I realized when I started my second book that the mobile binder system provided the perfect way to capture my inspirational moments and organize my research material. I no longer had to start my book at chapter one, I actually started it 2/3rds of the way through, simply because I had lots of research material already collated for that particular subject.

By the time I had written about my current situation my mind had already worked out how the chapter before led up to this time and how the chapter following would be formed. I was no longer restricting my imagination and inspiration to just focus on that one story at a time, because all the stories were linked! I didn’t need to write all the chapters at once – just scribble a note to myself and put it in the relevant research section for later! I had these inspirational moments on the bus, walking the beach, standing in line at the grocery store and even in the shower. I just wrote myself a quick note so I didn’t lose the idea and then filed it away in my bookbuilding binder. I call these “inspirational bundles” and use clear pockets to keep each “bundle” of notes together, eventually these will inspire my chapter titles for my book.

So how much does this all cost? You can print just one book if you like and buy your books on demand averaging $6.50 a copy plus an initial set-up cost (starting at around $150 if you self publish using LightingSource) or you could opt to buy your own stock for back of room sales and reduce the cost per copy to $6. If you retail your book at $20 that means you net $14 for each sale! That’s a much better return than traditional publishers will give you (An average royalty is around 5% which would net you $1.50 per book – you need to sell nearly 10 times more books to get the same return!)

There are lots of options depending on how many you want to print, how many pages your book is and how it will be bound. These examples are taken straight from some of my quotes from a local Print on Demand printer based on approx 200 pages and full colour cover. There are many things to consider when choosing a printer/publisher including the quality of their print and paper (do you get bleed through on the print to the reverse page?). Most important is the level of service they are offering you, some allow free uploads (i.e. no set-up costs) but remember nothing is for free and there is usually a catch like signing over the rights to your book or only receiving a small royalty for each book sold. What other services do they offer? Do they offer educational programs to help you produce a professional looking book? Do they give advice on layout and design and what distribution services do they offer (i.e. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, online book store, ISBN No. Barcode and copyright) Is your book printed locally or is it shipped out to a 3rd world country where print and paper quality can be an issue.

There is a myth about being a first time author I’d like to blow apart. It is not just for the elite, you do not have to face hundreds of letters of rejection from publishers, you can afford to self-publish, and you do have time to write it in your busy schedule! I can show you how easy it can be and share a unique method to create and organize your first book. Read the full story

Have you ever had one of those light bulb moments where an idea comes in out of the blue?

It’s the sort of idea that you feel compelled to act on and it can make you drop everything or keep you awake in the early hours. Perhaps you had a vision for a new invention that will make you rich, an idea for a novel or even something to save or change the world.

These types of inspirations are wonderful.  They seem to come in at random when you are least expecting them and they happen to all of us. They also seem to come in fully formed in less than a second.

Isaac Newton apocryphally had one when an apple fell on his head leading to his Laws of Motion and Theory of Gravity. What actually happens in these cases is that you are thinking of something other than the task at hand.

To understand where these types of inspiration come from, it’s worth looking at times when they don’t happen. Say you are suffering from road rage or you’ve had an email that’s upset you, I think you’ll agree it’s hard to be creative. On the other hand, if your inner critic or internal dialogue is running, it has the effect of damping inspiration and the flow of ideas.

Mind maps are a really useful tool to use to get you into a creative way of thinking.  The left brain tells the right brain, “Leave the maps to me, I’m good at structure and navigation.”  While the logical left hemisphere is busy, the right brain is left free to sneak under its radar and get into full creative flow.

To get into a dissociated mode where you are “not thinking” about an issue, here’s a simple mind mapping exercise. Note that you don’t need any special software, pen and paper is just fine.

In the middle of a piece of paper, draw a picture that represents the opportunity or issue on which you would like some inspiration.

Now get any book and pick four pages at random and count down to the 7th line on each page. When you get to the 7^th line, find the first noun in that line for each page.

If there isn’t a noun, use the first adjective and if there aren’t 7 lines choose another page at random.

Now draw four branches off your central image with each of the words on them. Then, without thinking if possible, draw sub-branches with words that come to mind from each of these seed words. Like word association, just write down the first words that come into your head.  Feel free to make more associations from the new words.

You should end up with a picture something like the one above. You will find you have been taken down several new routes in your thinking and you may even have had a blinding flash of inspiration … and a great idea for a new book.

In my earlier blog called the Cascade of Creativity, I mentioned how you can ground ideas by taking them through a fairly logical process.

You can see that blog here

The advantages of this approach is that your idea doesn’t float off so someone else can pick up on it AND that the idea is not rushed. As a result, it has a better chance of actually happening.

Well many a wine grower, and now many farmers, have been synching their crops to the phases of the Moon for aeons using biodynamics. If you want to know more, have a look at this book In Tune With the Moon from Findhorn Press.

Women are of course more tuned to the Moon than many men and lunatics quite literally sometimes come out of the asylum more often when the Moon is full.

There are both exoteric and esoteric reasons why this all works which I go into more details on in my 1-2-1 mentoring and workshops and I may well come back to later in this series.

I’ve been synching my creative and marketing activity to the Moon for over a year now and can testify it seems to work – and it’s no harm or effort to try. If nothing else, the sight of the Moon at night reminds you to be measured in your approach and to ensure you think thing through in logical and measured manner.

What you do is this – each month work through your initial inspirations while the Moon is just past New. From the First Quarter to Full, conceptualise the ideas and how they might play out. From Full to Last Quarter, work on structure. Finally, from Last Quarter to New, work on the actual words.

Now obviously external pressures might make this a bit of a luxury but I think it works well for projects with a medium term time constraint – like a novel or a marketing initiative.

You can find out the current phase of the moon here …

The proof is in the pudding and there’s no harm in trying – and I would really appreciate your feedback as to how you get on …

Have you ever had the most amazing idea or light bulb moment and then not carried it through?

Then a year or two later, you see someone else has done it and ’stolen’ your invention or idea for a book.

You take umbrage and feel a bit aggreived.

To explain how this comes about, imagine that all knowledge, wisdom and memories - past, present and future - sit in a sort of cosmic soup.

This has many names like the superconsciousness, the Akashic Field, the Zero Point Field or the Collective Mind. You can think of our brains, especially that 90% the scientists don’t have a function for, as a tranducer to the collective consciousness which sits outside our 3-D space and time.

You will notice that you have these bright ideas when you are not thinking – either dreaming, day dreaming or meditating – which is when the conscious mind is on pause.

If you don’t act on the idea, what happens is that it pops back into the cosmic mind and anyone else can then pick up on it.

An alternative approach is to act on the Idea and start to Dream about where it can take you  – or you can take it. Then you can Evaluate all the options and take Action.

By doing this, you take the inspiration all the way done into the real world and ground the IDEA and make it your own.

Later on in this series, I will show you how you can synchronise this process (and your creative writing) to the phase of the Moon and get even more amazing results.