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It’s All in Your Head

June 1, 2021– It’s already June! Can you believe that we are halfway through another year? Today we’ll be starting a new theme for the month, and it’s all about Author Mindset. We’re going to dig into this in-depth, and I’m going to share some science, some tips, and some exercises that will help you get into the right headspace so that you can achieve your goals and have fun doing it!

Everything begins and ends in our minds, and we cannot have a reality without the mind entering into it. Author mindset is how you see yourself as an author/creator/artist, how you see your work, your beliefs about yourself and your work, and what limitations you have put on yourself as an artist. We’re going to talk about some really cool things like genetic inheritance, limiting beliefs, and self-sabotage and how to make massive changes. Whatever you believe about yourself, good or bad, will end up being your reality.

Today’s exercise is simple. I want you to get a pen or pencil or open your laptop and write down five good things that you believe about yourself as an author and write down five not-so-good things you believe about yourself.

For example:

  • I am a great storyteller.
  • I am passionate about writing.
  • I can write a bestseller.
  • I am motivated and disciplined to write every day.
  • I can help combat illiteracy through my books.

Not so good things:

  • I procrastinate in making decisions in my writing which delays the release of my books.
  • I am messy and unorganized and waste time trying to find things that I need to begin writing.
  • I don’t think that I can ever be awarded a prestigious prize for writing because my books are too silly.
  • I don’t think I can make enough money from my writing to do it full-time.
  • Does anyone really care what I have to say?

Read the first list aloud; how does it make you feel? Take note of your feelings, jot them down beside each answer you gave.

Now read the second list; how does it make you feel? Write down your feelings beside each answer you gave.

Every single problem has a solution. That’s the good news. The bad news is that if you don’t have a positive author mindset that looks at problems as challenges that can be overcome, you won’t be long for this industry.

I want you to write down five solutions to your not-so-good list.

For example:

  • I will decide on a direction for my book within 10 seconds and follow my instincts to make the right choice.
  • I will organize my writing space for ten minutes each day.
  • I won’t worry about what critics think about my work; as long as I enjoy it, nothing else matters, not an award and not other people’s opinions.
  • I will commit to educating myself in book marketing, sales, and best practices to write full-time as a career eventually.
  • It doesn’t matter if no one wants to read my work; I do this because I enjoy it and am free from the judgement of others.

I hope that you’ll do this exercise and that it will give you insight into how you think about yourself, your work, and what your author mindset is at the moment. I’ll give you the tools, but you have to use them. Nothing changes if nothing changes!

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Limiting Beliefs

June 4, 2021– What’s holding you back as an author? Did you know that sometimes we are unaware of the thoughts that have been programmed into our subconscious? I know it can be a bit difficult to understand, but today we’ll explore limiting beliefs, what they are, where they come from, and how you can break free of them.

What are limiting beliefs? They are thoughts that are not true that hold us back and shrink our views of the world and who we are considerably. They hold us back professionally and disrupt our personal development. Limiting beliefs can sound like, “I’m not good enough,” “I’ll never reach my goals,” “I can’t afford it,” or “I don’t deserve it.”

Where do limiting beliefs come from? A lot of the things that are pre-programmed into our subconscious take place during childhood and around our experiences during development and onward into our teen and young adult years. For example, perhaps you heard your parents say to you at a young age, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” “Starving artist,” “That’s not a real job,” “How do you plan on making money?” I had one author discuss their limiting beliefs with me, and she said that her parents used to tell her that she couldn’t make a living from her art as a writer, so she had better find a real job because life is expensive. That belief stuck with her 40 years later, and it hindered her growth professionally, and she suffered greatly for many years with self-esteem issues and procrastination. We must remember that most parents try to do the best they can, but sometimes they say things that have been programmed into their subconscious at a young age by their families. My dad is an entrepreneur, so naturally, I saw him achieve a level of success that was not at a desk or in a factory, and this showed me what is possible (working for yourself and making an income, being your own boss, taking responsibility for everything that goes on in your company etc.) and that I can achieve even bigger things. We must look at limiting beliefs as a blueprint. If we don’t change the blueprint, there’s a ceiling on what we can achieve because our minds, efforts, and actions will not be in sync to do anything more than what we believe.

How can you break free of limiting beliefs?  When someone tells you that you can’t do something, or that you’re never going to make it, or that you should stop writing and get a real job, they are showing you THEIR limitations. To break free of limiting beliefs, we need to ask ourselves for evidence constantly. “You can’t earn a living by writing.” Is that true? What evidence is there to support that belief? There are plenty of authors who have earned a living and made buckets of money with their books. Continually ask yourself if things are true and what proof you have to support that. Remember that what is true for other people doesn’t have to be true for you! Our brains have a way of making things up and skewing the facts to support our limiting beliefs.

I want you to write down some of your own limiting beliefs that you have as an author and closely examine them. Why do you have them? What do you need to do to break them? 

Remember that everything begins and ends in the mind, and what you believe has no choice but to become your reality, so make it a good one. If you want to believe in something, believe in yourself and that you have the ability to do anything you set your mind to and take action toward.

 

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Fun and Games! Free Downloadable Activities!

May 31, 2021– To wrap up our Children’s Book Writing segment, we wanted to share these awesome activity sheets for kids created by our intern Hannah Kim! Thank you, Hannah. All you have to do is click on the activity to download it. Check them out here:  Panda_WordSearch,   Darlene_Maze_Colour, Snakes_SpotDiff, Bookmark

We hope you enjoy the activities and if you want to share your completed work, send us an email at pandapublishing8@gmail.com.

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Fond of Font

May 31, 2021– I hope you’ve enjoyed our theme for May, Children’s Book Writing and that you learned a lot of valuable information. Today we wrap up and talk about one last thing that you need to know FONTS MATTER!

Did you know that there are 32,000 fonts available at this current moment? But what should you know about choosing the right font for your self-published book when there are so many options? (Please remember that whatever font you choose must be considered public domain as some are copyrighted). Do your research.

  1. Audience-Who are you writing for? The font should match who the reader is when combined with all of the guidelines below. Is your audience toddlers, mid-grade readers, early readers, or young adults? They all deserve their own fonts that compliment who the audience is. There’s no quicker way to put a reader off a book than by choosing the wrong font.
  2. Readability-Choosing fonts that are easy to read seems like an obvious choice, but you won’t believe how many submissions I’ve had that have been in tight cursive that is barely readable. When writing for kids, please remember that they are learning to read; we don’t want to create any barriers to that, so we must be aware of what looks complicated, unclear, and hard to decipher.
  3. Topic– When you see a spooky font such as Tango Macabre or Ghoulish Fright, you automatically associate the story with Halloween, ghouls and ghosts, and creepiness. The font should match the topic. You wouldn’t use Lunacy More for a bedtime book. The topic matters, and the font can make or break your book if it doesn’t help convey the message of your story!
  4. Visual Appeal– Think outside the box on this one! A great way to add interest and visual appeal is to change the colour, size, and font choice throughout your book. Be careful not to go overboard and take away the attention from the story. A perfect example of this is DJ the Terrible, written by Sam Nemeth available here: DJ (Djeaneautha) The Terrible! – Pandamonium Publishing House. We decided to change the font in certain paragraphs and bold some words for effect; it’s an easy way to keep the reader engaged in the middle-grade space without overwhelming them.

Well, that’s all from me on Writing Children’s Books, but you can check out our masterclass here: Children’s Book Writing Master Class – Pandamonium Publishing House.

Be sure to stay tuned tomorrow, June 1st, as we dive into a new topic! We’ll be chatting about Author Mindset and what separates actual authors from wannabe authors. Some exciting stuff is coming up; I hope you’ll join us.

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Too Cool!

May 28, 2021– As we wrap up our theme this month of Children’s Book Writing, we have a few more things to explore before moving on to our theme for June. This video is pretty cool! Check out this TedTalk by Artist Raghava KK as he demos his new children’s book for iPad with a fun feature: when you shake it, the story — and your perspective — changes. In this charming short talk, he invites all of us to shake up our perspective a little bit. Stay tuned next week as we announce what we’ll be talking about next month!

 

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Don’t Copy Us

May 27, 2021– This question comes up more often than you think! Authors want to know if they can re-write very old books using different words and settings and then publish it or submit it for publication. The answer is NO! 

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. Do not do this. Copyright law explicitly states that the copyright on a work stays with the author/her successors until 70 years AFTER her death. Yeah, but what if the author has been dead for 100 years? I would urge you to be original and have some decency to not pass someone else’s work off as your own no matter how much you think you’ve changed it. How would you feel if someone ripped off your work that you spent your life crafting? Pretty crappy no doubt.

There’s a difference between retelling and stealing, a big one. Feel free to use books that you enjoy as inspiration to find a different take on a situation, plotline, or characters. A great example is our very own Tamara Botting’s retelling of the fairytale the frog price told as Unfrogged available here: Unfrogged – Pandamonium Publishing House. It’s a fresh take on the story with interesting characters, a dazzling setting,  and unique challenges.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement have no place anywhere to be honest, but especially in the creative arts. Artists spend their lives bringing art, stories, music, movies, and productions to the world, why would anyone want to destroy that or take credit for something they didn’t do?

Here’s an interesting article on five very famous copyright infringements and their outcomes: 5 famous copyright infringement cases (what you can learn) (99designs.ca)

If you have even one iota of a feeling that what you’re doing could be considered stealing from an artist, stop and start over. Make your own art and give credit where credit is most certainly due.

For information on how to publish your own book, send us an email at pandapublishing8@gmail.com for a customized price quote.