All
authors and book promoters need to have their version of an equipment bag. Just
as I carry an equipment bag for the baseball team of 10 and 11-year-olds that I
coach, so too must writers and those who market them.
What
should go in your equipment bag? It’s not just the tools of your trade –
laptop, smartphone, pen, pad, and dictionary (coffee too!) – but rather it’s
the resources that you may call upon to improve your writings and help you
produce great content at a prolific rate.
A
baseball team bag tends to have both offensive and defensive tools. For instance, it has battling helmets to
protect the hitter from suffering an injury to the head. It has emergency items
to treat an injury, such as ice packs and band-aids. It also has a weapon to score
runs with -- bats -- and it has baseballs, the crucial item needed in order to play a
game.
A
writer’s equipment bag may not be a physical thing, though it could very well
be things that help today’s writer to perform his or her core task. Maybe your bag has snacks, a device to listen
to music, a power cord, and some other useful items. Perhaps you have other content to inspire or
distract you – newspapers, magazines, books, etc. But what writers need are resources – certain
websites, social media pages, blogs, videos, podcasts and landing pages – that
inform the writer.
Perhaps
your bag has clothes in it. Some clothes
make us feel sexy. Other clothes give us
a professional appearance. You have athletic clothes, casual wear, night-out
threads, and all kinds of looks. Which
clothes will give you comfort to bang out a great book?
Maybe
your bag has an addictive substance or behavior in it. Did you remember to
bring your smokes, booze, pills, or needles?
Perhaps you need to have sex, shop, eat, or gamble before you are
focused on writing. Put it into your
bag.
Sometimes
a bag just needs to be emptied. We burden ourselves with things, thoughts, and
obligations. To write well we need to unclutter our minds. Maybe you need to meditate, take a nap, or
workout before you start hacking away at the keyboard.
Writers
know which elements are conducive for them to be productive. Some of us need complete silence around us
while others thrive amid noise and chaos.
Some
require a certain part of the day -- sunrise, pre-dawn, dusk, midnight, lunchtime,
or commuting time – to produce our best writings.
We
all carry an equipment bag with us.
Think about what should be in your bag and then pack it up and go off to
write. Just remember to pack extra
underwear – you may decide to stay a little longer once you settle in.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2016
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