Okay, I’m not quite that strong, but right now anything seems possible!!

This is your invitation to join me over at The Sugar Divorce, where I’m sharing the journey back to a state of health I have not enjoyed in 25 years. It’s just amazing. Please come!

The Sugar Divorce

Kate is talking about the possibility of starting a blog. I look forward to it. She says, “If I were to blog, it would be brief musings on things like aging, relationships, being a mother, being a friend, you know, what moves me.”

We spent hours tossing the ball back and forth to get better footing on how authors can thrive in the altered landscape of publishing today. I think we’ll see a bit more from Kate in the future as she, like other writers who are braving these learning curves, enters blogging.

I want you to know about Kate’s book, “Trust.” The second novel by the hand of a superb storyteller.

Follow-up: A few days after our meeting, Kate told me she was getting excited about the possibility of writing shorter fiction and engaging the digital publishing world where her readership is waiting. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me!

Suzanna Stinnett

This morning I posted the above iPhone photo and message on Twitter.

Then I got a response from @SaraBlackthorne, a woman I began following recently on Twitter. She said,
@Brainmaker I don’t know what that is, but I really like it. Unsure why. Has a soothing and constant effect.

I looked a little further and found Sara’s lovely blog, Forest of Stories, and realized for the second time that she is inspired and informed by the Torah.

That’s when I decided to share this in a blog post. The reason I am soothed by the numbers in the photo has a lot to do with some rhythm of nature. The numbers are digits of pi, which I play with, memorize sometimes, and just look at a lot. (I say I’m a freak because I can occasionally recite about 600 digits of pi. That’s just freaky.)

The reason I’m looking at my pi strings today is to try to keep a little more balance in my heart and mind, so I can keep doing my work, in the midst of the many points of desperation on planet Earth today. I’m mostly sunk in the horror of northern Japan, and not paying attention to much else. But it doesn’t matter where my focus goes, the pain is in the atmosphere and I need constants, like pi, to help me keep my footing.

I feel an affinity for Sara because (for one reason) she mentions the Torah on her blog and on Twitter. I barely know what the Torah is, but I rely almost daily on a little book called The Hebrew Alphabet, gifted to me by my brother-in-law, a theology nut and a Presbyterian who converted to Judaism at age 55. This wonderful book tells the stories of the characters of the Hebrew alphabet, with interpretations by beloved rabbis. It’s so full of journey, and kindness, and, well, light.

This is one of my favorite characters: Yud. If I was made of something, it would probably be Yud.

From the book:

In Jewish mysticism, it represents a cosmic messenger bringing movement and change into our lives.

And most curiously,

Yud connotes our inborn tendencies for both selflessness (yetzer hatov) and egoism (yetzer hara). According to the sages, the biblical commandment to love God “with all your heart” means “with both your impulses” — for both inner aspects can serve a higher purpose. In this sense, our yetzer hatov involves altruism, compassion and kindness; and our yetzer hara, the passion or personal momentum that, as the Talmudists observed, “leads us to marry, build a house, beget children, or engage in business.”

Ow, my heart
Over the weekend my distress over the situation in Japan reached a crescendo. I realized I had to do something definitive to help, and began to work on a plan to employ my creativity, my writing, my connections with others — and Yud — to implement a publishing project to contribute to funds for Japan’s situation.

Now to find the right connections to work with me, collaborate, and share this journey.

See how Twitter works? We find ourselves relating to each other, and sometimes realizing we are relatives. Then we may begin to act like caring family.

Thank you for responding, Sara.

With love,
Suzanna Stinnett

Your way of thinking about things may not be reflected in any of the models or teachings you see in the world around you. That’s why it’s important to relax and be playful with the process of mind mapping. Your best outcome is when you discover something new that works for you.

Early Mapping
My mind mapping impulse goes back to elementary school. I was chronically bored in class. I started spending my time writing a series of numbers on a sheet of paper. 1, 2, 3 etc, but I was placing the numbers randomly all over the page. Then I would start connecting the “dots,” basically, taking my pencil and making a line from number to number, following the sequence without crossing over any lines. I would end up with a labyrinth-looking image full of curving parallel lines. I was giving my brain a chance to doodle while the teacher droned on about a topic I had mastered the year before.

Later I gave up the numbering. My brain moved my pen through more freeform squiggles.

Relief
People with forms of autism or Asperger’s syndrome may find great relief in allowing the organization of their brain to appear on paper. I knew from early experience that I do not process things in linear terms. Expressing my mind in these different modes helped me feel connected to something as a “different” child.

Stories emerge in elaborate doodles – even if I don’t know what they mean. Psychologists have fun with these things.

Story Arcs
My brain follows curving story arcs and needs blasts of color and organic images to make sense of things. My journal covers are mind maps which can provide a touchstone for the process I am in at the time.

The Big Book
I started doing collage as a teenager, using all sorts of resources to create stories of images for myself. In my 20s I created a huge book to keep my mind maps in. It sits on the shelf for years at a time, but I do have some mind maps of novels I’ve worked on, concepts I wanted to understand better, and memory-maps that are collages of things I want to remember and put together in a pattern of some sort.
In addition to memory-maps where I bring in bits of my life connected to past and future,

I mapped out the characters for a novel,

wrote everything I knew about electricity on sticky notes,

explored the relationships of numbers,

and brainstormed sustainability parties.

Sometimes I build a map just to talk to myself.

Mirror Image
Around that time I also began to write in mirror image. This is another way to give your brain a new route and discover something hidden. I have many pages of journals filled with mirror-image writing.

Stress Relief
Today I often make a mind map to relieve the stress of having too much on my mind. My maps show me what I am struggling with, what I need to focus on, and where the joy is.

Patterns are fun for the brain. This one is okay.

Sketching
Try using the concept of simple sketching as a mind map. If you like to doodle, take it a step further and create an image story. Label things and draw lines of relationship from one to another. Make up your own icons. My journals are full of little faces, smiling, frowning, or showing confusion.

Here’s the earliest icon of emotion I can find, from a 1976 journal:

Blueprints
To plan my series of clay turtles during my pottery years, I took time to map them out clearly.

Focal Points Help Organize
Most often I will write a focal point in the center of the page, and then write all the different things that are on my mind about that focal point. It’s interesting how well these things tend to fit on one page. Our brains are good at working within parameters if they are clearly marked.

Color
I use color to decorate my maps more than to show relationships or to categorize.
A current mind map for my Kindle publishing, BABS and the Directory, fiction writing and marketing.

Sometimes a pattern of color is as informative as any arrangement of words and shapes. I made this collage during a turbulent time and it has given me some sort of information for over fifteen years. Mind maps don’t always point to a destination.

After looking at this series of possibilities for mind maps, does your brain have something new percolating in there?

What would make a mind map work for you? Are you willing to experiment and play?

Would you share your mind map with me?

Blessings,
Suzanna Stinnett

The big players are drumming up their publishing wars, too. Amazon is way ahead from what I can see. Apple has some catching up to do but they play with very big sticks. And there are others.

The reason I’m focused on Kindle right now and the other options offered through Amazon is that their world is big enough. Big enough to warrant close attention and a time investment. Eventually I will work my way through all the different pathways Amazon has created (brilliantly) for writers and publishers. I’ll have my kingdom mapped out and my products all shiny in the store windows.

This takes time. When you sell products online, you have to find a focal point. Let that focal point dictate your time and activity in all the rest of the wheel spokes. I’m choosing Amazon for this phase of my writer-turned-publisher life.

Visit #kindlechat on Twitter where we work together, talk to writers and readers, and unravel some mysteries. That’s every Friday Noon (PST) on Twitter. Use Tweetchat.com or search.twitter.com if you’re not accustomed to the Twitterverse.

Find The 4-Hour Publisher now on Amazon: For writers moving courageously into the new world.

Be well and keep writing,
Suzanna Stinnett
Bay Area Bloggers Society

Live in SF Bay area? Come to a BABS Meeting and learn this stuff in a room with other humans.

Sunday morning was another special treat (it’s Valentine’s weekend, okay?) – at a breakfast restaurant we love. A side of bacon with the scramble was really excessive. Fruit bowl too. Again, though, I didn’t feel uncomfortable being really full.

At lunch I went back to the variable salad routine with shrimp on my salad, lentils, avocado, and all that. Dinner was some beef thing from Trader Joe’s and black beans and salad.

Monday I’m back to the two-egg breakfast with a little salsa and some black beans. Met some business friends for Chinese lunch and got the black bean fish with lots of veggies, skip the rice. It’s very filling. I think there’s a fair amount of sugar in the Chinese sauces, though. I can tell when I eat a “pure” menu, because I get the sensation of sugar deprivation.

Sugar deprivation symptoms are lessening now.

OTHER CHANGES
I thought I would see some change in the hot flashes. Maybe they are a tiny bit better, but I’m not tooting any horns over that one yet.

My rings are looser. People are commenting that I look thin “in the face.” Whatever.

This week is a whole new trial. The first few days of the diet, I had a two-day migraine. I can’t say it was because of the diet since I have a long history of these. But it would make sense to have a reaction like this at first.

I allowed myself to bounce around a lot as you can see. This week, to continue to lose weight, I have be a little bit more conservative.

PHILOSOPHY
But here’s the deal. I have a terrible addiction to wheat, and that is the thing I most want to control. I’m doing very well with it on this food plan. Usually when I stop eating wheat, I replace it with corn and eat it like crazy. That’s not happening this time either. I know I’ll have popcorn here and there, but I’m keeping the portions small and using it as a vehicle for a little salt and the flax oil and the B vitamins in the brewer’s yeast. Every day I can go without popcorn is a huge victory. I didn’t have any yesterday. Woot!!

I pay attention to the demands I’m making on my body, my brain, and my willpower. If I try to do it all at once, it’s not going to last very long. Staying away from any kind of yo-yo (except maybe Yo-Yo Ma), is very important. I’ve watched friends on the HCG diet gain back a lot of the weight and then go back to HCG. Yikes. I know about the dangers of up and down weight loss and how it can devastate your metabolism. Not going there.

I consider the first (10-day) week a success.

Next, the adjustments of Week Two. Will I win, lose, or forfeit?

Suzanna Stinnett
P.S. As I’m making my way along this food plan, I am collaborating with my friend and associate Barbara Bonardi who is well-versed in the HCG diet. Stay tuned for our Cookbook!

Doing it within a budget. I have not included the supplements yet, except for the alpha lipoic acid which I was already taking – but not in the dosage Tim suggests.

Major considerations
Getting off the wheat is such a good change Getting off excess corn — that’s big, big big. Dropping the sugar down to nearly none – whoa.

I’m making this a lifestyle. Is that possible? That’s my question as I watch my progress through the hours each day.

Eating in the FIRST HOUR.
There’s an adjustment. And I am a breakfast person. I like to get ready for my day, including shower, stretches, and all that, before I go downstairs to eat. Tim’s observation of the difference it makes to eat in the first hour — I’m taking that to heart. I am looking for the things that make the most difference with the least sacrifice. That seems like one I can accomplish.

I focus on the two egg breakfast. In the first hour after rising, that’s hard. I can easily eat one. One day I broke a second egg into the bowl and it was a double-yolk. Erg. That’s really too much.

RECIPE
I throw a bunch of spinach (2-3 cups) into the skillet on top of a teaspoon of olive oil. Let it cook down. Three tiny tomatoes cut in half, a sprinkle of feta (the flavor makes so much difference). Then pour the scrambled eggs on top, turn down the heat and cover it for about five minutes, no more. It makes a lovely frittata-like thing. A little salsa or pico de gallo on top makes it juicy.

It’s weird to eat when I don’t have an appetite and I am trying to drop weight. I’m starting to think about it in a different way as I move into this as a lifestyle and not a diet.

The week wasn’t fun. I had more than one start, so it stretched over ten days.

Out of the ten days, I had four or five that were closely compliant with the restrictions and demands, minus the supplements and most of the exercises. I have to take one thing at a time.

MEAL DESCRIPTIONS
Lunch
1/2 cup lentils
2 cups lettuce
1 medium tomato
1/4 avocado
1 small chicken breast sliced
1 tablespoon of caesar dressing
3-4 kalamata olives
1/4 lemon squeezed over everything

Variations
Hamburger or turkey burger
Lots of spinach
Black beans or pinto beans
Add feta

INFRACTIONS
Here’s where I screwed up. Over these ten days I had one real “binge” spell, and that was Friday night when I was taken to the Metropolitan Club and then a member’s reception at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Food, food, food, food, food. And champagne.

I ate about fifteen strawberries.

Other infractions along the way (I think this is all of them)
Half of a date & a few pecans with my coffee. Not every day.
2 or 3 corn chips with my salad meals. Not every day.
At an overly catered business meeting, I had a big gorgeous piece of mozzarella, a thai spring roll (rice), and some wine.
Three popcorn episodes, but each was less than half my usual volume, plus I put flax oil and brewer’s yeast on it, so it’s like taking vitamins. (heh)
One episode of movie popcorn. That was gross. And that was the night before I weighed.
Quite a bit of almond butter and a little nonfat plain yogurt here and there.
The day before I weighed I had a mean headache, and rode the ferry to the city to work with a client. Desperate and frustrated, I had a small bag of potato chips and a little bit of a coke, maybe 1/3 of a cup.
A madeline one morning with coffee.
A small potato roasted with the chicken breast, but I only ate a quarter of it.
A bowl of lemon chicken soup that had some rice in it.
Some very thin slices of apple (about 3/4 of a whole apple over the 10 days).
I eat almond butter when I start to lose it, but I’m keeping the portion low.

I think that’s it. You can see that all together these are quite a few “sugar” moments. Still, I was acutely aware of the sugar deprivation. My energy was very low and the daily walks often were not much fun.

Toward the end of the ten days I began to incorporate the squats and wall presses. Those will become part of the lifestyle, and I can sense they will make a difference.

RESULTS
First week weight loss: Six pounds.
Not bad.

Next: My first JOY DAY

Suzanna Stinnett

You might want to skip this post if you don’t want to know how uncomfortable the food plan can make you in the beginning. Words of encouragement: It does get better. Hang in there.

Good and Bad
Good thing: I like a lot of the foods that are part of this diet. I like simple food, and I love Mexican.

Bad thing: I have barely started this and I’m crazy with cravings. I want sugar, sugar, sugar!! I can’t fathom doing without corn chips. A few chips right now on top of all this food would make everything okay. Walking into the market I had to go past the bakery. Tiny muffins with pink frosting, oh, it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day. Great. I wouldn’t even eat those, but they multiplied in my head into an army of pink headed monsters.

Good thing: One Cheat day out of every seven seems so totally workable. It’s really not that long. I say that now. Look what I just found on my desk. (photo of See’s Candies bag)

Now I am almost half way through my plate of food and I really don’t think I can do it. I searched 4-Hour Body (which I read on my laptop through the free Kindle app), about portions. It says eat until you are full. I ate a little over half of what you see in the photo and I am soooo done. (photo of food plate)

I guess the rest of it will be my next slow-carb meal.

Feeling quite ill. Chewing on the lemon helped. Managed to finish the food over the next hour.

Later
After a 2 1/2 hour nap, got up feeling rubbery and still not well. Made it out for my walk (YES) and now wondering what to consume for the evening slow-carbs. The protein is difficult to keep up with.

Don’t have all the right groceries yet either. So here’s what I ate. Another pile of spinach with about a teaspoon of feta cheese on it. A quarter of an avocado. 4 small tomatoes. I cooked 3 small pieces of “tempura” halibut from Trader Joe’s and scraped the coating off it. Lemon all over everything. Oh, and 3 broccoli florets with a little liquid aminos on them. Went to bed not long after.

Day 2
Had the headache all night and woke up with it. Bad. Got right up and had a scrambled egg and a spoonful of organic nonfat unsweetened plain yogurt. Ended up back in bed struggling with the headache. Finally got up and showered. The headache was starting to scream. I gave in to the sugar and had a wheat-free waffle. The rest of the day I managed okay on the food plan. The headache subsided late in the evening.

Day 3
Wobbling around with the food plan, feeling terribly sugar deprived and a little nauseated. I felt like I was eating a whole lot of food but it wasn’t doing me any good.

Day 4
I relaxed a little on the food plan, knowing I was going out for a special evening and was probably not going to follow any restrictions. I decided to start over the next day. So my Week One was more like ten days of flailing around.

Still with me?
Suzanna

X Marks the (Kindle) Spot
The big obstacle to successful self publishing was distribution. And it has been the bugger keeping self publishers or indie publishers on the wrong side of the tracks.

With our ability to publish directly into Amazon, producers of new content can now turn full attention to the final frontier: Discoverability.

And we are chockfull of tools for that.

Marketing your written material remains a job you must perform with intelligent tenacity. It’s more fun that it used to be, though, so I hope you won’t let that fact get in your way. Get your writing out there. Join our Kindle party. Amazon has created viable distribution channels for you, and continues to enhance them. Publish, lay out your map, and begin to enjoy the process of connecting with your readers.

Megan Garber’s post via Gerd Leonhard on Twitter

The web isn’t bringing about the long-predicted “death of long-form”; on the contrary, it seems, the digital world is heralding a renaissance in long-form reportage.

Joel Friedlander in his post here on The Book Designer:

Ebooks, which eliminate the risks of over-production, over-distribution and returnability, stand the blockbuster model on its head. They allow, even encourage, the opposite model, what you might call the “experimental” model, where publishers are encouraged by the lack of financial investment to put out lots of products instead of loading all their efforts and hopes on one book, and which encourage experiments with pricing that are impossible with printed books.

As long as indie publishers understand the nature of the book distribution that’s available to them, and exploit the advantages they have over larger publishers, amazing sales can be the result.

and
Len Edgerly refers us to this fact in his post here:

The Kindle 3 passes Harry Potter 7 as the most popular Amazon product in history
Amazon.com today announced that the third-generation Kindle is now the bestselling product in Amazon’s history, eclipsing “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7).” The company also announced that on its peak day, Nov. 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which is a record-breaking 158 items per second.

158 items per second.  Ready to publish?