Why not? It’s not like there’s anyone to stop you.
One of the coolest things about the good ol’ Internets is its ability to host, present and amplify just about anything you can think of. Your blog could be about food, ferrets, footwear, or the hairstyles of Roman Emperor Flavian’s reign circa 75 CE.
Knowing this to be true, it occurred to be this morning that I could freshen up this dusty blog with a new feature that works to amplify the work I’m putting in elsewhere. And I’m calling that feature BOOKWARD BOUND / Daily Build.
What’s BOOKWARD BOUND?
Every year I go to Social Media Marketing World I come back to Wisconsin with a head buzzing with concepts, and a notebook full of ideas. My best intention is to turn a lot of those ideas into action, but the reality of real life often intervenes to slow me down a little—or a lot. Last year was all about video. This year turned it up a notch by seeing that video and raising it to LIVE video. So what was I going to do to address one or either of those concepts?
I heard a story at these year’s conference from my friend Todd Austin of Fletch Digital in Sydney, Australia. He told me about a golf pro friend of his who had done 191 daily livestream videos documenting his attempt to quality for the Australian Open, and had tremendous success with it (more on this in a bit). I loved that story, and for some reason, filed it away in my mind for later. Little did I know that ‘later’ was just three days after the event.
Going through some of the Unselfish Selfies I took at the event, I saw one I had taken with my friend Melanie Deziel. She had just published her first book, gave me a copy of it, then realized that we had inadvertently re-created a photo we had taken together two years prior when I had given her a copy of my brand new book ROTOMA—The ROI of Social Media ‘Top of Mind’ at Social Media at Social Media Marketing World 2018.
Seeing that photo, I said to myself “I NEED to have a new book to give her in 2021!” And then I remembered Todd’s story about his golf pro friend and blurted out (again, to myself) “I NEED to write a new book to have ready for self-publishing by January 1, 2021! AND I’M GOING TO LIVESTREAM THE WRITING OF IT BY DOING 301 DAILY LIFESTREAMS DOCUMENTING EVERY ASPECT OF GETTING THE BOOK DONE!!!”
What was I thinking? Oh yeah—I wasn’t.
On the day I had the stroke of inspiration, March 5, 2020, there were 301 days left in 2020. And so I went down to my office and hit the ‘go live’ button on a new liveshow called BOOKWARD BOUND—301 Days from ‘I should really do this to DONE’ in Ecamm Live and started working on a book I had had in my head for at least ten years. It’s titled NONFICTION BRAND—Discovering, crafting, and communicating the ‘completely true / completely you’ brand you already are. As of today, I’ve done 68 consecutive daily livestreams doing something to move the book toward completion via Restream.io to YouTube Live, Twitch, and Facebook Live. Yeah, I can’t believe it either.
Some days, it’s little more than showing up. Others, I get inspired and write hundreds of words. And still others, I’m designing the book cover, outlining new sections, or doing a little complaining about ‘this is going to be short ’cause I’m just not feeling it tonight.’ And that brings us to the ‘Daily Build’ part of BOOKWARD BOUND / Daily Build’.
On those days when I actually write part of the book, I’m going to post whatever I did that day completely as is. While I always try to write ‘clean’ (meaning no misspelling or grammar errors) I don’t always succeed, so I’m sure there are going to be a bunch in every posting, but that’s part of the charm of it. You’ll be able to read the book as it’s being written in rough draft form long before any spell checking, editing, ‘you shouldn’t say that’ deleting of content. It’ll be a the rawest of raw feeds that will undoubtedly be altered, edited and XXXX-steel-wool sanded long before actual publication. I’m kind of terrified/excited by the prospect, and hope you might be too.
So if you’ve ever wondered about how to write a book the right way, look elsewhere. But if you enjoy rubbernecking train wrecks, I think you’ll find this at least a little bit interesting. Will I be able to keep the streak alive? Can I possibly get final files ready for uploading and self-publishing via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform? Will Melanie Deziel and I be able to re-re-create the photos we took in 2018 and 2020? Stay tuned to this BOOKWARD BOUND / Daily Build station. – dp
