C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

Right about now, if you’re doing National Novel Writing Month, you’re feeling a little tired and you have two complaints: Where do I take my story from here and how can I better manage my time to meet my writing goals?

I can help. First, here’s a link to my guest post on Masquerade Crew today. This excerpt from my book, Crack the Indie Author Code, is an easy, fun and  genuinely intuitive exercise that will turbocharge your NaNoWriMo efforts and make your manuscript fresh. I call the strategy my Trio approach to story creation. You’ll love it and your readers will, too.

And now your free time management tool: The SlimTimer. I found it through The Nerdist Way by Chris Hardwick. (With all those Star Wars jokes and references in my books, you must have guessed my nerd secret, huh?) This tool will help you track your activities and find time. Only what is measured can be improved. Measure your day with this timer.  Then make time you didn’t know you had, get back on track and stay on track.

Crack the Indie Author Code is Book One. Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire is Book Two in my series on writing and publishing. For fresh inspiration, I offer this uber cool image to motivate you to persist with writing your book so you, too, can have a cool ad like this!

Click the image to get Higher Than Jesus

Often when we think of graphic designers, we only think about book covers. Kit Foster from KitFosterDesign.com sent me this ad this morning. I’m using the white variation above in the Orangeberry book tour. Pretty cool, huh? Kit is not only an author and the sponsor of the All That Chazz podcast, he’s also an amazing designer. He does book covers, web banners, Quote Art and much more. If you have a podcast, you need art. If you need an ad, check out Kit’s portfolio and go get help. Great images grab eyeballs.

Graphic designers can do more than just book covers. Kit is a great consultant. For instance, it was he who suggested that I add a tag line to my covers using the ten commandments to reflect some aspect of the plots through the series. In Bigger Than Jesus, it was “Thou shalt not steal.” In Higher Than Jesus, it’s “Thou shalt not kill.” In the next book, Hollywood Jesus, it’s “Thou shalt not covet.” That tweak added a lot to the look and tone I wanted to achieve. Tweak your covers. Don’t let them lie there, weak and ugly.

I’m so excited about how my books are turning out (which explains how linktastic I am today), I want you to be excited about your books, too. Go write one.

Related articles

• #NaNoWriMo Tip: How to blast out of the gate (chazzwrites.com)
• #NaNoWriMo: The key tip to write a much better book (chazzwrites.com)
• NaNoWriMo: My crucial mistake (chazzwrites.com)
• Bigger Than Jesus: Descent (allthatchazz.com)
• The Gambler (allthatchazz.com)
• The Ultimate Liar (allthatchazz.com)
• Ta-da! Motivation, Inspiration & Information for Writers (chazzwrites.com)
• Branding: The change I made (chazzwrites.com)
• Tools of the Trade: Things go awry (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, All That Chazz, Aspire to inspire, Bigger than Jesus, book covers, book promotion, Chris Hardwick, Crack the Indie Author Code, ebook, Graphic design, guest post, higher than jesus, Kit Foster, Kit Foster Design, Literature, Masquerade Crew, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, novel in a month, Podcast, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, self-publsihing, SlimTimer, time management tool, writer, Writers Resources, writing, writing advice, writing tips, writing tools