[stylist] Donna, Robert, Computer experts, help, and other four letter words

Sun Jul 20 23:02:34 UTC 2014

Donna and all,
I have wondered about the virtual ribbon. The instructor  I hired said she
installed it. She also put in some directions for it. AT some point she
changed it saying  I could handle the regular. But I have typed all of these
instructions. She said they would work on either one. 
Then the state instructor said that he was individualizing it for various
operations because of some of my prior knowledge, and some big gaps. 
The result is that I do not know which settings all of my little notes on
hot keys work or not, and I still have a terrible time with making them
work. An instance, for page numbering, Alt, N, then N U. It is supposed to
bring up that menu that I can open. It does nothing.
Both instructors went through and changed many individual settings
I am tempted to now change it back to virtual ribbon. My question is: Will
it change back to the original settings before they were changed by anyone,
or will it be the virtual ribbon with some of the settings still changed?
Will I find the complete list of settings under options in the JAWS menu? I
know you do not have time for this, but it looks like I am on my own with
this.   When he left last week, he said that perhaps I had trouble with my
motherboard, or my sound card, and that perhaps because I had not used it
for two years except for installing the software by Cox, after buying it, it
had deteriorated. He also said that JAWS 15 should not have been installed
with Microsoft 7, for it was geared to 8.  Also that Freedom Scientific
could not keep up with the fixes for my combination, and that is why my
attachments will not open. He said JAWS was not installed properly, and
since 13 and 15 were still on my computer, and the older one not removed
first, He could no longer hope to reinstall it and get a pure result. It
goes on and on. If I hire anyone else at my own cost, I go broke. I waited 8
months to be approved by the state. Now he does not want to return until I
get my computer fixed. 
Right now, I have to get a line count for all of my poetry before
submission, and Alt, R, then W does not work for the word count. It goes on
and on.
Still, I will get twenty poems ready to post by next Friday when I have a
driver hired.

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Computers are the fires in which we burn.
After Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: Applebutter Hill [mailto:applebutterhill at gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2014 3:18 PM
To: 'Jackie Williams'
Subject: RE: [stylist] Authors & Marketing: Sensitive Introvert to Shameless
Hawker - Abandoning Erroneous Expectations

Hi Jackie,
Thank you so much for all of your observations and support. I'm sorry you're
having such trouble with Jaws. Sounds like your instructor might have messed
something up. If Jaws isn't reading the ribbons, the setting for Virtual
Ribbons in the Settings Center may have gotten unchecked. If you want to
check, go to the Jaws window, alt+f and right arrow to the utility menu and
down arrow to Settings Center. It opens on a search field, so type in
"virtual ribbon" and enter. Down arrow to the results (I only had one), and
it should say "Use virtual ribbon checkbox ... Either checked or unchecked.
If it's unchecked, use the spacebar to check it, tab twice to OK and
spacebar to confirm the change. If that's not it, I'm at a loss.

Yes, the whole marketing thing is a major drain on my time and creativity,
and I appreciate you saying that you almost resent my having to spend so
much effort on it instead of just writing. That's the way it is though and
it's good to know that low percentages of success is the norm in sales. I
admit that I am not very good at deliberately setting aside time to just
write. That should be my challenge going forward. I'm trying to blog once a
week, so that's something, though it's still part of the marketing formula.

I'm also glad you wrote in, because I was beginning to think the post didn't
go through. I guess there just isn't much interest on this list.
Best of luck with getting your poems together and dealing with all of the
technical stuff.
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: Jackie Williams [mailto:jackieleepoet at cox.net]
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2014 4:02 PM
To: 'Applebutter Hill'; 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [stylist] Authors & Marketing: Sensitive Introvert to Shameless
Hawker - Abandoning Erroneous Expectations

Donna,
I opened the link in your e-mail and heard the entire website excluding the
cloud of music. I just get overwhelmed, and my computer has a mini-crash
whenever I do something unusual. I found your article most fascinating and
it was particularly interesting in the percentages of people needing at
least 8 prompts of one kind or another to read a particular book, and other
such research you presented.
Every time I read a posting of yours,  I find more things about your life,
the books and articles you have already written, and the hurdles you have
surmounted to get where you are.
Although I am approaching page  200 in Apple Butter Hill, I have had a
series of setbacks  with my computer and the lessons I was supposed to get
from D E S, I have been trying to get my entries ready for Minnesota, and
JAWS simply does not work, or talk for the ribbon commands, and my teacher
changed everything just before this happened.
I took refuge in reading Catherine the Great which I could not put down for
26 long hours.
Now, I am just trying to keep up with the list, and back at trying to get my
poems ready with a seeing aide, and again looking forward to finishing "The
Heart of Apple Butter Hill."
I almost resent that you have to spend so much effort and time marketing
instead of just writing what you want to anew. All of your efforts have
benefited those of us who were not aware that now, no matter which way we
choose to publication, we will have to be involved in the marketing.
With my utmost gratitude and respect for your body of work.

Jackie
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Apple butter
Hill via stylist
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 8:18 AM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: [stylist] Authors & Marketing: Sensitive Introvert to Shameless
Hawker - Abandoning Erroneous Expectations

Hi Friends,

I'm copying this post below just in case any of you are interested in
self-marketing. At the end of the post, there is a Sound Cloud player with
an accessible play button, but it doesn't translate to email. If you want to
hear "The Rules of the Game" or leave a comment using the link to
"Accessible Comment Form for Screen Reader Users," you will need to go to
this link:

http://donnawhill.com/2014/07/14/authors-marketing-sensitive-introvert-to-sh
ameless-hawker-abandoning-erroneous-expectations/

Enjoy,

Donna

***

Authors & Marketing: Sensitive Introvert to Shameless Hawker - Abandoning
Erroneous

So, you succumbed to that craziest of temptations and wrote a book. Now,
whether you are one of the "lucky" ones who landed a publishing contract or
you did it yourself, you're starting to realize that you're the one who has
to do the marketing. The problem is that marketing is totally foreign to
your innermost nature. There are lots of suggestions out there about
building an online presence, developing niche markets, mastering SEO (search
engine optimization) and snuggling up to industry professionals, but how do
you get to a place where you're at least halfway comfortable doing that
stuff?

The Writer's Mindset

Whether we're embroiled in research or lost in our private worlds conjuring
up scenes and scenarios, the writer is motivated by a few simple principles,
and truth is at the bottom of each of them. We stare into our characters,
and using our accumulated understanding of humanity's flaws and foibles, we
fashion plots and conversations that shed some light on something that
matters to us.

When we're done, we want to show off our baby and have people coo about how
beautiful it is. We've put so much of ourselves into our work that it takes
a monumental effort to steel ourselves for criticism of even the most benign
nature.

But, steel ourselves we must -- and not merely to function in the role of
hearing out our critics. The truth is that getting the public to read our
work is no easy task, and there has probably been little in our lives to
prepare us for the realities of marketing. Some writers will feel like
they're pimping out their child. Others will be easily discouraged by the
lack of enthusiasm from a public that doesn't seem to care.

A Head's-Up

Here I am giving you advice, but who am I? Is my advice worth taking? First,
I'm not a successful novelist -- not yet anyway. My book's been out a year,
and for the first six months, I couldn't lift a finger to promote it. My
husband was feeling terrible when The Heart of Applebutter Hill came out as
an eBook, and mere weeks after the print edition hit the market, he was in a
full-blown crisis of extreme and unmanageable pain.

I was in fulltime research and advocacy mode. Six months later after a
myriad of complications and medical snafus, he was diagnosed and treated for
Neuro-Lyme disease (Lyme of the central nervous system). He has permanent
nerve damage. As of late November, I was able to start spending some time
promoting the book.

I don't have an issue with doing my own marketing. I had a head start. Most
of my career was spent as a singer-songwriter and recording artist. No
booking agent wanted to take a chance on a blind woman, so early on I
started doing my own booking and PR. I learned from my mistakes while
working as a street performer in Philadelphia's Suburban Station, a
center-city commuter train and subway hub. When they didn't want to assign a
writer to cover my happenings, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other papers
often published my press releases -- without any changes. That's still
happening and I'm still grinning about it.

I also learned about motivation and sales from tape recorded programs from
Nightingale Conant. The actual statistics may have changed, but the
principles are the same. People don't generally buy something after hearing
about it for the first time. The rule of thumb in the '80s was that it took
eight times for the average buyer to respond to an unsolicited pitch. Sales
is a matter of high volume and low percentages.

Failing Your way to Success

Most of us have at least twelve years of experience with schools, and we're
used to the idea of success (aka grades) having something to do with
percentages. To get an A, you probably needed 90%, and if you had less than
60%, you failed.

There are many things that require accuracy that borders on one hundred
percent. It's not acceptable, for instance, for a surgeon to take out 90% of
a cancerous tumor. Fittings for machinery have to come within tiny fractions
of being perfect. To bring it closer to home, a book that has only 95% of
its words spelled correctly isn't considered  to be properly edited or
well-written.

With all of this totally reasonable obsession with perfection, it is
understandable that writers are flummoxed by the results they get from
everything from letters to their friends and families to paid
advertisements. Coping with the realities of marketing requires that we
abandon our preconceived and thoroughly vetted expectations about success.

An Example & a Suggestion

When I started thinking about doing school assemblies, I wrote letters to
the headmasters of twenty-five private schools in the Philadelphia area. 5
of them hired me. Five is 20%. This was a targeted solicitation, so we'd
expect higher percentages than something random, but 20% is still high. For
random solicitations, I learned that even 5% was rare and cause for elation.

I built on that initial success by obtaining reference letters and including
them in mailings to every school in the area. Now that I'm promoting my
novel The Heart of Applebutter Hill, I use the same basic formula -- cast a
wide net, rejoyce in small percentages, and use what you catch to create
your next net.

So, take heart, recalibrate your expectations and power up with a shot of
wisdom from "The Rules of the Game," a little song from <i>The Last
Straw</i> that I wrote to nudge myself onward and upward.

-- The Heart of Applebutter Hill - a novel on a mission:

http://DonnaWHill.com <http://donnawhill.com/>

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