I remember being given the permission to date at a certain age. Even if not literal (I don’t remember being told), by the age of 15, 16, and 17 it was understood I have at some point begun dating, and as such there was a silent acceptance of this change. As I’m running errands and trying to escape the triple digit scorch that’s got it’s body spread all over Louisiana, I thought about womanhood. 
What is womanhood? The question hangs over the heads of our daughters with anxious anticipation. The youthful mind dividing itself into sections of experience: puberty, first date, first love, marriage, and children. We split ourselves into portions and gamble off pieces that do not fit. We grow old and still we find this question lingering against the frontal lobe of our minds, and occupying the mental space of our thoughts, “What is Womanhood?” It is a question we believe can be answered just by purchasing cigarettes, buying liquor, engaging in sexual intercourse or the entering of the club scene. As my thoughts spread out and I take these snap shots of my own past, I thought about this generation and how disappointed I am in a lot of today’s youth. Their minds seem to be so far gone from basic fundamental teachings that drive adulthood. My thoughts grew to include preparation and how little of it is present in many of our communities. That is the preparation of our young people and most especially, of our young women. Instead of encouraging our daughters to get boyfriends, it is time we start to prepare them for womanhood. In this way, when they begin to engage in relationships, when they do find a man, they’re not little girls. Because we have not prepared our daughters, a generation of children occupy grown-up bodies and little girls have over run our households and are producing babies they don’t have the tools to teach. What happened to the womanhood training our grandmothers instilled in our mothers fifty years ago?
Tag: general
This weekend I am Reflecting…
…On getting it done.
Enjoy your weekend people.
Sandra Bland & Black Hypocrisy
I know, I said I was resting. I also said I was a workaholic. I am resting but before I dig in deep and disconnect from the internet, I thought I’d give you something to ponder over the weekend.
What kind of woman was Sandra Bland? Can anyone tell me? Did she pray often? Did she love those around her? Who was she? Personally, I don’t know.
I’m always saddened by the deaths of anyone and the things I see taking place within the black community. However, what annoys me is when black people allow themselves to be driven by emotion and disregard common sense. It has been said that she was dead in her mugshot, for instance. Have any of you ever seen a dead body or a rotting corpse? Have you examined lifeless bodies or studied the difference between someone living or dead? How then do you know what kind of state the woman was in when she was photographed? Must we ignore the marijuana they found in her system or is she automatically granted immunity for being black? We have turned Sandra Bland into a hero, even though no one can tell me what kind of woman she was.
How do we know for certain that she didn’t kill herself? Is this conclusion a result of a personal study or are we making decisions off pure emotion? Maybe she was murdered or maybe she committed suicide but what does it mean?
It’s sad, of course. How can it not be? But the question black people should be asking themselves is why? Why do these things continue to happen to you of all people?
Why is there a greater outcry against the killing of Cecil the lion than the death of one of yours? We are killed in the streets every day. Why are you continually treated like less than a human being?
These are the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves, not whether or not Sandra Bland killed herself. The question is not if she did it or not, the question is….why?
I am not without compassion, but I cannot allow my emotions to surpass the truth. It’s hard to sit back and watch your people die but this woman did nothing to be considered a heroine of mine. I don’t know what her life was like to be granted that title or to make that kind of a decision.
You see the truth of the matter is that a lot of people are unconscious, especially within the black community. We have no idea of what’s going on around us or in front of us. We have no understanding of who we are, who we are not, and why as a result it has led to our position or lack thereof in this land. We continue to be slaughtered in the streets under the rule of a black skinned president but you’ll hear nothing about that. Funny how dark skin can deceive dark skinned people. Blinded by the hypocrisy we cannot see the truth for what it is. Many of you, because you wear the title of African American, completely disregard any wickedness that comes from your blood line and the consequences that happens as a result of that disobedience. This woman is filled to the brim with weed but this is your Queen. I am not Sandra Bland’s judge and her death is sad, but she has done nothing for me to admire. Oppression is real but many of you are blind to the part that you play in that same oppression. This too is futility and it is hypocrisy.
Deu 28:20 “YAH sends on you the curse, the confusion, and the rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the evil of your doings by which you have forsaken Me.
Word to the Wise
As we approach the month of August, when teachers return to work and students go back to school, I couldn’t help but to get excited that in just a few short weeks (mid August) I will be publishing another book. I’m really excited about this one and this excitement led me to a thought which in turn led me to something I think all Self-Publishers should take into consideration. I know that finances are a big deal to Self-Publishers and we are always looking for the most cost effective, yet professional, way to produce so here goes:
Never use POD (Print on Demand) services like LuLu and Createspace for anything other than Printing your books. Do not use POD editing services, POD promotional services, or POD book cover design services. Why? Because you can save a lot of money not doing so.
The most effective and creative action we can take as Self-Publishers is to use Print on Demand Companies as Printer Companies for our books, and then sell them from our own Author websites. Let people buy your books from YOU and you take a percentage of that income to pay the Printing Company (Createspace) to print the book AND if you don’t have the funds to buy your books in bulk from the POD, you can still send it to the buyer directly from the POD service. Remember to apply wisdom to everything that you do, so remember that you still have to pay the POD to print the book and to ship it so set your prices high enough to actually reap a profit but low enough to be reasonable. When people have to go to YOUR website this helps build you as an Author brand.
However, there are some exceptions to be understood when considering these methods:
- You’ll never make Amazon’s Best Sellers List using this method because your buyers are not buying from Amazon they’re buying from you. If making Amazon’s Best Sellers list is important to your writing goal (which is understandable) I suggest you ignore this post, carry on and not use this method. (It would be wise to use Amazon to sell your e-books and your Author site to sell your print books, kill two birds with one stone).
*Here’s another secret*
Amazon, Createspace, Kindle Select etc., is extremely popular right now. When people hear your book is on Amazon they go and inquire, they get excited and you feel like you’ve accomplished something great, AND YOU HAVE. But, it’s not really that big of a deal. If you really want to build yourself as a Self-Publisher, invest in your own Self-Publishing Company and make YOUR name the one people get excited about. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just your name alone will do. (I will draft another post for another day on building a Self-Publishing Company and creating a name brand in the most cost effective way possible).
- If you don’t buy in bulk and are shipping directly from your POD, you won’t have the chance to include promotional products with the book since it ships directly from the POD, which doesn’t help you with promotion.
BUT …
(OK so I’m really letting all the cats out the bag, gonna have to get a dog)
…you can send readers a separate gift with the money you saved AHEAD of the books arrival with these special offers (bookmarks, flyers, business cards, gifts etc.). Make sure to expedite the mail so that it gets there BEFORE the book for a professional outcome. Include a little note that thanks them for the purchase and that you hope they’ll enjoy the free gift. Don’t forget to include your contact information (business card) and to also inform them that their book is on the way! Readers will appreciate this, trust me. Why? Because, who doesn’t like to get mail filled with free goodies? Plus, if your readers are anything like yours truly, they’re extremely anxious for the book’s arrival and a little something ahead of time will help calm their nerves while they wait .
I hope this information has been helpful. Now, get off the internet and back to writing :).
An Easy Way to Prepare Your Book’s Table of Contents for E-Book
One of the most challenging aspects of Self-Publishing for me, in the beginning, was preparing my book for e-book conversion for proper viewing as an e-book on electronic devices. Of course, formatting and conversion slightly differ (anyone can use the method I am about to show to make ePub and Mobi files, but unless you format the underlying HTML and CSS properly, the result will not look as professional as we all intend as authors like the image above. Often there will be blank lines between paragraphs, no indentations, no TOC (table of contents), links that don’t function, and everything left aligned including headings that were meant to be centered hence, the difference between conversion and actual formatting…. but that’s another post for another day).
So anyway, as I ventured on this Self-Publishing endeavor, I was practically pulling my locs out trying to prepare my manuscript to be accepted by retailers for electronic devices. As we are familiar, manuscripts that are prepared for an e-book has to be done in a way where the electronic device can easily navigate the book. The electronic device easily accomplishes this by utilizing the navigation functions built into an EPUB file to move around the e-book. This is done by properly creating a Table of Contents section or in technical terms, a Navigation Control File. Basically, because your device is not going to be printed like in the old days, it needs guidance on how to move around. Your Kindle or Mobile phone needs to know where each section begins and ends. It does this by looking for Header Styles in your document. While you can either pay someone else to do this or let your POD (Print on Demand) service do it for you, an easy way to learn to do it yourself is to format your manuscript using Heading Styles. Heading Styles are at the top of your Word Document and looks something like this:
So Below I’ve listed how each section should be properly headed using these Heading Styles to create the TOC. To make this simple, I am only going to assume your book has a few main levels: Title Page, Copyright, Chapter, Sub-chapter, Preface, Body, Epilogue, and Sections:
1. Apply Heading 1 style to the Title and to each line containing a Section name (copyright, prologue, etc.) or section (Part 1, Section II, etc.). Heading 1 style will always appear at the top of the next page.
2. Apply Heading 2 style to each line containing a Chapter name or number
3. Apply Heading 3 style to each line containing a sub-chapter / subtitle or subsection.
That’s it! Pretty simple huh? I know most of you already know how to do this, but you never know who else may be pulling their hair out :). In most cases, your POD distributor will not reject your manuscript if you use this format.
(Don’t use additional Heading styles (Heading 4, Heading 5) to denote chapter or section breaks, as these will not generate most TOC *Table of Contents* entries. Most readers will not be able to navigate to these chapters resulting in retail distribution partners, such as Amazon Kindle and B&N, to reject your e-book).
Self-Publishing: The Workflow
You are not just a writer. You are not just an author. You do not have the privilege of having an agent or big publishing company to stand behind you. You cannot write a book, sit back and then watch things happen because you are not just a writer anymore. You are a publisher. You are a Self-Publisher. You publish your own books. This means you must stop being a writer. You are much more than that. Now that you publish your own books, you must now think like a publisher. You must organize and plan and live as a publisher. You must become a publisher.
“Self-publishing has gained a great deal of popularity over the past few years. Amazon has made it easy to publish our own work through Create Space and Kindle Select. Unfortunately, the fact it is easy to self-publish has resulted in a proliferation of poorly edited novels as well as novels that need a great deal of help with content and structure. Until these issues are addressed, self-publishing will continue to have an unnecessary stigma attached to it. Many authors just entering the arena of self-publishing have no idea where to start – how to find an editor, a cover artist, and formatters.”
– Editor Glenda Poulter of Rainbow Tales Literary Services
I like this quote because the tone is not bashing toward Self-Publishers, at least not to me, it’s just real talk. It’s hard language, but it’s true: While I don’t think Traditional Publishers or advocates of Traditional Publishing should stigmatize Self-Publishers because of it, I do understand that because it’s pretty much free or extremely cost effective to Self-Publish, it has in many ways brought down the quality of work in some authors who feel that’s all they have to do. Self-Publishing alone does not automatically degrade the quality of work but rather, the quality of work put in by the author can in fact degrade the business of a Self-Publisher.
In certain situations it can benefit us to look closely at how to better use the components of everything we have to achieve a desired effect. While certain things in our lives require a foundational stance (like morals and values no one should allow another to alter) other things, like Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing, can both be understood in a way that is helpful to both. It’s a good idea for Traditional Publishers to understand all that goes into establishing oneself as a Self-Publisher, that it is not easy, and that it does add value to the market by having all of these books now available that would have probably never made it had not some undiscovered genius never taken the chance. It’s also a good idea for Self-Publishers to take some ideas from the Traditional Publishing method to help to increase the professionalism of their work as Publishers. Traditional Publishing exist and Indie Authors should use this as a resource.
For example: You may not have to worry about pleasing a publisher since you are the publisher, but you do want to create a good experience for your readers. After all, this is how you are going to make money. (Side Note: Speaking of making money, there are people out there making money off of your work. There are those writing Self-Publishing Help Books who have probably never Self-Published a book in their life. There are people conducting seminars, creating products, and overall profiting hand over fist because more and more of you are Self-Publishing. They’re making money off of your workflow. Why shouldn’t you? Just a thought, but I digress).
A few years ago, I took a brief class on Career Empowerment and received one of the most valuable pieces of advice I could have ever used over the course of my career. It actually saved me from dying of boredom in that class:
“There really is no such thing as not working for someone. Everybody works for someone. A beauty salon owner depends on customers to come in to pay the rent on the building {mortgage or taxes}. She must pay for the electricity, the repairs etc. Everything about her business depends on customers coming in to get their hair done.”
I found this piece of information profound because I had never thought about it in this way. When someone studies for an exam, they are not studying for themselves in the sense that they pick up a book and instantly understand what is being said. They first need to be taught by an instructor, they then take notes, and then they study those notes without having to be told, thus, they study on their own. The same applies to writing. Sure, I can be my own boss and set my own hours, but there really is no such thing as an Entrepreneur in the sense that we make money all on our own.We do not make money on our own. What we do on our own that makes us Entrepreneurs is that we put in work. A Wal-Mart employee ultimately works for the owner, but as the owner, we work for ourselves. We put forth the work necessary to convince the public that our product is important enough to invest in. As a result, we get to set the terms and conditions necessary for the company to grow. That’s what we do. We put in work. We build.
As I mentioned in a previous article: “4 Common Sense ways it will benefit you to Self-Publish”, Indie Authors actually put in more work than those who choose to publish traditionally. The reason is pretty much attributed to common sense: They must do everything themselves. For this reason, there are many Indie Authors who may not start off as educated about the book making process. They can be great writers, but they may not understand that the publishing industry is a little different than other businesses: there is a lot to learn. Without the power of a publisher behind us, indie authors are forced to become much more than just writers. We have to become business men and women. We need to have great communications and marketing skills and we have to be relentless in our quest to get our books seen. Indie authors have to do it all. There is no outside help. Sure we can hire an editor, but that comes at our own expense. We have to develop, or at least hire someone to develop, a quality cover; another expense that a traditional publisher would normally cover. Indie authors have to treat every day like a business day. They need both pre-publishing and post publishing plans, goals, and quality material that never wavers. All of this requires a lot of work and investment financially in order to be successful.
While success can be defined differently to each person, every Indie Author, or Self-Publisher has the opportunity to produce quality material, but they also have an opportunity to become much more than writers if they are willing to learn something from both the Self-Publishing AND the traditional publishing process. Self-Publishers are publishers after all, and if we continue to put forth both the time and monetary investment necessary to be successful, we can quickly tear down the negative connotations associated with this industry.
And it all starts with that workflow. So let’s keep it moving. It’ll eventually pay off. Hard work always does.
Yecheilyah Ysrayl is the YA, Historical Fiction author of The Stella Trilogy. She is currently working on her next book series “The Nora White Story” about a young black woman writer who dreams of taking part in The Harlem Renaissance movement and her parents struggle to accept their traumatic past in the Jim Crow south. “Renaissance: The Nora White Story (Book One)” is due for release spring, 2017. For updates on this project, sneak peek of chapters and the pending book cover release for this project, be sure to follow this blog and to subscribe to Yecheilyah’s email list HERE.
10-four word sentences
about Love…
- “Love is all Language”
- “Change begins with Love”
- “To Love is Law”
- “Love others like yourself”
- “Love life like air”
- “Breathe Love like lovers
- “Taste Love with heart”
- “Feel Love with soul”
- “Treasure Love above money”
- Give Love like currency”
The PBS Blog 