Today in our continuing book study of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP], we look at the pitch.

There are two kind of pitches: 1) the elevator pitch, which is over by the time the elevator gets to the next floor, and 2) your long-form pitch. [p.70]

I keep trying to come up with a snappy elevator pitch:

• “Art & Fear only funny”?
• “How to Write a Novel in 30 Days for slackers”?
• “Twilight, but well-written. And no vampires”?

Perhaps, as the authors¹ also suggest, my subtitle is the elevator pitch: “procrastination as a creative strategy, or how I stopped worrying  and learned to love doing it wrong.”

The long-form pitch is no less simple.  It’s supposed to be a paragraph or two, but still under a minute.

How about:

In 2007 a small group of creative amateurs founded a society dedicated to celebrating their procrastination and found, to their amazement, that their productivity improved. Now they share the secret of their success with nine “precepts,” ways to re-organize your thinking about how you create and why.  Sometimes counter-intuitive and usually amusing, their strategies distill some of the most obvious secrets of the creative process to free you from your own mindblocks.

Hm.  How about:

Sure, you can buy a book to help you cure your procrastination, but why would you? Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy frees you from the worry and the guilt—and shows you how to use your bad habits to become more productive in your creative life.  No matter whether you’re a writer, an artist, a composer, a programmer, a gardener, or any other creative type, the Nine Precepts of Lichtenbergianism will give you ways to rethink your creative habits and give yourself permission to succeed—by failing!

That’s better, and more in sync with the tone of the book.

Tomorrow is better!  That’s the motto of the Lichtenbergian Society, a group of creative men who bonded over their shared tendency to procrastinate and found that they became more productive because of it. Now Lichtenbergian chair Dale Lyles shows you how you, too, can stop worrying about your bad habits and learn to love your own creative process.  Whether you’re a frustrated writer, artist, composer, gardener, or programmer, you’ll find new ways to think about how you create and why, from Task Avoidance to Successive Approximation to Ritual to Abandonment—if you give yourself permission to fail, you give yourself permission to create.  It’s that simple!

One more:

Are you a creative genius?  No, only Mozart is a creative genius, and you are not him.  But you are creative—yes, you are, admit it—and you want to overcome your fears and your bad habits so that you can write that novel/paint that painting/compose that song/program that app.  Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy gives you nine Precepts, ways to restructure your thinking about how you create and why so that you can just get to work and create the work of your dreams. But not today.  Tomorrow is better.

And I’m spent.

—————

¹ I keep saying “the authors” because it’s easier than typing out their names: Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry.

From The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP]:

A common mistake authors make is choosing a title that has a particular meaning to them but that no one else understands.

Well.

I mean to say.  Lichtenbergianism.  What could go wrong?

I will admit to having been told already that the title sucks and won’t survive an agent/editor/publisher.  I will resist while I can, of course, because the whole core of the book is how the Lichtenbergians became more productive through the use of the Nine Precepts (although of course the Precepts are ex post facto developments).

The subtitle of the book, I would hope, makes the purpose of the book clear: Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.  My feeling is that the silliness of the main title becomes attractive when attached to the subtitle, i.e., the browser is distracted by the weird, incomprehensible title, then sees the subtitle and laughs, yeah, I need this book.

But I am not the expert, the authors of EGGYBP are, and they suggest a couple of strategies here.  The first is to create a “title pool” of words that could go into your title:

• procrastinate, procrastination, procrastinating
• create, creative, creativity
• put off, hold off, postpone, protract
• don’t start, tomorrow…
• finish, finished, finishing

Then somehow you’re supposed to find that perfect title out of all those terms.  (They also suggest checking Google Adwords to see what will result in your book being found, but that involves creating an account which involves “budgets” and “payment” and all that stuff.)  Here are ten:

1. Don’t Create, Procrastinate!
2. Never Finish Today (what you can put off tomorrow)
3. A [Poem]* Is Never Finished: *painting/song/novel/garden ( a riff on the Paul Valery quote)
4. Be Creative… Some Day
5. Be Creative… Tomorrow
6. Hold That Thought! : a guide to creative procrastination
7. Lord, Make Me Creative, But Not Yet (a riff on St. Augustine’s sly prayer about chastity)
8. Tomorrow Is Better: procrastination as a creative strategy
9. Back Burner Creativity, or Creativity on the Back Burner
10. Moseying to the Finish Line: creativity is not a race

Okay, there are a few in there that I could tolerate were an agent to hold a book contract to my head.

Another strategy from EGGYBP is to “get lots and lots of opinions.”  I realize that anyone reading this blog has already had their brains infected by Lichtenbergianism, but try to forget that perfect title and give me your opinions in comments.  Who knows?  This could be that moment when Bugles Sang True finally became Gone With the Wind.

Back to work.

When last we looked in on Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy, I was reading through The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [EGGYBP] and working on all the advice contained therein.  Chapter 2 deals with one’s online presence and how to capitalize on that.

Okay, I’ve read the chapter a couple of times and I have to admit I’m kind of stuck in a little mental eddy.  I know what they’re talking about, of course, and I’ve seen all of the strategies and platforms in action, but where I’m stuck is figuring out how best to proceed.

There are a couple of stumbling blocks.  The first is deciding on who I want to be in this endeavor.  I already have this blog, and accounts with Twitter, Tumblr, Imgr, and Instagram, not that I use them (because I don’t have to.)

But I think it’s wise—and smart—to split Dale Lyles from Lichtenbergianism.  I can post my liberal rants or muse on the aspects of ritual in the 3 Old Men or post my music and William Blake’s Inn sketches—but that’s muddying the waters when it comes to attracting a “permission base” to Lichtenbergianism.  Anyone who heads to the intertubes looking for Lichtenbergianism ought to be able to be immersed in it.

That means a separate website/internet presence based completely on the book and any services/goods I might be offering.  (What, you don’t want to buy a Lichtenbergian brand Waste Book? Or a Cras melior est hoodie?)

So there’s the first stumbling block.  Do I want to go to the trouble of establishing lichtenbergianism.com and @TheLichtenbergian and all that before anyone shows any interest in the book, or do I need to do that in order to attract interest in the book?  Ugh.  Around and around I go.

The second stumbling block is the incredible amount of time/work it takes to establish that permission base of online followers.  I’m going to be posting about the different strategies in Chapter 2, but a lot of them deal with joining one’s online community.

Who, exactly, is that?  I work in a vacuum here in Newnan, and of course that’s my own fault for not looking for my “community” online, but which community is that?  Writers?  Painters?  Gardeners?  Efficiency experts? Creativity gurus?  All of the above?

Thinking that I have to spend hours a day checking on these communities and establishing a presence there just gives me the fantods.

Oh well.  Excelsior.