Walking the Talk, Part 14 – The Rough Draft is Finally Done!
I bet you were probably thinking I flaked on that No More Smelly House project didn’t cha?
Well hear me loud and clear – I didn’t.
The last time I blogged I was 40-something pages into writing it. And I thought I was almost done. I kept thinking, “just a few more days… just a few more days.”
Well 40-something pages has turned into 80 pages. And now I can honestly say that the end of my writing journey is near.
It actually ended a little prematurely last week when I had the nerve to get an awful case of writers block!
I didn’t want to put any undue pressure myself, by trying to force the words out. So I did what I said I wasn’t going to do.
I hired a ghostwriter to pen the introductions for 6 sections in No More Smelly House.
Yeah, I cheated a little. But if I sat and waited, it might have gone undone. It’s hard to regain a strong momentum if you let a project sit for too long.
In any case, here’s the project description I used to find my guy:
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I’ve written a 70+ page manuscript on how to rid your home of bad smells.
I’m looking for someone who can write introductions – consisting of 3-6 paragraphs each – for the following sections:
* All Over the House Odors
* Animal Odors
* Kitchen Odors
* Bathroom Odors
* Laundry Room Odors
* Smoke OdorsI’m not looking for somebody who’s merely going to summarize what I’ve already written.
I am looking for intro’s that maybe have a quick story, give the reader interesting/shocking facts, offer a bit of humor, etc. I like color and personality.
Once you’re chosen as the winner, you will receive a copy of the manuscript.
Payment will be made immediately upon receiving the final version of the work. (I have a spotless payment record on eLance.)
And I need the work to be completed within 5 days.
Thank you in advance.
——————–
The gentleman who I chose had a perfect feedback rating, samples of previously published work, and agreed to do it for $120.
I just received the intro’s over the weekend, and so far they’re great. I’m very pleased.
What about the No More Smelly House blog?
In the midst of writing No More Smelly House, I realized that I wanted to take a different direction with the No More Smelly House blog.
When I really sat down and thought about it, I just couldn’t imagine having to smell 500 different air fresheners a year. There really aren’t that many scents to go through. So I’d run out of content ideas kind of quickly.
Instead, I’m going to primarily focus on products that help to neutralize odors in the home, all natural type products, and have a little smell good stuff thrown in.
For example, during my writing I found that lots of people dislike the smell of offgassing furniture.
Like if you buy a desk, and it has that ‘new’ smell to it. That new smell is usually formaldehyde. And it can give people with sensitive systems headaches, sinus infections, breathing problems, and so on.
So in the blog, I’ll feature interesting pieces of furniture that don’t offgas.
Or, there’s a new lightbulb that has a fragrance already built in. Everytime the bulb is on, the room gets a sweet scent. That’s interesting because it’s not a normal, everyday air freshener. Much more blog-worthy.
Are you still doing No More Smelly House as a print book?
You bet!
Print-on-demand to be exact.
Aaron Shepard is the author an excellent book titled Aiming at Amazon, that offers a super simple approach for using print-on-demand to get into Amazon.
His technique is brilliant, and I promise it will save you thousands of dollars in potential book printing fee’s. Really exciting stuff!
Anyway, I got my ISBN numbers a couple of weeks ago. On the Bowker web site it says they’ll take about two weeks to arrive. But I received mine in three days. And I didn’t order the rush service. So maybe they’re not busy right now.
And I found a company that’ll create an index for No More Smelly House and design the interior of the book. According the rates listed on the site, it should be less than $300 for everything. (But I won’t tell you who they are just yet, till I give it a go.)
Well friends, that’s the update.
I’ll probably be back with more frequency now that I’m wrapping this project up. I actually have two more titles in the works. But they’re not quite as intense as this one, so I’ll have a bit more time.
Keep on writing baby!
Alexis
Filed under: Bullet Point
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Glad to see its going so well! It was so long since the last post, I thought you’d fallen off the face of the Earth! And speaking of your last post, it would be cool to learn a bit about how you approached those websites about selling NMSH. Perhaps fodder for a future blog entry?