who are going to be interested in you're going to be trying to sell, and that means figuring out ways to find these people. Facebook has already done all this for you. All you have to do is tell Facebook what you're looking for and all of a sudden you're going to find hundreds, if not thousands, of different groups on Facebook that are interested in that very topic. 

What's really cool is that you can usually promote your stuff to those people, even if the days are limited in each group, and therefore optimize your marketing. First off, make sure that whatever group you join has no problem with you promoting your stuff. A lot of groups happen to be non-promotional or because of the very nature to hate promotional materials within the group. Go ahead and join those groups for fun, just keep in mind that they won't be part of your marketing plan. For example, as writer you can always find tips and tricks to actually help your writing. 

At the same time, keep in mind that some groups can be a little over promotional; these groups are pretty much nothing but promotion. For comics, this actually works out well because people actually track those groups down; people are always looking for new comics and so finding groups that are ultra-promotional are actually a godsend. 

However, you do need to debate the size of the group: You want people to see your books, and if the group is too big then people may not see your promo. Conversely, if the group is too small then maybe not enough eyes are seeing your materials. As such, I'd suggest a group between 1000 and 10,000; any smaller and not enough people will see your book and more than that and it's likely no one is seeing your book. 

Lastly, try to run your promotions no more than once a week per product; if you have a new page every day then post the new page, but otherwise you may be accused of spamming and bounced from the group; that can put a serious crimp in your promotion plans. So figure out what the Facebook groups are out there that work for your book, make sure that you follow its rules, and don't spam, and you should be able to use the Facebook group for your promotions.  

The bottom line is that Facebook users have organized themselves into groups and you can tap into that to promote your books. Take advantage of that when you promote and it can only help your book become a success. 

Freebies Rock!

If you're trying to figure out a great way to kick off a really great promotion, you should at least debate some sort of freebie. I don't care if it's an eraser, a key chain, even bookmark, you need something that allows people to not only to have a physical reminder of you, but will also carry your contact information on it. The freebie gives you a chance to have a little fun with your marketing, and that alone is worth looking into. Just remember to have something that's practical but looks cool and you should be good to go.

Sometimes you want to give people something that reminds them to check out some more information on your book that you're trying to promote. A freebie acts as a physical reminder to check out the book; it's hard to ignore something that always seems to be in your pocket. Make sure you have your logo and some basic contact information on it, even just an URL, and you should be golden.

My personal suggestion is to go to 4imprint.com and checking out what they have; while there are some other sites that you want to track down, but 4imprint is a great starting point.  However, have a general idea what you are looking for; if you're doing a fantasy comic you might want to look for something like a sword or wizard's cap or if you're doing a horror comic a monster pencil-topper could work. Also, some of these make great tiers for a Kickstarter, such as a USB drive.

Obviously, not all freebies are free, so decide on what you are willing to spend and go for it. However, keep in mind that if you're looking for something that sets you apart but is still cheap enough that it won't hurt your bank account too much. You're looking for something that will work with your comic, that you can toss in with your comic when it ships, or that you can disburse at a convention, and if you can put your logo or URL on it so much the better. 

Straight up: Fan love free swag and little touches, and that's where freebies come in: They're just something a little fun that you can include that will make your fans happy, and anything you can do to make fans happy is worth it when you're trying to sell your comics.

When it comes down to it, freebies act as both a physical reminder to check out your book as well as something fun for your fans. It doesn't matter if its bookmarks, pencil-toppers, or notebooks; freebies can help sell you. They create a certain amount of goodwill towards you, especially if your freebies are actually decent (we all have our memories of horrible little freebies, like printed out bookmarks). So have some fun, find something that works for you, and include them as part of your marketing plan if you really want to kick your promotions up a notch. 

Listen To The Haters!

We're all going to eventually acquire haters, or somebody who hates what we do, the way we do it, and has absolutely no problem saying so. This somebody will track us down into the nether regions of the internet and try to roast us. This person will become one of our personal trolls.

So let's have a lot of them.

It's just something that comes up at some point, and it's a sign that you're doing your job well; you just know you 're getting under someone's skin when you pick up some sort of hater. While they can be irritating, and you may need to figure out some way to deal with them if they become a problem, you can actually use these people to actually get better by listening to what they say while at the same time ignoring it. We all have our flaws that we need to work on. As these people actually have absolutely no problem telling us what a screw up we are, and specifically how we're screwing up.

Okay, so I'm like, "Cool, tell me more." These people can tell you where your flaws are. and nine times out of ten they'll even tell you how to fix those problems. I know it's weird, but listen to these people. Sure, there's a lot of people you need not listen to as they are little more than insulting, they're definitely disrespecting you, and when it comes down to it their entire thing is to get you mad enough that you just up and quit. They would love it if you were never seen from again. 

You should not give them that satisfaction. 

But learn from your haters. Figure out why they don't like you. And then use that to get better. But don't let it get to you; take it as a personal badge of honor; after all, the haters you have out there, the more people that are wanting to see you dead, the better, which is though weird, it means that your audience is increasing to the point that someone hates you. Sure, they may think you suck, but they are reading your writing 

So remember to learn from your haters. Don't internalize, let it roll off your back, but do take advantage of all that free critique as much as you can.

Yes: Writers Are Artists, Too!

You are an artist. One of the things people forget is that people tend to stress that the artist of the piece is the illustrator, and this, of course, creates an interesting little dynamic because it creates a little man complex when it comes to us writers: All of a sudden, we're trying to prove that, yeah, we're artists in our own right. 

The problem is that a lot of people tend to treat writers as the bottom rung of the art world. Our talent is seen as needed, sure, and we even form the basis of the film and television industries. The problem is that because we form the basis of the industry, and it's easy to blame us when things go wrong because we're not even allowed on the set, it's easy to make fun of the writer. It really doesn't help that Writers Guild of America is the weakest guild in Hollywood; sure, when it speaks it roars but it speaks so rarely. 

The same applies to other industries. Thanks to content mills, vanity presses, and self-publishing anyone can be a writer and so everyone has an even greater disdain for the profession. It doesn't help that journalists are already held in contempt by the general public and "writer" is seen as the profession of last resort; if you can't be anything else you can be a writer. And we won't talk about the issues comic book writers have.

But...you don't have to prove that you're an artist. You are an artist, you're doing a lot of really cool creative things. Your art may not be as readily apparent as a drawing or painting or sculpture, but nonetheless, it is a form of art. Writing requires the ability to juggle a lot of moving parts, from characters and worlds to themes and symbolism, and we need to do it in such a way that it looks like it was meant to go that way from the beginning. 

So if someone tells you that you're not an artist, smile mysteriously while memorizing their details and remember that we can do something no one else can do: We can include them in our new book as a victim. Oh, and remember that we're artists: We just aren't as messy as other artists. Usually.

The Importance of a Little Research

Research is maligned by way too many amateur writers. They feel that one should write what one knows, and that means what they know at the moment. Others see it as the boring part of writing, and they refuse to do anything boring. 

These people are idiots. 

As a writer you should always be expanding the boundaries of your knowledge. Those little nuggets may seem trivial to you at first glance, but they can be the difference between someone trying to respect the subject and someone actually respecting the subject, and your audience can tell the difference. Those that are limited to knowing just what they know will never be able to match the authenticity of someone who did their research, and the audiences will love them for it. 

Those that see it as boring would make lousy explorers. Research allows you to ask some of the weirdest questions and find the strangest facts; yu can explore the darkest jungle, the deepest seas, and the furthest stars. Sometimes that bit of trivia that you didn't think you would ever use can help you kill a victim in a way no one has ever seen before. If you don't end up on at least one government watchlist as a writer then you aren't doing it right.

I'm not necessarily saying you have to research every last detail for whatever you happen to be working on. Sometimes all you just need are 5-, 10-, 15-minutes searches, where you just need that one really weird term defined that you've never seen before. But if you happen to get lost researching, where you start in Google and then you hit a string of Wikipedia articles, and that branches into Youtube, all because you found something interesting about some particular term or person, well that really cool.

Getting lost in the research for hours is when you know you're doing it right. The best writers go in for a quick dip and end up diving deep; trivial knowledge is our bread and butter. and sometimes we just can't get enough.

But the key here is that writers need to constantly be researching. You should constantly be updating your knowledge, maintaining a ridiculously huge knowledge base. And from that knowledge base, you're going to find that you're going to be drawing on it in your stories; by doing that your stories are going to gain some depth, some extra emotion, and a level of reality that just adds a really cool level to your writing. 

Your stories with ring true on a lot of levels, and that truth makes your stories feel like they could actually happen, regardless of whether you are writing about a rogue scientist, the Russian Revolution, or fleet of dragons.  

So if someone say research is boring or not needed, then smile mysteriously, secure in the knowledge that your houses will stay together because they were built with more than prayers and dreams. You did your research and know how nails work, and have since 3000 BC. And that makes your stories that much more solid. Because you did the research....