I've just hosted a guest on my Learn To Love Your Words Business Blog.
They contacted me about an infographic they had created on Becoming A Digital Nomad.
It's given me fresh food for thought and a renewed motivation to crack on and write the books and create the online workshop products I need to give me some regular income while we travel.
It's also got me thinking about my priorities and what I can do now to be better prepared.
My Priorities
My three top takeaways from this Infographic:
1) Live with less
- Last month I wrote about Minimalism and my quest to reduce the 'stuff' in my life.
- We've just hired cleaners to clean the house monthly and ahead of the first clean we had a good tidy up.
- We've already started to get rid of things and I've been gradually squirrelling away books and nic-nacs in the 'gift box' to give to friends and family for birthday and Christmas gifts.
- We've started 'project summer house' - converting the old brick outhouse into a a summerhouse and tool shed. The idea of the project is to recycle as many resources as possible, so all that old flooring and paint under the stairs and all the old wood we have in the outbuilding will be used in the build, this will free up space and reduce the junk!
It's a work in progress, but we're getting there.
2) Digitise Everything
I've settled on HubSpot as a way to keep track of my contacts and clients and I need to experiment with other digital tools to organise myself. There is probably more I can do via my Android phone - fewer notebooks!
3) Finances
- Keep our debt to a minimum (we're already pretty good at this)
- Build up our savings pot
- Create digital products and an online sales funnel
I write fiction as Amy C Fitzjohn, but when I'm not writing, my day job is to help others discover the joy of writing - in particular, businesses.
As a Content Coach, I work with small businesses every day to help them bring their words to life, using my experience as a fiction author, story fanatic and a trainer.
I'm working with a client who is writing a non-fiction book.
At our last session, we talked about how to structure her book, the 'architecture' behind building that book.
It made me realise that putting together a book, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, needs to follow a sensible structure and there are differences between books, and in the world of digital publishing best practice is still evolving.
For example, in a print book there are sections that would traditionally be in the front, such as, achknowledgements, list of other books by the author, etc.
However, in an eBook it's better to put these in the back.
This is bacasue when people go to 'look inside' the book on Amazon, they want to read the book!
There's nothing more infuriating than not being able to read any actual book content!
You really don't want to infuriate people before they buy - they'll never be a customer if you do!
I've put together this handy infographic for anyone planning a book.
It gives you a sense of how to structure it and where to put things.
When you write the first draft, don't get too hung up on the order of things and what should be where - writing a book does not have to be a linear process.
The most important thing is to just write.
Get the words out of your brain, just as they come, then chop, change a rearrange later.
Happy writing!
