Well, it seems that for some strange reason I have got it into my head that I can teach a class. Now, how that idea actually first entered my mind is a little bit of a mystery. But it has something to do with Lee Stranahan's awesome improv class, where we bring meaning to improv. Nobody knows about it. It's a secret. Albuquerque's best kept secret, in fact. A little too well kept, actually. And nobody knows that there can be meaning in improv. Virtually no one, anyway. But there is, and we do. It's genius. But anyway, doing improv with Lee reminded me of all this acting training I took years ago in New York. I had some decent teachers, actually, some great teachers, and we approached plays and movies the way actors typically do: scene by scene. Actors don't worry about writing the plot, and they don't worry about having a great ending. Of course, it's already written, so they don't have to.They literally take a scene from a play, out of order, and live in the moment with it.

But as writers, we don't have that privelege, do we? Writer's usually think they have to know what's going to happen at the end, and set everything up so it all makes sense. But it's a lie. A dirty rotten lie. Because in improv, we work like actors, scene to scene, but we also have to make up the ending. But we do just find making up the ending working this way. Thus proving my point: writer's can work the same way actors do, scene to scene, and get way better results.This is my firm belief. If, as a writer, you think like an actor, in terms of the action of each scene, it also helps get you out of the mire of endless internal dialogue. Also, if you think like an actor, you create more full characters with rich backstory and strong motivations.

Anyway, it's upon the basis of this theory that I've decided I need to bring my theory out into the world, and I now have four, possibly five students, who have given me four and a half out of five stars on my meetup page. I'll be developing the class and striving for that last half star over the next few months, and letting you know how my students fare. In the meantime, check it out at www.meetup.com/writers-workout.

The art of stacking one’s furniture into a giant pile is a
truly underappreciated householder’s skill. There are reasons to do this. It’s
not some arbitrary entertainment like stuffing a hundred co-eds into a phone
booth or arranging cheerleaders into a giant pyramid. Not to malign those
entirely healthy enterprises, mind you.

Specifically, if one is having a new floor put into one’s
house, the traditional method for doing this, I have recently come to discover,
is to stack up all the furniture from one side of the house into the rooms on
the other side of the house. Then, after the guys have laid the new floor on
that side, you take all the stacked-up furniture and switch it to the other
side. But you don’t have to move the stuff that’s off the floor. So clothes are
left forlornly hanging in the closet, looking like they miss the shoes and
dirty-clothes piles that used to occupy the space beneath them. Mirrors and
framed posters are left hanging on the walls, looking pointless without the
furniture that used to define the spaces: the over-the-couch space, the
between-the-hutch-and-bookshelf space. Hanging plants are left hanging over
empty, colorless air, abandoned and loveless.

A half-empty house is one thing, like with one room empty,
or two rooms empty. But when it’s the entire bottom of the house that’s empty,
and the entire top part is full, that’s just eery. It brings to mind flood
victims and sewage overflow and the possibility of an infestation of anacondas
or other low-lying dangerous pests.

So there we were, moving every stick of furniture, every
tchotchke, every standing lamp and pile of books out of the bedrooms and into
the living room. Furniture tends to be boxy, so that’s not too hard to stack.
But what about all the other stuff? Throw pillows. Blankets. Cd’s. Giant enamel
butterflies. Eighteenth century gas lanterns. Delicate origami creations. A
banjo. You know, the things you have lying around for whatever reason. Smaller
things you can put in boxes, but awkwardly shaped things have to stand alone. A
Christmas tree stand holding up a sewing mannequin, that statue of a naked man
contemplating some unknown thing that seemed like such a buy that time in Peru.
Those, you have to arrange around your neatly stacked boxy furniture. Then the
guys come.

I can’t help wondering about the lives of these floor
installer guys. They go into people’s homes and see all their stuff piled up
like some Jersey City art exhibit. They don’t see the little stuff, like your
collection of plastic widgets that hold the bread bags closed, but they do see
your collection of broken vacuum cleaners. They don’t see the tiny stash box
that contains the lock of hair which was the first haircut of your first
serious boyfriend, which his mom gave you. She thought you two were meant to
be. Well, you kept the lock of hair anyway, and its been thirty years. They
don’t see that. But they do see an arrangement of willow branches and eagle
feathers bound with a rawhide handle and meant to bless a sacred Native
American something-or-other. You only keep it because you are afraid you’ll be
cursed by the stranger who gave it to you, for a reason you no longer remember,
if you throw it out. They don’t see your collections of great American classic
books and antique salt and pepper shakers. No, those are neatly packed in
boxes. What they see is an unfinished upholstering project with its springs
jangling out in all directions, looking like something you dragged out of
someone else’s trash. Which it is.

You want to post signs all around your pile, proclaiming,
“What you see before you is not representative of my inner being!” and “These
items are on their way to Goodwill, I swear!” But you don’t. You let the floor
guys come and think what they think. Don’t pretend they don’t think anything
about it. You know they do. Installing floors isn’t that thrilling; they need
something to contemplate all day.

Then the floor guys come, and you meet them. They are
Mexican teenagers.

You try to imagine how this sort of person would regard your
odd-shaped objects that don’t fit in boxes, but you cannot. The next day you
have to come and restack your belongings on the other side of the house. You
can’t help it—you find yourself trying to arrange the things artfully, in a way
that might make you seem intriguing to foreigners in the rosy bloom of youth.

So they come and they go. You get a new floor, but all they say is adios.

So my birthday party actually went off without a hitch, amazingly, but I got a migraine headache the next day. The next day happened to be my actual fortieth birthday. What the hell? Was it due to some unacknowledged stress about turning forty? About having a party? Was it a brand new brain tumor? Was it a message from God? If so, what did it mean? There is no way of knowing. I took some very very strong drugs with all kinds of warnings all over them. I took three, actually, which was two more than recommended. It worked well enough to get me into the "alternative therapies" stage of panicked problem solving.

I went to a chiropractor. Boy have chiropractors changed. I thought they just cracked your back. What a fool I am! I told him my problem and my fear that I was about to embark on a new and scary life adventure called Being a Person Who Has Migraines. He said he had the solution for me: cold laser therapy. He had me sit on a machine that is like a bicycle for your arms. There is the bicycle seat, and you pedal with your arms. It opens up something. Okay. Then he took this device that fits over my ears and comes in front of my face and sprays oxygen into my nose. Okay, oxygen is good. I'm arm-bicycling and breathing oxygen. Meanwhile a troop of slack-jawed mentally challenged people came striding through the office, and sat, staring at me, awaiting their own turn for alternative therapy. This added a new dimension to the thing.Then he took this little hand-held device that was on a brightly colored twirly plastic string and used it to point silent lasers at my forehead. All this was going on at once. I kept arm-pedaling. After a while he told me I was done. 

I went home. I felt better! I really did. Much better, in fact. But later that day I felt worse again, so I went back. He said he'd nail that headache once and for all. He had me sit in a glide-rocker and took this device that was like a lamp-postwith all these tiny arms sticking out that could be posed in different positions. A little rectangular laser-producing box was at the end of each arm. It was a very 1950's-space-alien kind of thing.

He pointed the lasers at my forehead, my sinuses, my ears, my temples, everything. I sat there with the lasers on me and my eyes closed. At one point I moved and saw all these red lights flashing through my eyelids. I got hypnotized, then decided I was probably going to go blind if I didn't put my head back where it was before. 

It was my own personal science fiction movie. I was the star of it and it was wierd. It worked though. So hey, if you ever have a migraine, go to a chiropractor that does cold laser therapy. It's an adventure of a cure!

Been planning my fortieth birthday party. Felt I should have a party. Don't know why. Temporary insanity with long reaching effects. I have a total party phobia. I do not recall having ever actually given a party. Once. Once, when I was housesitting at this great place, I invited a bunch of people for a party because the space was so perfect for it. It worked, too. All I had to do was sit back and let them go 'ooh what a beautiful home!' and say, 'yeah, have a glass of wine or something and look around,' and it was a done deal. But now I live in a little apartment by the highway with stained carpet and no view and I can not imagine inviting people to come and enjoy this cramped space with me. "Ah, listen to the roar of the sonically enhanced motorcycle engines as they pop your eardrums repeatedly!" I would say. Or, "If you close your eyes, you can imagine the traffic is the sound of the surf!" But I have a friend with a lovely house who was gracious enough to offer to throw me a party at her house. For some reason, I decided this would be good.

I felt that 40 should be marked with some acknowledgement that I do have friends and they will come to see me. (I DO have friends, and they WILL come to see me. I DO have friends, and they WILL come to see me . . .). So I did what I have never done before, and I went through my cell phone directory and called pretty much everyone I know who hasn't ostracised me for some social gaffe or other and invited them all. Interesting thing to do. People were actually flattered. One lady said, "Wow. You're inviting me? Somebody cares!" Now, if you are a person who regularly has parties, then you know this feeling. It probably happens all the time to you. Me, this is something novel. Even when I was a child, I had a party phobia. I remember being a kid and my mom throwing me a birthday party. "Who should we invite?" she said. I broke down into tears. The kids from school mixing with friends of the family? The kids from the neighborhood mixing with the kids from "gifted" class? My God, what a nightmare! I guess if I'd followed the Successful Kid Handbook I would have gone through with it and learned that when you have a pool, you can count on everyone uniting around that common pleasure. Which I would then extrapolate into adult parties, but replacing "pool" with "booze." Except that at my age, a bunch of the people are already recovering alcoholics, so then there is the problem of should there be booze or no booze. Should it be placed tastefully out of sight? A new party nightmare that comes with age!

But I didn't learn a damn thing as a kid, seemingly, and here I still am, forty years old and chronically party-phobic. But this time I'm going through with it . . . I have my very social friend with a good house as coach, though, so hopefully I come out the other side of 40 with this one mid-life crisis narrowly averted. Stay tuned for searingly honest descriptions of my upcoming potential party idiocies.

Went in to Big Star Books the other day, where I had about twenty bucks worth of credit, and decided to spend it all on three David Sedaris books. So I bought Barrel Fever, Naked, and Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim. God damn, this dude is funny, but not funny in such a way that you start out laughing your head off. You start out just reading along, thinking hmm, a little story about someone's life, then some mostly ordinary situation is drawn out in the most fantastic hyperbole you have ever read and you just collapse laughing. It's also very brave. His humor is either about what a loser he is, and he does prove his point rather well, or about his fantasies of being something very different from the loser that he supposedly is.

For instance, as of the publication of these three books, he had never learned to drive and was going from job to job just doing stuff like being a housecleaner, or doing odd jobs. He managed to pull so much incredible humor from these tales of loserdom, that he is officially no longer a loser. I hope the success didn't harm his street cred. Barrel Fever is a series of short stories that immediately made me think of Mark Leyner, they're that kind of I'm-writing-about-my-fantasy-of-myself type thing, followed by a series of essays, which include the Santaland Diaries, which was his kind of break-out bit. And when you read it, you will see why. It's about working as an elf at Macy's Christmastime Santaland set-up. Here is an excerpt for your chuckling pleasure:

The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean. She held up a calendar and said, "Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer.' You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer, you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf."

He just leaves you with that quote, "you are an elf and you will wear panties like an elf." No commentary needed. Later Sedaris describes his favorite Santa:

The parents and children enter the room, and if there is a girl in the party, Santa will look at her, hold his gloved hands to his chest and fake a massive heart attack—falling back against the cushion and moaning with a combination of pleasure and pain. Then he slowly comes out of it and says . . . "Elf, I just had a dream that I was standing before the most beautiful girl in the world. She was right here, in my house."

I say, "It wasn't a dream, Santa, open your eyes . . ."

Santa rubs his eyes and shakes his head as if he were a parish priest being visited by Christ. "Oh heavenly day!" he says, "You ARE the most beautiful girl in the world!" 

I just loved that bit about the parish priest. Anyway, if you haven't read Sedaris, go out and read him. I don't particularly recommend one of these books over the other. Get them all!

I'm in this acting class, where I and my partner (who is this arrogant chump that has so much "experience" doing improv that he can't possibly be bothered to follow the directions of the assignment, but anyway) are supposed to act out a scene of forbidden love. So we came up with this funny idea about a psychiatrist that falls in love with her patient, and we get up on stage and we improvise it and its awful because no matter what I did, he would say, "Why are you saying that? You're crazy!" We are supposed to come back the next class and do it again, better, so we come back the next class and the teacher comes up and says "Have you created a backstory around your character?" I can't remember what we created last time, so she starts asking me if my character is married, and I say yes. Does she have a kid? And I say yes. What age? I say four. Girl or boy? I say boy. What's his name? I say Sheldon, at which point my partner interrupts- hey! we already decided it was a two-year-old girl named Mythria! Oh, right. I forgot. In fact, I didn't even stop to consider if I had created this info before, I just started doing it. He goes- You have a thing about making things up, don't you? Despite how much I have secretly hated him up to this point, I have to love this. Nothing truer was ever said. I said yeah, it's like a disease. A mental disease. Actually its just being a compulsive lier, that's all. Under stress, I either compulsively reveal more truth than you could possibly want, enough to probably get me thrown in jail in many cases, or I compulsively lie. Typically I do the opposite one of the one I should be doing (because otherwise, what fun would it be?).

Which is why it's lucky I have this new job. It is a job of acting and lying, which I have to do because I am ashamed of what the job actually is. Or else I'm afraid people will shoot me. One or the other or both at any given time. I have to drive around to the homes of people who are going through foreclosure and find out if they still live there so the bank will know if they are going to have to evict them or not. Gross, huh? I have to knock on the door and find out if they are the owners of the homes or tenants without actually letting them know I am "from the bank." Strangely, I enjoy this. I never know what I'm going to say as I approach the door. I do have some staples that I use, though, when I'm in a pinch, although I try to think up new ones just to keep things interesting. One of my old standbyes is to tell people I'm a location scout for a film. We were thinking of using the front of your home in a film, would that be okay with you? I need your name and to know if you are the owner of the house and so forth. It works great, but usually gets me involved in a long conversation about the "film," which I have to make up as I go. They ask me the name of the film. I look down at my shoelaces and come up with "lace and leather . . . but its not a porno, don't worry." It goes on like that and they won't let me leave. The more complicated my lies get, the more fun I'm having, it's like an endorphin rush. Do I feel sorry for the people? Strangely, no. I should, I suppose, but I'm just not that good of a person. 

I know a guy who saw Clerks and said, “that’s a movie? I could make a movie!” and promptly did. That’s how I felt after reading Post Office, Bukowski’s first novel. It’s good. He wrote it in three weeks.

Here’s the concept: forget three-act structure or any of that. Forget suspense. Forget beginning, middle, and end. Take a character, which is you, who is deeply flawed and totally unapologetic about it. He proceeds to describe how the whole world screws him over because people are such outright douchebags. He himself is a total tool, but mostly a pathetic one, as opposed to a mean one. Sounds annoying, right? But somehow it isn’t. It is the battle of mean people against pathetic people. Basically, the struggle of the working stiff against The Man. Stay away from expression of feelings about it all, just say what the Man did, then what you did. Then what the other stupid fool did, then what you did. Go on like that.

Usually, what you did is not very clever, but occasionally you manage to pull off a zinger. This makes you kind of an anti-hero that’s actually very sympathetic. Also, you don’t have to exaggerate the stupid things people do, it’s not hard to find assholes in the world that do stupid things, so here is automatic humor material. But you can use a little hyperbole here and there to create a Kafka-esque visual image around the stupid fools and their stupid worlds as well as your own stupid, pathetic world. For instance, here is Bukowski on delivering mail in the hot sun with a severe hangover:

The whiskey and beer ran out of me, fountained from the armpits, and I drove along with this load on my back like a cross, pulling out magazines, delivering thousands of letters, staggering, welded to the side of the sun.

Go on like that for a couple hundred pages, then find some tiny victory on which to hang the ending. Here is the ending: (Don’t worry, it’s not a spoiler)

I got into the door, said goodbye, turned on the radio, found  half-p9ind of scotch, drank that, laughing, feeling good, finally relaxed, free, burning my fingers with short cigar butts, then made it to the bed, made it to the edge, tripped, fell down, fell down across the mattress, slept, slept, slept . . .

That’s a novel? I could write a novel!

Okay. I am addicted to radio shows. That’s why I started with “okay.” Because Ira Glass, for instance, from This American Life, frequently starts with “okay”, as do the guys from WNYC’s Radio Lab before launching into some profoundly improbably weird story (like a scientist developed a gene-spliced pig with a human arm), which actually turns out to be true, and they can prove it with all kinds of experts on-hand, who all happen to somehow have these soothing radio voices just like the host. I don’t know why that is, but I wonder if perhaps everyone has a soothing radio voice somewhere inside that is just lurking there, waiting to be used. It’s a public radio standard, seemingly.

Anyway, I mention this because this first blog is about a true self-revelation that I may or may not have reached due to a show on Radio Lab. That is, I reached the revelation, but it may or may not be true. It was a show about liers. Some scientists (there are always scientists) did a study whose aim was to detect compulsive liers. They took a sample of people who they took from temp agencies—because they figured temps were likely to be social outcasts who lied a lot (no comment)—and asked them embarrassing questions. Like: have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements? Have you ever had a rape fantasy? Things where they figured these are social universals and anyone who answered no was lying. Now, especially with the second question above, there is bound to be a great deal of controversy over whether or not these things are social universals, but anyhow, for the sake of moving forward, let’s just assume there was some measure of accuracy to this study. They scanned their brains and expected to find that the “compulsive liers” (they found a lot) would have less “white matter” which is the part you use to think and reason. Actually they found that they had more. Further studies showed that “compulsive liers” actually tended to be more successful, happier people and, among sportsmen, were the winners and high-achievers. The conclusion being something like—the ability to lie to yourself about the improbability of succeeding against the odds helps you to press forward and actually do it.

So I couldn’t help noticing that, according to their definition of a “compulsive lier”, I am one. I didn’t used to be one. I would say that actually I used to be a compulsive truth-teller. Then somewhere along the line there were three things that switched around--

First, I realized that in the attempt to give the absolute truth, you can give too much information. People don’t necessarily want the whole truth; it isn’t necessary. Your personal trainer asks you to fill out a form about your physical state, he wants to know if you have sore muscles or a knee problem. He doesn’t need to know about your urinary tract infection. No. Your boss wants to know why you will be late to work on Friday, she wants to know you have to meet with your landlord. She doesn’t need to know its because your roomate’s dog somehow got itself shut in the bathroom and panicked, destroying everything in its path and leaving the place with the stink of bowel and deep gouges in the woodwork, and now there is hell to pay. No. So, I learned to selectively give out just the right amount and type of information.

From there, came the second step, where I realized that all reality is subjective, and the information you select to give out is really your interpretation of the situation or event . . . so why not interpret things to your own advantage?

Sometimes, after telling about some experience of mine, I will realize that I missed some parts that were very true and would have made me look better in the story, but I didn’t take them seriously, or I thought they weren’t important. So I started being aware of how to tell a story so that I come out looking very experienced, if that is what I am trying to accomplish, or looking like a total buffoon, even if I wasn’t, if that is what will make people laugh, or seeming terrifically adventurous or insightful, or whatever. In the same way that I can make myself look bad by interpreting the information from an insecure standpoint, I can also do the opposite by just thinking “how would a truly self-confident person tell this story?” And that is perfectly fair and honest.

Why not, instead of saying that you design clothing at home in your spare time, and occasionally consign items that you don’t want anymore, say that you have a design studio with items for sale in local boutiques? I consider that to be just a matter of putting your best foot forward. Other people, who really really aspire to be designers, may do exactly the same things you do, but if they take it seriously, they call it a studio. If they take the consignment shop seriously, they call it a boutique, which, strictly speaking, it is. So which is true? They both are. It’s just a matter of how seriously I decide to take myself and my work. So that was the second thing-- speaking in a way where I put my best foot forward.

Now, the third thing, which made me realize that I may be a little more over on the edge toward lying . . . maybe. Well, I am often switching careers and trying new things. When one does this—I don’t think I am the only one, after all—one has to sort of REALLY REALLY put one’s best foot forward. Like I want to get a job doing something I have never ever done before, but I’m quite sure I could do it if I got a chance. Well, I think of everything I’ve ever done pertaining to it. Let’s say its raising tropical fish—just to save me from any future prosecution. I once saw a tropical fish while swimming on vacation in the Caribbean. I can put, you know, that it was a scientific expedition based on viewing such and such fish, conducted by an American university cooperating with the Caribbean authorities. The American university is, ahem . . . me, as I was in college at the time. And I had a visa, so that is a Caribbean authority and, having a keen interest in tropical fish, I discussed my fish observations with numerous persons there at the resort, one of whom was a scientist. He turned me on to some scientific studies done on the fish and their habitat, which I looked up online. That’s research. And I can state some facts about the fish to back up my research. After all, I am not going to use this resume to apply to be the head of the damn San Diego aquarium, I just want to get my foot in the door on an entry-level thing. So that’s called REALLY REALLY putting your best foot forward.

Well, and I want everyone to not miss this paragraph-- I am pretty firmly entrenched in my various careers at this point, and I don’t need to REALLY REALLY put my best foot forward anymore, career-wise. But I noticed, upon updating one of my (many) resumes, the other day, that one of my sort-of lies, aka RR-best-foot-forwards, was still on there. And I didn’t want to take it off. It was such an excellent and positive interpretation of what had otherwise been a miserable and unprofitable experience, that I was kind of in love with it. The only thing that made spending a year in a terrible place—getting sick, breathing pollution, and attending the crappiest school in the universe—actually a wonderful experience was the fact that I interpreted it on my resume as something, let’s just say, truly grand. It wasn’t, but it might have been. And no one would ever know the difference. Ever. No one would ever know about how I had REALLY REALLY REALLY put my b.f.f. There was no way at all to check the information, yet no one ever doubted it. It didn’t qualify me for some special job, or imply that I had skills I didn’t have. It just added color. I left it on my resume. I am in love with my own lies. And I’m okay with that.

So much for my attempt to do a bunch of professional blog stuff. I got rather bored with that. Let's talk about special ed. I have this- you could call it a hobby- of helping out in the special ed room at a local middle school. It's not what you think. I mean, I get paid. But its an occasional thing. And this is why it's so unbelievably funny. Here's why. The children are severely handicapped, both mentally and physically, and, well, they talk funny. Now, deep down they are your typical middle school kids. They tease each other, they disobey, they curse, they talk back. But they do it from wheelchairs and no one can understand what they're saying or doing except the teachers who work with them every day. One of the teachers is actually a screenwriter, so it kills me that he doesn't get the incredibly cinematic humorous situations that occur every day, but he doesn't. Only I see the humor for some reason. So here's the scenario:

kid named robert: aloobagorrabiilaaree (that's what I hear) (He is kind of looking off into the distance, seemingly unfocussed.)

other kid named Serge: brinnooflibergibletriblofoo (again, that's what I hear. He is staring at his shoes while coloring a picture)

teacher:  Robert! Stop teasing Sergio! If I have to tell you one more time you are going in "time out," and no gold star today! Do you hear me????!!!!!!

Am I sick, or do you see the humor here? The teachers get really mad about whatever the kids are supposedly saying, so I have to stifle my laughter completely. No one would get it. 

Every business seems to have an ebook these days. Why is that? Well, in the age of the internet, it is important to be able to offer your clients, or potential clients, something for free. That's right. The more free information you give out, the more likely you are to have clients actually pay you for more of the same. I don't know why this is. Something about human nature, something about priming the pump, something about people getting giddy with knowledge juice, I guess. You don't have to be a writer to do it. You hire a writer to ask you the right questions, organize your information, and make it all presentable. Judging from my own experience as a customer who appreciates free ebooks, I would say it is successful because when you draw someone into your profession by giving them a taste of just how complex your work is, just how much is involved in it, they will no longer want to do it themselves. They will realize how worthwhile it is to hire you to do it. I have seen this work with websites that give away information on: how to write a resume, how to SEO optimize your website, how to do inbound marketing, project ideas for teachers . . . It's endless.

At first, if they are diabolically minded, like me, they will think- Aha! I have the information! I can do it myself! Then, very soon they will realize that there is no way they have the time to learn all the information they need. I have written ebooks for several clients who are business consultants. They give away their success ideas for free. You may ask: if their aim is to get hired to conduct workshops and seminars about these strategies, why would they give them away for free? It seems counter-intuitive, but it isn't. The fact of the matter is that the more information you give away, the more people respect you as an expert, the more they believe that you have MORE to teach them. However, do not take this statement as a suggestion to make your ebook a teaser that only gives part of the information the reader needs, urging them to pay you for a consultation where you will get the rest. It's not like that. Your ebook should be an honest, straightforward nonfiction book about the information it says it will provide.

Here is how you reel people in: Let's say you are a business consultant who deals with time management, increasing productivity, creating SMART goals, improved management strategies, insightful hiring practices, and innovative customer service. You write your ebook on "time management," one component of what you do. People get it for free and they use the ideas. They are impressed. They want more. They like you and want you and your expertise to be a part of their life and business. They hire you to teach them the full spectrum of business-improvement ideas. It's as simple as that.